Sting in the Tail: Tory morality (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tory morality

You would think that any political party which has had so many of its leading lights’ extra-marital activities exposed in the media would think twice about presenting themselves as the guardians of the nation’s morals.

But not the Tories. Having blamed the one-parent family and especially the absent fathers for the decline in "family values", they had to gaze in horror as one more government minister, Tim Yeo, is exposed for his part in creating yet another one-parent family. Yeo’s brazen defence was that his case was different because he is paying towards the child’s upkeep!

So its OK to contribute to this so- called decline in family values so long as you pay for the privilege, and when it comes down to it, money is always what Tory morality, philosophy, and all the rest of that guff, is all about.

Common practice

We’ve heard plenty about gerrymandering in the past in Ulster and more recently in Westminster, but it’s been happening in Scotland too. This piece by "Backbencher" appeared in the Glaswegian (27 January):

GERRYMANDERING IS NOT JUST A
 TORY PLOY

Labour were quick to call it "gerrymandering". But their councillors, up and down the land, appear rather restrained in condemning the peculiar council house sales policy of Westminster City Council.

Not surprising. After all, in the post-war years, Labour activists quickly figured out their own vote-creation formula.

They built new council houses in their 'marginal" wards to strengthen the political control.

Indeed, this explains why some pockets of new homes were created not where Glasgow families actually wanted to live.

But where ambitious local politicians needed extra votes.

Little earners

The Tories’ latest desperate attempt to explain their failure to run British capitalism smoothly has been to blame the parents for almost all of society’s ills. Increased crime? Drug abuse? Poor educational standards? All down to the lack of parental control!

But this pathetic excuse is not exclusive to the British government. BBC’s Newsround Extra (14 January) told how children in Colombia, some only ten years old, are working down coal mines in horrendous conditions. There are shafts with wooden pit-props which frequently collapse, dust-laden air, and access so restricted that even a child can barely squeeze through. Indeed, this was one of the reasons mine-owners gave for employing the children.

A local official justified the government's inaction by claiming that the children did a Lord Lucan whenever rare inspections were made, and added that the blame for this child-labour lay with — guess who? — the parents for allowing their children to go down the mines.

These children, they earn about £10 weekly, are often their families’ sole source of income and, come to think of it, could be held up by the Tories as a shining example to British children.

He’s a scream

That comical Keynesian, Professor J.K. Galbraith, has been wowing his British audiences once again. In his Cardiff gig he was supposedly setting-out conditions for what he called "the good society" (Guardian, 26 January) but this was just a front for his usual laugh-a-minute routine.

And what a routine! The good society, he gagged, would put an end to poverty, unemployment, bad health and poor housing. Then he joked that there would be a "more equitable distribution of income" while "positive government intervention" could end recessions. Hilarious stuff!

For a finale he slayed ’em with "I want to see demilitarisation" plus "an effective curb on the arms trade", and all of this to be achieved within (wait for it) the capitalist system. Stoppit, Prof, you’re killing us!

So maybe it is the same old material, but the Prof knows exactly what his audience wants to hear, and on this form his Vegas debut can’t be far away.

Sheer murder

Anyone who thinks that socialists use over-emotive language in claiming that capitalism murders workers, might like to consider a report which appeared on Scottish Television News (18 January) revealing how the asbestos industry was responsible for the deaths of many workers employed in shipbuilding on Clydeside by deliberately suppressing information about the deadly effect of its product.

According to the report this information became available fifty years ago when experiments carried out in laboratories in America showed how white mice were exposed to asbestos dust with terrifying results. 81.8 percent of mice inhaling long-fibre asbestos develop lung cancer, a figure sixteen times that of other dusts.

Because the consequences of inhaling asbestos dust don’t appear for perhaps twenty years, the industry was able to protest its innocence for a generation. Not only do dead men tell no tales, but even better from the insurers’ point of view, they make no claims for compensation either.

Learning to hate

Did you watch the movie of South Pacific on 9 January? In among all the big hit songs was this little gem:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
you’ve got to be taught from year to year
it's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
you’ve got to be carefully taught 

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
of people whose eyes are oddly made
and people whose skin is a different shade
you've got to be carefully taught 

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
before you are six or seven or eight
to hate all the people your relatives hate
you’ve got to be carefully taught

This song probably explains how racist ideas are learned and not inborn more clearly than all of the speeches and writings on the subject ever could.

Booking his place

This is what Patrick Minford, Professor of Economics at Liverpool University, had to say on Channel Four’s High Interest: Loadsamoney on 16 January:

  "There’s no doubt that in the last decade and a half when we have liberalised this economy and pushed it more towards the free market end of the capitalist system, the distribution of wealth and income has become much more unequal and of course that’s exactly what one "would hope would happen because the whole point of the capitalist economy is that it should throw up enormous inequalities in order to motivate effort and entrepreneurship. It’s now extremely respectable to he a successful entrepreneur. You get invited to the best dinner parties and people pay you the respect that you are due, and that is the visible change in our culture which I think is a tremendously good thing."

If that doesn’t earn this lickspittle his own invitation to "the best dinner parties" then nothing will.

Gatt: Free Trade — or Protectionism? (1994)

From the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year we dealt with the various factors that were leading to a trade war (Socialist Standard, April 1993). The possibility of a return to the "beggar thy neighbour" policies of the 1930s was discussed in the light of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) and GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade).

Prior to the recent signing of these agreements the Establishment-controlled media argued that the alternative to signing these agreements was a gigantic world slump. Quoting the OECD, the Financial Times (9 November) stated:

   "a successful round would add about 200 billion dollars a year to world trade. . . the increased business would certainly help the international economy from its current recession. If the talks collapse, then these potential gains will be lost. But, worse, a tit for tat trade war would lead to higher tariffs, higher prices, reduced sales, lost export opportunities and lost jobs."

Before the recent signing of GATT, the world was already dividing into trade blocs such as NAFTA, comprising Canada, the United States and Mexico, the EEC (Europe), and the Far East under the domination of Japan.

A similar attempt has been made in Latin America to form a trading sphere made up of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (MEPOSIL). Currently Brazil and Argentina are in dispute over movement of capital goods between the two countries. Argentina accusing Brazil of dumping.

NAFTA, when signed, was considered a triumph for the diplomacy of President Clinton. It has not, however, resolved the trade rivalries between the member countries. Canada has raised tariffs on farm products since GATT was signed "to make up for the protection its farmers lost in the GATT agreement. Tariffs are expected to be as high as 350 percent on butter. 290 percent on cheese and 270 percent on eggs" (Daily Telegraph, 16 December). The United States is pressing Canada to phase out these tariffs in 10 years instead of 15 as required under GATT’s rules.

The revolt of the Zapatistas in Mexico had their leader denouncing NAFTA from a hotel balcony as "a death sentence for Mexican Indians" (Economist, 22 January). In short, the Indians see no hope for themselves under NAFTA. Unlike the European Community there is no offer of regional aid to the poorer members of this trade bloc.

Export subsidies
One of the claims made by the advocates of these multinational agreements is that freer movement of goods will result in a raising of living standards world wide. Because many of the goods exported by the major industrialized countries have export subsidies the opposite is the case as far as the "lesser developed countries" are concerned. The higher prices of these products, especially agricultural products, are often more than they can afford. With much of their revenue being consumed in paying crushing interest payments on outstanding loans, far from improving, their living standards are worsened.

