Sting in the Tail: Unity is Strength (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unity is Strength

We have all seen the ad. on TV in which demure Asian air hostesses pour champagne for businessmen on a Cathay Pacific flight.

This idyllic scene has been interrupted because those very same hostesses are on strike. Cathay, like every other airline in a dog-eat-dog industry, want to cut costs and have demanded that cabin attendants also perform more menial tasks.

Although the union made "significant concessions” this wasn't enough for Cathay's macho management which said it would discipline strike activists.

Now other trade unions in Hong Kong are backing the strike because: 

   "If Cathay Pacific is allowed to go ahead and dismiss people who are taking strike action, it could set a dangerous precedent for any other trade union", said Lee Chukyan, leader of the Confederation of Trade Unions.

The Guardian 26 January 

It's good to see trade unionists looking beyond their own narrow, sectional interest by giving mutual aid, but they must eventually realise that their real interest lies in helping to establish socialism rather than forever fighting their employers.

Perfect Timing

Another example of sound trade union action has been seen on Clydeside where the workers in Yarrow's shipyard have come out on strike over pay and against their union's wishes.

But what is sound about striking during a recession? The fact is that during the boom years orders for the naval ships which Yarrow's builds were scarce, so instead of making gains the workers had little option but to let management walk all over them.

Now, despite the recession, the yard's order book is full until 1997 so the workers are taking the opportunity to get some of their own back. As the yard convener said on Scottish Television on 5 February - "It's our turn now".

All too often workers hit the street when they haven't a hope of winning, but here their timing — and their chance of success — is much, much better.

True Confessions

We haven’t looked at Tribune, "Labour's Independent Weekly”, for some time because it is so boring but the issue for 8 January was very interesting.

For example, Robin Cook confesses that Labour's membership is down to "around 250,000 and declining". This is after a national recruiting drive, so mugs are obviously harder to come by these days.

But the juiciest item was the editorial’s confession about the quality of the debate now raging in Labour's ranks over which way the party should go — 

  It is impossible to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the columnists who are crowing about Labour's intellectual bankruptcy are absolutely right.

Could any Tory rag have been more damning than that? Must make a note to read Tribune more often.

Mods and Trads

That battle between Labour’s "modernisers" and "traditionalists” is really hotting up.

Clare Short MP is a trad and has made a bitter attack on the mods. She thinks their obsession with changing Labour’s image means — 

  People no longer know what Labour stands for. Many feel they cannot trust a party that appears to have dumped everything it used to believe in, and seems not to have a way forward that is different from the mess the Tories have created.

Tribune 15 January 

Of course when Labour dumped nationalisation it lost whatever distinct policy it ever had, but what is Clare Short's "way forward"7 Only the usual left-wing ideas for improving British capitalism's performance.

She wants "an industrial strategy based on . . . Japan's success in fostering long-term investment in the economy", "cuts in defence spending to restore our industrial base", etc.

And what will the workers get out of all this? "the chance to work and train and a right to decent pensions", "real equality of opportunity” for women, and so on. Can you see stuff like this having them storming the polls to vote Labour?

Merchant of Death

With the demise of the Bolshevik dictatorship and the break up of its empire Western politicians talked glowingly about a "new world order”. We were promised such goodies as a "peace dividend".

Unfortunately capitalism doesn't work that way. The hostilities in the Gulf, "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia, conflict in Palestine. It is business as usual.

Mr Major may have talked about a "peace dividend" but he has delivered a much more welcome dividend to the share holders of British Aerospace. A staggering £4-£5 billion order for bombers for Saudi Arabia.

The outcry about arms sales to Iraq seems to have subsided and anyway as a spokesman for British capitalism "nice Mr Major” must ensure that the highest sales possible come into British coffers. Profit today and to hell with the death and destruction that may follow tomorrow. It was ever thus. Whether its "nice Mr Major” or "the iron lady" Thatcher business always comes first.

Another Leak

To the Editor,

The Daily Wail,

Sir, are you aware of the many lunatics at large today? For example, those loonies who insist there is a worldwide conspiracy to install John Major as controller of the planet.

These maniacs are everywhere. There is David Icke, none of whose fearful predictions for 1992 came true, thank God, and those South Koreans who abandoned their homes, jobs and even families because they thought the world would end last November.

And I recall the Americans who some years ago fled up a mountain to escape Armageddon or some such. Still up there I shouldn’t wonder.

All this is bad enough but now I have learned of the Socialist Party. They apparently believe that society as we know it cannot last forever; that at some future date there will be no place for rulers, employers, the military or even money and everyone will actually co-operate with one another!

You, Sir, may agree with me that, compared to this Socialist Party, all the others I have mentioned are as sane as you or I.

Disgusted, 

Tunbridge Wells

What about the miners? (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent furore over the pit closures has been notable for the number of public figures, politicians, ex-politicians, lords and landed gentry who were desolated by the prospects of unemployment with its consequent hardships and miseries involved for the miners. From the minister himself, Michael Heseltine, interviewed emoting at peak levels in front of his Adam fireplace in his stately home, to Winston Churchill clarifying the issue in typical upper-class fashion by calling for “a level playing field”, the depth of emotion shown on behalf of the miners has been truly touching, or would be if you were daft enough to believe it.

Huge amounts of energy, enthusiasm and work have been expended to gain a reversal of the decision to close the best part of what remained of British Coal. The eventual outcome is not yet clear but it looks as though some stay of execution might have been gained, and possibly some jobs saved. Are these gains of real significance? Has a “victory" been achieved? If the fight is content with that, if it stays at the level of reversing, or attempting to reverse a political decision, the answer must be a decisive “no”.

This is not to disparage the miners or their struggle. In fact one of the most heartening aspects of the whole sordid business has been to see the regeneration of enthusiasm in the miners' movement, but to the extent that some jobs at the pits have been saved at the expense of others in the nuclear or gas power stations we cannot speak of a working class gain. This can only be applied to a fight which benefits the entire working class.

Limited aims

For those miners who blacklegged in 1984-5 the depths of ruling-class perfidy must now be clear, had they thought that crossing the picket-line would give them any guarantees for the future. The message is evident. There is no such thing as an honourable bargain with the ruling class. They can never be trusted.

The other incontrovertibly clear message is: the power of the working class when we wish to use it. Those workers who are doubtful of the possibility of socialism prevailing against the power of the state must surely take heart. The truth is the capitalists have no power other than what is voluntarily given to them by the workers. We don't have to fight them, we only have to stop supporting them. The capitalists can only have power when they are resisting a minority opposition and even then are totally dependent on the support given them by the remaining majority of workers.

In other words, it is only by getting worker to fight worker that the ruling class maintains control and any close study of ruling-class tactics in their unceasing endeavours to maintain their dominant position will show this stratagem to be a consistent favourite. It therefore follows that the only impediment to bringing socialism into being is the lack of development of socialist understanding.

Unfortunately there is no evidence in the coalmine dispute to show that either the miners or their supporters are looking for anything other than very limited objectives within the capitalist system. They are not even looking for changes to the system nor demanding the restitution of past coal rundowns. They merely asked for a “review".

Because the workers are committed to capitalism they cannot press their demands to the point of threatening the stability of the system. If they push too far and go over the edge they have nothing to replace it with. The capitalists know this too and are ready to use this weapon when it suits them: “If you go on strike we'll lose that valuable overseas order which gives you jobs, and then we shall have to shut the factory down".

