Sting in the Tail: Another Dud Czech (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Dud Czech

It Is difficult to run capitalism, whether the free-enterprise or the state model. The latest politician to learn this harsh truth is Tomáš Ježek, privatisation minister in the Czechoslavakian government.

Part of Mr Ježek's scheme was the issuing of books of vouchers that can be exchanged for shares in the privatised companies. This scheme is the subject of the usual speculation and sharp practices that can be expected in a market system. According to The Guardian (21 January 1992):

The Czech privatisation minister Tomáš Ježek has threatened to take away the license of any firm shown to be speculating. . . . But the public has been shocked by reports of agents tempting little old ladies with food hampers if they sign over their vouchers.

This Tomáš Ježek is the same out and out defender of capitalism with its wonderful "speculation" who wrote to the Socialist Standard in June 1991 accusing us of "calculated drivel" and "utter self-deception".

Mr Ježek has yet to learn the bitter lesson of capitalism. It is not politicians who control the market system — it is the market system that controls the politicians.

Labour of Sisyphus

The futility of dealing with effects rather than causes has been proved once again by the re-launch of the Anti-Nazi League.

The League was first formed in 1977 to combat the rising National Front. Street battles duly took place and the League was wound up in 1980 when the NF went into decline for reasons which, incidentally, had little to do with the League.

What has brought the League back again is the growth of another bunch of would-be Nazis, the British National Party, and punch-ups between the two are likely.

So the League which thought it could "drive the Nazis off the streets” has it all to do again! That's the fate of all those who think they can deal with capitalism's evils in isolation.

Of Bikes & Bangs

I am fed up with politicians who say "you can't disinvent nuclear weapons". You can't disinvent penny-farthing bicycles either, but I haven't seen many just lately.

(Letter in The Guardian 1 February1992) 

Obviously the penny-farthing didn’t have to be disinvented for it to disappear: it was simply replaced by more effective means of transport as society's technical knowledge advanced.

The same thing happened to the cannonball when high explosives and then nuclear weapons came along, and the latter is still the most devastating means of waging war that society knows.

That letter writer probably wants to see nuclear weapons banned, but this is impossible when the profit-driven capitalist system churns out the conflicts which make weapons, nuclear or otherwise, so necessary and therefore so inevitable.

The Front-Man

The demise of Gorbachev had politicians, journalists, etc., rushing to endorse the Great Man theory of history.

According to this theory, significant changes in science, art or political direction are down to an outstanding individual, and John Major expressed It very well:

It is given to very few people to change the course of history, but that is what Gorbachev has done.

(The Guardian 27 December 1991) 

This shallow thinking ignores the social forces which shape history and which brought down the "communist" dictatorship. Look at how America's economic might bled-white the USSR economy through the arms race and how this in turn produced massive discontent among workers in the USSR with their living standards.

The reform of the USSR economy and political system had to be attempted sometime, and if Gorbachev hadn't started it then another front man would have. To paraphrase Henry Ford, the Great Man theory of history is bunk.

Tough at the Top

The plight of Lloyds’ "names"who find themselves a little strapped for cash has moved the nation to tears and the journalists and TV commentators to indignation and pleas that "something must be done".

At the risk of appearing a little unfeeling about the plight of our "betters" we would just like to point out what kind of wealth you need to become one of these "names".

To be a name you have to show that you have £250,000 in readily realisable assets, a total over and above the value of your first home.

(The Independent 20 February 1992)

An interesting side issue to the "names" affair is that 40 Tory MPs, Including some cabinet ministers, have suffered in this insurance crisis. We suppose that they will all be very philosophic about it — after all they never tire of telling us how we all live in a classless society now.

And of course in this classless society we all have £250,000 in readily realisable assets, don't we?

Easing the Pain

In 1990 the Marquess of Cholmondeley was left £118 million in his father's will — we assume that his dad reckoned that even in Mr Major's classless society the money might come in handy.

Unfortunately the Marquess has three sisters and dear old dad didn't leave 'em a bean. Anxious to see that his sisters don't starve the Marquess has decided to sell a Holbein painting that was part of the estate. This painting is estimated to fetch about £15 to £20 million — so even divided three ways this should ensure that the three sisters will be able to afford the occasional knees-up.

Heartwarming stories like these from the national press are the sort of thing that must cheer those other citizens of the classless society who are huddled In the doorways of shops, shivering in cardboard boxes and wondering where tomorrow's breakfast is coming from.

Let’s talk politics (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once every four or five years the great thinkers of our time are given ample opportunity to explain to us where their ideas went wrong. For surely the ideas of such great intellects as John Major, Neil Kinnock, Paddy Ashdown et al must have gone badly wrong, or we wouldn't be living in a society where there are more homeless yet more empty houses and more unemployed builders than ever before; more starving people, yet more food destroyed or prevented from being grown than ever before; more understanding of the needs of our planet, yet greater destruction of its resources than ever before. The list is endless, but we shouldn't really expect any apologies from the self-appointed gurus, because according to their doctrine—the doctrine of capitalism—it has always been like this and always will be.

Socialists would be forced to agree with this depressing outlook if we still lived in a society that could only provide comforts and necessities for a certain proportion of the population. However, the technological advances in production which could only have been achieved under a competitive system such as capitalism have left that system as an obstruction preventing the majority from enjoying the fruits of those advances. Capitalism has outlived its historical usefulness and needs to be replaced by a more efficient system, socialism, if the potential it has created is to be realised.

This is very different, though, from what we are going to hear emanating from the party platforms which are projected into our living rooms. We will be asked to believe that the problems facing society today are the fault of certain individuals, parties, policies, workers, or anything other than the system itself. Their arguments will be backed up by millions of pounds-worth of advertising and airplay to help convince us. They will talk about such impersonal phenomena as “the market”, "the stock exchange”, “inflation”, “the unemployment problem”, and “the economy”, and put forward sophisticated formulae for the eradication of the many facets of poverty most of us encounter in our daily lives.

Limiting the debate

In putting forward these formulae, the professional conmen and women of these political parties seek to obscure the definition of politics behind a screen of rhetoric designed to confuse or bemuse the voter. They aim either to make the political arena seem so complicated that the ordinary person could not possibly hope to understand it, or else to alienate the working class from political thought and action by making it seem irrelevant to the problems of daily life. By confining and designing political debate within the limits of the existing system, these representatives of the ruling class leave workers little option but to become baffled or bemused by the “pass the parcel" policies of the left and the right.

Socialists, in complete contrast to all the apologists for capitalism, refuse to confine the political agenda within the straightjacket of the present system, but seek instead to replace that system altogether. Socialists therefore enter the political field with one simple aim—to end capitalism and replace it with the superior system of socialism.

Socialists claim that in order to change society people must first understand the fundamental principles of the system they wish to change. Otherwise they risk making purely cosmetic changes, leaving the system intact. The present system we live under is called "capitalism”. One of the principal characteristics of capitalism, socialists contend, is the separation of society into two main classes. Firstly, there is the ruling class who own the means of production and the vast majority of the material wealth of the planet, even though they make up only a small minority of the population. Secondly, there is the working class, who constitute the vast majority of the population, but who are forced by economic necessity to sell their physical and mental energies to the ruling class in return for a wage or salary. Therefore, socialists argue, any progress from capitalism to socialism must involve the dismantling of this class system.

Socialists contend that capitalism is by its nature a political system. It affects everybody all of the time. It is not confined within national borders or dependent upon the existence of particular electoral systems. However, capitalism has not always existed. The political systems of feudalism and slave-based societies preceded it and flourished for many hundreds of years. Since capitalism has not always been with us, there is no reason to believe that it will always exist in the future. It is merely a passing phase of human development and as such is no more "natural" or “eternal” than any of its predecessors.