Similar attempts have been made in the past to reach agreement on a world scale with the object of preventing trade disputes and the economic rivalries that result eventually in world wars and slumps with mass unemployment. The Bretton Woods Agreement was one such example when in 1944 it was proposed along with the IMF and the International Trade Organization. The latter, the ITO, was rejected on the ground that it would provoke hostility from some of the major trading powers. No such considerations apply today. There is now a World Trading Organization replacing GATT.

The problem that capitalist politicians have to solve is how to have world trade without the various powers falling out as they compete for a bigger share of the world market. Bretton Woods, out of which came the IMF, gave rise to a system of fixed exchange rates that could periodically be adjusted where trade imbalances occurred. It appeared to work initially but with the entry of countries such as Japan into the world market and the subsequent erection of trade barriers it finally ended when President Nixon ended the dollar’s convertability. Under this arrangement America provided enough currency to provide a gold exchange rate system.

The violent currency movements that have occurred in recent years is evidence of the developing trade imbalances instead of the convergence of currencies as the enthusiasts for the European Community promised. Currency adjustments cannot overcome the problems of trade rivalries. Tight control of the D-Mark by the Bundesbank has not prevented the deepening recession in Germany.

Erection of trade barriers does not in itself afford protection against rival economic competitors or prevent import penetration. American multinationals were not in fact kept out of Europe by the formation of the EEC for the simple reason they were already established in Europe; Kellogs Cornflakes, Budweiser Beer, Camel Cigarettes, Ford Motors and the inevitable McDonald’s to mention only a few.

The only time anything approaching free trade can occur is when one world power has acquired a dominant position in the world. This was the case in the middle half of the 19th century, when the British Empire was the dominant world power with unlimited access to a large Empire from which it could obtain raw materials at minimal cost. A similar situation existed after the Second World War when America was the predominant world economic power for about two decades. In this sense protectionism has dominated, apart from these two periods in the history of capitalism.

Whilst NAFTA was launched under the auspices of free trade it is in reality protectionist as is the EEC ("Fortress Europe”). The three trade blocs that have emerged have access to cheap labour and raw materials. In the case of NAFTA, America and Canada can increasingly use Mexico for production of labour-intensive goods. This will reduce their interest in the Newly Industrialized countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia which are all heavily export-dependent. The percentage of GDP that comprise exports are 30 percent for South Korea, 44 percent for Taiwan and well-over 90 percent in the case of Hong Kong and Singapore. The main markets for their exports are OECD countries such as the industrialized nations of North America, western Europe, Australasia and Japan. The OECD accounted for an average of 44 percent of the export of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong in 1992. Any failure of GATT will cause serious economic problems in these export-dependent economics.

China has officially admitted that it has over 130 million agricultural workers surplus to the requirements of its industry. Many of them have defied regulations and flocked to the cities in search of work. With surplus labour-power of this size, where wages can amount to less than a dollar an hour, it is not difficult to see what impact this will have on the world market if utilized.

Hardly had the ink dried on the new GATT agreements before the United States and Japan were involved in a dispute over computer copyrights and access for computer hardware, with America alleging that Japan was violating the agreement. On a recent visit to Japan, Jean Spero, US Under-secretary of State for Agricultural and Economic Affairs, accused Japan of foot-dragging. Speaking in Tokyo she said: "Quite frankly progress has been disappointing and when the leaders meet it will be against a backdrop of the largest trade deficit in the history of United States-Japanese relations” (Daily Telegraph, 13 January). Subsequently Lloyd Bentsen, US Treasury Secretary, warned that "his country would have to re-examine the basis of its bilateral trade agreement with Japan if negotiations fail to make sufficient progress by next month" (Daily Telegraph, 24 January). Lloyd Bentsen said "Japan is out of step. It has the lowest penetration of manufactured imports and it has the lowest foreign investment levels among major nations." At the same time the European Community is in trouble with GATT for operating a restrictive quota of bananas while Latin American countries claim discrimination against them" (Daily Telegraph, 24 January).

Last year it was discovered that Germany had signed a secret trading agreement with the United States unbeknown to its European partners leaving them out in the cold (Daily Telegraph, 21 June). With the majority of European countries in recession the likelihood of trade barriers and protectionism increases, particularly as the recession deepens.

There is absolutely no convincing evidence that GATT involving 105 countries can increase free trade when it retains many of the features of protectionism. Its history is one of endless disputes, complaints and alleged violations. Its ultimate effect is the opposite of what its advocates claim. The groupings of NAFTA, the EEC and the Far East are expressions of competing capitalist groupings struggling for access to the world’s markets.

Terry Lawlor

Poland — the old crowd returns (1994)

From the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "In Poland the elections are now over. The old crowd came back into power under a new guise. Despite its leftist leanings the new government has made it clear that it will not in any way harm the repayment of Poland’s debts and will carry on with the economic reform programme" Correspondent from Poland reports

The elections are now over and by all accounts forgotten. The old crowd came back into power under a new guise. The former "Communists” now called "Left Alliance", along with the Farmers Union, received two thirds of the seals in the new' Polish parliament. The Democratic Union of the outgoing Premier did badly, as did Lech Walesa’s centrist group. Walesa today is a played card and few regard him as the statesman he pretends to be. More surprisingly, the Patriotic Coalition supported by the Catholic church did just as poorly.

Despite its leftist leanings the new government has made it clear that it will not in any way harm the repayment of Poland’s debts and will carry on with the economic reform programme. There will be no return to the centrally-planned state capitalist economy.

Since the collapse of the Russian Empire, Poland has become the prime target for overseas investment in the former state capitalist bloc and has experienced the greatest economic growth in Europe. For example, the growth in industrial production was 9.4 percent in the first half of last year. More than one million new businesses have been initiated since 1989 and more than half of Polish workers are now employed by privately-owned firms. Meanwhile the currency has stablized somewhat with annual price rises down from 100 percent three years ago to 35 percent now.

However, all is not rosy. The reforms that privatization have brought have not improved the lot of the working class. A new class has effectively emerged that lives in luxury while the poor are even poorer. The difference between the rich and poor is greater now than ever. Unemployment has grown to over three million, or 15.2 percent of the available working population, and the new economic reforms have brought further social division and an understandable jealousy on the part of some.

Crazy debts

One of the biggest problems which none of the parties have been able to adequately tackle is Poland’s massive indebtedness. Poland has a $30.6 billion debt owed to the Paris Club of Western creditors, and the new Premier Pawlek has so far failed to negotiate a successful debt reduction programme, just as with many other attempts to do so in the last few years. If reform of Poland’s debt comes, the burden of it will no doubt fall on the backs of the workers. There have already been attempts to reduce government expenditure through manipulation of the state pension, which has not risen nearly as much as even the government’s own supporters were demanding.

It is also worth noting on the international front that because of low labour costs, Germany is preparing to invest heavily in Poland at present, and this means that Germany will come to have a greater say in the everyday affairs of Polish polities. Already Germany and Poland have had joint military manoeuvres, in which they have recently been joined by Denmark.

