Questions about Socialism (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. WHAT IS THE SOCIALIST PARTY?

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. Our object and declaration of principles were adopted 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 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 contradictions 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 a nationalised concern are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned companies. 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; and there never were, certainly not Russia under the dictatorship of the Communist Party. The system that has collapsed in Eastern Europe — and which is collapsing in Russia itself — was a system of state capitalism where social power was monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. It never had anything whatsoever to do with socialism.


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 sale. The only question 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, modem 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 lime 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 in the world 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 satisfaction of needs. At the moment houses stand empty and thousands of building workers are unemployed; yet many people are homeless or inhabiting slums. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are paid to take land out of food production; 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 steps 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 1990s 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.


If you agree with some or 
all of these points, contact
 us with your questions and 
ideas about what you can
 do to help speed the
 progress towards Socialism.
 Write to: Socialist Party, 52 
Clapham High Street,
 London SW4 7UN.

Crises, booms and slumps (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Since its evolution out of feudalism, the capitalist system of society has ensured that there has been a long-term expansion in the productive capacity of the world. TVs, computers, weapons capable of mass wreckage at one stroke—all these things that were once unthinkable have become basic features of life, at least in the more developed areas of the planet where capitalism has been dominant for many decades, and in some instances, hundreds of years.  

  Although capitalism broke through the fetters placed upon production by the feudal system and has expanded the forces of production to an unprecedented degree in the years since, the expansion of productive capacity and output under capitalism has never proceeded in a straight line. Notions of steady growth and constantly increasing well-being owe more to the rhetoric of politicians than the actual reality of capitalist development.

As a system, capitalism grossly underuses the technology and potential for production that it has helped develop. On one level, this can be seen by the growth in employment of people who are not engaged in intrinsically useful activity—bankers, accountants, insurance workers, armed forces personnel and so on. But even when capitalism can be said to be working at “full capacity”, with expanding output, growing productivity and booming sales, a period of “under-use” is always around the corner.

Falling output
Capitalism in Britain has reached just such a turning point. The last few years have seen fairly steady growth, with rising productivity and increased investment in those expanding sectors of industry that were making the headlines in Thatcher’s last years in office—particularly microelectronics and information technology. Much of that growth and expansion has now been halted.

This has not, of course, prevented the present government from arguing that the downturn in economic performance is just a "blip”. Only in November 1990 was John Major (when Chancellor) prepared to admit tentatively that Britain is in recession. The government currently defines a recession as being a situation when there is a negative growth rate for two successive quarters, but this “official" definition hardly matters to the thousands being thrown on to the dole queue or the thousands of others forced into bankruptcy.

Britain, in common with a number of other countries, is now in a situation where industrial production is falling and unemployment is rising. Although the official unemployment statistics have been doctored to the extent that they have become virtually meaningless as a measure of the actual level of unemployment in Britain, they do at least indicate trends—and the current trend is up. Manufacturing production has been falling since April last year and in the three months to November fell by 2.7 percent compared with the previous three-month period (Independent on Sunday, 27 January).

So far as governments and politicians are concerned, falling rates of growth and high levels of unemployment are signs that something has “gone wrong". When things start to go wrong for capitalist governments they often look for a scapegoat— like some hapless (ex-)Minister whose irresponsibility and recklessness is blamed for having brought the period of growth to an end. In Britain this role has been allocated to former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, a man previously described as "quite brilliant" by Thatcher and Major. But governments taking the credit when output is expanding and unemployment is low, and finding a scapegoat when things get rough is based on the mistaken assumption that the capitalist business cycle results from the policies they pursue. They may like to think that they are in control of the economy and that when things go wrong they can put them right again with the correct policies, but this is a fantasy.

George Meddemmen

Over—expansion
What governments fail to realise is that an economic recession is not an example of capitalism “going wrong" because of some dreadful ministerial error. Economic recessions with stagnating production, growing unemployment and a further slide into poverty are entirely normal—and necessary—features of capitalist development. This is because of the inner logic of the capitalist system's drive towards expansion.

The conditions for the development of an economic recession are present even when the capitalist system is in a period of boom, or relative prosperity. One thing that is immediately noticeable is that the operations of capitalism are not planned at the level of the whole economy. Decisions about investment are made by thousands of competing enterprises operating independently without social control or regulation. This means that when business is booming and when profits and growth rates are high "over-investment" by some enterprises will inevitably occur. In pursuit of future profits they expand their productive capacity beyond what the market which they are producing for can absorb.

A particular industry over-investing and expanding its productive capacity beyond the limits of market demand in this way is the usual cause of an economic crisis and subsequent depression. If capitalist growth was to be achieved in a controlled manner, eliminating booms and slumps, then growth would have to be balanced in each sector of industry. But the growth of an industry is not linked to the demands of other industries—its growth is determined by the expectation of profit, and this inevitably leads to a disproportion in investment and a disproportionate expansion between the various branches of production.

When an industry has over-produced for its particular market, this will have a knock-on effect for firms operating in other sectors of the economy. For instance, if an enterprise is no longer able to sell the commodities it has produced on the market at a profit, production will be cut back thereby slowing output. This will provoke a chain reaction as the enterprises' suppliers will no longer be able to sell all their products either, which will in turn affect their suppliers and then their suppliers' suppliers, and so on. Such an overproduction for selective markets therefore only has to appear in a few key industries for a crisis to break out and spread—reducing overall growth rates and increasing unemployment. And it all arises out of the general anarchy of production inherent in the capitalist system.

Boom—slump cycle
After a period of generalised stagnation and high unemployment, capitalism will be able to move out of the slump phase of its trade cycle. Although a recession has devastating consequences for the working class, no slump is permanent and once many of the weaker capitals have gone to the wall—with their assets being sold off cheaply to their competitors—the prospects for investment and expansion improve again. Capital depreciation, coupled with reduced interest rates caused by reduced demand for money capital, and lower real wage rates in a recession, mean that the prospect for making profits improves and industries begin to expand once more, taking on more workers. The cycle then begins all over again. As Marx pointed out in the last century:

The factory system's tremendous capacity for expanding with sudden immense leaps, and its dependence on the world market, necessarily gives rise to the following cycle: feverish production, a consequent glut on the market, then a contraction of the market, which causes production to be crippled. The life of industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation. (Capital. Volume I. page 580, Penguin edition).

Now that capitalism has become a world system the "sudden leaps" of production referred to by Marx are not nearly as immense as they were in the capitalist system's historical ascent when whole continents of the Earth still had to be brought into the "factory system" with its wage-labour and capital relationship. Indeed capitalism, having raised the forces of production to a level where a society of abundance is feasible, has outlived its usefulness for humankind, and its cycles of boom and slump are a testament to its inherent inability to utilise resources efficiently. Capitalism can only advance so long as there are periods of regression when workers are made redundant in increasing numbers. when growth stagnates and when poverty spreads—not merely in the "developed" areas of the world but in the weaker capitalist states also, where the effects of the capitalist trade cycle are often felt hardest.