Just as all of us are affected constantly by the political system of capitalism, so each of us is forced to act politically innumerable times each day. Contrary to what our leaders would have us believe, political action is not confined to the election booth or to a small elite group. Every time we go to the newsagents to buy a newspaper, we are performing a political act, no matter which paper we buy. Each time we buy an item of fruit we are acting in a political way, no matter from which country that fruit originates. The procuring of any commodity, be it food, shelter, labour power, in exchange for a sum of money, is a political act, since the very existence of money depends on political acquiescence to a system that supports its use.

Money is political

But these self-proclaimed prophets of what amounts to utopian capitalism never tell us about the political nature of money. Instead, they offer a society where employers and workers, rich and poor, takers and givers, can live in harmony. This wonderful state of affairs is to be reached through a redistribution of money amongst the aforementioned groups without changing the nature of those groups or abandoning the need for money. How is it possible to have workers, who give, and employers, who take, in a society of equals? Even the political illusionists cannot come up with the mysterious formula for this magic trick. Instead, they tell us that money is a natural part of “society", that the one cannot exist without the other, and therefore conclude that money is essential

From within capitalism this may appear to be true. However, if you look at the Earth from the ground it appears to be flat. Looks can be deceptive. Money, like capitalism, has not always existed, but is a human social invention. For thousands of years societies flourished without the use of money. Even until quite recently, prior to the development of capitalism as a world-wide system, most populations lived their whole lives where money played little or no part in the social relationships. This is hard for us to comprehend now, living as we do under the world-wide grip of capitalism, but even a quick glance at social history shows it to be true.

With the advent of property, and the greater variety of production, a universal means of valuation was required to regulate exchange. Money performed this function. However it did so in societies that were far from able to provide for peoples needs. As well as defining value, in the form of price, money also acted as a means of rationing. Today money retains these two functions, of valuation, converted by the pressures of supply and demand into a price, and of rationing, where we are limited in our access to the commodities produced by society, by the amount of money we possess. So, if there are two glasses in front of me, one filled with beer, the other empty, and I have no money, under the present system I will not be able to drink from either. The second glass denies me access to beer for the physical reason that it doesn't contain any, the first for a purely political reason: I have no money. In socialism this barrier would not exist.

Socialists believe that, in common with capitalism, money has outlived its usefulness, since technology has now produced the means of providing all humanity with all their material needs. If money lost its value altogether, the value of all socially manufactured products could only be measured in terms of their usefulness. The collecting of worthless paper currency would be merely a pastime of museum curators or sentimental ex-capitalists. With production geared to satisfying human needs, and with the means of providing for such needs being available, as they already are, the idea of anything being bought or sold would become ridiculous. Distribution would be based on need rather than ability to pay.

So, as the election approaches, workers have the choice of being taken in by the hollow' promises and impossible dreams of these small-screen egomaniacs, or else of keeping them on video-tape for later viewing as an historical comedy once the insane Comedy of Terrors known as capitalism has been replaced by the sane and humane alternative of socialism. The workers of this country—of the world—have the choice, but they may not have that choice for too much longer.

Capitalism may provide a bleaker alternative in the form of a nuclear holocaust or some "natural" environmental disaster. Either way the days of capitalism’s reign are numbered, and it is only the human race as a whole who can decide who shall be the beneficiaries of its demise. The fate of young and old, male and female, the yet unborn of all races, hangs upon that decision.

J. C.

Faith, hope and superstition (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

It can’t be much fun being God these days. The trouble with being a figment of someone's imagination, is that you have to take on all the oddities and personality problems that they dream up for you. You get no say in the matter, even if you are omnipotent.

When humans first made the gods in their own image it was different. There were deities for every occasion and the task of running the universe was shared out. When disease or famine came and threatened the whole community, the merciful god could point an accusing finger at the god responsible for sickness, or for the harvest, and everyone was satisfied, if not entirely happy, with the situation. Times have changed, however, and gods who find themselves surplus to requirement face redundancy just like the rest of us. Today it’s a one-man job (and God is male, of course) and he has to accept the fact that he himself sent the AIDS virus, floods, famine, earthquakes and so on—for the benefit of humanity. Still, to help out and clear up any confusion, he has dozens of different sects of believers and worshippers to spread “the truth"—dozens of different truths in fact, each one being the real truth.

The further back into the history of god-worshippers you look, the better the logic seems to have been in their approach.The early believers decided that if suitably bribed, the gods could be useful in all sorts of ways. Today, when acts of God don’t work out in everyone's best interest, all kinds of excuses are made for him. He gets away with murder. Presumably because of this reverse progress in humanity’s long quest for God. many of the ancient ideas have survived through to today’s rituals. Saturnalia, for example, in honour of Saturn, a Roman agricultural god, was celebrated on 17 December. This was followed by several days of feasting and jollification with candles being lit, slaves allowed certain liberties, and a good time being had by all.

Ancient beliefs

Anthesteria (or caster as it is now known) was originally a Greek 3-day festival held when the first signs of new life in nature appeared. Lots of wine was consumed. and on the third day pots of vegetables were boiled for the spirits of the dead who were believed to be roaming at large. The day ended with the spirits being chased out and sent back to their spiritual home. On the third day they “rose again", you might say.

As far back as we know in the history of religion, grain or fruit had been offered to the gods to make sure they understood exactly what was required of them. Modern Christians do the same in their harvest festival. Many of the born-again variety, especially in America, have a similar approach except that it is considered preferable for the offering to be made in hard cash.

The very idea of being born again, which is only a modern recruiting version of the more conventional Christian baptizing, has a history which goes back, at the very least, as far as ancient Greece. Anyone who had been mistakenly supposed to be dead and had turned up, perhaps after a battle, and after the ritual handing them over to the god of the underworld had been performed, had to go through a play-acting form of re-birth before being re-accepted into society in order to convince the gods of their revived mortal status. In an equivalent ancient Indian ritual, performed for the same reason, the person being born again had to spend a night crouched in a tub of fat and water. Over this, the rituals normally performed for pregnant women were carried out. John the Baptist, who went in for ducking people in the river in order to cleanse them of their sins and give them new life, was only reviving an already old custom.

Another early idea was that of making human sacrifices, often with the victim being given the name of the deity to whom they were to be sent. The eagerly awaiting audience would swallow the flesh and drink the blood of the victim in an attempt to be at one with the god. Catholics today do the same or. at least, they claim to.

Childish absurdities

Every advance in humanity’s knowledge of their surroundings leads to a change in the ideas of "God”. This change, however, is obviously not one of greater understanding, but less. As "God" becomes more distant and obscure, the efforts to reach him are ever more bizarre. The “development” of religious ideas is backwards. They made more sense in the day when everyone knew that the Earth was the centre of the universe, was supported on pillars, and was flat. These were the kind of ideas held by the writers of the books of "God’s holy word”, and the absurdities contained in these are clear today to anyone who can read and is capable of doing so without a totally closed mind.

Believers however, whose hope of doing well in life (this one and the next), rest on the acceptance of these as "gospel", or. at least, on an ability to find a self-deluding interpretation of the nonsense, are put in an ever-increasingly ridiculous position. With faith, however, they rise to the challenge. For example: What is sin?. Answer (from a leaflet handed to the present writer by a Hyde Park evangelist, in response to the observation that the small baby she was carrying was not a sinner): "All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever”.