This situation is happening on a major or minor scale, continually. It is the reason why the heroic struggles of the oppressed must end in comparative failure and it is why trade union struggles of any kind can at best only ever achieve a limited success.

Tyranny of economics

What is possible or not possible in the context of capitalism is dictated by capitalist economics, and not only capitalist economics but the immediate pressing economic demands of the moment. When Heseltine, being interviewed by Dimbleby was asked about the prospects of North Sea gas in fifty years’ time he positively laughed at the prospect of making any decision for fifty years’ hence. The strength and the weakness of the capitalist system is that it is dynamically balanced to respond to immediate pressures and survive, but it cannot do more than that.

Capitalism is a system geared to the demands of the market. It has devised endless techniques to cope with the varying demands of the market, but it can never break away from them to plan a long-term strategy. It can react but can never act. Therefore the only argument which really has any validity for the capitalist politician is the economic argument. Not all capitalists or even all politicians realize this. After all, they do like to have some human illusions and for them to admit that they support a system which is utterly sterile of all human values, and which in the long run is a living nightmare, is a bit bleak for them to face.

But the Heseltines and Majors and Thatchers and Kinnocks and Smiths probably do realize it and usually make a fairly good job of concealing it from their own followers, knowing that if they allow the truth to present itself without the fancy wrapping there may be some opposition. This time Heseltine got so carried away with the beauty of his own arguments that he forgot to bring out the wrapping paper. Major must have been absolutely furious with him.

CYR

What Socialists Want (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our aim is to see established a democratic world community without frontiers—in which the natural and industrial resources of the world have become the common heritage of all humanity, and are used in co-operation to produce wealth directly for needs, with free access for all to the available goods and services, according to their own self-defined needs.

A moneyless, stateless world commonwealth is the only framework within which current social problems can be permanently solved, since it is only on this basis that production can be oriented towards satisfying human needs. This social revolution can only be carried out when once a majority of wage and salary workers throughout the world want it, fully understand its implications, and organise democratically and politically to achieve it.

Little John has a major idea (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The good news is that John Major (a British Prime Minister) has at long last come up with a big idea. The bad news is that it is an extremely stupid idea.

In the course of capitalist history the attempt to explain why some people behave anti-socially has given rise to more than a few barmy theories. For the early Christians, undisturbed by any scientific thoughts, the explanation was simple: God made all men (for which include women) sinners. We were born to be anti-social. Only those who repented by conforming to the Church and the property morality it propounded would be saved. Hundreds of years ago the churches ran the prisons; the Inquisition was not characterised by the New Testament injunction to “turn the other cheek”.

As theology became increasingly discredited in the light of science, the rise of pseudo-biological explanations of anti-social behaviour emerged. To the Social Darwinists it was all clear: human violence was part and parcel of the beast-like struggle for survival to which humans were biologically destined.

Pseudo-science

At the end of the last century the biological blind alley of Social Darwinism laid the path for an equally diversionary side-road: the new pseudo-science of criminology. Cesare Lombroso, the father of this bogus science, attempted to explain how it was that some people were criminals and others not. It was all very simple: criminality was a consequence of physiological make-up. As Lombroso put it:

  The criminal by nature has a feeble cranial capacity, a heavy and developed jaw. projecting eye ridges, an abnormal and asymmetrical cranium . . . projecting ears, frequently a crooked or flat nose . . . Their moral degeneration corresponds with their physical, . . . The criminal by nature is lazy, debauched, cowardly, not susceptible to remorse, without foresight . . . his hand-writing is peculiar . . . his slang is widely diffused . . . The general persistence of an inferior race type.

In the USA pseudo-scientists are still at it. For example, at the time of the LA riots a number of commentators turned to the nonsensical book, Violence and the Brain, written by two “professors" called Mark and Erwin and arguing that rioters are people with dysfunctional brains. (Funny that Reagan and Quayle never made it to the riot, isn’t it?) Another book, by Wilson and Herrnstein called Crime and Human Nature, argues that criminal tendencies are in people’s genes. In short, certain babies are born to be criminals. This leads one to wonder why the police do not use their resources more efficiently by targeting maternity wards and arresting the genetic criminals at birth, thus achieving a maximum crime clear-up rate before the crimes are even committed!

If you think that these ideas are crazy there is a simple reason for it: they are crazy. They are the ridiculous inventions of desperate ideologists who have to explain why it is that property society, with all its alleged advantages for human growth, gives rise to so much violence, disorder and frustrated spite. The fact that over 90 percent of crimes are property-related is embarrassing to a society which pretends that anyone can live well if they try. The truth is that millions of people try very hard and get nowhere; some of them turn to illegal robbery to make money (as opposed to legalised robbery, to obtain profits) or violent acts to give vent to their misery and frustration.

Stupid idea

On the subject of frustration, it is now time to return to the little matter of John Major’s idea. Since his accidental elevation in 1990 Little John has lived in the shadow of the mad priestess of Big Ideas: Margaret Thatcher. Nobody could accuse her of having any lack of big, big ideas. Like Hitler, Stalin and the authors of the Bible, she was full of them—the barmier the better. Thatcher was always opening her mouth and making news. Not so Little John. To most people he is just a wimp and an idiot. And not liking to be seen for what he is. he decided to make a speech which would say something Big.

On 3 February this year Major addressed the Tory Carlton Club. He was on home turf so could be sure of at least polite applause. He decided to speak about the problem of inner-city crime. (A few of the Club members nearly had heart attacks when they thought they heard that he was going to talk about crime in the City—now. there's a subject for a big speech!).

Now, Little John was not taken in by all this talk about born sinners, feeble cranial capacities or criminal genes. These are outdated stupid ideas. So John Major came up with a brand new stupid idea. And the next day it made it on to the top headline of the Independent:

PM BLAMES


SOCIALISM FOR


CRIME

Now that is what you call a really stupid big idea. Here is the key paragraph from the speech:

  Socialism must face up to its failures. It must recognise the harsh truth that it is where, over many years, the state has intervened most heavily, that local communities have been most effectively destroyed.

To begin with, socialism has never been tried, let alone failed. We challenge John Major or his supporters to tell us where common ownership, democratic control or production solely for use has ever existed.

But we expect half-witted Tories not to know what socialism means. More interesting is Major’s assertion that inner-city crime is caused by there being too much state interference. This comes from the head of a government which has expanded the police, put more people into prisons than any other western European country and is currently planning to interfere with the unemployed by making conscript labourers of them. Own goal. John.

Going from bad to worse, Major then proceeded to deny that there is a causal relationship between poverty and crime. It is mere coincidence, we must assume, that so few street muggings are committed by gangs of millionaires. (They are free to do their mugging legitimately.) Alas, Little John has not read the Home Office research document published in 1991 by the civil servants of his own government. It stated that property-related crimes increased in relation to economic hard times. The number of burglaries in Britain went up during the recession of the early 1980s, down during the 1987-8 boom and up again with the slump of the 1990s.

Furthermore, the Independent reported last 13 October that the government was giving careful consideration to its public expenditure cuts for fear that too many cuts will result in an increase in violent crime. So, it seems that Little John is acting on the basis of an explanation of the cause of crime which he now claims not to believe in.

We look forward to the emergence of the next Major Big Idea. What will it be: “PM SAYS THAT O-LEVELS ARE BAD FOR THE INTELLECT?" or “MAJOR PROPOSES NEW DISNEYWORLD ON BEAUTIFUL SHETLAND COASTLINE?"