Most importantly of all, there is nothing that politicians can do to eliminate the boom-slump cycle—it will be around as long as capitalism itself. Capitalism cannot be efficiently planned as anarchy of production and uneven development are at the very heart of the system. All attempts at planning capitalism have ended in disaster—most notably in state capitalist countries like Russia and China where production seems to be in an almost chronic state of stagnation and where unemployment has. at least until recently, been masked by overstaffing.

The only way to take the abundant resources of the Earth and use them in an efficient manner is to establish a system of society based on common ownership and democratic control, where articles of wealth will be produced solely for use and not for exchange on a market with a view to the profit of a minority. Only then will crises, booms and slumps be a thing of the past and only then can production be geared to satisfying the needs of the inhabitants of the Earth.

Dave Perrin

A quote from Gavyn Davies which accompanied the article:

  “Around July, companies began to complain in private that demand had suddenly fallen away without much warning . . . What we are now observing is the flip side of the boom in confidence which led to so much borrowing and investment from 1985 to 1989. In those years, output growth was persistently stronger than anyone expected, initially because consumers were so willing to dip into their savings . . . As consumers threw caution to the winds companies decided it was time to invest, and the level of capital formation rose to heights which had never been seen before, relative to GDP. Companies continued to press ahead with expansion long after consumers had started to rebuild their savings and for quite a while that kept employment rising, and the economy afloat.
  It was not until the middle of 1990 that companies suddenly realised their expansion plans were not supported by the prospects for demand . . . Companies are now in the full throes of a major adjustment which is designed to correct their over-borrowed condition. And the main casualty over several years is likely to be capital spending, since productive capacity has run ahead of demand."
—Gavyn Davies, currently chief UK economist at Goldman Sachs International, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, 27 January 1991.

Is a fourth world war inevitable? (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let us start on some points we can agree about:

• The war in the Gulf is about oil and profits. not freedom, justice or decency.
• The right of the Kuwaiti rulers to exist as a nation-state is of no concern to workers anywhere; nation-states represent the interests of the rival capitalist gangs that exist under the profit system not those of the wealth-producing majority.
• The “allies” who now attack the dictator Saddam Hussein are hypocrites who used to arm the Iraqi dictatorship when they thought it was in their interests to do so.
• The soldiers on both sides in this war are wage slaves in uniform, dying pointlessly for their masters' interests. Workers have nothing to gain from fighting on behalf of the capitalists.
• This war is causing deaths, injuries, suffering and fear which a sanely organised world would avoid.

Socialists are not alone in recognising these points. Despite the mind-destroying propaganda of the pro-war media, there are hundreds of thousands of workers in Britain, across Europe, in the USA and in the Gulf states who know that the Gulf war is a war for the control of oil. which has little to do with what the ruling class say it is about.

It is fundamentally important that socialists are not lone voices in a global wilderness in which everyone else is totally conned by capitalist lies. The existence of a vocal anti-war movement is proof that we workers have brains of our own and will not always fall prey to the lies of our rulers.

The problem is that so much of the anti-war rhetoric is confined to the futile hope of ending wars within the capitalist system. This is as hopeless as trying to end street crime in the midst of urban slums and mass poverty. The hard fact is that wars—all wars—are effects of a cause. Just as the mugger is the effect of the brutalising, alienated social environment of urban capitalism, so war is the effect of a system of persistent rivalry over raw materials, resources (including oil), markets and exploitable territories and populations. This persistent rivalry is inherent to the world capitalist system. The profit system without competing, plundering and—when push comes to shove—fighting rival gangs of capitalists could not exist. If you accept capitalism you must accept that there will be wars.

Within the anti-war movement there are some serious misconceptions. There are those who call upon the capitalist owners of the Earth to act morally. The United Nations is seen as a moralising force, coming along to capitalist gangsters who take their rivalry too far and telling them off. This does not work. No force on Earth can make the capitalists relegate commercial advantage to humanitarian concerns. At a recent anti-war demonstration in London a group of Christians on the outskirts of the crowd were praying for peace. They might just as well play dominoes for peace; war is not a matter for mythical spirits in the sky to solve. Then there are the left-wing sects whose own Leninist theology is akin to religious dogma, who argue that any enemy of the American and British ruling class must be a friend. So it is that the SWP have stated that they hope Saddam gives America a bloody nose (as if it is Saddam doing the fighting rather than the poor, frightened Iraqi conscripts, and as if the recipients of the bloody nose will be the parasites of Wall Street) and the RCP urges workers to take sides with Iraq. What utter confusion these self-appointed leaders of the working class cause.

War will not be ended by wishing it away or by taking sides. For the effect to be removed its cancerous cause must be destroyed. This is the case for socialist revolution. Nothing short will lead to a peaceful world.

After this war
With naivety and hypocrisy combined, the politicians talk of how the defeat of Saddam will lead to peace. Do they expect us to have forgotten the First World War which they called ‘‘the war to end all wars”? The British Empire and its allies won; Germany was humiliated and the Kaiser overthrown. In the aftermath of war the League of Nations promised a new world order of peaceful national co-existence. In 1939 the world was at war again. Once more, we were told that Hitler must be defeated at all costs. Victory for the Allies would mean no more Hitlers. One of the Allies was Stalin and. after the defeat of Hitler, his dictatorship controlled vast areas of Europe that had not been its victims before the war. Was this a defeat for dictatorship? Of course not. After the Second World War came the United Nations with its grand promises. In reality, the UN has been a tool of the most powerful capitalist nations and that is why its resolutions. ranging from that condemning the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, have been worthless. In Vietnam the American Empire claimed to be making the world safe for democracy. Today the Vietnamese workers live under a hideous dictatorship and the Cambodians live under constant threat from the vicious Khmer Rouge now armed and funded by the West.

George Bush, who was head of the CIA when Saddam began massacring the Kurds, and who was an oil multi-millionaire in his twenties, speaks of the New World Order which will follow the defeat of Iraq. Is this new order going to benefit the unelected, tyrannical monarchs of the Arab states who are Bush’s allies in this war? Will it benefit Gorbachov, the most centralised power-holder in the Russian Empire since Stalin? Will it benefit the butchers of Tiananmen Square who still rule over a fifth of the world’s population? Will it benefit the Turkish rulers who have locked up trade unionists in hellish prisons, but are on "our" side because they allow bombing raids on Baghdad from their air bases? Will it include the Israeli rulers who have imposed a curfew on over a million Palestinians for over a month? And if these are to be the beneficiaries of this "new world order", then one thing is for sure: times will be even worse for the workers of the world.