What is God? The nearest we ever get to an answer is that he is the creator of all things. This task took six days followed by one of rest—what did God do on the 8th day?, the 9th and 10th and so on until today? In what sense did he exist in a state of complete nothingness? How long was he in this state? When did he start the project? We do have an exact answer for the last question thanks to a certain Bishop Usher and a Dr Lightfoot. Usher computed the date to 4004 BC and Lightfoot, not to be outdone, worked it out to 23rd October, at 9 o’clock in the morning. What day of the week did God start on? Not a matter of great importance unless you happen to be a Seventh-Day Adventist and you, therefore, know that it was a Sunday, which makes the sabbath fall on Saturday and the rest of the Christian world one day out.

Some believers, who think that the idea of God creating the universe in just six days, and out of nothing, might sound a little far-fetched, concede that there may have been an error in translation and that a “day”, in fact, could mean a period of perhaps 1000 years. This, no doubt, would have made the task much easier, but presumably we cannot apply this multiplication of time (by 365,000) to the story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. This trip, which ought not to have taken more than a few days (24-hour days, that is), took— with God's guidance—40 years. Even more miraculously, the clothes and the shoes they were wearing never wore out—‘And I have led you 40 years in the wilderness your clothes are not waxen old upon you. and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy feet". The robes and the sandals worn by a 10-year-old at the outset must still have been in good condition and supposedly still a reasonable fit, when the wearer at the age of 50 finished the trip.

Why bother with such absurdities, you may ask? Why not treat them with the same amusement that you would treat a 6-year-old who believes in fairies and Father Christmas? The answer is that if civilisation is to reach the stage where poverty is not tolerated, where the best that can be produced is produced—to satisfy human need, not the profit motive, and where all humans have equal access to the best possible standard of living and human dignity, the childish and primitive ideas that we are all inherently sinners, and therefore incapable of acting humanely, and that an invisible tyrant in the sky has a paradise where “only a few will be chosen”, must pass into obsolescence first. Such ideas have no place in the 20th century.

Nick White

SPGB Meetings (1992)

Party News from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I'm not sure if David Hines was a member of the SPGB but he was definitely a sympathiser. His play "Bondage" was adapted into the film the 'Whore', which starred Helen Mirren and was directed by Ken Russell.

Socialists against racism (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Traditionally, racism has been seen as an ideology, a system of beliefs, which held that white people were superior to black people. It was an ideology of crude racial superiority and, as such, was used to justify the conquest, enslavement and pillaging by European nations of most of what is now called the Third World. This type of crude bigotry is still promoted by members of fascist groups throughout Europe and the USA.

The so-called new racism, on the other hand, is essentially a theory of “human nature" and “human instinct" the most important of which is supposed to be the desire for the company of the same kind. The idea that there exists such a human instinct is now widespread among right-wing politicians. For example, in The Meaning of Conservatism (Penguin 1980) Roger Scruton claims that:

Illiberal sentiments . . . are sentiments which seen to arise inevitably from social consciousness: they involve natural prejudice, and a desire for the company of ones own kind.

What bonds people together, what makes up “one's own kind" according to new racism, is “a shared way of life” which includes not just language and customs but also beliefs and feeling, in short a “culture”; and, the new racists continue, while there are many groupings, the most important way in which people who share a way of life come together is in a "nation" in which they identify themselves as who and what they are.

As with the old racism, science is called in in support of such an "instinct" to "prove" that it is “natural" for people to be hostile to "outsiders”. The idea of an innate and natural hostility towards those who are perceived to be different is something which runs through the new racism. But that biological differences determine other, cultural characteristics has been discredited by scientists for years. What are called "racial differences" is something which is socially defined. For example, groups which are classed as "outsiders" in one period or in one country may be defined as insiders in another.

Prejudice

According to the Daily Telegraph (23 September 1991), the former French President Giscard D’Estaing takes a tough line on immigration. He suggested a referendum to make citizenship a "right of blood” rather than a "right of ground"—in other words, he wants nationality to be determined by "race" and ancestry rather than by place of birth. In his article he wrote of an invasion by "unwanted aliens", an opinion he shares with, indeed derived from, his rightwing rival Jean Marie Le Pen and his National Front.

In the 1990s' economic recession many racist workers are blaming problems on immigrants who happen to mainly come from the so-called Third World. Their racism arises from fear that someone else is competing with them on the labour market and for housing, education and other social services.

The nationalistic and fascist ideas of the 1930s of Mussolini and Hitler such as xenophobia, nationalism and contempt for democracy are now at work again in Western society. Organisations like the National Front, the BNP. German and French neo-nazis and other European fascists have been churning out propaganda. aimed particularly at young people, to foster antagonism between black and white. In recent years minority ethnic groups have suffered an increasing number of racially-inspired attacks. Temples, mosques, synagogues and cemeteries have been vandalised and daubed with fascist slogans and emblems; people have been attacked in the streets and abused with racist insults. This alarming trend is only the tip of the iceberg of popular and institutionalised racism.

The problem of racial tensions is usually approached by the main political parties from the assumption that plans should be devised to enable "different races” to exist co-operatively. Although on the face of it this is an anti-racist attitude, it is in fact quite the reverse. There is of course only one race—the human race, and no-one comes from any pure "racial” stock. The peoples of the world enjoy many diverse cultures, but there is no necessary link between race and culture.

Todays so-called “British stock” in fact traces its ancestry to a great variety of groups who settled on this island including the Celts, Romans. Jutes. Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Each of these groups was, similarly, the result of a mixture of people of different geographical and cultural origins. So, many of the philanthropic reformers who today advocate measures like “positive discrimination" as ways of improving the relations between the "different races" are in fact proceeding from the same fallacious racial assumptions as their fascist opponents.

Ignorance

The profit system doesn't operate on any moral code, and we can not say that as capitalism continues it will progress to smoother and more harmonious ways of working. Governments will tend to discourage or promote racism to suit the requirements of the profitability of industry. During the last World War much of industry and many services were destroyed. After the War there was much reconstruction work to be done and. with about 30 million workers killed in Europe, there was an acute shortage of labour. The capitalists needed an enlarged workforce quickly, and they were not fussy about where the “hands” came from. In the Economic Review of 1947 the government set out its policy:

Foreign labour can make a useful contribution to our needs. Foreign labour is the only substantial additional source of manpower which is open to us, especially for the undermanned industries. The undermanned industries have to be filled by the immigrant labour force mainly from the Colonies of West Indies, India and Africa.

Now Britain, along with other industrialised countries, is in economic crisis—and "swamping our culture", scaremongery and measures like the Nationality Act and the 1991 Asylum Bill have come back on to the agenda.

From the Jewish fundamentalists, who proclaim they are the “chosen people”, to the neo-nazis who believe that that honour is theirs, all racism feeds and flourishes upon ignorance. But the fact is that today the most significant division between people is that by which a small minority (from all cultural origins) own and control the means of life, while the overwhelming majority of us (from all cultural origins) create wealth and run society primarily to produce profits for the rich.

Michael Ghebre

Letter: Socialists and partial struggles (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists and partial struggles

Dear Editors.

I would like to enquire as to your party's attitude to struggle and participation in broad campaigning movements.

I think I understand your view that the only effective and proper way to remedy the ills giving rise to such movements is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. The argument being that such movements merely respond to the effects of capitalism, expressed in various forms of injustice and oppression, and ignore the basic underlying cause, the class exploitation inherent in capitalism.

Given this, I wonder what is expected of members of the Socialist Party. Do they participate in such movements as Anti-Apartheid and CND but argue from within that fighting for their limited objectives at best diverts from the important task of winning workers for socialism and at worst sustains capitalism by generating illusions about improving it? Or should they stand well apart from such reformist diversions and rely solely on the platforms offered by Socialist Party meetings and publications like the Socialist Standard?