Steve Coleman

1994 Euro-elections: appeal for funds (1993)

Party News from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are planning to contest at least 2 and maybe 3 seats in the elections to the European Parliament which will take place in June next year. To do this we shall of course need money.

At the moment the amount in our Election Fund—left over from contributions made for our general election campaign last year—is £1419. We shall need at least four times this amount to pay the deposits and run a credible campaign.

We are therefore appealing again to all those who wish to get the Socialist message across—contesting three seats would allow us to put the case for socialism to three-quarters of a million voters—to contribute to building up our election fund. In fact the final decision as to how many seats to contest, if any, will partly depend on how much we have in our Election Fund by the end of the year.

Any contributions should be sent to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN. Cheques and postal orders should be made payable to ’’the Socialist Party of Great Britain”.

The Politics of Fire (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Friday 20 November in Windsor Castle a curtain caught fire in the Queen’s Private Chapel, probably ignited by a spotlight recently installed to illuminate the altar and art work. The fire quickly spread throughout the north-east wing devastating “The Grand Reception Room” and “The State Dining Room”. Fire-fighters rushed to the scene to carry out a prearranged fire-fighting and salvage plan. They were drawn from the surrounding counties to save this “loveliest of palaces"—an ancient fortress overlooking the Thames. The estimated cost of restoration is put at about £60 million.

Fire is a violent chemical reaction involving heat, oxygen and fuel in which heat and light are produced. If you remove either the heat, the oxygen or the fuel, combustion will stop. This is the basis for controlling fire which early hunter-gatherers must have learned for themselves. They discovered it could be used to keep wild animals away. They learned to cook with it and in time how to “fire" clay pots to make them hard and leak-proof. They smelted metals to make tools and weapons. The evolution of the tool has enabled different sources of fuel to be used. First wood and animal fats, then peat and coal, later, mineral oils and natural gas.

To successfully use fire combustible materials had to be collected and brought to the dwelling. In a communal environment this arduous task would have been shared and the energy expended would be offset by the use to which the fuel was put. With the advent of trading, fuel could be bartered for other essential goods, especially in areas where the fuel was scarce.

Capitalism has turned fire and its fuels into a commodity, possessing like all other commodities the value imparted to it by all the workers who have worked on it. Today, fuels like coal, oil and gas are all big sources of profit for those who own their production. However, under capitalism access to the fuels of fire required for heating our dwellings and cooking our food is only available to those who can afford them. Fuel will be provided only at a profit and this is why every winter the elderly and the poor cannot afford to heat their homes.

Protecting property

Once a fire is started it can spread very quickly, fanned by currents of air and fed by combustible materials. Obviously some sort of organized method was required to deal with it. Up until the Great Fire of London in 1666 fire-fighting was undertaken

by groups of volunteers carrying buckets of water, usually led by the occupier of the burning property. However, the Great Fire destroyed 13,000 homes and caused massive losses for the commercial insurance companies. In 1667 a businessman named Dr Barbon set up an insurance company to cover houses. This lucrative idea soon spread and rival insurance companies were soon competing with each other. A house insured with a particular company had to display a company plaque called a “firemark” on its outside wall. When a fire started and the firemen were summoned, invariably by shouting, they would arrive and check the plaque. If the house was covered by their company they would fight the fire. If not it was left for their competitors or it burned to the ground. Intense rivalry existed between these companies and they would often impede each other on the way to a fire.

In 1833 an Act of Parliament empowered local councils to purchase fire appliances and equipment out of the rates. Unable to compete, the private insurance brigades joined the town brigades or disbanded. In 1938 the Fire Brigade Act required local councils to maintain efficient fire brigades and set up a national fire service. In 1947 only county councils could become fire authorities and the 1974 local government reorganization led to the system that exists today. A decentralized service of 63 virtually autonomous brigades, 54 in England and Wales, 8 in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland.

Fire brigades are funded by the county councils as are the local ambulance services. Councils raise the money from local taxes in addition to what is allocated them by central government. In an attempt to reduce the cost the right-wing theorists at the Adam Smith Institute have recommended the merger of the two services:

  The report claims extra efficiency would be achieved by closer co-operation and cross-training in the emergency services. It says amalgamation would also generate substantial income by selling redundant buildings. (Daily Telegraph 7 December).

These reforms are supported by some personnel in the services who believe that the merger will bring in much needed money and equipment.

Within capitalism two mutually dependent social classes have evolved. The capitalist or ruling class is made up of the owners of the means of production, landowners and financiers who derive their income from the surplus value created in production. This source of profit is produced by the working class who own no productive resources apart from their labour-power. On a personal level workers may partly own their homes or small pieces of land but this does not alter their social position. They must still exchange their labour-power for a wage or salary in order to purchase the goods they need to survive and bring up their families. It is in the capitalists' interest to keep wages as low as possible.

For capitalism to perpetuate itself it must provide a relatively safe environment for the exploitation of the working class to take place in. The National Health Service was set up to ensure that the population of workers are fit enough to work. Similarly, the emergency services are provided to ensure that workers are safe at their places of work and in their hours of recuperation. As safe as is profitable.

Profits before safety

Although fire safety is in the capitalists’ own interest it is not a very high priority for individual businesses, especially in a recession. This is because unless they have a fire they will not get any financial return on the money they have spent on precautions. In fact many individual capitalists see fire precautions as a burden and a drain on their profits.

Art by George Meddemmen

The Daily Telegraph (5 December) reported that Nuswift, makers of fire protection equipment, had seen their profits drop from £11.3m to £2.52m in the first half of that year. Clearly their equipment is not in demand. The Fire Services Act of 1947 empowers the local fire authorities to carry out inspections of commercial premises to ensure that they meet the standards required by all the relevant fire safely requirements passed by law. Despite this external pressure the capitalists' requirement to increase profits invariably comes first.

A report published by the National Audit Office, last December criticizes industry on a number of points. Only £2m was spent on fire prevention publicity in 1991 despite the fact that deaths have risen from 430 to 740 a year since 1960. Insurance losses from fire now run at about £1 billion a year. The bill to the National Health Service for treating 11,000 burns cases a year (3.000 in 1960) is at least £40m. The report goes further. Sixty percent of deaths a year occur in the home despite the increase in the number of smoke alarms fitted. However those most at risk like the elderly are the least likely to buy alarms. Those over 80 years of age are eight times more likely to die in a fire than people aged 55 to 64. The NAO report recommends the free distribution of smoke alarms.

For a safer world

The technological means to ensure that every home and workplace is as safe as possible already exist. But the workers do not have access to this technology unless they can afford it. Today under capitalism how many homes have even got an extinguisher or fire blanket—the workers just cannot afford them. It does not have to be like this. Once we recognise our role as wage-slaves under capitalism and that our labour is the source of all wealth, we can use the democratic process to establish socialism by making technology and resources the common property of all.

Fire precautions could then be an integral part of every home. All building construction and household furniture could be constructed with fire-resisting materials. Every place of work should have the best warning and fire-fighting equipment installed as a matter of course. Everyone could acquire a working knowledge of First Aid and basic fire-fighting. One more avoidable tragic death due to fire is one too many.

A.W.E.

Letters: Religion again (1993)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion again

Dear Editors,

The reply to Ken Cole’s letter in January’s Socialist Standard seemed to overlook certain points which should have been picked up.

In his second paragraph he wrote “some of us are not only Christians but socialists as well, opposing war as an immoral pointless means of defending markets and supplies".