Social dislocation

On the social side, Poland is experiencing all the ills common in Western society — drug addiction, homelessness, organized crime, mugging, pornography and gambling. At the moment it is estimated that 20,000 people are homeless in Warsaw alone, many of whom are unemployed, having come in from the small towns. Shelter is provided by the Church, but many refuse this due to the regimentation of the hostels. People beg in the streets and others rummage through dustbins. The average wage in Poland is four million zlotys; to put this in perspective, the rent on any available single-roomed flat is three million zlotys. Because of this many teenagers have to remain with their families, sleeping as many as four or five to a room. Houses are being lived in that are almost ready to collapse.

The television and the cinema are full of American films and advertising from the multi-nationals. Just about everything one would find in any Western city has come to Poland, from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Burger King. And any rubbish that has not, one can assume soon will. One of the worst things in contemporary Poland is the cult of the skinhead. They tried to disrupt the Warsaw Ghetto commemoration, they have attacked Jews and eighteen months ago beat a German lorry driver to death in Kracow.

Euro Union

Poland is now preparing to join the European Union, and hopes it will be admitted in three or four years’ time. It could be that with a large skilled workforce and a cheap supply of labour, Poland will have an "economic miracle" like Germany and Italy after the Second World War. But a poorly-organized working class can expect to gain relatively little from this, and it is to be expected that the needs or rapid capital accumulation will continue to put a brake on consumption for the foreseeable future.

The good news is that, despite its difficulties, the Polish working class is now in a position to form a Socialist Party and put the case for world socialism in a part of the globe that desperately needs revolutionary change. Without a doubt the courage and tenacity Polish workers have shown in the past should not be put to ending their own wage-slavery.

D. Szczescie,

Warsaw

Raging Hormones (1994)

Book Review from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Raging Hormones, Do They Rule Our Lives? by Gail Vines. Virago, 1993, £6.99.

If Gail Vines is right, "the 1990s seem set to witness a resurgence in ’biological’ explanations of human capabilities and frailties". Her book is a timely attack on a scientific determinism which seemed long dead. Although primarily a feminist critique of the medical profession’s supposed objectivity, her arguments work equally well against all attempts to treat science as a thing unbiased by the perceptions of its time, to "push human agency and the social context of our lives out of the picture".

Thus, we find that men who are dominated by their hormones are "deviant", yet for women it is expected. The "feminine" hormone, oestrogen, even takes its name from the Latin for gadfly, "that which causes a frenzy". Gender roles are socially constructed, so society covered its tracks with the ideology of the hormone, giving an unchangeable basis on which these roles could be justified.

It is an ideology, moreover, well suited to late twentieth century capitalism. The study of hormones betrays a fascination with the uncontrollable within us, a deep psychological anxiety which stems (Vines convincingly argues) from instability in the social and economic spheres.

The Victorian medical profession — male, of course — was obsessed with menstrual bleeding, the fear of obstruction and accumulated waste mirroring the laissez-faire economics of free-marketeers like Herbert Spencer. The fad of today, fatness, symbolises our modern concern with self-control and the "correct" management of desire. Women cope with fears for their role in a consumption-driven society by dieting, men by transposing them on to the unstable "other" woman: woman herself.

The menstrual cycle is seen as defining the essence of womanhood, and its end at the menopause as a loss of allure. Nevertheless, from puberty onwards, girls are conditioned not to let their "private" time encroach on the "public" time of their working environment, whether school, home or workplace. Any conflict between the two is met by attempts to "get the woman regular".

Many accounts of pre-menstrual tension (PMT) stress the loss of mental and physical discipline, the very things which capitalism demands. Another classic symptom, anger, is usually the cue for therapy. Rarely is it hinted that women have anything to be angry about. Vines questions the hormonal basis of PMT (there seems to be no link between its occurrence and hormone levels), and explains its survival in medical folklore partly through casual sexism, but also through a more easily quantifiable reason: the drugs companies enjoy having such a large market for their “cures". The causes of stress, too, come less from within than from the inability to control and predict the environment, most noticeably the working environment. Again, capitalism’s problem becomes a women’s problem in particular, because they are urged to conquer stress not just for their own sake, but for others — boyfriends and husbands (in advertisements), and customers and clients at work (contact work, for example in shops, is done most often by women).

Likewise, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has two faces. Originally introduced to combat the short-term symptoms of the menopause, its pioneer, Robert Wilson, claimed rather more. His 1966 book was entitled Feminine Forever, a ploy followed by modern HRT evangelists such as Teresa Gorman MP, who tells women that "if they want to keep the older man from leaving home for a dolly bird, they too will get smart and use HRT" .

As with PMT, powerful pharmaceutical interests stand to gain from hormone replacement treatments. A mere $1.3m of their money paid for the establishment of the Wilson Foundation in 1963, while by 1991 American women alone bought $730m-worth of oestrogen products every year. Better still, the market is set to expand as the baby boom generation reaches middle age.

Like PMT too, however, the menopause itself is, at least in part, a creation of our society. In Mayan villages, women look forward to it as the end of child-bearing and lack the symptoms found in the West, such as hot flushes. It is only now appearing in Japan, at a time when their gynaecologists’ traditional income from abortions has fallen because of better contraception. In this, the situation is similar to that in the US, the biggest market. In Britain, at least until recently, doctors under the NHS had no need to sell drugs to give them an income, and HRT was consequently much less popular.

Vines maintains that gender and sexuality are the result of upbringing, and no more determined by our hormones than aggression is, or (we might add) greed. There is no "brain sex" which determines, for example, that women have poor spatial awareness, and therefore make bad drivers or bad engineers. In most cultures, boy and girls are treated very differently from their first months, and it is therefore impossible to distinguish biological and cultural factors.

To pretend that people are as they are because of their biological programming, whether by hormones or genes, carries obvious risks of discrimination and worse: it oppresses the individuality of all of us, and takes our sexuality "out of its lived context". This book is designed to give us a better idea of how hormones, and scientists, work. It is designed to put us back in touch with our bodies. "Such empowerment will come only with the knowledge that in reality, collectively and individually, we are continually creating ourselves."

Toby Crowe

Letters: "New World Disorder" (1994)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

"New World Disorder"

Dear Editors,

The article "New World Disorder" in the January issue seems to imply that it would have been viable to retain the state capitalist systems of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and that the present mess there is due to the West having forced their abandonment. This concept is in my opinion seriously in error.

It is true that the Reagan SDI initiative finally broke the back of the Soviet Union, but this merely accelerated an inevitable end. The retreat from state capitalism is occurring all over the world, because that form has been undercut by the free (or at least freer) market version. Technological advances such as the rise of the computer coupled with the spread of the multinationals have favoured the free market and counteracted earlier trends in the opposite direction.

"Western economic approaches" have only "clearly failed in capitalist nations" in the sense that every approach within capitalism must "fail" from the working-class viewpoint. From the capitalist viewpoint, they form the best option, albeit from a grim bunch. The fact that capitalism has reached this point, after a period in which it seemed that clamping the market a la USSR was a good thing, strengthens yet further the case for Socialism.

The mess in Russia and eastern Europe Is greatly aggravated because the switch to the free market has been so long delayed. Cuba seems fated to go the same way, but China with a more liberal economy, may yet escape the worst. Any attempt to restore the status quo ante is foredoomed and will simply recreate again the situation which caused the crash in the first place. Significantly it is the Russian fascists who have come closest to advocating such a reactionary policy. Otherwise it has merely been a case of slowing down the pace of reform.

