Sting in the Tail: Good Ideas Department (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good Ideas Department

A Canadian scientist Martin Satin has come up with a good idea. . . to make bread without wheat. He has found that a viscous substance which can replace wheat gluten can be made merely by boiling cassava, or flour from sorgham or maize, in water.

But why do we need this good idea? We are continually being told of the plight of the Canadian and USA wheat producers. They from time to time are paid NOT to produce wheat. Their governments face the awful problem of paying millions of dollars a year just to store the surplus wheat.

We don’t imagine Mr. Satin, a UN food technician, is going to be too popular with the Canadian capitalist class because according to The Observer, 19 February:

  Now officials are to give demonstrations In countries such as Sudan, Nigeria and Cuba to persuade bakers to give up wheat.

Socialists want a new society where everything is produced solely for human needs. A society where we don't store food while people starve. Now isn't that a better Idea, Mr. Satin?

Liquid Assets

Another example of capitalism's "ethics'' has been uncovered by some environmentalists who by happy chance found "confidential" papers which detail the cynicism of Britain's water authorities as they prepare for the lucrative privatisation of the water industry.

An article in The Guardian 8 February 89 dealing with these papers reveals the dismay of the authorities at the refusal of the European Commission to lower its drinking water standards and the attempts being made, with government help, to persuade the Commission to compromise.

The authorities are apparently:

. . . determined to overturn public concern about pollution standards In order to keep to the £7 billion sell-off’s tight timetable.

The article seems shocked that:

  . . . Top directors of water authorities appear to be more interested In the financial and political implications of flotation than the need to conform with European pollution standards.

Tut, tut. Imagine business men putting profit before safety. Whatever next will they ask us to believe In?

The Cowardly Lion

"Labour Chickens Out"  . . .  this was the front page headline in the Govan victory issue of the Scots Independent, the journal which supports the Scottish National Party. The story dealt with the Labour Party's sudden change of mind about elevating another Scottish Labour MP to the peerage in case they lost the ensuing by-election as well.

Doubtless these nationalists are right about Labour's lack of courage but who are they to talk?

Every year the Socialist Party In Scotland challenges the SNP to debate in public the issue of Nationalism versus Socialism. Invitations sent to their head office, local branches, councillors and MPs have either been ignored or turned down.

Maybe the animal which symbolises the Labourites is the chicken but which one most closely sums up the SNP - the Cowardly Lion?

Talking Dirty

"Profit Doesn't Have to be a Dirty Word" claimed the headline above a half-page advert in The Guardian (4th. March). The ad. informed us that £1,000 invested in Britain's first "ethical" unit trust had been turned into £2,714 in Just 57 months and "without hurting anyone".

What the "ethical" bit means is that investors' money doesn’t get invested in oppressive regimes like South Africa, the arms trade, animal experiments, etc., but only in ". . . companies with healthy track records in labour relations, pollution control and environmental protection". Oh well, that's all right then, isn't it?

But is it? There's still the little matter of how £1,000 became £2,714. Was it because these companies didn't pollute the environment or had good labour relations? Of course not, it was because their workers created wealth greater than their wages and salaries. They produced a surplus, part of which belonged to the unit trust and that's where the extra £1,714 came from.

Conscience-stricken Investors may think this legal robbery is "ethical" but to socialists profit IS a dirty word.

The Patriot Game

A recent decision to retain the Gurkhas should surprise no one. If we look back to The Observer of 12 February we can find the answer.

 Recruiting Gurkhas means an extra cost in travel permits for visits to their families in Nepal, who often survive on remitted wages. But the MPs found that the men still proved exceptional value in cash terms because of their much lower pay.

Cheaper cannon fodder! The old definition of a patriot is still true. One who wants YOU to die for HIS country!

A Suitable Case For Treatment

In Peter Thornton's book Decade of Decline — Civil Liberties in the Thatcher Years, he deals with an MI5 agent Cathy Massiter who was so upset at surveillance of NCLL, TUs and CND that she appeared on TV to express her concern.

Before resigning from the service Massiter had complained to senior civil servants that she considered the surveillance to be in breach of internal guidelines. She was told to see a psychiatrist.

And to think that the British Government complains about dissidents in the USSR being forced into psychiatric clinics,

About ourselves (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is the Socialist Party?