It is not part of the socialist case to make appeals to morality. It is the recognition that markets are part of the way capitalism functions. When nation states go to war in order to defend or get a larger share of them it is not a question of morality, but of understanding that it is how capitalism works and that markets and war are part of its fabric.

The other point is Ken Coles last paragraph: "Tarring all Christians with the same brush is akin to equating all socialists with supporters of Stalinism". This could imply that some socialists are supporters of Stalinism, which of course is not possible. State capitalism cannot be equated with what socialists want, i.e. the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

P. B. Young 

Wingham, Kent

Dear Friends,

The January issue of the Socialist Standard contained a letter from Ken Cole of Preston in which he stated that he is a socialist who also holds religious beliefs. The editors reply was of course predictable. I have been a socialist most of my life and remain a keen supporter of the economic and political views expressed by the Socialist Party, despite the fact that I have been refused membership of the Party solely on the grounds that I hold religious beliefs. My purpose in writing is not to enter into another sterile debate with the Party on this subject, but rather to make contact with Ken Cole and any others reading this who hold both socialist and religious (of whatever nature) views.

Tony Burns 

N. Ireland

Reply:

We can agree to disagree, but keep on putting over the same economic and political ideas— Editors.

Dear Editors,

I was interested to read the letter from Ken Cole of Preston in the January issue. Like him I am a committed Christian and a Socialist and obviously have an awareness of the corruptness of the capitalist system and have had since the age of 12 (I am now 62). This awareness and belief in Socialism was passed on to me by my father who would often take me to meetings where I heard the likes of Turner and Young. My reason for writing to you is my concern at the invariably contemptuous and derogatory way you refer to anything to do with Christianity.

While I am quite aware of the position that established religions have held over the centuries, in many cases keeping the workers “in their place” and often supporting the ruling classes, particularly for example in time of war; also the hypocrisy of so many alleged Christians, and also understanding, because of the past record of “religion”, why many socialists are totally opposed to it per se, nevertheless I do feel that you should at least try and accept that there are many of us with true, deep and sincere belief in God and Jesus Christ and who know that there is no incompatibility between that belief and Socialism because we know that would be His desire.

We are not all of the blind, praying unceasingly, passive, meek and mild human doormat-type. I spend a lot of my time talking to people about Socialism and quite often become involved in heated arguments and I certainly do not "turn the other cheek".

Speaking for myself there are aspects of the Bible where I have strong reservations, and I know that I am not alone in this within Christian circles.

I thought the article "The divorce of the decayed” was excellent in January's issue.

John D. Rowe 

London SW11

Reply:

You are right; we are opposed to religion per se, but it's comforting to know that if God existed he’d be on our side— Editors.

Between the Lines: Know what I mean, John? (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Know what I mean, John?

Given a choice between being stranded in the Sahara Desert or spending a night drinking in The Queen Vic I would without hesitation start to pack my flask. The Queen Vic, focal point for the gathering of all those lovable East Enders, is Hell on earth. Its resident drinkers are amongst the most unlovable lowlives ever to have stained a television screen.

There are the vicious Mitchell brothers (Grant the ex-army psychopath and Phil the cheating lout); there is their moronically empty sister, Sam, whose big aim in life is to make it on to Page Three; and her pathetic wimp of a wage-slave husband, Ricky; not forgetting her spite-filled wastrel of a best mate, Mandy. Then there are the older East Enders: "Arfur" Fowler who has graduated from nicking the Christmas fund to cheating on his boring wife; Pete Beale, the bar-stool philosopher worthy of the National Front; the anti-social, self-pitying Pat Butcher who drove while over the limit and then expects sympathy because she killed a girl; the Bible-bashing Dot Cotton and her thieving, murderous family; and Tricky Dicky, the conniving northerner who isn't fit to clean the pavements down Coronation Street. The characters in East Enders are all detestable specimens of the worst in humanity. "So don’t watch it", I hear you cry. But that is not the point. Millions do. And they are shown the images which they are shown for a reason. Of course, part of the reason is to entertain: keep the proleys amused with simple dramatic episodes twice a week. But why these characters, why this image of humanity?

The East Enders are how they are because that is how the makers of TV (mainly "educated” people who imagine themselves to be creative and middle class) think that the working class is. When they see young working-class men they expect to see the Mitchell crooks, when they see young female wage-slaves they expect the Sams and Mandys and Sharons, when they see middle-aged proles they are surprised if they do not find a Pete Beale or a Frank Butcher — or better still a Big Ron. a huge proletarian lump who never speaks in more than monosyllabic grunts.

It is well known that if teachers expect non-whites or girls to be inferior learners their prejudiced prophecies will often result in reality: the non-whites or the girls fail in line with the prediction. And if the TV producers expect the workers to be mindless low-lives and they transmit that image twice a week it has the same effect.

East Enders is an insult to the working class. There are working-class pubs, some of them in the East End, where people discuss music and films and books and even political ideas. Some of them do it intelligently — more intelligently than in the pretentious late-night "culture" discussions on BBC2. But it does not suit the makers of East Enders to depict that image of our class. Let the workers think they're dumb and they're more likely to act dumb.

Without a doubt, there are pubs like the Queen Vic. There are plenty of nasty, narrow and mean-minded wage-slaves. Just as there are plenty of bent cops. But it is rather more than an accident that The Bill shows us only the occasional bent cop, whereas East Enders shows us nothing but working-class trash. The choice is political.

Know what I mean, Boris?

The cultural journey from Albert Square to Red Square is not all that far these days. Last summer Russian TV showed a 24-part Mexican soap opera made in the 1970s. Seventy percent of the Russian viewing audience watched it: a staggering 200 million daily viewers, making it the most popular TV drama in the history of the world. Set amongst the privileged echelons of Mexican society, it was called The Rich Also Cry. Something handy to think about when you’re queueing for sausages, eh?

Capitalist nonsense for beginners

Germany Means Business (BBC2, Tuesday, 2 February) was a rather dull documentary about how the Dresdner Bank is becoming the largest banking instituted in eastern Germany and is training young east Germans to become good little bank employees. The thrill of these poor wage-slaves at the chance to be trained to work in a bank (which is a lot more rewarding than learning the thrills of mass unemployment) was pathetic to see. The trainers were teaching them all the nonsense of how to see themselves as being part of the prosperity of the bank. In the final scene the trainees were shown at a dinner which was laid on for them. As for the growing number of unemployed workers in eastern Germany, one fast-learning girl explained that their trouble was that they didn't want to work hard. She could go far.

Killers on the box

Last month saw a set-piece moral debate about whether it was ethical to have shown a TV interview with a serial killer. In the same month both BBC and ITV carried interviews with Malcolm Rifkind, the Minister of Defence. After the bombing of Baghdad they interviewed the glorified mass killer. Storming Norman. What is the difference?

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Socialism, Pacifism and Politics (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Capitalism can last only as long as the majority of the workers are prepared to preserve it. and as long as it lasts the so-called abnormal periods of economic blizzards and wars will continue. These crises are normal to capitalism, and it is the duty of pacifists and other workers to grasp this fact and work to end this system. Mere resistance to war is insufficient as it cannot even achieve its purpose—peace—because it cannot rid the world of capitalism. The social problems we are troubled with to-day can be solved only when everyone has free access to the means of life; when goods are produced solely for use and freely distributed amongst the members of society. Socialism offers all that is worthwhile to the workers. It is an historical necessity, and it is in their interests, and we earnestly ask them to give serious thought to it as the solution to their problems. Only from the workers’ class-conscious political activities can Socialism be achieved, and war, want and insecurity be banished from the earth for ever.