I can see how the latter option has the advantage of principle and avoids possible confusion about the role of party members should they be active in broad movements. But it could be argued that by adopting this purist approach, the Socialist Party is unnecessarily isolated from important arenas of struggle and depriving itself of access to those who, through their own experience of struggle against the effects of capitalism, should prove more susceptible to the case for replacing it completely with socialism.

If you do not expect Socialist Party members to participate or support these broad movements, does the same apply to the relevant trade unions at their place of work? Although trade unions are wholly limited and defensive, they do have a definite class basis in the sense they seek to organise workers selling their labour power to a common employer or group of employers. If party members are expected to join trade unions, how do you summarise their role within them and how does this differ, if at all, from playing an active part in the broad movements mentioned above?

By joining a trade union, one is implicitly endorsing the struggle to defend wages rather than seeking the abolition of the wages system itself. How docs the Socialist Party resolve this contradiction? I find it difficult to imagine how a party advancing the interests of the working class can stand aside from such key mass working class organisations and yet I do not see how any alternative position could be consistent with your approach to other broad movements.

Andrew Northall

Kettering

Reply:

The Socialist Party exists to encourage the working class to establish socialism by democratic political action. We are a political party which advocates socialism and nothing else. Members join on this basis and we are in effect a body dedicated exclusively to spreading socialist ideas by all available means—meetings, pamphlets, leaflets, phone-ins. personal conversations.

As a political party our field of operation is the political arena. Here we oppose all other political parties since they all seek to reform or manage capitalism in one way or another while the only form of political action we support is political action for socialism. This is why we also do not support or join what you call “broad campaigning movements” which, without aiming at winning political power themselves, aim to bring pressure on governments to adopt certain policies or enact certain reforms. In this sense they too are reformist, and the argument we put against them is the one you outline in the second paragraph of your letter.

This does not mean, however, that we "stand well apart" from such organisations in the physical sense and rely solely on our own meetings and publications. We attend their meetings and demonstrations to make contact and discuss with those involved in them, with a view to pointing out that only in a socialist society will the problems they are rightly concerned about be able to be solved. Indeed, many of our own members first came into contact with socialist ideas in this way.

Trade unions, on the other hand, are not political organisations but organisations formed by groups of workers to negotiate their wages and conditions with employers. Workers in employment have to bargain over the sale of their productive skills and it is clearly better that they do this collectively rather than individually (“unity is strength"). Members of the Socialist Party do participate in trade unions (and similar bodies such as tenants associations, student unions, parents associations, claimants unions), but as individual workers directly affected not as party members carrying out some "Party line". We do not practise "entryism" like the Trotskyists who infiltrate organisations with the aim of taking them over. On the contrary in fact; our members always insist that such organisations should be run on a fully democratic basis and on the need to avoid being manipulated by politicians and politically-motivated groups. We are, for instance, opposed to unions being affiliated to the Labour Party.

Editors.

Between the Lines: Queen of the Scroungers (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Queen of the Scroungers

The BBC's shock revelation that the Queen is a human being with an almost real voice, after decades of giving the appearance of a mindless stuffed dummy impersonating a parasitical insect, was compulsive viewing. Elizabeth R (BBC1, 6 February, 8pm) followed this unelected Head of State for a year in her useless life. It was quite evident that forty years in the job had turned the woman quite barmy, unable to perceive social reality except as a prepared theatrical performance. Her idiotic advisers, recruited from the dregs of aristocratic idleness, always stand up in her presence and call her mam. She is never criticised and is consciously treated with sycophantic worship by her oafish followers.

In one scene she was shown with Kenneth Baker and Neil Kinnock who competed to each give the greater impression that they were indistinguishable from her corgis. The only passion shown by this pointless being in the whole recorded year was once when she was watching her horse come fourth in a race and once when she was entertaining the Reagans on her Royal yacht in Florida. The horse was not interviewed and had no chance to explain why it came fourth, but Reagan was given every opportunity to show that he had a lower IQ than the horse and a remarkably similar enjoyment of luxurious living to any Royal low-life.

In the exchange between Liz and Ron (in which we assume that she thought that he was Margaret Thatcher and he thought she was Oliver North) the Queen declared that, in her opinion, all of the "democracies" (i.e. nations like Britain where governments are elected but Heads of State aren't) are going broke. This was a perceptive remark. We assume that R Liz has been quietly studying Marxian crisis-theory between periods of scholarly examination of The Sporting Life. She then went on to say that countries are going broke because they spend too much on welfare and there are too many people who have grown used to grabbing all they can get. This from the biggest state scrounger in Britain!

So, do socialists plan to abolish the Queen? Why bother when we have a much more ambitious abolition in mind: the removal of the entire capitalist class as a group of legalised scroungers who live off the backs of the wealth-producing majority.

Powerful Sisters

If parasites like the Queen give women a bad name, the superb Channel Four documentary about the Amazon Sisters (3 February, 11 pm) showed the strength of those Brazilian women whose lives are being ruined by the coming of industrial capitalism to the rainforests where they have lived for generations.

These women were not out to ask humbly for this or that reform. They would demean themselves before no monarchical goddess who must be called mam. They were opposed to the coming of wage slavery. They spoke and sang with refreshing directness and passion about their hatred of what the profit system is doing to ruin their lives and the ecology of the area they inhabit — an area which is larger in size than Europe. These women, without formal education or political theories, were able to articulate the antagonism between the power of property and profit and the strength which comes from seeking to retain your humanity without having to sell it on the market.

The Amazonian women will lose their struggle against forces backed by billions of dollars. But their struggle will be won as soon as their fellow workers, in other lands and situations, all realise that it is as wage slaves that we are denied the freedom to control our lives and have access to the goods of the Earth. Watching these women was as refreshingly vital as watching the Queen was tediously depressing.

A Führer for France?

BBC's Assignment (4 February, 7.45pm) was a profile of the French racist leader of the fast-growing Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The man himself is a wild personality, not unlike a Breton Ian Paisley. He is playing on the fears within France that the recession is getting worse (unemployment is at 10 percent) and Arab immigrants are to be blamed for taking away French jobs.

Le Pen is undoubtedly on the rise, as are racist parties in Germany and Eastern Europe. Indeed, it is quite possible that Le Pen could become the next French President; the Front's results in this month's provincial elections will indicate how likely that is. In response to Le Pen the other leading politicians, eager for state power, are trying to outdo him in racist rhetoric. Chirac and Giscard are making speeches which could quite well have been spewed out by Enoch Powell in Britain in the 1960s, and Mitterand's bogus Socialist Party is passing laws to prevent immigrants from having rights in France.

Fifty years ago France was occupied by the Nazis. The first time it was tragedy and Le Pen is rehearsing the farce. Meanwhile, we are quite sure that, if elected, a state banquet for Führer Le Pen will be hosted by Elizabeth R. After all, the first thing that her uncle, Edward VIII, did when he abdicated was to fly to Berlin and pay his respects to his political mentor, Adolf Hitler.

Steve Coleman

Obituary: Paul Maxwell (1992)

Obituary from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Paul Maxwell
One of the last surviving members of the old Eccles branch, Paul Maxwell, died in February. The Eccles branch was founded in 1932, continuing with the Manchester branch the presence which the Party has had in the Greater Manchester area since the earliest days. The branch, as was fitting in an area which was the birthplace of the industrial working class in Britain and indeed the world, was composed largely of trade union activists, of which Comrade Maxwell was one as well as being a part-time conjurer. He joined the branch in 1934 and for years was a literature seller at the outdoor meetings held at Eccles Cross. When, as outdoor speaking opportunities everywhere died out (Eccles Cross became a traffic island), the branch had to wind up in 1962 Com Maxwell transferred to Central Branch, and it was not until 1986 a new Eccles branch was formed.