Worse to come
World capitalism is completely out of control. It is. as the Socialist Party has always said, a system of economic and social anarchy. Only a year ago the more naive capitalists were rejoicing at the coming of peace in our time. The Cold War was over; the good items were here; there was Eastern Europe to plunder and the future looked rosy. No sooner had the talk of the "peace dividend" made the headlines than war was on the agenda. Once again high dividends are to be derived from arms investment. Capitalism has no power to prevent wars from happening or from predicting when they will come. There is a reason for this

Capitalism is an unplanned system. Each company chases after profits, quite without any care of how this affects others. Each nation-state (which is a gang of capitalist thieves dominating one territory) carries on regardless of the rest. International treaties count for nothing when it comes to it. Iraq is party to the treaty forbidding the use of biological and chemical weapons. The USA has signed treaties making nuclear war illegal and this makes not a scrap of difference to the implicit threats of nuclear attack which they have made. Likewise, treaties of international friendship count for nothing: Jordan is committed to alliance with Britain, but this has not stopped Jordanian support for Iraq; the so-called European Community has fallen apart in the fragmented national responses to the war. Capitalist "agreements" are as reliable as one between Al Capone and Bugsy Malone.

There are over 160 nations in the world today. All of them are capitalist; there could be no such thing as a "socialist country". Each is armed. Each will fight for its economic interests. As world capitalism develops, more and more of these nations will threaten other nations. More will obtain nuclear technology and other awful weaponry with which they can threaten the rest of the world. In the long run, it seems very unlikely that nuclear and chemical weapons will not be used, by design or accident.
In addition to the multitude of legalised national gangs, there are vast numbers of would-be national groups. These are referred to by the legalised gangsters as terrorists. In fact, all warfare is terrorism. As world capitalism continues, more of these will obtain the capacity to blow up larger and larger areas. Today the IRA can bomb Downing Street; who is to say that five years from now the IRA, ETA or the PLO will not have biological or nuclear weapons? Certainly, the current holders of these disgusting weapons are in no moral position to tell their weaker power rivals that such weaponry is a bad thing to have.

With the ending of the Cold War, when the world was largely threatened by two giant superpowers, the planet Earth is not more secure. We are far less secure. Now we are entering a period in which the right to be a world power is spreading; weapons of mass destruction are escalating; the possibility of passing arms limitation agreements is less credible than ever.

It may be that the war in the Gulf will be the first act of a Third World War. If Saddam is defeated only a fool could be cheered by the likely rise of Assad of Syria as a new Middle Eastern super-ruler. The extent to which this conflict will destroy vast areas of the world is unknown. In one sense, it is almost too late to worry about that. More important is the prospect of the next war after this one. We can be sure that there will be another war if capitalism goes on. We can be sure that the more world battles there are the more unthinkable military results will become compulsively thinkable. The question is not whether there will be another war. but which of several likely areas it will be in and when it will commence.

It is important that workers oppose the current war, but such opposition alone amounts to crying in the dark. Only by dealing at root with the cause of war can the world ever be safe. Only an anti-capitalism movement can be an effective anti-war movement. This may sound like too huge a task. The awful consequences of failing in that task should motivate every reader to play their active part in ridding the world of the war-creating system before the system rids the world of humanity.

Steve Coleman

Quotes about the war (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The colonial powers drew the boundaries of the Middle East within living memory, with nothing in mind other than their own strategic interests". 
 “US insistency upon respect for international law merely serves to safeguard a capitalist world order based on the burning of ‘liquid gold’”.
  “One wonders if Mr Bush has lost his marbles in the propaganda war he is intent on waging? Almost everybody knows it is oil. and oil alone, that motivates him in the Gulf'.
  “It is breathtakingly hypocritical for countries such as Britain and the US to talk about curtailing Saddam Hussein's aggression when these two countries among others were responsible for selling armaments to him in the first instance”.
  “Saddam is one of many political gangsters armed and supported by the Western (and Eastern) powers. He is now threatening the economic interests of the United States and its allies and they have decided to eliminate him”.
  “This war is not about the ‘liberation of Kuwait' but for the liberation of Kuwaiti oil’".
  “After the slaughter of previous wars in this century it is heart-breaking to see human lives sacrificed in a conflict between US global business interests and the regional aspirations of a brutal despot, who until recently was propped up by those same interests”.
  “Last July if you killed an Iraqi you would be guilty of murder. Now if you kill an Iraqi you are a patriot. Somebody decided we were going to war and what were ordinary people going about their business became an attacking force killing people they never met before”.
—Extracts from letters that have appeared in the Irish Times since the outbreak of the war.

Blogger's Note: 
It's pretty obvious that the above were written by Irish comrades.

This selection of quotes appeared alongside the 'Is a fourth world war inevitable?' article.

SWP give critical support to Saddam Hussein (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "If it does come to a bloody land war, we argue Bush and Major are to blame and hope their forces are defeated. Some people see this simply as uncritical support for Saddam Hussein."

Socialist Worker Review, February 1991

Blogger's Note: 

This wee dig at the vanguardist Socialist Workers Party appeared alongside the 'Is a fourth world war inevitable?' article.

NHS priorities (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the National Health Service has suffered as a result of reduced expenditure. District health authorities have closed wards and reduced services to stay within their dwindling budgets.

These cuts in income have led to announcements that a further 3,500 beds will be closed to the public as hospital administrators are ordered to clear existing debts before the implementation of the government's changes to the NHS that begin in April (Guardian, 26 January).

Despite the government's attempts to reduce the politically embarrassing waiting list for treatment of a million people this has continued to grow. North East Thames regional health authority with the worst waiting list, for its size, in the country has found an answer to the difficulty in reducing its huge waiting list: in the future certain categories of patients will be prevented from joining the queue.

There have been informal restrictions for some time and it is claimed that a million operations have been cancelled in the last three years (Radio 4, 4 February). Screening for cancer could save an estimated 1,250 deaths a year by the end of the decade but the programme may have to be curtailed in some areas because surgeons are unable to cope with the extra work that would be involved (Guardian, 31 January). The women most affected by breast cancer who could be helped by the screening are in the 55-69 age group and, from capitalism's point of view, at the end of their economic usefulness.

The operations for which it is now difficult to even join a waiting list tend to affect people’s well-being rather than their ability to work. These operations are still available privately for those who have the means to pay. But the poor will have to live with uncomfortable disabilities.