[From an article by “L. J.”, Socialist Standard, March 1943.]

Obituary: Laurie Frank (1993)

Obituary from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce the death in December of Laurie Frank, who under his Party name of Frank Laurence, was for many years Secretary of our Central Branch.

Laurie Frank came to England from Austria just before the war and joined the Party in 1939. His father had been a Party member before the first world war. during which he was imprisoned in Alexandra Palace as an “enemy alien” and then deported to Germany.

During the 1939-45 war Laurie Frank was a conscientious objector on socialist grounds and. along with other socialists, was sent to work on the land. Besides his contribution as a member of the old Bloomsbury Branch, his main work for the Party was on the administrative side. The work of Central Branch Secretary involves sending EC Minutes, corresponding and collecting dues from members living in all pans of Britain and Laurie Frank was able to use the facilities of the ice cream trade association for which he worked to do this. For a number of years he was also the Literature Secretary dealing with the accounts and despatch of the Socialist Standard each month to branches, groups, bookshops and Companion Parties overseas.

Laurie Frank was not a member of the Party at the time of his death, but this cannot detract from the essential work he did while he was a member.

Obituary: Ernie Purkiss (1993)

Obituary from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We recently heard of the death of Ernie Purkiss last November on the Isle of Wight, where he spent his last few years. At the tender age of barely 14 he was given the job of cabin boy on the tramp steamer run to Buenos Aires. As this was in the mid-20s the conditions may well be imagined, bordering on Conrad and O'Neill as Ernie described them. This was to be his apprenticeship and in subsequent years he plied on more or less substandard shipping all over the world.

During the war he was given the dubious privilege of doing the Atlantic run. Having been torpedoed two or three times and once having spent four days in an open boat with little or no provisions before being quite fortuitously rescued he would always claim himself lucky not to have ended up in "Davy Jones’s Locker”. Finally he managed to persuade the authorities to release him from his duties as a merchant seaman, partly as a result of a severe ulcer no doubt originating from his tramp steamer days and its concomitant "food”. Soon after he joined the Party. A not unimportant factor in this was that his father was a member and no doubt made his socialist views telling. Add to this the miserable and dangerous life of a seaman and you have a socialist.

During his Party membership Ernie would always join in the activities involved, attending branch, indoor and outdoor meetings, selling the Socialist Standard, etc. During the enthusiastic post-war Paddington election campaign he was in the thick of it on a daily basis. Some years after the war he managed to get a "soft" job in the Port of London Authority. He openly made his socialist views known there despite the usual standard objections.

One of the great pleasures of his life was, always in the company of fellow socialists, doing countless regular hikes all over Kent. Sussex and Surrey. On many an occasion wrapped up in the heat of some discussion relating to the socialist case the way would be lost, but not the thread of the argument! The countryside represented an escape from the airlessness and concrete surrounds of the East End of London. On arriving in the open fields and woods he was wont to burst into Wordsworth's Paean to Nature which he had learnt by heart.

Although Ernie let his membership lapse in later years he never lost sight of the socialist point of view and its relevance to the deprivation, horrors and suffering imposed on humanity by capitalism.

Max Judd

Problem of sexism (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before I was a socialist, I was a feminist. As for many women, the discrimination in favour of men was the most obvious and immediate. I gradually came to realize that this fitted into a far larger picture of racism, class oppression, ecological destruction. "third world” poverty, torture, starvation, colonialism, etc.

“From each according to his ability to each according to his need”, wrote Marx and, although calling women “he” raises another issue, this formula offers an answer to women's problems.

As things are, all around the world, women and women’s work are undervalued—by men, other women and themselves. This is serious, not just because of the damage inflicted on that particular half of the adult population, but also because it threatens the wellbeing of the whole human race.

Women’s oppression

In her book The War Against Women, Marilyn French writes:

Women’s gigantic task reproducing the human race, supporting and maintaining it, is specifically excluded from both Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP) statistics. Women are not counted as part of the labour force because they are not paid for their work, or because men take their wages or because their work is not considered work.

My own experience was one of near incredulity when after the birth of my first child, I found myself on duty 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and yet not in receipt of an independent income, or the limited sense of autonomy that comes with it.

A housewife in the West is running the equivalent of a small business—managing finance, meeting deadlines, maintaining good relations among those in her care, preparing regular meals, undertaking cleaning and maintenance work . . . She carries a large responsibility. Yet she will habitually be described as "not working”.

Another of women’s needs is the need to feel safe. Many people in the world do not feel safe. The specific problem for women is of being under threat from attack by men, most often in the context of their personal relationships. Both battering and rape occur most frequently with men with whom women are intimate or at least “friendly”. Such experience leaves women with a sense of "no safe place to go”:

Half the married men in Bangkok, Thailand, regularly beat their wives; in Quito Ecuador. 80 percent of all women report having been physically beaten; in Nicaragua, 44 percent of men admit they beat their wives and girlfriends . . .  In the United States, a man beats a woman every 12 seconds, and every day four of these beatings reach their final consummation, the death of the woman.

There is more . . .

As regards rape, Marilyn French points out:

It is especially difficult to counter men's sense that rape is legitimate, that it is their right. Both sexes are raised in a culture that, until recently, implicitly reinforced this idea. Rape within marriage or on a date was considered impossible; rape by a stranger was the victim's fault: she was out alone . . .  she was wearing the wrong clothes or shoes, she had a drink.

What to do?

From boyhood, writes Marilyn French,

males are bombarded with the message that ‘‘real" men dominate women, which means they control women’s behaviour . . . So powerful and pervasive is this formula for the appearance of manhood that a man with an equal, mutual, relationship with a woman may adopt a posture of dominance towards her when other men are around.

Why does ail of this happen? What can be done about it?

Marilyn French’s answer is caressed in the concluding sentence of her book: "After millenia of male war against them, women are fighting back on every front”.

But is it in fact the case that the vast majority of one half of the human race feels compelled to dominate the other half? If so, why? What does socialism have to offer women, that feminism does not?

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

Socialism involves a complete change in the way the whole of humanity organizes, itself, so that we have a system which provides goods and services because people need them and not because of money. There is no money and there is no property. Land is owned and controlled by the whole of humanity. There are no national boundaries. It must be highly organized, but in a genuinely democratic way. so that all people are involved in making decisions that affect their lives. There are no hierarchies. no distinctions of class, race or sex. 

Such a system seems like the impossible dream, but the potential for it is there. Even in capitalism, men and women can be fair and compassionate and co-operate with each other. People derive pleasure from working for themselves and others without monetary reward. What it will take is for the majority of people in the world to decide that this is how they want to live, and to set about organizing it.

Clearly the resistance to this from certain quarters may be great. The capitalists will not like it, initially at least—and if one half of the worlds population does feel compelled to dominate the other half, such an attitude will have to be challenged or socialism can not be achieved.

Men not the enemy

I became disenchanted with the feminism which holds patriarchy to be the world’s primary problem, because I did not like the logical conclusion to which this kind of thinking would lead. If men are simply women's worst enemies, what should we women do? Shoot men down in the street? Or simply withdraw'? What of hopes for shared childcare and housework? Many women, men and children would like men to be more, not less involved in their families.

