About Socialism (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

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

2. What is capitalism?

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

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

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

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

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

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

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

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

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

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

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

8. What about human nature?

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

9. Are socialists democrats?

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

10. What is the next step?

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

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

Running Commentary: Cheap at the price (1988)

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

Cheap at the price

The latest figures for crime in London — or at least that part of it which the police get to hear about —offer encouragement to neither the hangers and floggers nor the carers and tolerators. Overall, recorded crime in the capital fell by four per cent last year although violence against the person (not the sort committed by the police) street robberies and other robberies rose by between 11 and 13 per cent. Parliament's refusal to re-introduce the death penalty, even with the offer of the then Tory MP Peter Bruinvels to be the public hangman in his off duty days, did not set London's killers on the rampage; murders fell from 210 to 195.

The Metropolitan Police, despite its self-image as the elite force compared to which the rest are bumbling wallies. manages a detection rate of only 16 per cent. As there must be an intrinsically high rate of detection for some offences, such as murder and rape, this means there is a strikingly low clear-up rate for other crime. Obviously, the Met. will not be in the running for the Sherlock Holmes Trophy for 1987.

The figures for London, like those for other areas, provide no evidence to support the claim from all types of reformers to have a policy for the elimination of crime. The hangers and floggers argue that harsh punishment would stamp out the problem, ignoring the fact that it did not work that way in the past, when the crank, the treadmill, the quarries and the Pentonville style of repression brutalised prisoners rather than reformed them. The do-gooders look for the cause in social or personal disabilities, blind to the fact that this social system must always produce such problems and they have no idea of what to do about that.

Crime is an aspect of capitalism's basic conflicts and inadequacies; while this society lasts it is inescapable. The property rights of capitalism — which is another way of saying its denial of access to wealth to the majority — are so comprehensive that it is practically impossible not to offend against them. With the majority denied free access to the wealth we have produced, while the privileges of possession are extolled as the ultimate social cachet, it is not surprising that there should be a widespread effort to grab some of the wealth in ways not legitimised by capitalism.

The privileged hold their position legally; the laws say that their right to the wealth and their right to exploit the rest of us must be protected and enforced through a system of police, courts and prisons. So every day courts throughout the land are crowded with people who have been restrained after offending against capitalism's laws, to be dealt with according to the whims and prejudices of whoever happens to sit in judgement on them that day.

This is a hugely cumbersome, hugely expensive, affair (it costs an average of around £250 a week to keep someone in prison — an experience unlikely to re-build their respect for capitalism s morality). But for the job it has to do — to assert, defend and emphasise the fact that this is a society divided into the exploiters and the dispossessed — it is cheap at the price.

Fortresses

Social Security offices, which have never been friendly places where one could enjoy a confidential, therapeutic discussion of one's financial embarrassments over a relaxed cup of coffee with a helpful counsellor, threaten to become like fortresses amid bedlam as the new DHSS regulations take effect.

The Thatcher government will always be remembered for the sleight of hand with which they have distorted the current reality of poverty. The unemployment figures, for example, can easily be reduced by drawing up regulations which force out-of-work youngsters into what the government calls training but what the youngsters call sweated labour. State benefits for the unemployed, the elderly, the sick and the disabled can be cut by rearranging the rules which govern them and then calling the whole thing by a different name.

So it comes to pass that what was once Supplementary Benefit is now Income Support; what was once a Single Payment is now a loan from the Social Fund. The intended effect, with time, is that many workers who depend on state benefits for their survival, will have much less to survive on.

Another effect — unintended but foreseeable — will probably be that violence against DHSS staff, already running at an alarming level, will get worse. If this happens, the government's response will be to call conferences where bureaucrats will gravely discuss the stresses which their underlings are subjected to; to fortify the offices even more; and to provide for stiffer punishment for those who. in their impoverished frustration, go for the staff, smash the windows, kick in the doors. . .

The government are hoping that charities will fill the gaps opened up by the new regulations. Some people may think this is taking Thatcher's version of Victorian morality too far; in any case what happens when the charities are unable to help? Will they too have to bolt down the furniture, install toughened glass, erect protective screens around their workers?

The loud protests which the poverty lobby launched against the new set-up was understandable, for benefit-dependent workers, at the lowest end of the poverty scale, need a cut in their payments like a hole in the wallet. In spite of their valuable work of research and indictment, the poverty lobby draw the wrong conclusion — that the workers' poverty is rooted in an inability to be employed and that it can be eliminated through higher state benefits.

Poverty afflicts the working class whether they are in work or out; it is an unavoidable consequence of the class ownership of the means of life. A working wage keeps a worker generally at the level of reproduction of their energy; not to be able to get a wage can mean falling below even that miserable standard.

This is the fundamental social condition which must be dealt with. Then the poverty lobby can stop pummelling the statistics — and the claimants can stop taking it out on the DHSS clerks.

Run out?

With the passing of time — with a widening waistline and narrowing achievements — Ian Botham has changed from everyone's Boys' Own hero into a rip-roaring public villain. Headlines no longer boast of his deeds with bat and ball on some sun-soaked cricket field; the preoccupation now is with his offensive behaviour in public places and fights in dressing rooms.

But of course Botham has always been what the media hacks love — a sporting character. Nicknamed Guy after the gorilla — he was always ready for pavilion japes like placing his hot spoon on some team mate's arm just after stirring his tea.

Most of his feats, which have been written into cricket history, have been inspired by Botham's all-consuming ambition always to be on the winning side. Now this sort of drive is among the most prized of personal attributes in a society which esteems nothing higher than a determination to get to the top no matter whose neck gets trampled on the way up. In industry, commerce and social standing the equivalents of Ian Botham receive respectful adulation while the rest are of little consequence.

Capitalism glorifies its heroes and heroines as examples to us all, as living proof that anyone who is an insignificant member of the working class has only themselves to blame for their situation. Of course the heroes and heroines sometimes misbehave — or rather behave in a way to be expected of someone under the constant stimulation of the media spotlight. But that need not be a disadvantage since it often serves to heighten public interest, sell more newspapers, push up the ratings and box office receipts.

It requires a super-powerful effort to resist these pressures — to act like an everyday worker while all the expectations of capitalism demand otherwise. That is why the entertainment and sporting business is littered with examples of the Ian Botham disease. the principal symptom of which is the realisation that headline-hogging behaviour has reached the depths of tedium.

This brings a pathetic conclusion to what set out as famously glorious. Botham's sacking by his cricket employers in Australia may have its repercussions in this country, for it is said that he is too disruptive an influence for any team to want to have him. Who would be to blame for this sorry end of the golden boy of English cricket? The man himself? Or the interests which depend on building up prima donnas in order to attack them for it?

The French Non-Revolution (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month students were erecting barricades and battling with the police in the streets of Paris. Over nine million workers were on strike. Industry was at a standstill with most factories occupied by strikers.

This social explosion had started at the beginning of May when the government, hoping to stop the student unrest that had been growing over the preceding months from getting out of hand, ordered the police to arrest certain student activists including the most prominent. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny-le-Rouge. The result was to provoke the very thing they had been hoping to avoid. Barricades went up in the student quarter on the left bank of the river Seine and fierce street battles took place on the night of 10-11 May as the police tried to reconquer the area, dispensing indiscriminate brutality to all who got in their way.