In January the NHS was provided with more money to open beds for certain categories of patients—casualties from the Gulf War. Some districts have opened beds which had remained closed due to underfunding from previous years. Professor Angus McGrouther, head of surgery at University College Hospital, London, has stated that the NHS is fully prepared for the chemical injuries, burns or conventional war wounds that may arise from the Gulf War (Daily Telegraph, 28 January). These type of injuries are not new to British hospitals. There were many burns and war wounds sustained during the Falklands' War and victims of chemical weapons from the Iran-lraq war in the 1980's. The chemical disaster at Bhopal also provided grim experience of chemical poisoning on a large scale.

The effects of sulphur mustard gas are well-documented as it was extensively used by both British and German armies during the First World War. The continuous development of chemical and biological weapons in Britain has enabled knowledge to be accumulated, and provides deadly materials ready for offensive use.

War casualties
Two psychiatric patients have been staying in a doctor's office at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, because of a shortage of beds. A hospital spokesman, while denying that this was a result of accommodation being set aside for war casualties, stated: "It was thought appropriate to create additional space" (Guardian, 28 January).

At a time when the government is urging workers to settle for smaller wage increases. members of the armed forces have been offered a 12.2 percent increase to encourage them to kill others and risk being killed themselves for oil and profits. Nurses have been offered a 9.2 percent pay rise instead of the expected 6-7.5 percent. Student nurses have even been offered 11 percent. This is because nursing skills are going to be in short supply if the expected 500 casualties a day start to arrive from the Gulf War. The government cannot afford to have a repeat of the strike action taken by North Manchester General Hospital's night nurses in January 1988.

Security in British hospitals has been increased on the advice of the Ministry of Defence and employees are being issued with identity passes. There have been an increasing number of assaults on patients and staff in recent years but attempts by nurses’ unions to obtain better security have been largely disregarded. The Gulf War has changed all that and money has been found very quickly.

Although poverty is the cause of the greater degree of ill-health and premature deaths suffered by the working class the NHS does help relieve some of the misery of illness. The resources to run an efficient health service are available as the response to the Gulf War has shown. The preservation of workers' health in a recession is not important under capitalism because there is always a supply of unemployed labour which can be used to maintain production. But keeping workers in uniform fit enough to kill those who have temporarily been designated as “enemies” is. The provision of beds to assist in the prosecution of a war for oil and profits while the rest of the NHS is slowly being dismantled shows capitalism’s anti-working-class priorities.

Carl Pinel

Letters: Housing problem (1991)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Housing problem

Dear Editors,

A few years ago I gave a talk on housing at a Socialist Party branch. I pointed out that the housing problem can never be solved as long as houses are built for profit and not for human need, and quoted statistics on homelessness and the numbers of people in sub-standard accommodation. In order to illustrate the consequences of bad housing at a personal level. I cited a newspaper article (Guardian. 18 December 1982) about a man living on a council estate in East London who set fire to the flat where he lived with his wife and small daughter in a desperate bid to get rehoused. (Capitalism was able to solve his accommodation problem, in the short term at least, by sending him to prison for nine months).

In seeking material for another talk on housing recently, I came across an article (Guardian, 17 November 1990) about a man who set fire to his house, killing his two-year-old daughter as a result. This time the man “owned” the house himself, but after being made redundant could no longer keep up the mortgage payments. To stop the building society from repossessing the house, he burned it to the ground, with tragic consequences.

Such acts of desperation are only the extremes to which people can be driven. But with the number of homeless increasing, with record figures for mortgage arrears, with the unbelievable squalor of inner- city council estates, with three building workers being killed on site every week, it is clear that capitalism is utterly unable to meet people’s housing needs. The earlier claims of reformist politicians to have solved the housing problem are exposed as hollow, and nobody would make such outlandish statements now. The truth is that the “housing problem” is really a poverty problem, and will not disappear until the cause of poverty— capitalism—has been abolished.

Paul Bennett

Manchester

East Timor

Dear Editors.

Having read your November 1990 issue about the Economic Causes of the Gulf War, may I say that you should not trivialise the economic significance of East Timor.

The key to understanding Australia’s support for the Indonesian takeover in 1975 was that their oil companies knew of enormous oil reserves under the Timor Sea. Hence, well before the Indonesian invasion in December 1975, the Australian ambassador in Jakarta reminded Canberra to take this factor into account when determining its attitude towards East Timor’s future status. Australia gave de jure recognition of Indonesia’s "integration” of East Timor in 1979 and from then on entered into negotiations for the joint exploitation of these reserves. Its reward is the conclusion of the Timor Gap Treaty in December 1989 which will provide a bonanza for Australian petroleum companies. The reserves in the Timor Sea are thought to exceed reserves in the Middle East.

The oil question worked in reverse for East Timor as compared with Kuwait, i.e. that it was in the West’s interest for Indonesia to control the country.

Even without oil, East Timor produces a great deal more than carrots. Its crop of high quality coffee has always been a great world market attraction. Since the invasion, the coffee trade has been taken over by the army and has profited people like General Murdani who commanded the invasion operation and continues to take a keen interest in Jakarta's policy of colonial control and exploitation of East Timor.

Carmel Budiardjo 

Indonesian Human Rights Campaign 

Thornton Heath, Surrey

William Morris

Dear Editors,

DAP (January) agrees with my general point that there are attempts abroad to “confuse William Morris's Marxist heritage’’, but suggests that the new book, William Morris and News From Nowhere: A Vision For Our Time is not amongst them. DAP goes on to suggest that I should back up my “generalities with some facts and evidence’’. It seems to me, however, that swopping textual analysis of the book is unlikely to clarify the point at issue. This can be done without the need to quote too much chapter and verse.

News From Nowhere is probably the finest example of a number of utopian socialist works written in the last years of the nineteenth century. The motivation for their production is easy enough to see. There had not at that time existed anywhere “socialism in power". Therefore there was a need to speculate on what socialist society might be like. That does not of course make Morris a utopian socialist himself.

News From Nowhere therefore is about a vision of socialism and to focus specifically on it is to run the risk of avoiding the question of how that vision related to Morris's political practice. In this sense the book skews matters from the start.

What is needed is not to use News From Nowhere as a starting point for further utopian explorations but to tie it back to the debates in the socialist movement at the time. Some chapters in the book, for example Jan Marsh's "Concerning Love" on the woman question do this very well indeed. Although I do not, of course, agree with Marsh’s actual treatment of the subject. But others, for example. Paddy O’Sullivan's “The ending of the journey” (which DAP also criticises) which uses Morris as a stick to beat opponents in a debate about late twentieth century ecological politics, quite clearly do not.