It is true, many women are in severely oppressive situations at home and at work. Women get more than their fair share of the work, less than their fair share of the cake and less freedom than the men they share their lives with. Women are subordinate to men. Knowingly and unknowingly, men abuse the power they have over women—but not all men and not all the time.

Men also love and care for women, and work to support women and children. Some men have been women’s best friends at crucial times in their lives—and some men are subordinate to some women: a wealthy woman may hand out orders to a male wage-slave.

The problem of sexism is complex and linked to a larger problem; that of the way the whole world is organized.The majority of women and men in the world feel and are powerless in the face of the minority powers-that-be. Part of the problem of sexism is simply a "kicking the cat” syndrome. a white employed man, oppressed by his employer (or depressed by the dole queue) comes home and puts his wife in her place, for much the same reason that the pair of them will insult their black neighbours. It is an ignoble and inadequate solution to one’s own lack of self-esteem and autonomy, to undermine someone else’s. but without self-respect it is hard to respect others. A feeling of self-respect in our present system is for most people constantly under threat.

It is surely preferable for women to work with women and men to change the whole system than against men in the hope of changing just one aspect of it. Some men are sometimes women’s enemies—but so are some women. Many men and women are women's potential friends and allies.

I hope we can one day realize our potential for mutual respect and co-operation and create world socialism. Part and parcel of this process must be the shifting of patriarchy.

Nicky Snell

Capitalism and mental health (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

If people are your lifeboat then schizophrenia is not for you. As you may find out, the boats talk back and cannot be trusted. I was living in Hulme in 1988 when I first became seriously ill. It was after a holiday in Greece which turned sour due to my oncoming illness.

We all have a certain amount of paranoia. Generally it is fairly harmless. However when you slowly drift into illusions much like an unconscious dream or like you have taken LSD, then things can get very nasty. Voices and feelings of persecution take over and unlike a dream or an LSD trip you do not recover without drugs, hospital, etc to take the edge from the nightmare-like torment.

Schizophrenia can creep up on anyone ever so slowly. Perhaps if you like yourself, you will not succumb. However if you do like yourself you have further to fall. Presently genone7 is said to be the genetic reason, but whatever the cause schizophrenia can either ruin the rest of your life or if you are fortunate enough to recover it can stigmatize and label you. They reckon one third have only one attack and one third have more than one and one third do not get better even with the drugs.

To recover is often seen as temporary sanity. Many people see the sufferer always through the doors of the asylum. At the moment I am back in Hulme having made a reasonable recovery. I have a job and I feel fortunate considering just how ill I was.

There are many reasons why people end up in mental hospitals. The main one is that they disturb family and friends so much that these are unable to cope.

We all learn from our experiences and "going mad", as it is called by some people, certainly gives you plenty of experiences most of which you certainly would not choose. The way back from schizophrenia—and I can only give a personal viewpoint—is to aim to control things again. Often this is very difficult when you have spent months in hospital but the approach should be gradual; think about the level of support you need and work towards more independence.

The world is often not a very understanding place and there are day centres which can help take the edge off things and fill the time in. As to the drugs which most people are on when they get released from hospital, if you can, get the dose reduced gradually (if that works) as the drugs themselves have effects on your ability to think quickly and they have other side-effects which can usually be controlled.

You do not only lose things when you fall ill you also gain things when you come out of it. You lose things like self-confidence. Often people have this to a great degree which really is a form of acceptable insanity, yet to get a measure of self-confidence back is a good thing for self-preservation. What you gain when you come out of it is a perception about schizophrenia which most people do not understand. You also gain humility and understanding about what it is like to be mentally ill. You may develop a healthy dislike of mental hospitals and psychiatrists. Someone once said if you want to see a psychiatrist you must be mad!

The thing to remember is that you have a reasonable chance to rebuild your life and self-esteem, given favourable circumstances. Not everything is in anyone’s control. More understanding and more help is certainly needed where mental illness is concerned. In general the people who lived in Hulme were supportive when I was ill and after I began my recovery. That counts for a lot.

I am one of those strange people who advocate a democratic socialist revolution to sort out the worlds problems. While we still have present-day society we have to survive as best we can by giving people respect and understanding especially if they have or are having mental health problems.

Looking to the future I hope to stay well like most people, I also hope to enjoy life no differently from anyone else. Mental illness can strike anyone. Not everyone can survive the experience. With schizophrenia one in ten people kill themselves. Perhaps that’s a reflection on the nature of the illness but it is also a reflection on society. Recently a doctor writing in the Observer said if he could give one piece of advice on how to avoid illness he would advise you to be rich. He was not talking specifically about mental illness but illness in general, although I believe it to be sound advice. The only way we can all get rich is to establish a society where we all have free access to what society can produce. Then, perhaps, there will be fewer casualties of all types of illnesses and better treatment. Well it’s worth thinking about, I believe it’s worth working for—what do you think?

D. McLellan

Obituary: Bob Gleghorn (1993)

Obituary from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with much regret that we report the death at the age of 62 of Bob Gleghorn at the end of December, a member for fifteen years of the old Seaham Branch in the North East, then of Central Branch.

Bob was born in the Seaham area of County Durham in 1930 and for most of his working life worked at Dawdon colliery as a miner, until 1984 when he took voluntary redundancy. Before joining the Socialist Party he frequented many political meetings in the Seaham and Sunderland areas— Labour, Liberal and left-wing groups—and was totally disillusioned with all of them; he even once stood as an independent socialist for the local council.

He was a most prodigious writer of letters to the local press over a number of years. Together with other members in the area, and under a range of pen-names, a collection of many hundreds of excellent published statements was accumulated and has been collected as a presentation set. Bob’s vision of the socialist alternative never diminished, and he succeeded in inspiring other sometimes wavering comrades. Bob was not only a fellow socialist but a genuine friend, and he will be sadly missed by his family and comrades. We extend our condolences and best wishes to his wife, Beatrice, and family.

H. W.

Rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen Part 2 (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 of the article.

This month France goes to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. The French National Front, the biggest far-right party in Europe since the war, is expected to do well in terms of votes if not seats. We conclude our two-part article on the rise of its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In 1987 Jean-Marie Le Pen caused quite a stir by suggesting that the Nazi gas chambers were “a small point in the history of the Second World War”. Not surprisingly he was condemned by both the Left and some on the Right, and in 1990 was to be fined one franc for this remark. For many years, he managed to cover up his antisemitism; but now the mask had slipped.

When the French presidential election came round on 24 April 1988, Le Pen stood on behalf of the Front National (seven years previously he had not been able to get enough nominations to stand). He called for the immediate denial of jobs or social security to immigrant workers, stiffer “law and order” legislation (blandly ignoring the considerable number of Front supporters involved in violent attacks on immigrants, particularly in the south of the country), and for “an Aids-free France”.

In the first round, he received 4,367,926 votes, an unprecedented 14.5 percent. As previously, the Front obtained the highest percentage in the south—28.4 percent in Marseille, for example. But, significantly, as with the fascist Parti Populaire Français before the war, the FN made dramatic inroads into the traditional working class votes of the Communist Party. In the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint Denis for instance the FN polled 107,702 against the PCF’s 73,625. The two leading right-wing candidates. Jacques Chirac and Raymond Barre, were particularly concerned, and made strenuous efforts to attract the Front’s support in the second round. In the event, the “socialist” Francois Mitterrand was re-elected.