To protest against this police brutality against the students the trade unions called a one-day general strike for the following Monday 13 May. Many workers — wage and salary earners had their own grievances against the government, which had been treating them in much the same way as Thatcher has been treating workers in Britain since she came to power — did not return to work the next day or came out again later in the week and a full-scale general strike, with factory occupations, which was to last several weeks, spread throughout the country.

Some thought that France was on the brink of a revolution that would sweep away capitalism and usher in workers' control of society. But this was an illusion. In the absence of a socialist-minded working class, the most that could have happened was the collapse of the Gaullist regime and its replacement by some left-of-centre government of capitalism similar to that then in office in Britain under Harold Wilson.

De Gaulle himself had come to power as a result of an army and settlers' revolt that had begun in Algeria ten years previously. In terms of the then existing constitution — that of the Fourth Republic — the way he came to power was perfectly illegal but such changes of regime by extra-parliamentary means have been a frequent feature of French history since the French revolution of 1789. Since that time there have in fact been a number of such changes — France has had five republics, two empires, two monarchies in addition to Vichy France under Marshal Petain — and this is what the term revolution has come to mean in French politics.

Such a "revolution" — resulting in the restoration of the Fourth Republic or in the establishment of a sixth one — was indeed a possibility in May 1968 but would have had nothing in common with what socialists mean by revolution — a change in the basis of society. From a socialist point of view, a change of political regime carried out by action on the streets is no more relevant than a change of government carried out by electoral means. Both are merely ways of rearranging the political administration of capitalism. Both leave the capitalist basis of society unchanged.

In any event the opponents of the Gaullist regime — from the student activists to the left politicians — underestimated the determination of De Gaulle and the solidity of his regime. When at the end of May he disappeared from Paris, opposition politicians thought that he was about to go and began to stake rival claims to the posts they would like to occupy in the new government. De Gaulle had in fact gone to Germany secretly to meet the leaders of the Army. On his return, on 30 May he immediately went on radio and TV to announce that a general election would be held in June in which the issue would be: maintenance of the Gaullist regime or a left-wing government dominated by the French Communist Party (which was at that time indeed much stronger than the non-Communist left). Faced with this choice, in the election which took place on 23 and 30 June, the voters gave De Gaulle a landslide victory. The May events had resulted, not in the overthrow of the Gaullist regime but in its consolidation. Of course they also brought university reform and wage increases and other benefits for the workers but as an attempt to change the political regime in France by extra-parliamentary means May 1968 was a complete flop.

This wasn't evident immediately, at least not to the student and extreme-left activists. They argued that it would have succeeded if only the workers had taken the next step and instead of just occupying the factories had started operating them without the bosses or if only the French Communist Party (PCF) and the trade union centre it controlled (the CGT) had not betrayed the revolution by taking up a moderate, constitutional line. The Trotskyists put on their scratchy old gramophone record about the revolution having failed for want of a vanguard party to lead the workers. More interesting was the attitude of Cohn-Bendit both at the time and later.

In a book written with his brother Gabriel in August 1968. entitled Leftwing Radicalism. Cure for Communism 's Senile Disease (an obvious play on the title of Lenin's pamphlet Left wing Communism. An Infantile Disease which the PCF quoted against him and other "leftists"). Cohn-Bendit argued that the Gaullist regime could have been toppled on the night of 24-25 May if the student demonstrators who had moved over to the right bank of the Seine had stayed there after burning the Stock Exchange (or rather starting a fire inside it since stock exchanges, being built of marble, don't burn easily) and had gone on to capture the ministries of Finance and Justice a few streets away instead of returning to the left bank.

Today, however, he argues that what the opponents of the Gaullist regime should have done in May 1968 was to have called for a general election in mid-May at the height of the factory and university occupations which he reckons they would easily have won. He has even gone on record as saying that the biggest mistake he has ever made was "not to have called for an election sooner in 1968" (The Economist 14 February 1987). In other words, Dany the Red, the student revolutionary, now says that the way to have overthrown De Gaulle was through elections. As a member of the German Green Party he now actively participates in electoral activity and has even been their candidate for the post of mayor of Frankfurt.

As a matter of fact this is not all that much of a U-turn since, even in May 1968, Cohn-Bendit was well aware that the student movement, despite its revolutionary rhetoric, was in practice struggling not to replace capitalism by socialism but to replace Gaullism by some left-wing government. So it is not really a big change, that he should now be saying a better way to have achieved this would have been through the ballot box. When he spoke about "revolutionary action" he did not mean action to overthrow capitalism but merely street demonstrations, seizure of public buildings and strikes to overthrow De Gaulle. This emerges clearly, for instance, from the interview the pretentious philosopher and ex-PCF fellow traveller Jean-Paul Sartre had with him in the middle of the events and before his expulsion from France on 22 May as an "undesirable" alien (his parents came from Germany) and which was published in Le Nouvel Observateur on 20 May. Here he stated clearly that the aim was "the overthrow of the regime". explaining that in his view:

  A radical change in the structure of our society would only be possible, if, for example, a serious economic crisis, the action of a powerful workers' movement, and vigorous student activity suddenly converged. These conditions have not all been realised today. At best we can hope to bring down the government. We must not dream of destroying bourgeois society (translation in The Student Revolt, Panther. 1968).

But to say that all that could be done in the circumstances was to bring down the government without destroying capitalism is tantamount to saying that all that could be done was to replace one government of capitalism by another. Cohn-Bendit did not shrink from this conclusion:

  Suppose the workers hold out too and the regime falls. What will happen then? The left will come to power. Everything will then depend on what it does. If it changes the system — I must admit I doubt if it will — it will have an audience, and all will be well. But if we have a Wilson-style government, with or without the Communists, which only proposes minor reforms and adjustments, then the extreme left will regain its strength and we shall have to go on posing the real problems of social control, workers’ power, and so on.

So Cohn-Bendit was lucid enough to recognise that, in the circumstances obtaining in May-June 1968, the only possible alternative to the Gaullist regime was some left-wing government. In the end this did come but 13 years later, when Mitterrand was elected President and appointed a Wilson-style government with PCF Ministers. As was inevitable, since capitalism can never be made to function in the interest of the wage and salary earners, this government failed miserably to solve working class problems — just as it would have done had it come to power in 1968.

This being so, it is pertinent to ask if raising the issue of a change of regime was not a diversion from the economic objectives of the general strike such as higher wages and better conditions. Actually, the French working class behaved in a remarkably intelligent way: refusing to get themselves killed in an attempt to replace the Gaullist regime by a government of left-wing politicians, which would have brought them no benefit, they profited from the momentary weakness of the regime in place to extract higher wages and a number of other concessions.

Naturally the student and political activists (Trotskyists. Maoists and other assorted followers of Ho Chi Minh. Che Guevara and Castro) found this a rather timid attitude and blamed the trade unions for betraying the workers who, according to them, were waiting for a lead to take action to overthrow both Gaullism and capitalism. But it is clear that it was the unions who were more representative of working-class opinion and had the more realistic if less exciting attitude. Workers are not as stupid as Leninists imply in their contemptuous dictum that ’’left to themselves, workers are only capable of acquiring a trade union consciousness". Trade union consciousness alone is indeed far from socialist consciousness but it is far in advance of Leninism. As one wit has put it, it would be more correct to say that, left to themselves, students are only capable of acquiring a Leninist consciousness.