Socialists and the Election (1992)

Party News from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is standing one candidate in the General Election, in the Holborn and St. Pancras constituency in London. Our candidate is Richard Headicar. If you want to help with leafletting, selling the Socialist Standard, canvassing or in any other way contact: Michael Ghebre, 169 Royal College, St. London NW1 0SG (tel: 071-482 XXXX).

The amount now standing in the Election Fund is £1524. So we still need another £476 to reach the target of £2000 we have set to be able to mount a credible campaign. Any further contributions will be gratefully received and should be sent to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Blogger's Note:

There is a report of the Party's election campaign in Holborn and St Pancras in the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Caught In The Act: Politics and Sex (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politics and Sex

Where were you when you heard the earth-shattering news of Paddy Ashdown’s affair with his secretary? If you can't remember where you were, do you care that you can't? Do you care about Ashdown's affair? Or about all the others which politicians are said to be continually involving themselves in? Well, it's perfectly healthy, from the point of view of a rational attitude to politics, that you shouldn’t care, except that this should not blind you to some illuminating aspects of the matter.

To begin with, Ashdown's dramatic confession enabled him to pose as the kind of clean-cut, honourable person to be expected of an ex-officer in Her Majesty's Royal Marine Commandos who, as we all know, are a fine bunch of men who would never stoop to anything mean or underhand. The truth is rather less clear-cut. Ashdown owned up, after an unusually determined effort to stifle the news, only when he knew the game was up. If it could have been managed, he would probably have continued with the deception. What worried him was not the deception, or the effect of it on his family or his ex-secretary, but the possible damage to his political career.

Media

Then there was the indignation, so supportive of Ashdown, aroused by the activities of the media — in particular of the "popular" newspapers who rampaged on the ruthless intrusiveness which is almost instinctive to them. It was not a pretty sight but then neither is a politician exposed as a hypocrite. For news is what sells the papers and. however we look at it, Ashdown's private life — like that of any other political leader — is news. As a supporter of capitalism and its commodity economy he can hardly complain when he is inconvenienced because the sellers of one particular commodity jazz up their product with details of his sex life to make it more saleable, more competitive.

In any ease the media interest was that much more excited by the fact that they had uncovered a scandal involving the leader of a party which presents itself as morally superior to the others, as an alternative to the muck-raking, back-biting and blackmailing which is the very stuff of politics. A lot of Ashdown’s embarrassment was due to the exposure of him as really no different, no belter, than the others. Of course it would have been worse for him if the publicity had cost his party a lot of votes. But the anti-media campaign which instantly counter-attacked when the news broke seemed to have had the opposite effect and Ashdown's position as leader of the Lib Dems looks safe. At least, for the immediate future — which means until the general election results are in.

So how far should the media intrude into the private, family life of politicians? On this there is a large balloon of hypocrisy which needs to be pricked. Social attitudes being what they are — distorted by capitalism's property-based relationships — it is to the advantage of a politician to be married. Having a husband or a wife prevents awkward, vote-threatening, questions about any deviancy from what is defined as sexual normality. Constituency selection committees arc favourably impressed by a candidate who presents as someone with a stable marriage and two or three bright, well-groomed children. It is the image they are interested in, before the reality — the sort of image which can guarantee a sugary photograph of the candidate at home with the family which looks good on an election address. As often becomes apparent, reality can be rather less united. If politicians set themselves up in this way, using their family in order to win support, they cannot complain if the family — its stability and their loyalty to it — becomes an issue. So if there is a hint that all at home is less than idyllically happy it is not unfair for that to be used to expose the politician as a hypocrite who tries to persuade the voters to give their family the loyalty which they themselves don't give it.

Votes

What really concerns politicians in these situations — what really concerned Ashdown and his party — was what effect the news would have on the voters. For the Liberals, the memory of Jeremy Thorpe is too close and too damaging for them to take another scandal lightly. The effect of the exposure on the people concerned — in spite of the mock concern for Ashdown's wife takes a very low priority compared to the party’s preoccupation with what the voters may think. For capitalism's politics is not about consistent principles but about taking advantage, however and whenever it is on offer, and about stifling, as far as possible, any disadvantages. It is about ruthlessness before caring, about cynicism before sustainable standards.

To take this point a little further, it was reported that the exposure of Ashdown's affair brought a rush of support for the Lib/Dems. Could this mean that, as we approach a general election which threatens to be historically dirty and irrelevant. John Major and Neil Kinnock will try to attact the voters by bringing out some skeletons from their own cupboards — or, if none exist, manufacturing them? The mind, in an exceedingly unpleasant way, boggles.

Economy

More real than the Ashdown affair is the economy — or rather the current recession — which is likely to be a dominant issue in the election. Is the recession really the result of a deliberate policy by the Tory government? Could a Labour government cure it or should this be left to Major's crew, who say they are about to cure it anyway? In the Commons recently John Major, under pressure from Kinnock's argument that the recession is all the fault of the Tories, shouted that many other industrial countries are going through a slump at present. The Tories can hardly be blamed for that, can they?

Well no, they can't. But what they can be blamed for is the pretence, when it suits them, that there is something separate and unique about the recession in Britain so that it can be "cured" by some clever fiscal juggling by Norman Lamont or whoever happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. In fact Lamont has rapidly climbed to fame as a persistent exponent of false promises and quickly discredited economic forecasts. If the Tories refuse to accept the blame for the slump, on the grounds that it is a world wide problem, they can't claim the credit when, as world conditions change, the slump recedes to be followed by a boom.

But, of course, they will claim that credit; Lamont claims it now. even as all the economic indicators say there is no sign of an end to the slump. Because, as we said about Paddy Ashdown, politics is not about consistency of principles. And come to think of it, a few years back there was a flurry of scandal about Lamont and a disappointed woman . . .

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Are The Workers Better Off During The War? (1992)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

As far as it is possible to describe, what has taken place with regard to wages and prices, by means of figures, the position is fairly clear, it gives no support whatever to the claim that wages have outstripped the rise in the cost of living. The Ministry of Labour Cost of Living Index shows a rise from 155 in September, 1939, to 200 in February. 1942. This increase of 45 points represents a percentage rise of 29% above the level of September, 1939. As regards the level of wage rates for a normal weeks work, the Ministry of Labour Gazette (January, 1942) shows that the average increase due to wage increases and war bonuses since September. 1939, has been about 26% or 27%. it will be seen, therefore, that wages have barely kept pace with the rise of the cost of living index figure. If in some industries wages have risen by a larger percentage this is offset by the many industries in which the rise has been much smaller.

The critics who talk about high wages ignore the above official figures and either seize upon the few exceptional cases where the increase has been larger or else use a quite different set of figures which relate not to the standard wage for a normal week’s work but to earnings for the very long hours now being put in. earnings which include of course payment for overtime and Sunday work.

[From an article by 'H', Socialist Standard, March 1942.]

Letter: Carmageddon? (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Carmageddon?

Dear Editors,

In the introductory piece in your January article reference was made in passing to the “modest” economic requirements of a typical worker including a car and an annual holiday. The question is could these be provided under socialism (or any system) for the population of the entire world, currently over 5 billion and likely to double in a few decades?