But all was not well within the Front National. One of their members in the National Assembly left the party to join the Gaullists. as he considered their views on immigration to be similar to those of the Front. Furthermore, despite Le Pen’s wealth, and that of a number of his supporters, the FN had been troubled with financial problems during the presidential election, and had reportedly been pressing the Rev Moon’s Unification Church for funds. Nevertheless. Le Pen was able to parade more than 50,000 FN members and supporters through Paris on May Day.

As is usual in France, the presidential election was followed, in June, by new elections to the National Assembly. This time proportional representation had been abolished and the previous two-round system restored. The results were something of a set-back for Le Pen and the FN. In the first round, the Front National received 2,359,228 votes, 5 percent less than in April. The level of abstentions was a massive 34.3 percent. Only 12 FN candidates got through to the second round and, although they won over 40 percent of the vote, only one was elected to the National Assembly.

Although of less interest, the European elections of 18 June 1989 resulted in the Front National again winning 10 seats in the European Parliament, with 2,125,077 votes—almost 12 percent of those who voted. Le Pen was said to be jubilant.

Attacks continue

During 1990 attacks mainly on North Africans continued. After one incident, where a Moroccan was attacked and left clinically dead, another left paralysed and a third killed, the Moroccan government officially protested to the French government. In the Department of the Loire, an Arab worker was deliberately killed by two men in a car; and in Saint-FIorentine, south of Paris, one Arab was killed and his brother left paralysed by a gunman. In Nice, a skinhead gang of six went on trial for kicking to death a Tunisian building worker. Asked in court why they attacked and killed the man, one of the gang laughed and replied: "We hate all Arabs, and we had to do something". While the court was in session, another group of skinheads, in the same city, set upon a black man in the main railway station, severely beating him and blinding him in one eye.

Throughout 1989 and 1990 there was a wave of anti-Jewish vandalism similar to that perpetrated in Germany and elsewhere. Scores of Jewish graves in a number of cemeteries were desecrated, mainly by having swastikas daubed on them. And so on.

In April 1990 the Front National held a congress, also in Nice. The hall was decorated with posters proclaiming that "One million immigrants equals one million jobless”. Le Pen accused the Gaullists and Giscardians of stealing the Front’s policies (which to some extent was true); and claimed that the only way of stopping violence against immigrant workers was to expel “four million of them” from the country. “France is being turned into an Islamic country”, said Le Pen. At the same time he talked of France being "dominated by Jewish power" and of the "activities of international Jewish cabals hostile to the interests of the Nation”. All old-style Nazi rhetoric. Speaking "for the little people”, and for "real Frenchmen", he said that "France was in great danger”—presumably from "four million Muslims and 700,000 Jews” (the population of France is nearly 57 million).

By the end of 1991, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his Front National, as well as various fringe Fascist and racist groups, were more than pleased with their progress. An opinion poll, published in November, showed that the FN had the biggest support of any single party on the right, with 17 percent. And according to a survey in Le Monde, more than 32 percent of the French people were in agreement with Le Pen on defence, immigration and law and order. But 60 percent felt that Le Pen and the Front National were "a danger for democracy". Moreover, the Front's support of the Ba'ath Party régime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was not popular with many.

In December, Le Pen visited London. He did not receive a particularly warm welcome. Indeed, no MPs met him. He accused his opponents of "intellectual terrorism". And he walked out of a World in Action TV interview when asked about his anti-semitism. It is doubtful if 2 percent of the British population knew that Le Pen was in England. The British working-class may not be particularly class-conscious, but they are not likely to fall for a far-right political con-man such as Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Roots of racism

So what of the future? It is far from bright. Indeed:

Behind France's façade of high living standards and grand works lies a nation in crisis. Mass immigration has given credibility to an extreme right-wing politician while mainstream figures like President Mitterand are held in widespread contempt; financial scandal has further undermined the major parties; farmers are in revolt as their livelihoods are destroyed. (Sunday Times Magazine, 23 March 1992).

Officially, unemployment is three million. But, as in Britain, it is probably nearer four million, and still rising. As in Britain and elsewhere in the world, capitalism in France is going through one of its inevitable crises. In such a situation, racism, xenophobia and fascism increase, particularly when workers, employed or unemployed, are still nationalistic and do not understand their class position in society; when they identify with their national exploiters and oppressors rather than with their fellow workers and their families who may have a different coloured skin, or perhaps speak a different language, or practise a different religion or come from another country or continent. In such conditions power-hungry demagogues such as Jean-Marie Le Pen flourish.

At the present level of support the Front National would be able to win more than 70 seats in this month's election—if there was proportional representation, but there isn't and some commentators in France are suggesting that the Front's support has peaked and could decline. Recently, at least at national level, the orthodox right-wing parties of Jacques Chirac and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing have been refusing to co-operate with Le Pen; and without such co-operation, under the two-round system, many of the Front's first-round votes could go to them in the second round and the Front only get a handful of seats if any.

Whatever happens, Le Pen's Front National is the largest far-right party in Europe, with 130,000 members—about the same as Jacques Doriot's PPF was in 1937. It's a sobering thought.

Peter E. Newell

Robbed blind (1993)

Book Review from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dare To Be A Daniel—A History of One of Britain's Earliest Syndicalist Unions. by Wilf McCartney. Kate Sharpley Library, BM Hurricane, London WC1 3XX.

The misery of wage slaves exploited in the catering business has always been particularly bad. Although Wilf McCartney's twenty-four page booklet on the subject, written originally in 1942 and published in 1945 with a preface by Orwell, is written in a workmanlike, sometimes poorly-crafted style, it expresses well the plight of the catering workers then and now. Reading it, what is clear is just how little has changed. It has always been a notoriously hard occupation to unionize, based mainly on casual and cheap foreign labour, and McCartney shows how little the official trade unions did to support catering workers. Reports of minor successes in rank-and-file strikes are written up encouragingly, but the hard fact is that catering workers are still being robbed blind by hotel and restaurant bosses despite earlier militancy.

Politically, McCartney's radicalism was of a pretty confused nature. Of relevance here is that he joined the SPGB in its early (not as a founder member) and makes the following critical comments about his experience:

I and others joined this party to learn socialism, but later, along with H. Maslin [surely, H. Martin—editors] and others, we left because of a letter in the Socialist Standard signed "Upton Park". The questioner wanted to know what would be the action of a member of the SPGB elected to Parliament, and the answer was that the Socialist member, backed by the revolutionary votes outside, would consider capitalist measures on their merits! This was quite enough for us.

McCartney is here referring to one of the most historically interesting formative conflicts in this party. The Socialist Party was formed to advocate socialism and nothing but. We have always rejected any compromise with the capitalist system. In 1910 some members, interpreting this principled anti-reformism as a dogmatic opposition to all reforms under capitalism, put their point by writing a letter to the Socialist Standard signed "W. B. of Upton Park". The reply given to them was that a single socialist or a minority of socialists elected to parliament on the basis of whether such measures benefitted or harmed the working class. For example, if measures extending the freedom of socialists to disseminate ideas or reducing election deposits or banning religious control of schooling were on the agenda it is quite possible that a socialist minority would be instructed to vote for them.

The minority within the SPGB formed a Provisional Committee to oppose this policy. Like dogmatic sectarians, inspired by doctrine to dismiss social reality, they went as far as to argue that no reforms have ever helped or could ever benefit the working class. The exchange of documents between the Executive Committee, expressing the position which we maintain today, and the ultra-sectarian Committee, of which McCartney was possibly a member, is highly educative and explains well why our party is opposed to reformism but not to reforms.