May '68 was, however, rather more than a general strike for economic ends sparked off by student riots. It also had a deep and lasting effect on social attitudes in France — decline of authoritarianism and paternalism in all fields — and it led everywhere to an interest in radical social ideas. Books by and about Marx as well as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick and other radical thinkers became readily available (alongside, it is true, less helpful works by Trotsky). All sorts of ideas came to be discussed. Tariq Ali. who saw himself as the British equivalent of Dany-le-Rouge. even declared in June 1968 on a television programme about the student revolt "we believe in the abolition of money". Naturally, with such ideas springing up spontaneously, socialists were able to get our point of view over much more easily than normally. The revival of genuine socialist ideas may prove to be the most lasting historical effect of May 1968. In any event, we are still working to ensure that it is.

Adam Buick

Classic Reprint: To The Workers of France (1988)

A Classic Reprint from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We reprint a manifesto adopted by our Executive Committee in May 1968 which set out our attitudes to the events in France.

We address you not as citizens of one country to citizens of another but as world socialists to fellow members of the world working class.

We reject frontiers as artificial barriers put up by governments. All men are brothers and the world should be theirs. All men should be social equals with free access to the plenty that could be if only the means of living belonged to a socialist world community. We oppose governments everywhere, all nationalism, racism and religion, all censorship, all wars and preparations for war.

Workers! We support your class struggle for better wages and conditions against the employers and the government. But do not be taken in by the ease with which you have occupied the factories. They allowed you to do this because they know that in time you must give in. Political power is always in the hands of those who control the machinery of government, including the armed forces and the sadistic CRS. Do not be misled by those who say that universal suffrage is a fraud. Learn from your masters. You too must organise to win political power if you want a new society. Do not let cunning politicians or the discredited Communist Party return to power on your backs. Ignore those who would be your leaders. Rely on your own understanding and organisation. Turn universal suffrage into an instrument of emancipation.

Students! We share your distaste for the indignities and hypocrisies of the present order. We share your wish for a new society with no exploitation of man by man. But do not underestimate what a task it will be to change society. It will be a hundred times more difficult than changing the government. A democratic world community, based on common ownership with production for use not profit, can only be set up when people want it and are ready to take the steps needed to get it up and keep it going. Democratic political action is the only way to Socialism. There are no short cuts. We must have a majority actively on our side. Do not be misled by student demagogues, those who praise Bakunin, Trotsky, Mao or Che Guevara, who would use you for their own mistaken ends. They think that an elite should use unrest to gain power and then set up a classless society. What dangerous nonsense! Look at state capitalist Russia where a new privileged class rules, with police intimidation and censorship, over an increasingly restless population. Look at state capitalist China where power-hungry bureaucrats cynically manipulate the people in their own sordid squabbles. Learn the lessons of history: elite action leads to elite rule. No Socialism unless by democratic political action, based on socialist understanding.

The task you face in France is the same that we face in Britain and our brothers in Germany, Russia, the United States and other countries: to build up a strong world-wide movement for Socialism. What is needed more than anything else in this period of social unrest is a clear, uncompromising statement of the case for a socialist world community.

If you agree, please write to us. We will be glad to help you ensure that the voice of Socialism is again heard in France.

Workers of the world, Unite!

Blogger's Note:

This statement from the SPGB's Executive Committee appeared in the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard.

I was there in '68 (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was studying for my finals exams at Hull University when it started to happen. Thousands of students on the streets of Paris — then the workers on strike too. Law and order was breaking down. That's what the newspapers and the radio told us, and we saw bits of it on our black and white TV screens.

Then it came over here. Or sort of. Demonstrations and sit-ins at colleges and universities all over the country. What sparked the one at Hull — if it wasn't just the Paris events — was the authorities dragging their feet over student representation on university committees. Before most of us knew it, general meetings were being called and resolutions passed. The administration building was occupied.

A hundred students sat in. Then two hundred, then five or six hundred. The administration was at a standstill. I was involved too. I'd never been a "militant", but I'd always supported the Labour Party and had a gut feeling for the underdog. What actually drove me in there more than anything else was seeing a silly detestable bugger of a student on my course standing outside the administration block wearing a large badge with the words "I'm backing Brynmor" (Brynmor Jones was the university's vice- chancellor). I called him a rat and walked into the occupation.

Once you were in there, you became more and more convinced your cause was a just one. Student "leaders" addressed meetings. and spoke persuasively. We were determined to see it through. There was an atmosphere of . . . what was it? — freedom? . . . community? that made you heady. It was what the activists called "radicalisation" and you put your case with conviction and enthusiasm to other students you met outside.

How long was it going to last? On campus there were rumours about goings-on in the sit-in. The local press picked it up. Offices were being vandalised, so they said, student records carried away, orgies held. I never saw any of it — and at the time wondered what I'd missed. But I did see people's resolve gradually slipping away and the sitters-in become fewer and fewer until only a few die-hards were left. The University weren't using a heavy hand. They were playing a waiting game, which they knew they would eventually win. And as they played the game, a group of "moderate" students used the students' union constitution to call an emergency general meeting with the proposition that the occupation cease forthwith.

It was the biggest gathering of students I'd ever seen — about 1.200. Those in favour of the motion spoke first and were frankly pathetic. The speakers on our side were cool and logical, and some of them brilliant. If there was any justice, we should have won. But we didn't. The vice-chancellor was allowed to address the students and showed himself, contrary to reputation, to be an extremely clever man. He was conciliatory. He said he sympathised with the demands for change, promised that reforms would be made to give the students more say in the running of the university but that in the meantime, in the name of moderation and responsibility, we should go back to our books so that the reforms could start to be discussed. We filed through division doors. Our side had 400 votes. The opposition had 700 plus. We'd lost. Or had we? For procedural reasons another vote was needed to finalise the matter. The left-wing "agitators" whom many people said had fomented the whole thing in the first place — maybe they had — tried to prolong the debate as much as possible in the hope that enough "moderates" would drift off for the vote to swing the other way. But. though a few people left, when the final vote was taken at six o'clock, there was still a decisive majority against the occupation.

It was the same story up and down the country. The various demonstrations and sit-ins came to an end. It was the same in France too. When the agitators died away. De Gaulle called an election and won hands-down. As for Hull. I left that year so I don't know whether they ever got the reforms.

I never really understood at the time what had gone on — either here or in France. People said that we'd been close to a socialist revolution. I only started to understand two or three years later when I came into contact with The Socialist Party. I asked the members I met what they thought of the events of '68 and was shown a copy of the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard with the cover "How close was France to a socialist revolution?". The answer it gave was a revelation to me and. if you can still get hold of a copy, it's just as much worth reading now as it was then.

Howard Moss

CND at 30 (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

For their own sakes it is to be hoped that the marchers on CND's 30th anniversary trek this Easter did not think they had any reason for celebration. They were repeatedly urged not to be nostalgic, for as Pat Arrowsmith, who was on the first march in 1958 and has been on unnumbered protests since, put it. "The issues are still alive and the young people here today are fighting an even harder battle than the one we began 30 years ago". Wait a minute: issues still alive, after 30 years? Harder battles than ever? CND was formed, and launched its protests, on the theory that huge public demonstrations were the quickest and most effective method of persuading the government to get rid of nuclear weapons. This was, in 1958, an urgent matter, to be dealt with before we could turn our attention to any basic changes in society. If something was not done quickly things would get a lot worse; why, there could be submarines cruising the oceans capable of firing nuclear missiles while still submerged; or missiles which could slip through radar screens by a low-level flight to their target; or a galactic nuclear conflict as the super-powers strove to disable each other's missiles out in space.