The book is a political curate’s egg and in so far as it tries to claim Morris for some form of utopian socialism quite muddle-headed. That is not to deny that it is an interesting book. But if socialists wish to revive the memory of William Morris, and that would be no bad thing, another vehicle will be needed.

Keith Martin

London, N11

50 Years Ago: BBC’s Anti-Pacifist Blockade (1991)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The B. B. C. is extending its anti-Pacifist blockade. It has now blacklisted three famous preachers—Dr. Donald Soper, of Kingsway Hall and Tower Hill; Dr. George MacLeod, of Iona; and Canon Charles Raven, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge . . . In these three cases, as in the case of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, banned because of the pacifist views of its conductor. Sir Hugh Robertson, the B. B. C. is assumed to have acted as the instrument of the State. No attempt has been made to disguise the reason for the action . . ." (News Chronicle, January 4th. 1941.)

["Press Cuttings", Socialist Standard, March 1941.]

Myth and Reality (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

There have been countless examples of the official myth-machine working hard to mislead the working class about war, telling us that war is glorious and that right and justice is always on our side. This deliberately calculated deception is based on the fear that if the truth about war—its causes, nature, effect and whose interests it is fought in—were to be publicised the workers’ enthusiasm for it would be less than complete and there would be no-one to do the fighting and to make the weapons and ammunition.

Capitalism's crises and conflicts are a continuing horror and this is a good time to read Clive Ponting’s book 1940: Myth and Reality which lifts a small corner on a hugely sordid deception. As the civil servant whose concern for the truth over the sinking of the Belgrano was so embarrassing that he had to be charged with (although later acquitted of) offences under the Official Secrets Act. Clive Ponting needs no introduction.

Winston Churchill described the year 1940 as Britain's “finest hour". According to the mythology that was the year when a country united and inspired by the brilliant, defiant speeches of their great leader resolved to fight for every beach, field, street and house against an invasion from the super-efficient German military machine which, having crushed the French, was in preparation across the English Channel. It was the year when the British Expeditionary Force was let down by their allies and had to fight a glorious retreat to Dunkirk where they were lifted from the beaches by a fleet of small British boats manned by week-end sailors. It was the year when the Battle of Britain was won by a brilliantly-led RAF which inflicted crippling losses on the Luftwaffe. It was the year when stubborn British courage so impressed the Americans that Churchill's friend and ally, President Roosevelt, eagerly gave as much aid as he legally could to the British war effort. And so on.

But it didn't happen like that. In 1940 the British government were by no means united in a resolve to fight to the bitter end; in fact, they were secretly exploring the possibilities of a negotiated peace with Germany. The German military machine was a ramshackle affair which depended largely on horses for its transport. As the BEF withdrew towards Dunkirk the British government did not tell the French of their evacuation plans—in fact they slyly encouraged the French and the Belgians to sacrifice themselves in rearguard actions; as the British commanders’ chief-of-staff put it, ”we don't give a bugger for the Belgians".

One of the war's great romantic stories was of the armada of small boats with their volunteer crews chugging across to Dunkirk. What actually happened was that volunteers were not called for until almost three-quarters of the BEF had been evacuated; two-thirds of the force were taken by Royal Navy ships straight off the quay in the harbour and the little boats picked up only about eight percent of the total. The withdrawal and evacuation were chaotic, as the British troops stole from the local people and were inclined to shoot anyone who was so much as suspected of being a spy. In breach of the Geneva Convention British troops were using dumdum bullets, in reprisal for which unpublicised act the SS performed a well-publicised killing of 170 British prisoners. Discipline broke down among the evacuating troops, with officers deserting their men and other ranks throwing their rifles and equipment out of train windows when they got back to England. Heroic it was not: in private Churchill told his colleagues that it was the worst military defeat for centuries.

The RAF's success in the Battle of Britain owed a great deal to mistaken and inconsistent German tactics. At times the RAF was close to breaking point but was relieved by Goering senselessly switching the Luftwaffe’s point of attack. Casualty figures on both sides were hugely distorted by the British with the RAF losses understated by 15 percent and the Luftwaffe’s overstated by 62 percent. On September 15—the crucial day, now Battle of Britain day—the British claimed that 185 German aircraft had been destroyed when the true figure was 60. What really stopped a German invasion was the English Channel and the fact that the German navy could not have protected an invasion fleet.

America’s attitude towards the war was not fashioned by any “special relationship” with Britain but by a long-standing ambition of their ruling class to undermine British world influence and in particular to dismantle the system of Imperial Preference which obstructed American industry's access to some enticing markets. Aid came to Britain from America grudgingly and with stringent conditions. Many British assets overseas had to be sold to pay for American aid and were snapped up by American firms for knock-down prices. In typical style Roosevelt told one of his cabinet that this was “milking the British financial cow which had plenty of milk at one time but which has now become about dry". By the end of the war the cow was wretchedly emaciated while America, whose industrial and military power had been crucial in the Allied victory, was a dominant world power.

While this was going on the British working class were deflected from reality by a relentless stream of lies and false promises. In this great exercise in deception Churchill’s speeches were supposed to be valuable for their inspiring defiance but at the time many of his colleagues did not rate them highly. His more rousing speeches were made in the Commons; some which were broadcast—including the famous pledge “ . . . we shall fight on the beaches . . ." —were not delivered by Churchill but in an imitation of his voice by an actor called Norman Shelley, who also played Larry the Lamb in Children’s Hour.

Ivan

Obituary: Fred Kenny (1991)

Obituary from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manchester Branch were saddened recently to learn of the death of Comrade Fred Kenny at the comparatively early age of 55. Fred, a building worker, joined the Socialist Party in 1983. and was a keen literature-seller and fly-poster. He had been ill for some time and unable to attend meetings, hut his enthusiasm for socialism never dimmed.

Sting in the Tail: Market Morality (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Market Morality
While Iraqi and UN forces throw rockets, missiles and bombs at each other in the Gulf with little or no thought of the cost, it is interesting to note that the National Health Service in Britain is somewhat more parsimonious.

   Managers at a hospital in Manchester have refused to pay for a pricey new drug which could save the life of a seriously-ill cancer patient. . . . A course of injections with the drug, interleukin 2 (IL-2), costs around £3,000. Dr Thatcher said that he had been told by the unit general manager, Mike Fry, last week that the money was not available.

The Independent (5 February)

The war in the Gulf is costing the British government billions of pounds. This they reckon is money well spent as it is in pursuance of their policy of ensuring a cheap supply of oil for British capitalism.

£3,000 to save the life of a worker is looked upon as an extravagance. This is the logic of the market place.


God on our side
The Gulf War has seen many reservists mobilised, but one of them must be all of a dither as he has been called up by both sides! He is God, sometimes known as Allah, and The Guardian (1 February) provided a collection of the claims being made for his exclusive services.