Many of our opponents on the Left, embarrassed by our unceasing exposure of their own rotten reformism, have tried to attack the Socialist Party by attacking what is actually the position of the few members of the Provisional Committee who left this party precisely because we do not hold the view in question. McCartney did hold that view, left the SPGB and went on to join the Syndicalist Propaganda League which was soon to disappear into the mists of history. What a pity that a man of such evident passion and union militancy did not stay within the ranks of the one revolutionary party committed to the abolition of the wages system.

Steve Coleman

Doctor Smith operates (1993)

Editorial from the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

As Leaders go John Smith is something of a novelty. He did not campaign for the leadership as the darling of the left and then outrage his supporters by revealing himself as a man of the right.

His appeal was of a different kind. He studiously avoided any ideological commitment apart from vague phrases about a juster and more caring society. His promise was to be a shrewd and prudent managing director for British Capitalism plc. The implication was clear. This is a man you can trust. He will look after you like your family doctor. After the hysterical abrasive raving of Neil Kinnock some Labour supporters might have found relief in John Smith's more comforting message.

It was all of a piece, that Smith's election to the Labour leadership should be so blatantly and determinedly stage-managed. There was in fact no contest worth the name. It was a fix-up. Punch-drunk though they were over their fourth consecutive election defeat, some Labour Party members still had enough energy to have doubts about Smith's leadership and about how he got the job.

So it should have surprised nobody, when Smith declared that nothing would be exempt from his desire to revise Labour's policies. What Labour used to regard as its principles no longer exist. Everything they say and do must conform to two standards of judgement: Os it in the interest of British capitalism? Does it win or lose votes?

If this means disregarding everything the party has stood for, so be it. If it means an open admission that Labour is the Tory Party with a different emblem and different coloured rosettes, that is a price worth paying. If it means losing a few voters who believed however half-heartedly that Labour stood for a different social system—well, what party aiming at power over British capitalism needs such thorns in its electoral side anyway?

What Smith is doing is but the latest episode in Labour's drive to become a natural party of government whose only principle is to get into power. At times they have justified this on the grounds that they will run capitalism more efficiently and more humanely than the Tories. Smith has made it clear that even that excuse can no longer be used.

So what about all those people who want to contribute to the establishment of a new and better society and who have worked and voted for the Labour Party in the belief that this would bring it nearer? Many of them must be in despair, bitter and angry at what they see as the betrayal of their party.

But it need not be all loss. A society of common ownership, democratic control and production for need not profit remains worths struggling for. To do this people need to organise politically—not in the Labour Party. Labour has never been a socialist organisation and now more than ever is unworthy of anything other than working class hostility and contempt.

What is needed is a party that stands for socialism and which sticks to its socialist principles. We consider our record over the years shows us to be such a party. If you want socialism your place is in the Socialist Party.

Two anti-Leninists (1993)

Uğur Mumcu

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is probable that few of our readers will have noticed the brief news item at the end of January regarding the assassination in Ankara of the Turkish journalist, Ugur Mumcu. Even fewer will have linked this tragic news with the contacts we had with the émigré review, Marksist published in Paris. It should not go unnoticed, however, that Mumcu was part of a remarkable political trend which we in the Movement for World Socialism can welcome whole-heartedly.

For many years the Socialist Party here and our companion parties overseas have largely been alone in maintaining that Lenin's ideology paved the way for the establishment of state-capitalism in the Russian Empire and elsewhere. Even when the London-based magazine International Socialism diverged from its Trotskyist background by recognizing the USSR to be state-capitalist, they were still so ensnared in their Bolshevik mental straitjacket they could not see the oppressive Russian system as a direct consequence of Lenin's seizure of power in the backward conditions of 1917. The SWP, which emerged from IS in the mid-seventies, remains frozen in its incomplete understanding of the factors giving rise to state-capitalism and, to use a Trotskyist phrase, is accordingly degenerate.

By contrast to the most advance trend within Trotskyism, those around Marksist developed their understanding much further even though many of them emerged from yet more rigid Leninist disciplines as Maoism and its Albanian variant. Mumcu, too, came to a recognition that Leninism was a distortion, a perversion of Marxian ideas. Anyone familiar with the powerful grip which Stalinism has had over the working-class movement in Anatolia will not find it hard to see that Mumcu was not only at risk from those who conspire to re-establish a theocratic state in place of Ataturk's secular republic and who he regularly lambasted in his column in Turkey's best daily Cumhuriyet (the quasi-official mouthpiece of Turkey's own special mix of state and private capitalism). The fact that Mumcu was a scourge of the huge narcotics industry in his country and is said to have been near to publishing a major exposé of the whole business and its political links right the way to the top suggests he could have been in the sights of many different marksmen.

As it is, the TV news from Istanbul reports that Hesbollah, the Tehran-backed Islamic terrorist organization, has claimed responsibility for placing the fatal car-bomb. This could be true but then again MIT, the Turkish secret police who are a menace in their own right to political democracy might have their own reasons for floating this idea.

Whilst acknowledging the valuable contribution Uğur Mumcu and his associates have made to a clearer understanding of the Leninist phenomenon we would be deluding ourselves if we were to overlook the dangers inherent in their reversion to a kind of pre-Leninist Social-Democracy, with all its erroneous attitudes towards the role of leadership, reformist legislation, the nation-state etc. Nevertheless, we share the sense of outrage at this murder and we shall continue as best we can in the work of exchanging and clarifying ideas paving the way to the Socialist world community of the future.

E. S. Grant

Anton Ciliga, whose claim to fame amongst socialists is as the author of the book The Russian Enigma, died in October in Zagreb. As this book first appeared in English in 1940 many will perhaps will be surprised to learn that he was still alive in 1992.

Born in 1898 Anton (or rather, Ante in his native Croatian) Ciliga was a founding member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia who went to Russia in 1926 and was eventually imprisoned and then exiled to Siberia for "trotskyism". He managed to get out of Russia in 1935 and put down his experiences in writing. These were published in book form in French in 1938 under the title Au Pays du Grand Mensonge ("In the Land of the Big Lie", a much better title than that of the English version in fact).

The Big Lie of course was that Russia was a "socialist state", a "workers' paradise". Ciliga, who had been imprisoned as a Trotskyist, eventually came to realise that Russia was state capitalist and that the Party bureaucracy was a new ruling class. This, naturally, meant that he ceased to be a Trotskyist. In fact he came to see Trotsky as no different in principle from Stalin. As he put it himself:

Trotsky as well as Stalin wished to pass off the State as being the proletariat, the bureaucratic dictatorship over the proletariat as the proletarian dictatorship, the victory of State capitalism over both private capitalism and socialism as a victory of the latter. The difference between Trotsky and Stalin lay in the fact that in his victory Stalin saw the triumph of pure socialism, pure dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas Trotsky perceived and stressed the gaps and bureaucratic deformations of the system.

Besides being an interesting account of the privileged lifestyle of the Bolshevik leaders (and Comintern official from abroad) in the 1920s and of the discussion amongst the political prisoners of various sorts in the 1930s, it is this denunciation of Trotskyism as an ideology of state capitalism that makes the book still worth reading (a new edition was published by Ink Links in 1979), an antidote to the Leninist vanguardist views still being peddled on the streets by the SWP in Britain.

Ciliga, however, soon drifted away from any claim to be a Marxist and became a Croatian nationalist. In later years he was active in Croatian exile politics and when Croatia became a separate state in 1991 he returned from exile and was granted a pension by the new authorities.

Adam Buick