Early optimism

Since 1958 we have had four changes of government and numerous CND marches. The governments have been unmoved; the situation has got worse. Not only have the disowners failed to remove the problem quickly but what effect they have had — or can now hope to have — can be assessed by the fact that they still feel a compelling reason to protest and that another of their veteran campaigners can say, in 1988:

 But although we know atomic weapons will never disappear, it is clear that their development is being intensified against all political claims of disarmament. (Liz Baker, Observer, 3 April)

In spite of that rueful admission that CND never had a hope of persuading the government to change its mind and, whatever the other powers did, throw away its nuclear weapons, it is true that the early CND marches encouraged a measure of optimism. In June 1960, after observing the march that year, a contributor to the Socialist Standard could write:

  Yet there is some comfort in this march. After the barren years of the delinquents, large numbers of people seem to be getting active in a movement of protest against a social problem.

That was a reaction, not so much to the promise of CND as to the frustration of confronting years of complacency among a working-class who seemed popularly to agree with Harold Macmillan that they had never had it so good. Especially galling was the fact that this cynicism was so apparent in young people, who excused it with the assertion that social problems were peculiar to, and the fault of, an earlier generation. CND was significant for puncturing that complacency and. by focussing the unease about nuclear destruction, encouraging young people to question what capitalist society was all about. A few youngsters even got the answer right, left CND and joined the movement for a socialist revolution. Many of the rest could not surmount the reformist obstacle of a preference for massaging symptoms rather than excising their cause.

Changing tactics

But misplaced enthusiasm can breed only confusion and CND was quickly blundering from one desperate expedient to another. There was a heavily publicised split over the emergence of the Committee of 100, much of whose appeal was that they had attracted Bertrand Russell to their ranks. Surely, someone who could write all those clever books on philosophy couldn't be wrong about the way to get rid of nuclear arms? The Committee's argument was that the government would take little account of orderly marches and rallies; what was needed to make them sit up and take notice was a lot of people sitting down in the middle of the road. The resultant disruption and publicity would soon bring the government to its knees, willing to throw away its nuclear armoury rather than subject the motorists of London to another moment's delay in a traffic jam. What actually happened was that the police were sent in to lug the demonstrators out of the way and to arrest those of them who particularly did not want to be removed. Meanwhile. far away from the scene of it all, the production of nuclear weapons continued its uncongested way.

Since then CND has changed its line often enough to satisfy the most erratic of reformist tacticians. At one time it was into direct action, by which it meant diverting a few of the more athletic demonstrators into attempts to storm Regional Seats of Government. If CND expected a great howl of outrage at their revealing the existence of these places they were badly mistaken; a more likely response from the working class was one of gratitude, that the government should so thoughtfully provide somewhere for what was left of British capitalism to be administered after the nuclear holocaust. There was another spell, when CND seemed likely to cease being a single-issue movement and join itself to the long list of organisations which campaign, day in and day out. about wages, housing, poverty, health and the rest. It has tried high-profile leaders like Joan Ruddock and Bruce Kent and low profile, like the present. One tactic it has not considered: a campaign against class society as the cause of war and all weapons, nuclear and conventional.

Courting Labour’s leaders

Much of CND's energy — its enthusiasm and its despair — has gone into its long battle to win over the Labour Party. To some extent this was understandable, since so many Labour leaders have been keen to be associated with them. The most prominent of these, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, have been at the head of many a march, and Foot told the rally at the start of this year's march:

  I came to the march in 1958 with a different dog but with the same wife. This march is a sign that the campaign will go on until nuclear weapons are wiped off the face of the galaxy. It has nothing to do with nostalgia.

A strong, ambitious way of imparting the same message of failure as Pat Arrowsmith and Liz Baker. But there is one very important difference. Not so long ago Foot, as Labour leader, was bidding to become prime minister, to lead a government whose party had in theory committed it to unilaterally getting rid of British nuclear weapons. How strong, how ambitious was he then? Well, at Labour's 1982 conference he was arguing for multilateral nuclear disarmament — for all the nuclear powers doing it at the same time — which was a long way from CND policy. Foot's words then might just as easily have been in the mouth of Reagan or Gorbachev or of any Tory claimant to a policy of peace and disarmanent:

  The greatest task which this Labour Party will have to take (sic) is to carry out our policy for securing nuclear disarmament in this country, and throughout the world.

During the 1983 general election, pushed into a comer by Tory propaganda that a Labour government would eagerly abolish the military power of British capitalism — a myth which won the Tories a lot of misinformed votes — Foot firmly pledged a "strong defence (his word for it) for Britain and Britain's allies" and a continuing adherence to the nuclear armed, American dominated, power bloc of NATO. Asked about Labour's commitment not to abolish British nuclear arms but only to get rid of one kind of them the Polaris missile — Foot was clumsily evasive: "Read the statement carefully and read the manifesto carefully and clarity will descend on all quarters".

CND’s “successes”

What did not descend on all quarters was the assurance that a Labour government would be be less resolved to keep a British bomb than would a Tory one. Foot was trying to juggle with his misled party activists on one hand and the voting British working class on the other. The activists were of course let fall. By 1983, with Kinnock in the leadership, the confusion was less; Labour's election manifesto was quite clear that a Labour government would keep the bomb while trying to start negotiations to remove some of the weapons from Europe as a step, they argued, towards them being abolished together, all over the world — much the same as the recent deal between Russia and America over the INF missiles.

Which brings us to what CND claims to have been its successes. The "success" of the 1963 Test Ban Treaty can be gauged against the subsequent developments in nuclear warheads and delivery systems, not to mention the increase in the number of weapons in the world since then. It is a strange sort of remedy, which is followed by the complaint getting worse. Last year's INF treaty should remove some of the less powerful weapons from some places but it was followed by the nuclear powers scrambling to plug the gaps which the treaty opened in their armouries. It is a peculiar type of success, which looks likely to leave us worse off — more threatened, less secure — than before. In any case CND had mixed feelings about each of these "successes", fearing to make too much of them in case they convinced too many people that the cause of nuclear disarmament had won the day and need not be supported any longer.

Foreseeable failure

In human beings the age of 30 is seen as an important threshold, when workers have a rough idea of how the rest of their lives will be spent — what type of exploitation they will get their living at, how long they will be chained to their mortgage, what they feel about the people they have agreed to spend the rest of their lives with. Personal horizons, over which we disappear when we die, can be described, albeit a long way off. Failures, mistakes and prospects can be evenly assessed. CND at thirty might try the same exercise, asking themselves why all that well-intentioned energy has been so sadly misplaced. Is their fear of nostalgia more a morbid suspicion that their failure must extend into the foreseeable future?

Ivan

Olympic invitation (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many commentators were taken aback by the apparent volte-face conducted by China and Russia when they recently accepted South Korea’s invitation to the 1988 Olympic Games. This seemed particularly odd since their regional ally "Communist" North Korea, bitterly opposed participation on the grounds that it amounted to a virtual recognition of the US-backed Southern regime.

The confusion over these manoeuvres stems from the mistaken belief that leaders determine foreign policy in line with their ideological interests. In opposition to this view, the materialist analysis of international relations holds that there are underlying economic forces which determine, over the long run, what actions leaders take. Seen in this light, the "mystery" of the Olympic acceptance is soon resolved.