For example, George Bush is sure that God's on his side:

We know that this is a just war, and we know that, God willing, this is a war we will win.

But Saddam Hussein rubbishes this and warns that:

  If Mr Bush makes the mistake of attacking us he will repent it for ever. If he depends on technical facilities, we are depending on God.

In case Saddam thinks he has sole right to Allah's muscle then there is his fellow Muslim, a Saudi commander, to put him straight:

  Whatever Saddam Hussein says . . . we are the ones who have been given a special mission by God.

If truth is always the first casualty in war then God is always the first recruit.


Black and white
When apartheid was imposed in South Africa 43 years ago, the Socialist Standard described the idea that 2.5 million whites could forever keep the other 9 million in subjection, as a "forlorn and fantastic hope", and so it has proved.

The South African government is to repeal the laws which are the basis of apartheid, and although there has been no announcement about voting rights for the black majority, it can only be a matter of time.

But political reform alone will not be the salvation of the black majority. Archbishop Desmond Tutu points out:

Black people would remain poor unless real barriers are removed.

The Guardian (2 February)

All he is seeking here is more land for the blacks when what is required is that all the means of production and distribution be commonly owned by everyone whatever their colour.

The Archbishop will probably not consider that proposition but there will come other South Africans who will: the mixture of political freedoms and wage slavery guarantees it.


Media Breakthrough
Any socialist searching through the media for an accurate description of socialism is fated to be disappointed, frustrated and, very often, infuriated. How pleasant therefore to read a report in the Weekend Guardian (12 January) giving an excellent description of socialism:

  "Economic conditions" he says, "are absolutely ripe for the break-through. The only thing that's lacking to build a society based on common ownership, on production for use not for sale, on the abolition of the wages system. . . .  is the intellectual factor."

This is a major breakthrough for a newspaper which at various times describes socialism as nationalisation, state control, municipalisation or some other scheme to run the buying and selling system.

It should surprise no socialist to learn that the quotation is from a supporter of the Socialist Party. After all, who in British politics could give an accurate description of socialism, other than a member or supporter of the Socialist Party?


War and Peace
Politicians are fond of pretending that capitalism is a peaceful system of society; that conflict such as is occurring in the Gulf at present is a mere interruption to an otherwise peaceful norm.

This is of course nonsense. Capitalism is a system based on competition and economic rivalry that inevitably leads to military conflict. If anyone has any doubts about this, the recent report of the International Red Cross should set the record straight.

  Thirty-eight current or recent conflicts - excluding the Gulf war - have claimed the lives of 5 million people, almost all of them civilians, according to a study released in Geneva yesterday by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
  The report, which will be used by the Red Cross to spearhead an international campaign on behalf of victims of conflict, estimates that 20 million people have died in 105 wars during the "post-war period" since 1945. A further 60 million have been wounded or uprooted.

The Guardian (29 January)

Danger zones
Every day The Independent prints a macabre death chart that shows the latest Iraqi and Allied figures for deaths in the Gulf war. It is probably all government lies but the figures shown for Day 28 (12 February) according to the Allies are Israeli 12, Saudi 1, Jordanian 7 with no figures for Iraqi dead, although the Iraqi claim is 467 dead.

No one can doubt that Baghdad, Tel Aviv and other cities in the area are danger zones but then so is London. For according to the same issue of that paper here is the position of the homeless in Britain:

  The office of John Patten, a Home Office minister, told the campaign that, in 1989, the last year for which statistics are available, 375 people died from hypothermia on the streets in England and Wales, 83 died from malnutrition and 13 from self-neglect.

The recent cold spell in the London area alone has claimed more victims:

  The death rate among homeless people could more than double over the next few weeks as a result of the cold weather, a leading doctor warned yesterday.
  Mr Jeremy Booth, consultant in charge of Accident and Emergency at the Westminster Hospital, London, said that the number of people attending the hospital had trebled during the cold spell with a significant increase in cases of frostbite and hypothermia. Gangrene of toes and fingers was also common.

Being poor is always dangerous. It is dangerous being a poor Palestinian on the West Bank when you can't afford a gas mask to protect yourself against the possibility of a gas attack. It is dangerous being a poor worker on the South Bank, London if you can’t afford the price of a bed for the night.

Scorpion.

Capitalism, war and recession (1991)

Editorial from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A famine threatens in Sudan and Ethiopia. But has a mass airlift of food, tents and medicines been organised? Has the production of useful things been increased to meet this obvious need? Not at all. The only airlift that has been organised is one of troops and armaments to the neighbouring Arabian peninsula in order to wage a hi-tech war. And manufacturing output in countries like Britain and the US is actually falling as their economies enter the recession phase of the business cycle.

Over the past ten years capitalism has had a comparatively good press. Words like profit, competition and enterprise have become catch-phrases to express something desirable. The desirability of what they denote is a matter of opinion but they do describe the key features of capitalism. Under capitalism economic activity is governed by a competitive struggle for profits amongst rival enterprises. Defenders of capitalism say this is good as it leads to more and cheaper goods being produced. We are now seeing what it also means: war and recession.

Under capitalism decisions as to what, how and when to produce are taken by firms which are all competing to make profits. A recession develops when this anarchic struggle for profits leads, after a period of expansion, to a key industry overproducing in relation to the market for its goods and this having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy. This is where we are now in Britain, the US and a growing number of other countries. Output, investment and market demand are falling while unemployment and bankruptcies are rising. It's the old story of poverty amidst plenty being solved by abolishing the plenty rather than using it to abolish poverty. But this is how it must be under capitalism, where the profit motive means that production is not and cannot be geared to meeting needs.

On the world scale the struggle for profits is not just a peaceful, economic struggle between rival firms from different states in which those selling the best product win. It is much more than this, since not just firms are involved. States are and, as states have armed force at their disposal, this gives the struggle a completely different dimension. When states feel that their "vital" economic interests are threatened by some other state, they are always prepared to use armed force as a last resort. This is the cause of modern wars, to which the present war is no exception.

This is why no conference of capitalist states, such as that proposed for the Middle East, can remove the threat of war. The most such a conference could do would be to negotiate a new balance of armed force, an armed truce between the states competing in the region. The only way to prevent wars is to abolish capitalism on a world scale.

What is required is indeed a "new world order", though not Bush’s mad dream of a permanent and unchallenged American world domination. Oil and all other productive resources must become the common heritage of all humanity, not the property of multi-national corporations and national states. Nothing less can provide the framework within which the problems of world poverty, disease and pollution can be tackled and finally solved. Only then can production be geared to meeting people’s needs. Only then can the obscenities of war and famine be banished for ever.