That is not to say that clamping the market cannot temporarily benefit many workers. What is being said is that, in the longer term, such economies are highly likely to be undercut by those who haven't clamped the market, with all the devastation this result may bring with it.

Ted Edge, 

Lytham St. Annes

Corrections

Dear Editors,

Thank you for printing my letter about abortion. May I correct a couple of printing mistakes. I wrote "Not priests, doctors, nor even her partner should have more rights over her body than she has herself." Unfortunately you missed out the word "body".

Also the book I recommended is "The Sceptical Feminist", by Janet Richards, not the "Socialist" Feminist. 

Veronica Clanchy,

Poole

50 Years Ago: Fabian Fallacies (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The early Fabians, the I.L.P. and the Labour Party were wrong, and the S.P.G.B. was right. The problem was not, and is not, one of extending state and municipal capitalism (incidentally the present drift is towards monopolistic public utility corporations under some sort of state supervision, not towards state operated enterprises) — nor is it one of finding experts and superior brains. There is no lack of able and experienced workers in industry, farming and the civil service to carry on, nor was there 60 years ago. All that is lacking is a Socialist working class to give orders to its delegates in Parliament and on the local councils for the ending of the private property basis of society. Socialism is still not here, but that is only because the workers are still not Socialists. What society needs, now, as when the Fabians began their slow march to nowhere, is not Fabian experts to show the capitalists what changes are necessary to keep capitalism going, but a majority who understand Socialism and are determined to achieve it through gaining control of the machinery of government.

[From the editorial in the Socialist Standard, March 1944.]

Profits before homes (1994)

From the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you were to hear of a country where one in 25 of the inhabitants were affected by homelessness — two million people — what country would spring to your mind?

You might imagine a Third World country, or a war-torn one. It is neither. The country in fact is . . . England

The figures above are an unofficial estimate by the housing charity Shelter (Homelessness in England — The Facts, information release, October 1993). The official figures are hardly more cheery. In 1991/2 a total of 196,039 households were officially accepted as being homeless in England and Scotland together. This understates the case, however.

There are no comprehensive figures for single homelessness nationally. Shelter estimate there may be around 50,000 single people homeless in Britain. Official figures exclude the majority of the single homeless, and only include households deemed in "priority need", for instance, those with children.

It can be easy to conclude that either there is a dreadful lack of houses, or many feckless people exist. Certainly, many believe so, especially those who think that our capitalist society is the only world possible.

The truth, though, is blindingly and tragically plain. It involves the perennial co-traveller of the working class — poverty. It doesn’t matter that an individual or family needs a decent, warm and comfortable house, if they do not have enough of the rationing vouchers that capitalism calls money, then tough. Capitalism has one driving force, and that is to make profit, not to supply resources to prevent pressing social need.

Poverty
Capitalism is run in the interests of those who own the means of making wealth. The working class, who own nothing in the way of creating wealth, have no choice but to work for the capitalist class for wages or salaries, and through their labour create every last penny of profit for the privileged class.

Yet many members of the working class have been able to buy a home. At a time when nearly three million people are unemployed, they are indeed fortunate to have a job and an income to secure a mortgage. Or are they?

Many believe they own their home, little realizing that in reality the bank or building society does. "Owning" is a misnomer, in that "ownership" can so easily be removed. In 1992, in England alone, 68,540 houses were repossessed. In the first half of 1993 courts in England and Wales awarded a further 53,436 re-possession orders.
In addition, a large number of people live on the knife-edge of being repossessed, with the resultant toll of stress and misery. A Roof magazine survey claims that 800,000 home owners are in mortgage arrears, with over a third of a million in arrears of six months or more.

Unfit
Renting a house, or flat, might seem a safer and more affordable way of getting a decent home to live in. But the facts of life here are not very enjoyable either. The 1991 Housing Conditions Survey for England and Wales (covering private, rented, local authority and housing association houses) revealed that 1.5 million occupied houses were unfit to live in (Independent, 10 September). It also found that one-in-20 of owner-occupied houses were of an unfit standard.

Misery knows no borders either. The 1993 Scottish House Condition Survey found that one-in-20 of occupied houses were unfit to live in. Also, nearly a third of Scotland’s occupied houses were found to suffer dampness, condensation and mould. These figures were reinforced by the 1993 Glasgow Housing Survey. It found one-in-5 of private rented housing was unfit, "Below Tolerable Standard" to use the official term.

Millions are affected by homelessness, the threat of homelessness, and living in "Below Tolerable Standard" housing. Multiply these figures across the whole of the developed world, and the amount of human misery connected to housing problems due to working-class lack of means is phenomenal. Capitalists don't have housing problems, other than getting more, or bigger, mansions for themselves.

None of this is new, of course. When capitalism is in recession — which is a permanently-recurring feature of the profit system — levels of poverty rise. But poverty, and its symptoms like homelessness, don’t go away when capitalism is booming. It — they — only stand slightly in the shadows.

Many construction workers are currently unemployed; there are large stockpiles of bricks and building materials, while the figures above tell of the number of people who need a decent home to live in.

A caring, people-based society would readily see the solution: apply the skills and resources to the problem. That will not happen in our capitalist society, for the missing ingredient of profit cannot be made in sufficient quantities. And it makes no difference that society becomes more aware of homelessness, and wishes to do something about it, for the capitalist rule is: No Profit, No Solution.

Pretending
Capitalist politicians — be they Conservative, Labour or Liberal — periodically latch on to the plight of the homeless and pretend that something is being done, or that they know what the solution is.

My own constituency MP spent a night in December camping out on the street in Edinburgh in his sleeping bag, with like-minded people, to draw attention to homelessness. Amazingly, our capitalist opponents are always saying that we are the wooly-minded idealists.

Capitalism runs governments, not the other way round. Reforms are a redistribution of poverty, not wealth. And reforms are reversible. Remember the Welfare State? Real Socialists do know the solution and it’s the only one that tackles the real problem, not merely the symptoms. Capitalism needs to go.

Homelessness, and just about every other social ill, will never be solved in a capitalist world. That is not mere pessimism on our part, it is a fact you can confirm by reading your paper every day, then looking to see how the world around you really is.

Meanwhile, workers everywhere can only keep their fingers crossed that illness, unemployment, and poverty don’t pull them into the misery of homelessness. Or they could be thinking how Socialism could be a move to something better than the mess capitalism is.

Sandy Wilson

What's it all been about? (1994)

Editorial from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we write, there has been no positive response from the IRA/Sinn Fein to the Downing Street Declaration. The Declaration itself is a contradictory and meaningless example of highly polished diplomatic draughtsmanship. It is designed to act as a political sedative while allowing the politicians to vacate the hooks to which they have become inextricably fixed by earlier actions and utterances. Indeed, we could damn the document with the same comment that Thatcher applied to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, of which she was co-sponsor: "We are dealing, not with facts, but with perceptions". In other words, not with reality hut with illusions.

The leadership of the Provos, a small number of political dinosaurs ushered on to the stage of history by bigots like Paisley and the more extreme wing of Ulster Unionism, are savouring their moment of media hype. Gerry Adams paid a publicity-seeking visit to the USA. Given that he had no intelligent contribution to make, it seemed a long way to go to repeat the old nationalist shibboleths. Though the opposition to his being allowed to go exposed how relentlessly vicious Ulster Unionism continues to be when its enemies are allowed a platform.