The latest figures I have seen for the world car “population" are 450 million, or slightly less than one car for every 10 people. These are said to produce directly and indirectly 30-40 percent of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. In Britain the car population is roughly two to every five people. If the world's population of motor vehicles were raised to the same level this would come to 2 billion vehicles, over four times the present level.

My contention is that even if it were possible to produce the vehicles (and the roads, etc to go with them) the Earth's environment could never stand it.

The point is, of course, that under a world socialist system, anything that could not be produced for everyone would not be produced at all, so I think we can rule out mass car ownership and for that matter annual holidays involving jet flights for everyone.

In the advanced capitalist countries most workers aspire to and, to a large extent, have these things, which means they are unlikely ever to vote for socialism. True, capitalism probably cannot sustain its present level of luxury production without causing ecological catastrophe and the workers of the “advanced" nations may then change their attitude. But socialism, capitalism or any other system will be irrelevant on a ruined, possibly dying planet.

J. Wood 

London E1

Reply:
It is capitalism, not overpopulation as you state, that is the cause of present-day pollution, resource depletion and environmental degradation, and, even if population growth were to become a problem in terms of putting pressure on the Earth's resources, it would only be within the framework of a world of common ownership and democratic control that such a problem could be tackled.

Similiarly, if your pessimism were to be confirmed and capitalism really did bring ecological catastrophe, then socialism would still be relevant as only a global approach treating the Earth's resources as the common heritage of all humanity would provide any chance of minimising the damage and saving what could be saved.

With regard to cars, you overlook two things. First, it is technically possible to produce cars that don't pollute the atmosphere. Secondly, that access for all to means of individual transport could be provided without this having to involve everyone having their own car. Non-polluting cars, such as electric ones, are not produced on a mass scale today because of the profit considerations and vested interests that exist under capitalism.

Access to a car offers house-to-house flexibility that no other form of transport can provide. So it is a reasonable demand, and we can envisage it being met in a socialist society by free taxis and mini-cabs as well as by individuals having access to a pool of cars kept available in their neighbourhood for use without charge as and when needed for specific journeys. Also, the situation would be transformed in that the need for car usage would be reduced by the existence of a comprehensive and efficient public transport system.

Capitalism is constitutionally incapable of tackling the transport question in a rational way since under it production is carried on by profit-seeking enterprises all competing to maximise their profits. Individual car ownership is encouraged because there is more profit in this than in providing an adequate transport system. Cars run on petrol because for the time being, and by the short-term perspective that capitalism takes, this is the cheapest fuel available. Competition forces manufacturers to produce as cheaply as possible, so the best anti-pollution devices are not installed in cars. None of these anti-social considerations would apply in socialism.

Editors.

Life on the dole (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first time that I walked into an Unemployment Benefit Office to sign on the dole, I pulled up my collar and glanced around surreptitiously in case anyone I knew should see me going in there. Socialist or no, forty-odd years of capitalist brainwashing can't fail to have some effect.

Despite having sold my labour power to the same employer for thirteen years, when "rationalisation" (what used to be called asset-stripping) strikes, the result is redundancy. It’s cold comfort to know that thousands of other wage slaves are suddenly finding themselves in the same position, through no fault of their own but due to the continuing tendency to recession, depression. over-production, crisis which is inherent in capitalism. Nevertheless, the result of the conditioning and propaganda is what its meant to be—guilt, shame and the feeling that losing your job is your fault. A local newspaper reports that there are 35 people chasing every job vacancy in the West Midlands. Another report tells of a man who is so desperate for work that he is offering to pay a thousand pounds to anyone who will employ him.

The real scroungers

With no previous experience of labour exchanges, and having perceptions of such places defined by Bread or Charlie Drake’s The Worker, it's little wonder that the "no longer gainfully employed” should approach the Unemployment Benefit Office with trepidation. For, in a society where an individual’s worth is measured not by personal qualities, but by their occupation, to lose your job is to lose your status in society and your personal identity. Try renting a television, or applying for credit to buy a car. When replying to the question what is your occupation with the answer “unemployed", the smile on the face of the salesperson will freeze, and you can bet your last ten pence that your application will be refused.

Perhaps they would be more impressed to be told that you are now an industrial reserve army member. More likely, the mistaken working class perception will flit through their mind—dole scrounger. For you have now attained that enviable state which those who still spend their days fighting through ever-worsening traffic chaos, and increasingly, their weekends, in order to spend their days doing boring, alienating jobs yearn for. You can please yourself as to what you do and when you do it. Unfortunately, for those working class members of the "leisured class" there is one small problem. We all still live in a capitalist society where every necessary means of life, from food to shelter to clothing to transport, is only available if you have the money to pay for it.

To belong to the real "leisured class” means being a member of that minority class who own most of the land, factories, shops, banks, transport, etc—those who real scroungers in society because their wealth is produced for them by the majority who have no other means of living but to depend upon having a job, pension or unemployment benefit.

Added to the obvious problems encountered by workers w'ho find themselves in the position of unpaid wage slave, as opposed to paid slave, is the straitjacket imposed by the Unemployment Benefit Office. If you didn’t know it before, you very quickly discover that your sole purpose on this planet it to provide surplus value, i.e. profits and wealth for the minority ruling class.

Wage slavery

If the fact of living in a society where commodities are produced for profit, not need, isn’t sufficient incentive for you to try your hardest to get a job—after all, if you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it— the UBO, run by other wage slaves, will insist that you are "available for and actively seeking work” before it will even entertain your claim. Even when your claim has been initially accepted, there is likely to be a delay before you begin receiving the pittance known as dole money whilst forms are shuttled back and forth between UBOs and your previous exploiter to ensure that you are not trying to defraud the state. Nobody, it’s said, starves anymore. If your previous employer decides that you were a troublemaker, they have the power to bring you damned close to it if they provide the UBO with negative answers to its questions.

On every visit to the UBO to sign on, you are required to prove that you have been "actively seeking work”. After a “permitted period” the 1989 Social Security Act restricts your right to refuse jobs because of the low pay offered. Why does the working class, employed, unemployed, pensioners, housewives and children. continue to put up with the economic exploitation and political control exercised by a minority class?

Understanding the social alternative—a wageless, moneyless, classless, leaderless, stateless society where goods are produced for need, not profit—is as simple as ABC’ compared to the minefield of bureaucracy to be traversed when trying to obtain paltry dole money. Despite the promises of Jam Today, forever being made by those lapdogs of the capitalist class, the politicians, most of us are still struggling to obtain bread and dripping.

The time to make capitalism redundant is long past. It’s the working class which runs capitalism from top to bottom for the benefit of the minority. Think what we could do with the opportunities presented to us by a new society— socialism.

Dave Coggan

Introducing a dirty word (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

INTRODUCING A DIRTY WORD

There are lots of things in our lives that we don’t find it easy to talk about. Some of them are even "taboo". But there's one thing which we talk about, all of us, all the time, and never give its proper name because that name is, for most of us, a rather dirty word. That thing is Politics. It is such a dirty word that you could well be ready to throw this leaflet away right now. But before you do, think back for a minute on the conversations you’ve had this week.

What were they really about? Did you complain about the price of something which has gone up again? Did you talk about problems with the Council, or with your mortgage, or with your wages? If you work, did your boss get you down again this week, or was it the fighting in the office? If you’re unemployed, were you depressed because you walked past shops and people who all seem to live on a separate planet? Or was it a row with a loved one over money, or with the kids, or just because you’re so tired and full of stress that anything sets you off?