Between the Lines: Whose Victory? (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHOSE VICTORY?

On Saturday, 9 February, while American and British bombers blew up their Baghdad targets and put the fear of bomb-blessing god into countless Iraqi kids, BBCI’s Going Live did its weekly "Press Conference" with Juliet Morris who had just returned from the Middle East where she was covering the war.

The Going Live programme allows teenagers to question the stars. Often the questions are more penetrating than the pompous political pundits ever dare ask. Sometimes they are naive. This week they were coated in fear.

How can we believe what we are told about the number of children killed and injured when the censors are at work? We can't, answered Morris - we just have to hope that the lies being told are not too great. Are Israeli kids scared of chemical missile attacks? Yes, very scared. How are they coping? Schools have been closed down - the difficulties of teachers putting gas masks on classes full of 30 six-year olds at a time are too great. Was she frightened when she was in the war zone? Yes.

Going Live is, by tradition, one of those jolly BBC shows put on to keep the kids smiling at the beginning of the long weekend. At the end of that week's show none of the children in the studio showed a tract of a smile. They had been dragged into the pit of fear which war pushes most of us in to. Going Live? But how long for?

SEEK TO BE DONE

On Sunday, 3 February your reviewer watched two films on TV. Both were about Justice. They could not have been more different. The Winslow Boy (Channel 4. 2pm) was about a false accusation made against an English public school boy. The boy’s father would not allow injustice to prevail and so sacrificed everything to see that his son's innocence was upheld. He took the matter to the House of Commons where the brilliant British defender of the law, Sir Henry Morton, made an impassioned plea for the right of the father to sue the Admiralty (who ran the boy's school). Of course, the parliamentarians were moved to a mass wave of sentimental awakening by the lawyer-MP’s speech and they voted for the case to be given a "fair trial". Then came the trial, with the sickening little goody-goody, Winslow up against the forces of the Mighty State. Needless to say, wee Winslow was in the Right, so the Mighty State had to concede defeat. Jolly good cricket, what! The film ends with the boy's father having been vindicated. But no, it was not he who was shown to be righteous in all of this, but the great English Legal System where Right is always done and, furthermore, seen to be done. What self-righteous little prats must have written, acted in and believed this film. What a smug and ridiculous act of complacent belief in good old English fairness this cinematic drivel symbolised.

Was the English parliament which decided to give young Winslow a "fair trial" the same kind as that which has refused persistently to free the Birmingham Six? Was the kindly judge out of the same stable as Lord Denning who is of the view that it would have been better for the Guildford Four to have been hanged, even though they have been found innocent?

The same night BBC1 showed Korczak, directed by Andrej Wajda. This was a film of painful truthfulness about one man's attempt to protect a group of orphan children from a full awareness of the brutalities of the Warsaw ghetto.

Korczak isolates the children in order to spare them a realisation of the grotesque social disorder which the fascist regime had imposed upon them. Perhaps he was wrong to deny them the truth; without a doubt, his intentions and actions, as depicted, were beautiful in their sincerity.

It was a film which refused to indulge in pathetic illusions about justice. In the end Korczak and his children are deported by train to meet their deaths in the gas ovens. There is a wonderful utopian moment close to the end of the film - a moment in which the carriage carrying the children falls off the end of the train and the young ones dance away to their freedom. It was one of the most moving scenes in any film ever. But Wajda, who is one of the finest film directors alive today, refused to allow viewers to roll back into the idiot's comfort of seeing justice done where it was not to be. The film ends with the stark information about the fate of Korczak and his children. It would have been a hardened viewer who did not weep.

THE MAD EMPIRE

First prize for the craziest moment of TV nationalism during the recent war lunacy goes to the half-time display during the US Superbowl. This was Nuremberg meeting Spielberg; George Bush on a big screen, and Fred Savage from The Wonder Years looking like junior commandant of the Florida Hitler Youth. Whoever devised this absurd pro-war pageant should be given an immediate offer of a star part in the sequel to Mel Brooks' The Producers. Bad taste? It’s the kind of thing that could make you wish that Columbus had never discovered America. And while the clowns performed workers died - needlessly.

Steve Coleman

Gorbachev clamps down (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Western politicians and pundits have been puzzled by Golden Boy Gorbachev. The man Mrs Thatcher thought she could “do business with" turns out to be slaughtering unarmed civilians in Latvia and Lithuania. How should we read Gorbachev—a great reformer or a reactionary? Or is he a Jekyll and Hydc character, who veers from reform to repression whenever the wind changes?

The change in Gorbachev's policies can be understood if you remember that he is a loyal Leninist, an opportunist, with a firm belief in the CPSU’s "vanguard” role. And like Lenin, he faces acute economic problems.

A serious balance of payments gap has been developing since about 1985, particularly where trade with “developed capitalist” countries is concerned. Also since then, state spending has exceeded revenue each year, and this budget deficit has been rising steeply. 

Leninist dictator

From 1989 Gorbachev was on the defensive. Opposition to perestroika—his vague, incomplete, ever-shifting reform package which threatened the interests of planners and managers—became increasingly vocal. Again and again he protested that he really was a true orthodox, an heir of Lenin:

Lenin is our guide to action . . . (in) the task of restoring the authority of Marxist thought . . .  the theory of Marxism- Leninism . . . (The Party’s) role is to serve as Soviet society’s vanguard.

(Pravda, 26 November 1989).

Then, as the Soviet Union threatened to split, with mass rallies, strikes, army discontent. civil strife, the growth of separatist ethnic and nationalist movements, and worsening economic chaos. Gorbachov followed the Leninist logic: he became a dictator in all but name.

The idea of "presidential power” was promoted by his friend Shevadnardze at the Central Committee meeting in February 1990. The following month Gorbachev became President of the Soviet Union, unelected except by apparatchiks. Almost at once, he issued a decree enabling him to declare a state of emergency. This meant that as President of the Soviet Union he could introduce temporary presidential rule, suspending state administrative and elected bodies, replacing their personnel with his own nominees.

Then in April he got the Supreme Soviet to pass a law to protect his “honour and dignity” and a law about the “maintenance, services and protection” which the bankrupt state was to provide for its sensitive president. Upon retirement, he is guaranteed a large pension, plus a state dacha "and necessary services" (Is this a euphemism for servants or does it mean simply hot and cold running water, mains drainage and electricity?) The state would also provide transport—and protection. This last point is not surprising. Like Mrs Thatcher, Gorbachev’s popularity was for export only. Those carefully staged walkabouts in Siberia were a long-time ago: his limousine now has bullet-proof windows.