Thousands of people have been slaughtered. Tens of thousands have been injured. Scores, if not hundreds, have had their lives disastrously downgraded by loss of limbs. Some have died from punishment shootings and hundreds of young people are suffering the after-effects of kneecappings and other grotesque forms of punishment. Thousands more have been, or are, imprisoned. In any terms that is a terrible price to pay and it is not unreasonable for us to ask what it is all for.

The only visible dividend from this catalogue of horror is a bitter, mindlessly bitter, legacy of hatred affecting the most depressed section of the working class, divided into tribal quarrels that feed on the latest atrocity. Violence as a political weapon, used by loyalist and nationalist, has only created a situation where it is difficult to discern any logical formula for future peace and stability, not only in Northern Ireland but throughout the island of Ireland.

As far as the provisional IRA activists and their politicians are concerned, their current deliberations on the Downing Street Declaration can only be concerned with their probable political fortunes if violence is removed from the political scene. Without the police Holding Centres and the thuggery of the so-called security forces and with, especially, the speedy release of all political prisoners, Provo power and influence would quickly diminish. Their very localized political effectiveness today is dependent on the same sort of discriminatory sectarian politics as the more loathsome elements of ward-healing Unionism used in the past, carried out against the sinister silhouette of the gunman. In a climate of peace, the Provos have nothing to offer.

What’s it all about? Certainly not about ending the grim economic facts that oppress political life in Northern Ireland. The British Exchequer contributes some £3.5 billion annually to keep the Province in its present impoverished position. If the Provos could force Britain to disengage from Northern Ireland, the resulting gain to the Exchequer would have a dramatic effect on the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement and the fortunes of the Major government! But in a recent opinion poll in the Republic of Ireland 71 percent said they would not be prepared to meet the per capita tax of about £1,000 per annum to subsidize Irish unity.

More than 20 percent of the people in Northern Ireland are living below the poverty line. The jobs of many of the more prosperous are underwritten by the troubles. Despite emigration, an even larger percentage of people in the Republic are on or below the poverty line. Given all this, one can only wonder at the naivete of a political movement that thinks our first priority is killing one another in order to have the postboxes a uniform colour or the pattern of the flag over the dole office changed.

Northern Ireland must surely represent a classic case study that exposes the bankruptcy of political violence as a weapon for the promotion of any cause. Together with the brutality and utter stupidity of Paisleyite bigotry, the IRA must stand as an implacable enemy of the unity it professes. And even more so of that more important, working class unity without which we can not hope to establish socialism and get rid of the evils of capitalism.

Obituary: Ken Leggett (1994)

Obituary from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have just learned of the death of our Comrade Ken Leggett of Enfield & Haringey Branch.

Ken joined the Party relatively late in life in 1968 at the age of 42 after reading an election leaflet put through his letter-box in the 1967 GLC elections. But, many years before, he had already taken a stance against one of the worst effects of capitalism by registering as a conscientious objector during the Second World War. one of the tasks he was given being to look after German POWs.

Ken was an amateur (tenor) singer and had a jovial and irreverent nature. He was at one time Branch Treasurer in the days when he was able to be active. In later years due to having to work long hours his activities were curtailed somewhat and the onset of arthritis finally put an end to this, making it almost impossible even to attend the Branch.

Ken took belated retirement last year and moved with his partner from London to Sussex to enjoy a well-earned rest.

Julian Vein

Scotland Yard (1994)

Book Review from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scotland Yard by Robert Fleming with Hugh Miller (Michael Joseph, 385pp, £14.99.)

Largely based upon material collected for the Channel Four TV documentary series, "Scotland yard", this is not a particularly well-researched. In the main, various senior police officers describe their departments and squads, all of which tends to make the account something of a whitewash.

It is not so much what they say, however, as what they omit. There is not a word about the infamous Stoke Newington "nick"; and the only reference to corruption is the following comment by Commissioner Paul Condon in the Introduction: "There is an awareness that corruption was about . . .  I honestly believe now that that corruption has gone. There may be the odd bad apple, but the feeling that there was a bit of institutional corruption around, that has gone, thankfully". Obviously, Commissioner Condon doesn’t spend a great deal of time in Hackney.

Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings, Scotland Yard provides a considerable amount of somewhat superficial detail on, for example, the Fraud Squad. Special Branch and its recent differences with the Security Service (MI5), the Anti-Terrorist Branch, the Royally Protection Branch, the Firearms Unit, the Mounted Branch, and even the Crime Museum and the Metropolitan Police Band.

We are informed that Lady Thatcher regularly has at least three armed detectives with her, and sometimes many more, including a female detective who keeps her revolver in her handbag. And according to Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Potter of "CE“ Squad (SO12 Special Branch), the fascist "Combat 18 is very small" and "they cause no problems". He also thinks that it was unfair to blame the SWP for starting the Poll Tax riot in Trafalgar Square, in March 1990.

For me, Scotland Yard demonstrates not just the size (an organization of 46,000 people) and complexity of the Metropolitan (that is London) Police Service (no longer a Force!), but just how much of it would become unnecessary, and therefore, redundant, in a sane genuine classless, socialist, society of production for use and the satisfaction solely of people’s needs, instead of our present crime-ridden class society. After watching the TV series, Scotland Yard is worth a few hours' read at least.

Peter E. Newell

Between the lines: Neil Kinnock and Tomorrow's 'Socialism' (1994)

The Between The Lines Column from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tomorrow's world

BBC2 has given former Labour leader Neil Kinnock an opportunity to expound his views on socialism in a two-part series shown on February 5th and 12th.

In Tomorrow's Socialism—jointly written by Kinnock and political commentator Peter Kellner—an attempt was made to assess the relative success and failures of allegedly socialist movements both in Britain and abroad. This was on the basis that the key tp understanding the problems of today partly lies in an intelligent understanding of the past.

To this end Kinnock began with the undoubtedly correct statement that the very idea that socialism has had its day is strongly associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The failure of the Soviet system was amply illustrated by a visit to a Russian city still suffering the effects of state capitalism. It was cast permanently under a cloud of thick black smoke belched out by factories producing low-quality goods for wage-slaves who could afford little better. Conditions were grim indeed, and Kinnock concluded that the "Soviet" system had been a disaster whose totalitarianism and notorious inefficiency had sullied the name of socialism.

Hard labour

After rightly dismissing the USSR as a viable model of socialism, Kinnock then turned his attention to the reformist parties of the Western industrial nations such as the British Labour Party and the German SPD. Kinnock claimed that their record in power was much more successful. The statist interventionism was based on a certain pragmatism rather than on "ideology" and they had, by working "in partnership" with the market, contributed to the overall well-being of the working class in a way that the Leninists had only dreamed of.

What Kinnock didn't address was why, if these parties had run affairs to the general benefit of the working class, as he claimed, did they lose so many elections? Are the workers simply ungrateful swine? Or is it the case, perhaps, that workers' memories are rather better than Kinnock's?

Kinnock maintained that his own "life chances" had been drastically enhanced by the actions of past Labour governments. What he didn't mention was that he spent most of his formative years under the Conservatives, or more importantly, why the "life chance" he spoke of, such as a university education, grew apace during the entire post-war era across the industrialized countries, whether they had a Labour government or not, due to the particular requirements of developed capitalism for a more skilled workforce. Neither did he explain how the "life chances" of the working class were enhanced by Labour's development of the British atom bomb, or its support for the Korean and Vietnam wars.