Following the enforced division of the Korean peninsula by the United States in 1948, Russia and China maintained a seemingly implacable hostility towards the South and lent their support to the Northern regime's drive to re-unify the country. The importance of the North to China and the Russians was dramatically enhanced by the bitter conflict which erupted between these two states in the 1950s and '60s. North Korea occupied a critical strategic position, flanking vital industrial and military regions on both sides. Ritual denunciation of the Southern regime became an important weapon in the struggle to secure the support of the North's dictator. Kim I'-Sung.

The situation began to change in the late 1970s and early '80s. when the stagnation of the Russian and Chinese economies galvanised their respective party bureaucracies into an enforced process of economic modernisation. A necessary condition for success was a massive injection of western capital and advanced technology, which required a downgrading of cold war hostility and an opening up to the United States and its allies through the process of detente.

South Korea occupies a key position here. It is located in the fastest developing economic region in the world and is growing at a more rapid pace than Japan. Its per capita GNP is $2,900, at least three times that of the North. Furthermore, South Korean industry has direct access to the latest technology from the United States and Japan and its manufacturers have proved themselves adept at integrating aid, successfully utilising their advances as, for example, in the development of the four megabit DRAM computer.

The Chinese were the first to attempt to tap into these resources. In the early 1980s they established trading links with the South through Hong Kong and between 1983 and 1985 two-way trade rose from $285 million to over $800 million, exceeding China's trade with the North. More recently a covert direct trade has begun to develop. South Korean businessmen have visited China, and in 1986 the Daewoo Corporation spearheaded the first ever joint venture with a Chinese company, producing television sets in the Fujian province.

The South Koreans have been anxious to encourage these links since China has a lot to offer them: cheap labour, low corporate taxation and an alternative to the increasingly protectionist United States market. President-Elect, Roh Tae Woo, has promised to develop the South West province of Challa as a free trade zone to exploit these possibilities.

The Russians have been more circumspect in making openings to South Korea, principally because of the strategic benefits they derive from naval facilities at Cam Rhan Bay in the North, as well as overflying rights for their military aircraft. The importance of these assets has diminished, however, as the Soviets attempted to create a stable regional environment in which they could pursue economic modernisation. This involved seeking a rapprochement with China and increasingly dissociating themselves from Kim I'-Sung's wilder demands for a military solution to the division of Korea. The last thing the Russians wanted was a clash with either China or the United States, which would have diverted resources away from economic development and threatened the flow of Western technology and capital. Consequently the Russian leadership has moved to relieve tensions with China and has tacitly accepted the present division of Korea as more or less permanent.

These shifts have resulted in the downgrading of the relative importance of the North in Russian thinking. For example, in the early 1980s they were notably reluctant to supply North Korea with advanced MIG 23 fighters, and did so only in response to United States' introduction of F-16s into the South. This reassessment was reinforced by the financial burden to the Russians of supporting the North. Kim I'-Sung's attempts to build an "independent" economy had resulted in an efficient and aging heavy industrial base patterned after Stalin's programmes of the 1930s. The North today has a trade deficit of $465 million and has consistently failed to repay its loans, much to the irritation of some Western capitalists who are now exceedingly reluctant to extend financial or technological assistance. In pursuit of economic self-sufficiency. Kim I'-Sung has also refused to join COMECON and integrate the North more fully into the Russian empire. This has remained a constant source of tension. The Russians are already overextended economically with their commitments in Vietnam, Africa and Afghanistan and strategic returns from their investment in North Korea no longer seem worth the immense cost.

For both China and Russia ideological hostility towards South Korea clashes with the demands generated by the need for economic modernisation. As Marxists would expect, this contradiction is resolved by bringing the ideology into line with changing economic circumstances. The acceptance of South Korea's invitation to the 1988 Olympics is an important part of that process.

Andrew Thomas

Socialist Standard price increase (1988)

Party News from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to inform readers that as from June 1988 the price of the Socialist Standard will be increased to 40 pence and the cost of an annual subscription will be increased to £6.50. This is the first price rise for five years. The Socialist Standard is still an excellent buy and we look forward to the continued support of readers and subscribers for our distinctive journal combining as it does hard-hitting commentary on politics, economics and current affairs with penetrating socialist analysis.

The socialist revolution (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is an age of contradictions in which we live. Millions destined to slums or homelessness while builders are forced into unemployed uselessness because the market has no need for them; police given huge cash bonuses for wielding their truncheons during overtime on the picket line while nurses survive on the pittance which capitalism offers to those who are caring; stockpiles of bombs which will convert us into dust while Church and State preach to kids about the virtues of peaceful behaviour; the cries of millions of starving children who will die this year, as they do every year, in a society which is actually paying farm owners not to produce food.

The objective of capitalism is to make a profit. The recipients of profit are the capitalists who are, and always will be, a minority. The workers, who produce the wealth but do not possess it, are the creators of all profits, and that creation arises directly from the act of robbery which is inevitable so long as the wages system exists. Under capitalism the earth and all of its major resources belong to the few and not the many; production is by the many for the enrichment of the few. The position of the working class is that of wage slaves. Although sometimes the wages are called salaries, the slavery remains the same. The wage slave majority does not own or control the world. We are the second-rate citizens in a world which should be ours.

Class struggle

The socialist proposition begins at the point when you recognise that capitalism must go and the earth must belong to its inhabitants. Socialism has nothing to do with regulating capitalism or equalising social relations within it, or injecting illusory feelings of co-operation into it, or moulding or reforming it in any way. Socialism is not a process of playing with the surface image of the profit system. We are uncompromising enemies of the capitalist system. While it exists, in whatever forms, we fight against it. Socialists are not alone in this fight. Capitalism necessitates class struggle between capitalists and workers. The two classes have opposed interests and live in a condition of permanent tension which frequently erupts into class war in various forms. The difference between the socialist struggle and that of our fellow workers who are not yet socialists is that we know what we are fighting against and what we are fighting for. Too often workers struggle in the dark; they hate the boss, they seek justice, they place faith in reform schemes or other illusions. To become a socialist is to see through the dark and convert blind struggle into a movement for social revolution. The socialist proposition commences, then, at the point of seeing the need for fundamental social change; it proceeds to consciously prepare for revolution. That is the socialist task.

Abolish rulers and ruled

Revolution. Few words convey so many confused meanings. 1789 in France when a king was removed and a new gang of robbing rulers installed. 1917 in Russia when state capitalism was inaugurated in the name of socialism. 1968 in Paris when students imagined that barricade romanticism would transform history. When workers hear of revolution they think of bloody street battles conducted by people in period costumes. Alas, quite a few of those on the modern Left indulge in the same misconception. What is misunderstood by such people is that all previous revolutions were minority revolutions: they were political acts which transferred power from one set of rulers to another. We do not seek to put political power into the hands of new rulers. The socialist revolution will be the first revolution in history which will abolish rulers and ruled — which will end class society. In short, the task of class-conscious workers is not to "take power”, but to end class power by ending all classes. The aim of the working class must be to abolish itself as a class.

The socialist revolution will not be an affair of leaders and led. The concept of "the socialist vanguard", so well loved by arrogant would-be Lenins of the Left, is an idea borrowed from the politics of past revolutions. Workers will not be led into socialist liberation. We shall not, as a class, be told by leaders that they have very kindly emancipated us from capitalism and now we may cheer like grateful masses for being freed. Workers will not be freed, but must free ourselves. To quote Marx. "The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves". The revolutionaries who make the revolution will know what we are doing. That is why the first prerequisite for the socialist revolution is consciousness of what needs to be done.