If your week sounded anything like that, you're not alone. What happens in our lives is not entirely up to us, and when we talk about life we are also making political statements about how we would like things to be. Politics is only a dirty word because the Thatchers and the Kinnocks have made it into a game that you play in parliaments and score off the opposition.

Their games are none of our concern, but our own lives matter, and the politics of our lives must matter to us as well. In the coming weeks we will be putting some leaflets through your door. They will be about politics, but don’t be put off by that. The things that worry you, that may be mentioned above, are the sort of politics we want to talk about. Not party politics, or 'real-politik'. but real life.

COMMON SENSE ISN'T EVERYTHING

What happened in 1066? Well, not the Battle of Hastings, for one thing - that was apparently around 1087. It must have happened to you that you’d believed something for years without question only to find out one day that it wasn’t true after all. Life is full of popular myths that, like the Battle of Hastings, may be interesting to explode but don’t really matter to anyone. But one myth that is still around, and matters rather a lot, is the myth of 'common sense'.

If something is ’common sense', it is true. Many of the ideas we hear through the TV and papers are put in this way. We take them very much for granted. They are what is called "realism". In our last leaflet we talked about the dirty word ‘politics'. Politicians are fond of "realism" and "common sense approaches". Nowadays you don't have to prove somebody wrong, you just call them "unrealistic" or "naive". Politicians have managed to make everybody else’s ideas sound childish and naive. Major and Kinnock, like the good Mummy and Daddy they try to be, know all about 'common sense'. They should, they manufacture most of it.

The problems that we have in our lives, that we mentioned in our last leaflet, don't get talked about by the papers or politicians. That is left to us, on our own, in pubs or among friends. Why do we have to work for bosses? What is the point of saving when inflation eats it all up? Why do people starve when supermarkets throw food away? But it's not common sense’ to talk about things that Kinnock is not interested in.

In the next few leaflets we are going to ask exactly the sort of questions that Kinnock and Major are not interested in. The sort of questions you don't read about in the paper, or hear on 'Question Time’.

Some of the conclusions we come up with might well sound like science fiction, and not common sense at all. But they might also sound just like things you've said yourself in the past. Try not to lose patience with us. Things which aren’t ‘common sense' aren't automatically wrong. We ask you to judge for yourself.

COPING WITH A BAD ATTITUDE

In our last two leaflets we have explained why we think politics should not be a dirty word, and why 'common sense' answers aren't necessarily right answers. We hope you saw what we meant by that.

Here are some examples of this 'Common Sense', and underneath, the feelings, or as they are more usually called the "Bad Attitudes" that a lot of people have about them. 

Common Sense: This is a prosperous country.

Bad Attitude: Where is all this prosperity when you're on the dole or three months behind with the mortgage?

Common Sense: If you want to 'make it', work hard and be thrifty. 

Bad Attitude: Like my parents did, and look at them. Besides, what's the point when some yuppie can make my life’s earnings in twenty minutes on the Stock Exchange? 

Common Sense: Other people are worse off than you. If you've got an ounce of decency you should be grateful, and give to charities.

Bad Attitude: Alright, I can't walk past a collecting box without feeling guilty, but however much I pay, the problems don't seem to go away. If anything they get worse. Why don't the government pay?

Common Sense: Politics is for politicians. I wouldn't fancy trying to run the country.

Bad Attitude: Mind you, for £35 thousand a year plus expenses I couldn't do any worse than them, could I? All they care about is their own power.

If you have something like this 'bad altitude problem', don't despair. There are others like you, not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions. Just think of election-time, when you get to make your own mark for democracy. In spite of all the rousing speeches, the rallies and the broadcasts, many people still don't bother to vote. They obviously think it makes no difference to their lives who is in power and who isn’t. This, we are told, is because they have a bad attitude. Perhaps so. Perhaps, too, if speeches and policy reviews don't matter to them, they should get together and find out what does. They might find out they’ve got quite a lot in common. With each other. With us. With you.

Taken from a series of leaflets produced by our Lancaster branch.

Editorial: An unfair fight (1992)

Editorial from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy: rule of the people by the people. The 1992 General Election: a chance to choose whether to be ruled over by Tweedledum or Tweedledee. The right to place a cross on a ballot paper every four or five years does not amount to democracy. To be governed is to be unfree.

The coming election will be a cynical exercise in manipulating workers’ minds to blame A or have hope in B as a way out of the mess of relative degrees of poverty which is the lot of the majority of us. Labourites and Lib-Dems will pretend that all of the problems of capitalism emanate from wicked Tory rule and could be remedied by them carrying out almost identical policies to the Tories. The Conservatives will lie that the workers have done well under them since 1979, despite the objective record of working-class hardship which only the socially blind cannot see around them. There will be smears: Kinnock the crypto-Stalinist; Major the secret puppet of the Thatcherite barbarians. There will be press launches in which political charades will take the form of tame rock concerts. There will be TV broadcasts in which your future will be sold to you by the same twisters who sell time shares and Fairy Liquid. There will be cheap, hollow slogans. There will be crass photo opportunities in which the previously inhuman shapes of Kenneth Clarke and Gerald Kaufman will pose with cuddly kiddies and dying geriatrics. There will be promises so big that all but the strongest will be crushed as they fall upon us.

For all of that, it is better to have the vote than not to have it. The workers in the Chartist movement of the last century were no fools in wanting their chance to determine who will rule. The wealthy who opposed votes for workers on the grounds that the working class is many and the property-owning rich parasites are few and therefore the many might end the social power of the few had a point. Sadly, the past century of working- class franchise has not yet justified those fears of real democracy. The workers have been persuaded to play the game: bought off by reforms and conned by leaders, the potential power of the vote has been wasted in every single election.

The answer is not to abandon the vote and ignore elections, but to work to create a politically-educated electorate of working men and women who understand where their interest lies. The battle, not just when the electoral whistle blows, but at all times, is to win workers’ minds; to make class-conscious workers. Such workers, currently only a small minority, will never waste their votes on electing leaders, nor will they support any policy designed to run the profit system which exploits and dominates them.

Socialists enter into the electoral contest, using it as a means of putting our revolutionary case for socialism to the widest number of fellow workers. In the coming election we shall put up one candidate, Richard Headicar, in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency. He is not a prospective leader, but a delegate to be used by workers who understand and support the socialist mandate. If elected, our delegate will be wholly accountable to the socialist majority which put him into parliament for the sole purpose of stating the socialist position and furthering the socialist cause. When enough socialist delegates are elected, here and throughout the world, the workers' conscious will shall be enacted: class ownership and control of the means of life will cease and the state, which is an instrument of class coercion will be abolished.

The socialist candidate in the coming election will receive negligible media attention and little chance to debate with his rivals who will be too busy engaging in manipulative stunts to dare to take on socialism in democratic debate. Our party will be charged £500 by the state for the right to join the electoral contest and then will meet with an unfair fight in which money, the means of communication and public prejudice will be stacked in favour of the pro-capitalism candidates. On our side we shall have little money and working-class supporters with constraints upon their time, but we shall not flinch from the fight, sure in the knowledge that the undeniable class interest of the vast majority is represented by Socialism which we alone stand for in this election.

Obituary: Albert Baker (1992)

Obituary from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Albert Baker
East London Branch regret to announce the death of comrade Albert Baker. Comrade Baker, who was well into his nineties, joined the old West Ham branch as far back as 1923. He worked for the Post Office before retiring many years ago.

The branch is the basic unit of our Party, essential to its democratic functioning, and an active branch is maintained by its members being prepared to take on a whole range of tasks. Comrade Baker was one such member of the West Ham branch, at one time one of the most active branches of the Party, acting at various times as literature secretary, dues collector, chairman of outdoor meetings, Conference delegate, as well as playing his part in the parliamentary campaign the branch ran when the Party contested the East Ham South seat in the 1950 General Election.