While Kinnock claimed success for Labour in the past, he realizes changes are now necessary. Convincingly Kinnock explained why much of Labour's earlier economic programme, based on state planning and nationalization, is now obsolete. He argued that the inter-connectedness of world production and the growth of multi-national corporations had rendered Clause IV of the Labour constitution meaningless. What was needed was a new direction to meet today's changed situation.

Back to the future

Kinnock labelled his recipe for socialist renewal "ethical socialism". In attempting to define what he meant by this term he mouthed some platitudes about the market and "sound responsibility" and listed a series of re-hashed policy proposals on "earmarked taxation" and of "worker directors" that even Bill Clinton or David Owen could feel comfortable with.

The abiding impression given by this tame stuff was that if this is the future for socialism, then its future is as black as the clouds over Russian factories. While Kinnock seems to have well understood why yesterday's capitalism became today's capitalism, and how the Left became isolated and confused as the world changed around it, his vision of "Tomorrow's Socialism" amounts to little more than capitalism with a human face, giving an impression of fairness where none really exists. In truth, Kinnock's vision is little different from sad John Major's dream of warm beer and village cricket on a Sunday afternoon. It is capitalism without its rough edges, capitalism without crime and unemployment, war and famine, a rose-tinted and soft-focus view of a society that breeds social discontent like its going out of fashion. Not Tomorrow's Socialism at all, in fact, but a politician's dream of today's dreary old capitalism where the life chances of the many are, as always, subordinated to the privileges of the few.

DAP

The Death of Marxism? (1994)

From the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Has the funeral of Marxism taken place? Is there nothing left but to remainder the once-popular volumes of Marxology and totter off to the wine bar for a spot of "deconstruction" the latest buzz-word in the Halls of Pseudo-Academe? Steve Coleman investigates

If you are a journalist, a politician, a publisher or an academic onlooker you will be well aware that "Marxism is Dead". The funeral has taken place and there is nothing left but to remainder the once once-popular volumes of Marxology and totter off to the wine bar for a spot of "deconstruction" (the latest buzz-word in the Halls of Pseudo-Academe).

Now, death is a pretty permanent condition. With the exception of Biblical conjurers, the dead do not rise again. So, if Marxism is dead we must assume that it has disappeared forever. Which is all rather odd. Because this article is not being written by a ghost (ghost-written) and socialists, though described by Marx himself as "spectres" haunting Europe, are not dressed in white sheets and have no plans to depart this world. The rumours of our death have been exaggerated.

Actually, there is something rather fascistic about trying to kill off a body of ideas. For that is what they seek to do when they assert repeatedly that "Marxism is Dead". It is as if they have opted intellectually for the Final Solution; after decades of distorting Marxist ideas or banning them or ignoring them or deriding them, now they want to bury them. Death is forever. And relevant ideas will not go away for ever even if you kill every person who holds them. For the ideas are bigger than the minds in which they are at home, and the material conditions which have made these ideas meaningful and urgent to us today will soon enough occur to others who come along later.

The revolutionary ideas which have come to be called Marxism existed in people's minds before Marx came on to the scene. Marx did not invent the capitalist system. It was the system which created the material soil in which revolutionary ideas would grow. Before Marx there were workers who opposed production for profit and wage labour - there were thinkers who explained history in terms of material conditions rather than ideals - there were elementary recognitions of the fact that labour is the basis of value. Marx did not give birth to revolutionary thought, but added to it.

Who 'killed' Marx?
So why the claim that "Marxism is Dead"? After all, if Marx was right in explaining that labour is the source of value and the unpaid labour of the wealth producers is the source of profit; if he was right in claiming that material conditions determine ideas, and that economic forces are the principal determinants of historical change; if he was right to point to the conflict of classes throughout all property societies; if Marx's theories were "alive" ten or twenty years ago, why possibly could they be "dead" now? A correct analysis is valid until it is disproved. Who has repudiated and thereby "killed" Marx's correct analysis?

The twisters who are so enthusiastic to report Marxism's death will say that the refutation is quite obvious. Look at what has happened in Russia. We are looking. It was the Marxist materialist conception of history which enabled socialists to identify the Russian Revolution as a transition to capitalism within months of it happening. It was Marx's definition of capitalism as a system based upon wage labour and capital, which were characteristics of Russian state capitalism, which enabled us to avoid the error, so easily accepted by our modern "intellectuals", that Russia was a non-capitalist society. Indeed, it was because we have used Marxist analysis as our method that socialists have been able to predict that Russia and its fellow state-capitalist countries would soon enough have to allow for the mobility of capital by integrating into the global capitalist economy without pretensions to ideological distinction. This has happened. We have been proved right. That is hardly a reason for being classified as dead.

The Leninist Left, forced by their ideological defence of state capitalism to twist Marx to fit in with Stalin, Mao and a host of other wretched dictators, are discredited by the fall of their tyrannous paradises. But that is the death of Leninism, a funeral at which no socialists will be found mourning.

Leninists were not alone in believing the lies and distortions of Stalin and Co, for they were in the company of the ideologists of the Right who were quite content to accept that somehow state-run capitalism was something to do with Marxism. Even though Marx himself advocated a society in which the state, as the coercive force on behalf of a ruling class, will not exist. To blame Marx for the failure of statism is as fair as cursing the Methodists because you have a hangover.

Complacent and foolish
The "Marxism is Dead" brigade, often to be found consorting with the "End of History" boys, are complacent and foolish. They have failed to understand that as long as the capitalist system exists, with its inherent contradictions between profit accumulation and the satisfaction of needs, there will be a persistent need to explain why capitalism is like it is and how it can be replaced by a new historical order: one based upon production for use. Marx, together with the other great thinkers in the revolutionary tradition, supplied this explanation. It will not go away and die just because defenders of capitalism want it to.

Of course, what has often been referred to as "Marxism" has frequently been dogmatic and mechanistic in its over-simplified approach to analysis. Socialists have no interest in defending dogmatism. The function of Marx's analysis is to be used as a critical tool for clear analysis of real, material social affairs with a view to changing them. The object of Marxism is to change the society which it is explaining. That is why it has always been so feared by those whom change threatens.

The dancers on the grave at Highgate Cemetery have little to celebrate. After all, their capitalist system is faced by a mass of insoluble problems as ever, and right now there is a global economic crisis which these pro-capitalist triumphalists are wholly impotent to end. We might suggest that their tedious sloganeering about the "Death of Marxism" is a pathetic case of whistling in the dark.

Marx Lives!
Like Karl Marx, socialists want a revolution in which The Wages System will be abolished forever. That will spell The Death of Capitalism. There will be no problem when this happens about identifying the corpse - we will be able to smell its stench from afar. While we wait, we challenge all and any of these anti-Marxist mourners to have the courage of their convictions and climb on to the platform of democratic debate. Are our ideas dead? We'll leave them in no doubt.