As the working class is the majority, and as there will be no socialism without a socialist-conscious working class, it follows logically that the revolution must be the act of the majority, not the minority. In short, it must be democratic. As socialism itself will be the most democratic form of society ever experienced by humankind, it follows that it can only be established democratically. A minority could not establish socialism in the face of a non-socialist majority of workers, and it would be folly to attempt such an adventure.

Once there is a socialist majority political action must be taken. The socialist revolution cannot be non-political. Why? Because we are up against the capitalist state and if we do not take it, it will take us. The power of coercion cannot be left in the hands of the capitalist class. Government and the armed forces must be taken away from them in the same way as they are handed over to them: by mandate. At present workers vote the power to rule over them to our class enemies every time there is an election. In the ballot box workers throw away their chance to be rulers over their own lives, offering such power to those who seek to govern on behalf of the bosses. The socialist never votes for anyone to rule over him or her, never votes for any capitalist party, even if it poses as "the lesser evil". The socialist vote is a class-conscious vote which is cast in opposition to the capitalist state in any form. This does not mean that we seek to establish a socialist state. On the contrary, the socialist revolution. in establishing workers' power over the state, will at the same time, put an end to the state. The state is an instrument of class coercion: where there are no classes there will be no state. The socialist revolution will bring about a stateless society.

World without frontiers

The working class is not a national class, but exists worldwide. Our interests internationally are not many, but identical. Workers everywhere are robbed of the fruits of our labour and only by revolution everywhere can the world become the property of all — or, more accurately, the property of no one. So, the socialist revolution knows no boundaries; it will not occur nationally, but internationally. That is why The Socialist Party is not concerned only with the workers of one state territory. In Britain we deal with the conditions here, but we are part of a World Socialist Movement, the other parties of which have the same principles as us. If the number of conscious socialists in one country is larger than in another, then it is the job of those where there are more socialists to offer every support possible to those where the struggle is more difficult. Whilst pointing out this identity of global working-class interest, and therefore the need for world socialist revolution, we do not ignore the many important cultural differences in which different workers find themselves. Also, we are not unaware of different obstacles which history has placed in the way of various national groupings of workers. It is up to socialists in each area of world capitalism to struggle for revolution in whatever way is best for them. It is not for workers in Britain to lay down precise revolutionary plans for our brothers and sisters who do not share our specific conditions. What they do share with us, and what is far more important than those factors which differentiate us, is a need to end world capitalism by means of joining the movement for world socialism. No nation can do that alone: national socialism is a concept to be thrown into the dustbin of discarded dogmas wherein lie the remnants of the Stalinist and Nazi abuses of the socialist label.

How is the socialist revolution to come about? The Socialist Party is in possession of no magic formula. Since 1904 this Party has, in a principled, persistent and uncompromising fashion, used all of the energy and resources at its disposal to make clear to our fellow workers that social revolution is the need of the day. Some workers have responded by joining with us. Others have nodded approvingly, telling us that they will be with us "on the day”. Most have dismissed our message. For some this dismissal is because they are convinced by the lies which prop up capitalism. But most of those workers who have yet to become revolutionaries have failed to be motivated because capitalism makes apathy an easier course than action. Sadly, millions of those politically apathetic workers, who over the years have come across the case for socialism and failed to be aroused, have suffered miserably for their apathy. Such suffering has ranged from the grinding frustration and insecurity of day-to-day wage slavery to the more evident horrors, such as murder in war and long-term unemployment and homelessness. The worker who avoids the call of revolution is a vulnerable worker. It is the job of The Socialist Party to point out, as we do at every opportunity, that socialism is not only a great idea about how human decency could be achieved, but is the only practical and immediately achievable alternative to the intense pain which capitalism is inflicting upon the wealth producers now.

The May Day message of The Socialist Party is no different from its April message or its December one. Our style is not that of the annual rabble-rousing exhibition which is all puff and no substance. Our message is that if you are a worker — namely, any person who needs to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live — you have an obligation to give the most serious consideration to the case for a revolutionary change in society from capitalism to socialism. This consideration requires an understanding of what capitalism is and why it can never run in the workers’ interest, and what socialism is and why a revolution to bring it about is the urgent requirement of our time. To ignore that obligation is to leave oneself open to the most awful risks of dangers created by the present, outdated social system. To face up to that obligation and join The Socialist Party is the most historically intelligent and dignified act that you could take. The movement for revolution demands your consideration and support.

Steve Coleman

The Poll Tax and the workers (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The government decision to replace rates with a "community charge" has sparked off furious controversy. The government claimed that the new system will get rid of existing anomalies and inequalities, and the opposition parties argue that it will destroy democratic local government and create new burdens for the poor. The new system is to begin in Scotland in April 1989 and a year later in England and Wales, starting with some London boroughs.

At present local authorities get their revenue from four sources: 40 per cent from central government through the Rate Support Grant; 20 per cent from local householders paying rates; 25 per cent from local industrial and commercial rate payers; and 15 per cent from council tenants paying rent. Domestic rates are payable only by the householder, not by other adults living in the house.

Pressure for the new system has come largely from the industrial and commercial rate payers. They complain that only 34 per cent of local electors pay full rates, and 57 per cent of those entitled to vote in local elections have no rates liability at all, due either to the rebate system or to the fact that they are not householders. The consequence is, they say, that local councils are elected by people who have no interest in keeping expenditure down — high rates are of no concern to them.

Under the new system everybody over the age of 18 will have to pay Poll Tax, except the mentally ill and elderly people living in homes and hospitals. Low paid workers and students will not have to pay the full amount. Business ratepayers will pay a standard Unified Business Rate pegged to inflation.

The Westminster Bank magazine, Money Care (February 1988), says that while many millions of individuals and householders will lose money another large group will gain:

  The people who will generally pay less are homes with only one adult and people living in large homes. Households where the total bill will be higher will be ones with more than two adults, small homes and those excused rates at the moment. Everyone will have to pay at least 20 per cent of the community charge.

The government has already acted to keep rates down. Councils raising rates unduly are penalised by a reduction in the amount of the central government grant. Mrs Thatcher, in a speech reported in the Financial Times (7th March 1988) said this about the new system.

  This will transform inner cities. No longer will they [the councils] be able to spend, spend, spend, putting it on owner-occupiers and businesses. It is being specifically designed so that the same degree of efficiency will result in the same community charge all over the country.

The new system has come under criticism from professional bodies interested in taxation and local government on the ground of its complexity and the difficulty of enforcing it against the large numbers of people likely to evade payment if they can.

There is nothing new in one group of property owners, in this case the business rate-payers, trying to unload some of the burden of the rates on to other groups. Professor Cannan, in his History of Local Rates in England (1912) showed that it was going on throughout the 19th century. Then, as now, one of the issues was how much of local authority expenditure should be paid by central government and there were then, as now, complaints about the "extravagances and mismanagement" of particular local councils. The business rate-payers naturally wish to reduce the burden of rates and most of them can count on doing well out of the change.

But what about the working class and the assertion by the Labour Party and others that the Poll Tax will, on balance, make the workers worse off?

At its formation the Socialist Party rejected the popular theory that rates (and taxes) reduce the workers’ standard of living and that they therefore have an interest in keeping them down. They are. in the long run. a burden not on the workers but on the propertied class. The argument against rates is that they are an addition to the rent workers have to pay for accommodation and that any increase in the rates makes the working class worse off.