To the Western media Gorbachev seems to be a man in tune with his people. Yet an opinion poll last year showed that only 6 percent of people had confidence in "Marxism-Leninism", and only 4 percent felt confidence in the CPSU, the vanguard party, while 50 percent declared they were opposed to concentrating power in one person (Argumenty i Fakty).

Special powers

Yet. in September last year, Gorbachev took on "special powers” for 18 months to establish economic reform, and law and order. It was Lenin who said "no essential contradiction can exist between the Soviet, that is, the socialist democracy and the exercise of dictatorial power by a single person". And Lenin was Gorbachev’s mentor. You have been warned.

The Gorbachev years of economic chaos, political indecision and stalemate in his power struggle with the Party-state bureaucracy have seen a growth in chauvinism, nationalism, anti-semitism. and savage ethnic conflicts, to the point where there is even a fear of civil war. On the political scene, there are literally hundreds of groups, factions, parties and fronts, some of them with over-lapping membership, most with ill-defined platforms, few with a mass following, and none of them, we suspect, having any concern about abolishing the wages system. Meanwhile, for ordinary folk, the struggle just to feed the family has become worse than anyone can remember—except those in Leningrad in World War Two.

As for glasnost, or openness, well, censorship is still at work. After Chernobyl censorship and state secrecy combined to suppress information about radiation hotspots and sickness. In 1989 Glavlit gave approval for the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s story Matryona's House but, after it was typeset, the censor pulled it. The editor of Argumenty i Fakty has complained of pressures, from Gorbachev, urging him to play down embarrassing issues. More recently, a serious TV current affairs programme (Vzglyad) was taken off the air, to suppress a filmed discussion about Shevadnardze’s reasons for resignation: his fears that the country was heading for dictatorship.

Socialists are not concerned about the fate of Gorbachev but we do welcome the opening-up of political debate as offering workers the opportunity to develop a socialist organisation, even if this is not going to be easy in the welter of monarchist, nationalist and liberal groups, in a land where Marx’s name is invariably coupled with that of Lenin and where “socialism” is thought of as inefficient, corrupt, totalitarian state capitalism.

Charmian Skelton

Caught in the Act: Goodbye To All That (1991)

The Caught in the Act Column from the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tory hopefuls will have felt their pulse quicken at the news that many of the parliamentary storm troopers of the Thatcher revolution will not be storming after the next general election. The list of ex-ministers who will not be standing again reads like a Thatcher cabinet - Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson, Norman Tebbit, Cecil Parkinson, John Moore, Nicholas Ridley. It is even rumoured that Thatcher herself will soon announce her retreat from the battle for the triumph of market forces over soggy concepts such as social welfare. A tot of plum seats, with fat Tory majorities, will be looking for candidates.

This situation is given extra piquancy by the fact that many of the retiring ex-ministers were themselves once considered as future prime ministers. Howe’s claim to fame was that he spear-headed the drive to cut back government spending and establish the policy that any business which couldn't make a profit was thereby not worth saving with state money. Lawson was the yuppies' favourite Chancellor and in his heyday encouraged the illusion that through his budgets the British people were reaping the harvest of prosperity from the seed sown by the unglamourous, dogged Howe. Sadly for Lawson, he did not time his resignation so that his reputation remained intact. The chaos of capitalism was too much for even a smarty like him, reducing him to taking a few part time jobs in the City bringing in the odd £30,000 or so a year.

Morals

As recently as last November Tebbit was threatening to contest the premiership (and it would have taken some very brave men in grey suits to deter him) but in the end he deferred to Major. Perhaps he was hoping for a return to prime ministerial favour; in the event he showed what he thought of Major’s declared intention to fashion a more "caring" government by deciding that he needed to spend more time with his wife.

Cecil Parkinson paid the penalty for being one of Thatcher’s blue-eyed - at one time, indeed, the bluest of eyed-boys. Tory aspirants to the leadership must have watched, in impotent despair, Parkinson’s apparent inability to do anything wrong in Thatcher's eyes. He had, however, done wrong in the eyes of Sara Keays and no patronage could save him from the repercussions of this exposure of how Tory gentlemen behave when it suits them. After all, Tory moralists like to tell us that morals are, like Major's Britain, classless; they did not thank Parkinson for showing that they are supposed to apply only to the working class. When he eventually came back to office Parkinson seemed to have lost his touch; the past master of deception made a series of public relations blunders which were intended as shrewd, voter-attractive ruses - which did not amuse his anxious colleagues.

Another Thatcher favourite to plummet to obscurity was John Moore, who was once the subject of an enormous publicity exercise to convince us that he was an unusually capable administrator of capitalism's affairs. Moore basked happily in this praise and in Thatcher's admiration for his talents for assaulting working class living standards. It did not seem to occur to him, that so blatant a campaign carried its own menace. When events exposed him as a very ordinary sort of political blunderer there were no men in grey suits to save him from an especially humiliating demotion. He did make one last effort to claw his way back into favour by issuing what was supposed to be a serious analysis of the deeper levels of poverty in such a way as to suggest that it was all a product of over-excited imaginations. This latest blunder met with the contempt and derision it deserved and to no one’s regret - certainly not that of the very poor - Moore disappeared from the ministerial scene.

NIMBY

Nicholas Ridley for prime minister was a prospect supported by only a few of the stranger fanatics. Ridley has always conducted himself with all the arrogance and contempt of someone who has inherited a lot of money. As much of the wealth of this old Etonian’s family came from the exploitation of coal miners he was well qualified to help formulate the government's strategy against the miners during the early 1980s, which reached its ultimate triumph in the defeat of the 1984/5 strike and the subsequent run-down of the industry. On all this Ridley looked with a pitiless eye; this is, after all, capitalism under which wealth is produced, not so that people can hold jobs but for sale at a profit. He had a similar attitude to anyone who objected to what are politely called developments - factories, motorways, runways and the like which threaten to blight their living conditions - sneering at them as NIMBYS - one of those fashionable acronyms, for Not In My Back Yard.

It is not clear whether Ridley regarded himself as a NIMBY when he used his influence to obstruct the building of some houses which would have affected the view from his elegant, costly country home. The incident confirmed what was already known - that Ridley has an uncomplicated view of the world: capitalism is a class divided society in which he is in the right - the superior - class and he will take good care to assert his privileges and to defend them at whatever cost to others. It was a typical indiscretion about European unity which forced his reluctant resignation from the government; events had overtaken someone who did his best to live in the past.

So now we have a new set of politicians in charge, who claim they are inspired by fresh principles, new priorities and more humane ambitions. This change is personified by the greyer, lower-key manner of John Major. Perhaps there will be some minor and insignificant changes: Thatcher's stridency and obstinacy, and the sycophnacy of her cronies, were becoming so laughable that they were losing votes. And that is what it was - and is - all about.

Ivan