Steve Coleman

Herland (1994)

From the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have always been fascinated by accounts of societies that are different from ours, whether they be real or imagined. They serve as a reminder that things need not be as they are in our world today and that our lives need not be one endless round of compromise with the grim and confusing reality that surrounds us. Women's Utopias such as Herland and the more recent Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy describe forms of social organization that historical and anthropological research has shown to be possible. They also respresent a development of the ideas of Marx and Engels but as is the case with much that women have to say, and perhaps because it is not expressed in the dry, pseudo-scientific style of political philosophers, these Utopian visions, firmly rooted in material possibility, are vastly underrated. Herland was written in 1915, twenty-five years after William Morris published his News from Nowhere. Both novels describe a world where private property and class privilege no longer exist. News from Nowhere however barely explores the role and status of women in its Utopia and, in failing to do so, throws little insight into a deeply-engrained power relationship of present-day society. As a consequence, it is limited in exploring how people can bring about social change. In that respect, Herland is a less comfortable read than News from Nowhere as it reminds us of how deeply crippled most of us are by social conditioning and how much there is to overcome in order to bring about the necessary fundamental changes in society if we are to survive on this planet. Fortunately, what could be profoundly depressing is leavened by sparkling wit, and the book is a really entertaining read. Personal is Political For the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the personal was also political and her own life and ideas were intimately connected. Like William Morris, she was familiar with the ideas of Marx and Engels and other prevailing political and economic theories of the time. She was involved in the American Socialist Movement and saw herself as a socialist-humanist. She always brought her own experiences to bear on her work and studied ideas in order to understand her own insecure and intensely unhappy early life and first marriage and to gain control of her own destiny. She had little time for the psychological leadership of experts and the detached, academic and so-called scientific approach to understanding human behaviour, in particular that of women. In Herland, she exposes the fallibility of the sociologist who makes assumptions about the society he is about to experience on the basis of observing a single fact. He notices some women climbing trees and deduces thereby that the inhabitants of the society he us about to involve himself in must be arboreal. In fact they are not, and all his scientific insight and his role as commentator on human behaviour is about to be rendered useless as he is gently drawn into ways of living and relating that are completely new to him. The author after coming close to losing her mind, herself rejected the authority of the psychiatrist who attempted to cure her depression by advising her to rest, to live as domestic a life as possible, to limit her intellectual life to two hours a day and to never touch pen, brush or pencil. Instead, she faced the fact that she was not happy in her marriage or in her role as a mother, left home and divorced her husband. He promptly married her best friend and the couple took on the care of Charlotte's child. Charlotte, from a position of great financial insecurity launched herself into a career as a writer. The three adults remained close friends for the rest of their lives but Charlotte was severely censured by the press for divorcing her husband amicably and for no apparent reason, for maintaining a warm relationship with his new wife and for, as the media saw it, abandoning her child. This very honest working out of relationships finds a different interpretation in Herland. The community of Herland is characterized by sisterly solidarity and friendship which is not destroyed even when the men appear. In their world it is also recognized that while every woman may at some point feel the urge to be a mother, not every woman is either interested in or suited to bringing up children and children are better off with those who are. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's experience as a woman under capitalism forced her to recognize that our society is not merely class divided but patriarchal in nature as well. For her, the subordination of women dehumanized half of the human race and retarded all human progress and this has important implications for how we organize for change. In order to make our society truly human, women need to regain power over their minds and bodies and challenge the centuries of dominance that men have become used to. This is the central theme of Herland. Unlike News from Nowhere, Herland is not a static Utopia that we arrive at after a period of social upheaval - it is a society that has spent generations perfecting itself and remains always open to change. It is both a strategy for change and a complete way of life. Amazon Jungle Herland is written in the style of a Boys' Own adventure story. Deep in the Amazon jungle, three amateur explorers, men of course, find their way into a world inhabited only by women. Instead of meeting with exciting adventures in which they can display their superior macho skills - one man even has notions of ending up King of all the women - they are gently disarmed of all their prejudices and pre-conceptions about women and two of them are re-educated into new ways of thinking and relating to women. This is altogether a much more painful and demanding experience. far from behaving like detached and culturally-superior observers of an alien culture as did many of the anthropologists of Charlotte's day, all three of the men become heavily involved in the lives of the Herlanders and learn to adjust to their ways. Herland is a matriarchal society. A matriarchy is not simply a refelction of a patriarchal society which is also hierarchical in nature. It is an egalitarian society, a sisterhood in which women's capacity to bear children is of central importance and held in high regard. The anthropologist Evelyn Reed in her book Woman's Evolution has shown that many of the earliest human societies are likely to have been matriarchal and such societies continue to exist - just about - to this day. There have been no men in Herland for centuries. This has given the women the much-needed personal and social space to recover their automony as women. Every woman needs that space for herself. Women should always be able to organize as women as well as with men. In Aboriginal society, individual members of a group might express their need for personal space by going on a walkabout. Men and women retained control over separate spaces for themselves as two distinct and autonomous groups. They often led much more separate lives than we understand in our society and Aboriginal women tend not to be impressed with women who are dependent on the views and approval of men. Biological Urge The women of Herland reproduce simply by responding to the urge to be a mother. This biological urge is the driving force behind all their creative activity. Indeed in the interests of population control, collectively agreed by the community, the women restrict themselves to one child each and channel their mother urge into other activities. They are not at the mercy of their childbearing capacity although the idea of abortion is abhorrent to them. In many of the matriarchal societies described by Evelyn Reed, it would appear that women had similar control over their fertility. They knew about contraceptive medicines and practised periods of abstention from sexual intercourse. It is possible that they had a better sense of their biological rhythms than we do and knew when they were most likely to be fertile. Travelers noted that women in some Native American communities only had three or four children and they were shocked to hear that women in our society sometimes had ten or more children. All the women of Herland are single mothers - like many lesbian mothers today, they are not dependent on a relationship with a man for their sexual pleasure or in order to become mothers. Unlike for most women in our society there is no tension between their responsibilities as mothers and fulfilling a socially-useful and challenging role in the community. This is because in matriarchal societies, child-rearing is a communal and public activity. No mother is separated from other members of the society with solitary responsibility for her children. The women of Herland have managed to fulfill their need for food, shelter and transport in ways that are technologically developed as well as ecologically-sustainable. As far as food production is concerned, they are gatherers and cultivators. But there are no farms on Herland and virtually no domesticated animals, apart from a few cats left over from a previous era. The idea of eating meat and drinking the milk of animals other than themselves strikes the women of Herland as a rather cruel and abhorrent idea. Instead, they live on the rich variety of fruits and nuts which they have gathered from the forest which surrounds their dwellings. The trees bear the marks of cultivation. Their branches are trained so as to make the fruits easily accessible and species have been bred so as to obtain a high yield. While Charlotte Perkins Gilman's vision of food production might seem a little twee by comparison with real-life examples, it is not dissimilar from the way some forest-dwelling peoples use their environment even to this day. In fact, the destruction of the forests by large-scale capitalist development projects such as dams and mines has particular implications for the lives of women among indigenous forest dwelling communities around the world. For the women who used the forest as a source of food, fuel, as a hygienic place to relieve calls of nature and a place of spiritual retreat, it represented social and economic independence. The impact of capitalism on their lives has thrust them into dependence on the wage-slavery of the men in a matter of months in some instances. There are no schools in Herland but learning as an ongoing process is of central importance in the women's lives. They are all open-minded and critically receptive to new ideas and fail to understand how religious beliefs going back thousands of years continue to hold such a powerful grip on the minds of people in our society. They set out to teach the men about Herland by enquiring about the world they have come from. Teaching for them is about sharing ideas and experiences, a much more egalitarian process than we experience in our schools and colleges. They meet the most conservative and sexist views of the men with patience and respect and draw them gently away from their prejudices and preconceptions with questions and information that might open their minds to alternative ways of thinking. Having captured the three explorers, the women of Herland decide that it is in their interests to allow this contact with men to develop. Nevertheless, they continue to retain their material and intellectual independence. Three of the women form intimate relationships with the men. Two of the couples marry but retain independent living quarters. Their relationships, particularly that of Ellador who marries the former sociologist who is perhaps the most receptive to the women's culture without feeling either that he has to challenge it or lose his own cultural and sexual identity in the process, are not dogged by the possessiveness and insecurity that so dogs relationships in our society today. Instead, they have an easy-going friendship based on shared interests, a meeting of minds, mutual trust and pleasure in each other's company. As far as Ellador is concerned, sex does not figure very highly in the relationship. It is an aspect of our culture, which she says she has yet to understand but she treats their different sexual needs with honesty and sensitivity and her partner finds himself being drawn into a calm and and deeply-rewarding understanding such as he has never experienced with a woman before. Terry on the other hand who is the most macho of the three men attempts to impose his desires on his partner during a much more stormy relationship. Unlike in our society where rape within marriage and date rapes are only just beginning to be recognized as such, the whole community of Herland responds to this attempted rape and Terry is asked to leave with no hope of reconciliation with his partner. Even the other two men recognize that they have a responsibility to deal with this man who they liked at the beginning of the book and whose behaviour they tolerated as long long as it did not implicate their own wives, sisters and daughters. Continued Relevance Although it was written nearly eighty years ago, Herland continues to have relevance today. In News from Nowhere there is a chapter on "How the Change Came About". We read of much that is familiar, of workers organizations, of mass demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and much more. In Herland the author reminds us of the central role that women have to play in bringing about a revolution. We should bear in mind that during the period when Charlotte Perkins Gilman and William Morris were writing, women had already made an enormous contribution to the working-class movement. Yet that is barely acknowledged today. In the early days of the trade union movement, their role as workers as dependent on a wage as the men was not recognized by those who advocated the family wage as opposed to equal pay. The enormous amount of unpaid work that women do continues to remain largely unrecognized and the women who do it largely unorganized. Any efforts to organize by such groups of women such as the wages for housework campaign is viewed with suspicion even by many of the male-dominated organizations on the left. The women who so staunchly supported the Miners' strike of 1984 were denied membership of the NUM. These are just a few symptoms of the deep-rooted sexism in our society that continues to exclude women from political action by failing to recognize the particular ways in which capitalism affects their lives. Herland demonstrates how class conscious women in full control of their minds and their bodies can organize themselves in peaceful co-operation and overcome this sexism and how they must play an important role in bringing about and maintaining the revolution. Men, deprived of their patriarchal role, will find for themselves a much more meaningful existence in the process. Kerima Mohideen The article elicited the following response in a later issue of the Socialist Standard.