Examination of what actually happens in the matter of rates and rents shows that the argument is not valid. High rates do not increase the amount the workers have to pay but reduce the rent the landlord gets. If rates are higher in one district than in others, businesses and tenants of houses avoid these districts if they can, compelling landlords to accept less then they would otherwise be able to get. Professor Cannan gave evidence of this. He wrote:

  The high rates of a highly rated district undoubtedly tend to deter population and businesses from settling in it, and this means that they will not settle in it unless the owners charge less than they would if the rates were lower. If the rates were reduced the owners would be able to charge more for their properties.

Examples of this were quoted in the Socialist Standard (October 1904). One was West Ham, at that time the most heavily rated district in England: "rents are falling, while rates are rising, owing to the decreased demand for houses". At the present time a shift of this kind is taking place between Camden, where the average rate charge is £752 a year, and neighbouring Wandsworth where it is only £327.

Since 1938 there has been a huge increase, in real terms, in the amount of rates collected by local authorities (as in the amount of taxes collected by central government) but it has not had the effect of lowering the majority of workers' standard of living, which is in fact very considerably higher than it was in 1938. The point is that the workers, through organisation on the industrial field, can take advantage of the favourable phases of capitalism when production and profits are rising, to get higher wages. In most of the years since 1945 the average wages of workers who are in work, have risen more than the rise in their cost of living. It is going on now. Since 1982 when production and profits began to rise again, average real wages have been rising continuously and are now well above the level of 1979.

It has happened in defiance of the regular pleas by government ministers that the unions should modify their wage claims and employers should not agree to large claims. Chancellor Nigel Lawson said, for example: "It is very important for businessmen to keep firm control of their pay costs" (Financial Times, 18th March 1988). Trying to keep wages down has been the line taken by every government, Labour as well as Tory.

Edgar Hardcastle

Between the Lines: A dull ache ceases (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

A dull ache ceases

Back in 1964, when Macmillan was telling the workers that we'd never been done so good, there was wage slavery for nearly all (we were supposed to be grateful for this "full employment") and the welfare state was working to plan, meaning that every worker in dire need of help who could not afford to buy decent aid was entitled to a third-rate service provided by the state. There was a feeling amongst certain capitalists that life was becoming too good for the proles. It was in that year that Crossroads was invented: a direct invention, it is argued by some cynics, to create a dull ache in the minds of millions of workers on a daily basis. There then followed fourteen years of cultural agony, with ever worse acting, less credible plots, greater insults to our class as the motel employees were depicted as hapless prats, culminating in the character who was the most ideal human work-horse ever invented: Benny, the unskilled skivvy who they love to love and love even more to exploit like hell. Crossroads existed as a standing monument to the cultural poverty of a social system which treats the wealth-producing masses as creatures in whom minds are an impediment to proper functioning. It was dinner at The Ritz followed by Beckett for them and fish fingers in front of Meg Richardson and Sandy for us.

On Monday 4 April the dull ache ended. Crossroads is no more. Now we are in a new era of world history, no more to be blighted by such evils as Adam Chance's phoney smile (it is rumoured that he is now in the running for the SLDP leadership) or Benny's inane caricature of what a good-hearted mug ought to look like. Central TV, after years of falling audience ratings, has taken this foul little cultural blemish off our screens. But beware of false confidence. Just as you sit there doubting the wise words uttered over the years by the Socialist Standard when we told you that the quality of life under capitalism will not improve, but will get worse. Just as you entertain the hope that the dull ache has gone for ever, be warned: ITV has announced that it certainly does not rule out the possibility of bringing Crossroads back in some new form. And remember, they said in 1918 that there would never be another world war.

A hidden item of news

Over the Easter weekend, as the news broadcasts reported on where the royal funsters were going on their next avalanche-causing expedition and how the government is taking the National Union of Seamen to court for the subversive act of holding a strike ballot, few of you will have noticed the following news report. You will not have noticed it because it was not broadcast. We shall alert you to it all the same:

  "This weekend delegates from various parts of England. Scotland and Wales met in the old Chiswick Town Hall for the 84th annual conference of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. The leader's keynote speech was notable for the fact that it was not given as there is no leader, although there was a ten-minute standing ovation when lunch was announced on the third day. The conference began by debating changes to its rule book: these are determined by all members, so no rules are imposed over the membership, but only by members if needed. It was decided to set up a committee to consider re-structuring the Party's executive committee and plans were also set in motion to establish a more scientific national strategy for the Party's various activities. The Conference affirmed its opposition to The Socialist Party becoming involved in the running of a printing co-operative, and a new document from one branch on 'The Road to Socialism' was discussed critically, with various worthwhile perspectives being stated. The Conference agrees to begin preparations now for contesting the next general election, and also agreed upon the importance of concentrating on local election activity at present. It was agreed that in future the Party shall in nearly all circumstances make itself known by its abbreviated title, The Socialist Party — although this does not mean that its official name has changed. Conference carried a resolution to write to Channel Four calling upon them to allow it time to state its grievance regarding the exclusion of The Socialist Party's voice from it. despite the fact that numerous smaller minority interests are allowed on. The Conference was unlike any other political conference. A Socialist Party spokesperson, asked what her main aim for the party was in the long-term, stated I hope to see the day when we fold up and have no reason to exist. Once a majority of workers understand and want socialism they will establish it and parties will be of no use'. Another speaker at the conference told us that he would only join a political party where there are no leaders or led. as he was after a society where there would be no leaders or led. It is quite clear to us that these people are all quite crazy. About as crazy as those subversive eccentrics of centuries past who persisted in the idiotic belief that the earth was not flat something to do with the law of gravity, our scientific correspondent informs us."

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Nurses’ Demo against Labour- controlled L.C.C. (1988)

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

The Labour Party majority, who control the London County Council, are in a sea of troubles. Trade Unions with members employed by the L.C.C. and the London Borough Councils complain that the joint meeting of the above bodies — dominated by Labour Councillors — curtly rejected their demand for increases of pay to compensate for the increase of prices. The Councillors. of course, are thinking of the rates. More expenditure means higher rates, and higher rates mean fewer votes for Labour candidates at the next elections.

We see masked nurses addressing meetings of nurses employed at L.C.C. hospitals, called to protest against their conditions of service. Mr G. Vincent Evans. General Secretary of the National Union of County Officers, spoke at one such meeting. and is reported in the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post (April 6th, 1938):

  . . . when the Nurses Charter was introduced . . .  it was felt that the L.C.C. would set an example to the rest of the country.
  Instead, when the testing time came, the L.C.C. showed that such a spirit of leadership was sadly lacking. The result was the use of this inaction as a vicious and indefensible argument for defeating the Limitation of Hours Bill in the House of Commons.
  "It was left to the Middlesex County Council." he went on. “to become the pioneers of this progressive movement of reform when it introduced the 48-hour working week. The lead was followed by many of the voluntary hospitals and other provincial county boroughs.
  "Surely the great trade unionist movement in London, and throughout the country, must feel that progress has been stultified."

[From the Socialist Standard May 1938]

Letters: Political health warning? (1988)

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

Political health warning?

Dear Editors

So, after 84 years of uncompromisingly putting the case for Socialism in war and peace, against enemies and betrayers, the Socialist Standard has finally been forced to succumb to the undemocratic arrogance of its current printers.

Presumably, since your printers have not previously felt the need to dissociate themselves from any other article published in the Socialist Standard, their political health warning on my article, HATE AND ITS CAUSES, in the March issue, implies their agreement with everything else they have printed in the journal. Or is this the precedent that will establish Calvert's right to impose their imprimatur willy-nilly in the future?