Another good comrade has passed away. We extend our condolences to his family and friends.

The Theory of State Capitalism (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"The fact of the matter is that the credit for this particular form of state capitalism should go back to the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who taught Jock Haston his Marxism in the first place (cf Against the Stream, p. 251) and had promulgated the theory as far back as 1918. For it was Haston who first raised the question of state capitalism within the Revolutionary Communist Party, not only as a purely Russian phenomenon but in global terms, both in the group's internal bulletin (War and the International, pp. 182-5) and in a series of articles in Socialist Appeal (mid-August to mid-September 1947). In fact Cliff's remit from Mandel when he first came to Britain was specifically to argue against these 'state capitalist' heresies, and what happened was that in the course of the dispute the contestants changed sides. Anyone who wishes to make a serious investigation of the whole topic should consult the above sources, as well as the SPGB's position, which was reissued as a pamphlet in the same year as Cliff first published his own, though we have to admit that Cliff's logic is inferior to theirs, since they dated Russia's capitalist revolution back to 1917."

—from a review of Alex Callinicos's book Trotskyism in Revolutionary History, Autumn 1991.

National Liberation (1992)

Book Review from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Liberation by Nigel Harris. (I B Tauris, £24.95.)

Capitalism, argues Harris, has now become a single world economy in which international capital finds the frontiers which divide the world into 170 or so political states irrelevant. Governments are forced to take this economic reality into account by pursuing policies that allow the free movement of capital and commodities. 

A similar view was expressed by many in the Marxist tradition before the First World War. In fact, it was almost the mainstream Marxist view, though only a few like Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek and Bukharin drew the conclusion that this meant that nationalism no longer had any progressive role to play and so should be opposed by socialists. Harris, of course, is well aware of this, and his first chapter is an analysis and debunking of nationalism and its myths. He sees nationalism as we do—as a political creation imposed on people by states (and movements seeking to set up states) in the interest of the ruling class (or would-be ruling class) of those states. 

But in a sense, says Harris, the pre-First World War Marxists were proved wrong in that the war was followed by an increase in economic and political nationalism, not the decline that their theories implied. Indeed, "Marxism" itself came to be associated with economic nationalism so that today most of those in the world who call themselves "Marxists" are nationalists of one sort or another. 

Harris is a long-standing member of the SWP, but his book has been severely criticised by the leadership of that organisation who find its political implications disturbing. For if you hold that capitalism has become a single world economy in which national frontiers are irrelevant, this implies that you should also regard the nationalist programme of economic "independence" as reactionary. Harris, himself, does not explicitly argue that socialists should no longer support nationalist movements, but he does cautiously say that we can expect nationalism to slowly decline and implying that this would be a good thing: 

Thus, if politics were no more than a reflex of economics—as some of the cruder Marxists seemed to imply—the world ought to be within sight of the end of nationalism as a political force. On such a reading, it might survive as a cultural-linguistic concern, but the economic and political issue would be over for all except the economically least developed. Such an eventuality would once more restore the pre-1914 theorization. 

To adopt the pre-1914 Marxist position of opposition to nationalism as economically reactionary is the last thing the SWP leaders want, as it undermines their whole case of supporting such groups as the IRA, the Sandinistas, Pan-Arab Nationalism and the like, as well as support of countries like Iraq when at war with more powerful capitalist powers. They are forced to stand by their dogma that nationalism has some progressive role to play and that state capitalism in one country is something to be supported, so placing themselves amongst those Harris calls "the last quixotic defenders of a world of national State capitalisms, replacing the tyranny of the market with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy". 

Adam Buick

Socialism Made Simple (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Existing society is based on class ownership. This means that the main resources of society are owned by the few and not the many.

In Britain today the poorest half of the population own only 6 percent of marketable wealth. The richest 10 percent own over half of all the wealth.

Society is not like this because it has to be. The rich are not at the top because they do more or know more than the rest of us. On the contrary, we, the vast majority, produce all wealth.

The capitalists do not need to work. If they want to they can go off to the Bahamas or the South of France for months on end, sure in the knowledge that their millions of pounds per week, month or year will still be pouring into their accounts. The capitalist minority live by accumulating rent, interest and profit. Who gives it to them? The Working Class.

We. the workers, run society from top to bottom. We are paid wages or salaries. Whatever we are paid is less than the value of what we produce. The difference between what we are paid and what we produce is taken by the capitalist as profit. The basis of all profit is the legalised robbery of the workers.

We do not choose to be legally robbed or exploited. We do not choose to be wage (or salary) slaves rather than capitalists. We are workers because we do not own enough resources to live without selling our labour power (our mental and physical energies) for a price.

So. we work in order to make enough money in order to pay to live so that we can go back to work and make profits so that the capitalist does not have to work. The capitalists live off our backs.

We do not need to carry the capitalists on our backs. We do so because we have agreed to live this way. We have agreed because we are conditioned to accept capitalism. We are conditioned because the capitalists pay to condition us. If we are properly conditioned we vote for leaders who will continue to run capitalism. Workers vote for their own exploitation.

The workers are many, the capitalists few. We have only to refuse to support capitalism and the whole system could not go on. This is a matter of political consciousness. At present most workers are politically ignorant. This is not intended as an insult. What we are saying is that our fellow workers have yet to realise their strength. When they do they will understand that it is not necessary to live second-class lives, enjoying less than the best that can be produced. The best of everything is available for everyone, not just the rich few. What we have to do is take it.

The movement for socialism is a movement to end minority power and establish the power of the whole community. Socialism will mean that everything in and on the planet will belong to everyone who lives on the planet. In short, common ownership and democratic control.

Another way of putting it is to say that in a socialist society nobody will monopolise the means of producing and distributing wealth. Social resources will be owned by everyone — and by no-one.

Once we workers have taken the world's wealth into our own hands by means of democratic political action there will be no need for money, wages or other features of property society. Instead of wage slavery, people will work according to their abilities and take according to their needs. They will not work under compulsion, but because they will understand that to live we must co-operate to produce what we need. Access to available goods and services will not be rationed by money. Buying and selling will be abolished. Instead, everyone will have free access to what they need. Nobody will tell them what they need. The state will be abolished. Socialism is based upon the understanding that humans are intelligent, conscious, co-operative beings who do not need leaders or governments to force them to act decently.

On the contrary, it is the present capitalist system, which puts profits before needs and money before life, which forces humans to become uncooperative and indecent. Capitalism is anti-social.

The aim of socialism is not just to ensure that everyone has access to material wealth and that poverty is ended. Socialists want people to be free to co-operate. There will be no more class and no economic basis for prejudice based upon race or sex. Socialism will be a society of free, human equality.

The well-conditioned wage slave will regard the prospect of world socialism as a Utopian ideal. The prospect of homes heated and lit by electricity was dismissed as a dream by inhabitants of a pre-scientific age.

The working class needs to do some serious thinking about society—how it is and how it could be. Millions of politically conscious workers will be a threat to capitalism. We will educate and organise with more and more workers. Once we are a majority there will be no stopping us. The result will be social revolution.

The Socialist Party works to bring about the political consciousness and organisation that will make a revolution possible. In other countries companion parties work to the same end. Right now we are in a small minority. Our efforts are limited. But our analysis cannot be faulted and our principles are never compromised. We will continue to advocate the sanity of the case for a revolutionary transformation of society. We have nothing to lose but our chains: we have a world to win.

Steve Coleman