Wage Slavery (1994)

From the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some people don't like the term "wage slavery". It's not nice to be called a slave. They think you're insulting them and they might want to smack you in the eye. Other people recognise how accurate a phrase it is. They get all bitter and maudlin about their "wasted life". They normally want to smack their boss in the eye. (The boss, unconcerned, smacks his lips and carries on counting).

But "wage-slavery" is what we are in, whether we admit it or not - even those accountants in their fancy cars are only a few months from the breadline if their boss decides to dispense with their services, as well they realize. For the kind of money they're on, they've got to pull out all the stops. The family? Leave it to the wife. Interests? Two hours on Sunday and be thankful for that. Peace? Relaxation? Self-determination? Forget it.

Wage-slavery is a condition of capital and of capitalism. Capitalism itself is, you might say, the latest refinement of a popular illusion that there is something called "ownership" and something else called "property", rather in the same way that there is something called "gravity" and something else called "weight". As long as we accept the illusion that this is a physical law, then we are also obliged to accept the working conditions, to say nothing of all the other catastrophes we keep meaning to join Greenpeace, etc, etc supposedly to prevent.

Well-adjusted people take it philosophically. After all, if you were sent to prison for forty years without parole your best strategy would be to learn to like it. Look on the bright side. Things could be worse. At least I get fed. At least I've a roof over my head.

If you don't like being a wage-slave but you aren't rich enough to have other options it's a bit tough. Bad for stress. That attitude won't get you anywhere. Don't let the boss catch you talking like that.

It seems to me that there is such a thing as collaborating against yourself, like a Quisling in your own personal Class War. It's as if by some awesome mental self-deceit you can trick and trip into reverse the normal emotional process, with the result that employed work becomes life itself and you the employeee come to define and subjugate you the person. You con yourself into thinking you are doing something useful and worthwhile with your life, whereas in reality you are keeping some capitalist's books for him and nothing more. Thus, you live to work rather than work to live. It's not really a matter of cheap fuck-you-Jack materialism either, even if some people do dribble and slobber over fast cars occasionally. "You've got to work", they would argue, "you might as well enjoy it". So every morning, bright and early, you get up and shoot the resistance fighter in yourself and lace up the jackboots.

Nope, can't do it. I can't learn to love wage-slavery. I do think it's a prison, and I think of the Socialist Party as a somewhat understaffed Escape Committee. But I've emulated the capitalists and adopted sound business principles in selling my skills - we agree on eight hours, they pay for seven hours, I give them six and hope they don't notice. As for the solitary confinement of the dole, that's hardly an improvement.

I know there are a hell of a lot of workers out there who feel exactly like I do, but they either won't admit it or aren't saying anything for fear of being labelled a bad worker. Their attitude can be summed up as "OK, so it's all bullshit, but you've got to play the game."

The thing which really pisses me off is that if I object to the terms of this "game" I'm told by the likes of Michael "Mr Shithouse" Portaloo or Blue Peter Lilley that it's because I'm just a lazy feckless git who won't get out of bed to do a decent day's hard graft. This is true, in a way. Most of the "hard graft" which is on offer I wouldn't cross the road for, except maybe to avoid. But that doesn't mean I don't like money at all. I simply dislike employment on someone else's terms.

Let me have the sort of work I can see a useful point in, in which I have a say, which I can enter into freely and without obligation, which is creative, which I can take a pride in, which I can do when I want and stop if I want, which I change when I like to something else I want to try. With half the world starving and the planet poisoned it's not as if there isn't anything useful that needs doing. It's my body and my labour, after all. Why the hell shouldn't it be me that decides when and where to apply it? Money doesn't even come into it. That sort of work I would do for nothing if I could, and what's more if you're honest about it, so would you. Without "property" fetish, that is how socialism would be able to do things. But that's not how it is, and in this stick-and-carrot society, we've got there is no real opportunity, for most of us, to find this kind of work. Employment is for the most part a dreary, oppressive, soul-destroying way of paying the rent and the food bills, but it's the only game in town until we decide to change the rules.

So we carry on playing the game. Some of us even manage to like it. But we might as well recognize that we, the working class, are not holding any of the boss cards. We're not supposed to, because this is a game devised by the owning class which we cannot ever win. Therefore, we must kick the table over once and for all.

Paddy Shannon