What really intrigues me is what awful thing I have written that so offends Calvert's. Where I live, opposing legal and illegal terrorism, as did my article. involves some little degree of risk. It is a risk, however, that we Socialists have to take if we are to be faithful to our principles.

No such risk is involved for Calvert's. They can come out of their funk-hole and tell me and your readers what exactly in my article was so disturbing that they felt obliged to use the power of their property in a crude attempt at censorial refutation.

Of course they might simply refuse to allow you to publish this letter.

   Yours for Socialism

Richard Montague

Belfast

Dear Editors,

I note that your publishers have added a disclaimer at the end of the article "Hate and its Causes" in the March '88 issue of your paper. I know that the issues raised by the conflict in Northern Ireland are the subject of endless argument among declared "socialists". I have never noticed such a disclaimer previously and would be interested to know what it was in the article that so offended Calvert's Press.

   Yours faithfully.

Alan Tait 

Huddersfield

Reply:

Having typeset the article "Hate and its Causes" which appeared in the March issue of the Socialist Standard, Calvert's Press contacted the editors to voice their disagreement with the ideas contained in that article. They asked for a 'right of reply' and the SSPC stated that any disclaimer or reply which they may wish to make should be in the form of a letter to be printed, at the editors' discretion, on the Letters page. However. Calvert's Press did not send us any such letter but instead printed the disclaimer that appeared at the end of the article. This was added after the typesetting and lay-out stages and hence without the Editors having seen it prior to publication.

The Editors

Calvert’s reply

Dear Editors.

The article "Hate and its Causes" (Socialist Standard March 1988) contains inaccuracies and unsubstantiated generalisations concerning the republican movement in Northern Ireland. The members of Calvert's Press who have written this letter do not, though, wish to enter into a political debate with the Socialist Party about socialism, whose broad aims and principles we agree with, nor are we interested in whose version of socialism is "right", as we are aware that our and Sinn Fein's views would not completely correspond with your own. However, we would like to point out some of the inaccuracies in the article, to answer the patronising comments about our assumed (mis)understanding of socialism and to refute the hysterical accusation of censorship caused by our disclaimer.

1. The article says that Sinn Fein is a nationalist group who don't care whether their government would be capitalist or not, so long as it was "green", and that they have no knowledge of or interest in socialism. This is based on a quote from an issue of Eire Nua which must be at least five years out of date (we found it in a 1971 edition). This booklet has been superseded by a series of policy documents, including the one from which we quote:

   ". . . we believe that the present system of society is based upon the robbery of the working class and that capitalist property cannot exist without the plundering of labour; we desire to see capitalism abolished and a democratic system of common or public ownership erected in its stead. The democratic system, which is called socialism, will, we believe, come as a result of the continuous increase of power to the working class. Only by this means can we secure the abolition of destitution and all the misery, crime and immorality which flow from that unnecessary evil." (Sinn Fein Policy. 1986)

2. The writer claims that the IRA and its supporters dream of a "fairyland" where Unionists are silenced forever.

Must it be pointed out that British capitalism and colonialism can only be maintained in Northern Ireland with the collaboration of the puppet Unionists? In fact, the very existence of the Unionists is due to the British colonialists. The nationalist community in N.I. well understand this and the nature of this colonialism and its function: it divides the Irish and British working class, nullifies the power of trade unionism and maintains Ireland as a NATO base for Britain. Until British occupation of Ireland, backed up by Unionism, is eliminated, the Irish know there will be no way of realising socialism.

3. The writer says that poor conditions are "marginally worse" in Catholic working-class areas.

Recent figures give unemployment in the Catholic community as at 80 per cent. Catholics are four times more likely to be unemployed than Protestants. Furthermore, Catholics are subject to daily harassment by the RUC, UDF, British army etc., have their funerals noisily surveilled by helicopters continually circulating above, are stopped and searched when they enter or leave the country, cross a border or just walk the streets, have their doors kicked in by British soldiers . . . the list could go on.

4. The IRA are said to practise sectarian killings of Protestants, because they don't recognise their class identity.

This is offensive and untrue. There is not a policy of killing Protestants because of their religion. Members of the RUC, UDR etc are assassinated because of their political role in maintaining British colonial rule in Northern Ireland. (The two men in the car who were killed likewise. If you didn't catch any of the photos in the establishment press — let alone in An Phoblacht/Republican News — of the guns pointing out of the car window, we can oblige you with some.) On the other hand, there are killings of Catholics which can be described as racist or "sectarian", as well as the harassment of the Catholic community at large in the ways described above.

We would question the "sectarian" analysis. British imperialism uses this to justify the use of horrifying methods of brutality and repression without protest, and to uphold its colonial occupation — you will still hear people from both countries asking: "Who will keep the peace if Britain withdraws from N.I.?".

We do not agree that the IRA and Sinn Fein are anti-Protestant. The first 3 articles in their suggested charter of rights from the 1986 document state:

1. All citizens are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Every person is entitled to the rights of citizenship without distinction of any kind, such as distinction of race. sex. religion, philosophical conviction. language or political outlook
2. Every person has the right to life, liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.
3. Every person has the right to freedom of conscience and religion and the open practice and teaching of ethical and political beliefs. This includes the right of assembly, peaceable association, petition and freedom of expression and communication.

5. The Provisional IRA, according to the article, emerged in 1969 as a result of housing problems and unemployment.

Of course they didn't emerge in their present form in 1969. with no prior history of struggle against Britain! The history of the IRA and the nationalist struggle against their economic and cultural oppression can be found in many books (we are sure most people realise that Britain has been in colonial occupation of Ireland for 800 years or more). But this point raises a more serious question. because it seems that the writer is implying that if a Unionist/capitalist government could provide jobs. housing etc. for all, then there would be no trouble from the Catholic community at all! The Socialist Party's analysis says that there is no reason for this or any other war in the world other than control of markets and economy. However, in most cases the cultural element is not just the superficial reason behind an oppressed people's desire for self-determination; in Ireland and most of the countries you cited, the people are oppressed as a people. We feel the writer is saying "how foolish of the natives to want their own language, culture, religion, farming methods, sport — why can't they all see this as narrow-minded and backward? If they were truly socialist they wouldn't care what language they spoke, whether they played hurley or football, and would abandon their religious beliefs quickly when it was explained to them [by clever us?] that there's no such thing as god(s)" We feel that to oppose liberation movements on these grounds, is to collaborate with the colonial class and to practise a kind of cultural imperialism.

In the past, some of the nationalist community may have been guilty of a narrow nationalism, but the white, English community continues to ignore the growing internationalism in the republican movement, and the links forged with oppressed people of other nations which share a common history of colonial repression.

There are other points we could make, but time & space may not permit. Some of us do not support the IRA in everything they do, some of us are pacifists. However, like it or not. they have the support of most of the nationalist community in N.I., who have no other organisation fighting imperialism there. Most of us agree that Britain should withdraw from N.I. and that the people there should be allowed to determine their own socialist future.

Two last points arising from last month's letter about our disclaimer: we apologise for the last minute addition of it. Due to an initial misunderstanding in the co-op, it didn't get submitted till artwork stage. But we had been given permission by the editor to put one in and/or to write a letter. Finally, we are relieved that readers do not associate the printer with what they print. Unfortunately, many of us do.

Some members of Calvert's Press