An independent political party which stands opposed to all others in this country, including the Labour and Communist parties. Our only links are with similar socialist parties in some other parts of the world.

What is your aim?

The replacement of the existing capitalist system of society by a new and different system we call socialism.

What is capitalism?

A system based on the ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth (land, industry, railways, offices and the like) by a section only of society who thus form a privileged class. The others, who in return for a wage or salary produce wealth for sale with a view to profit, make up the producing or working class. In Britain less than five per cent of the population belong to the owning or capitalist class. Most people — those who work in offices as well as those who work in the factories — are in the working class.

What is socialism?

A democratic world community without frontiers based on the ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth by society as a whole. Socialism will abolish classes and free all humanity from exploitation and oppression. The basis of socialism is this ownership of all the means of production by the whole community; control over their use will rest in the hands of the community through democratic institutions. Wealth will be produced not for sale or profit, but solely to satisfy human needs. This means the end of buying and selling and all the other financial and commercial institutions like money, prices, wages and banks. People will co-operate to produce an abundance of wealth from which they can take freely according to their needs.

Will everything belong to the State?

No. The State does not represent the whole community; it serves the interests only of those who own the means of production. State ownership or nationalisation is one of the ways in which this class controls industry. When the State takes over industries (like the railways and coalmines in Britain) it does so in their interests. State ownership leaves unchanged the class basis of society, the profit motive and the wages system, all of which socialism will abolish. Nationalisation is just State capitalism.

What system exists in Russia?

Russian society is part of world capitalist society. It shows all the essential features of capitalism: a class who control the means of production through their control of political power: another class forced to work for wages: production of goods for sale with a view to profit and the accumulation of capital out of profits. The same goes for countries like China, Cuba and Yugoslavia. They like Russia have State capitalism.

Do you want something like the kibbutzim in Israel?

Socialism can only be a world community without frontiers. It cannot be established in one country let alone on one farm. The kibbutzim do show that human beings can live without money and can work without wages, but their small scale means that what they can offer is very restricted so that young people are tending to leave them. In practice they have paved the way for the development of capitalism in Israel and some have themselves become capitalist institutions employing outside wage labour and producing for the market with a view to profit.

How do you advocate socialism should be established?

By the class of wage and salary earners, once a majority of them want and understand socialism, taking democratic political action to change the basis of society from the class to the common ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Why must there be a majority in favour of the change to socialism before it can be made?

Socialism, by its nature as a system involving voluntary co-operation, could only be kept going by those who really wanted it and knew what it involved. Any attempt to establish socialism without a majority first being in favour is bound to fail.

Do you repudiate undemocratic minority action to achieve socialism?

Most definitely. No leaders, however sincere or able, can lead a non-socialist working class to socialism. Leaders who take power while a majority do not understand socialism have no choice but to develop and administer capitalism, as has been shown in Russia and by the various labour governments in Britain. When a majority do want and understand socialism they have no need of leaders, but only to organise themselves democratically.

Why do you advocate political action to achieve socialism?

It is their control of the machinery of government that now allows the capitalist class to protect their privileged position as the owners of the means of production. In Britain it is parliament that makes the laws granting them property rights and it is the police and the Courts, and if need be the army, that enforce these laws. The socialist majority must win political power in order to remove the protection the government machine now gives to class ownership and to carry through the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production.

How do you advocate the socialist majority should win political power?

By using their votes to elect socialist delegates to Parliament and the local councils. A socialist victory in a democratically-run election would demonstrate to all that a majority were in favour of the change to socialism.

Why are you opposed to all other political parties?

All of them accept the capitalist system and believe that current social problems can be solved within its framework.

Why do you think that reforms of the capitalist system are not the solution?

These problems are caused by the class ownership of the means of production which all reforms leave unchanged. The policy of trying to deal with social problems one by one by reforms of capitalism is futile, as this is to deal with effects and not the cause. We call this policy "reformism" and are opposed to it.

But surely you are not against all reforms?

We are not opposed to reforms which may bring temporary relief to some workers, but we do not regard it as the task of a socialist party to propose reforms of capitalism. Were we to do this we could easily soon become just another reformist party. To avoid this danger we advocate socialism only.

Why have all the other parties failed?

Basically because capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interests of the class of wage and salary earners. It is a class system that can only work for those who own the means of production. Any party, be it Labour or Conservative, which takes power under capitalism is forced to run that system in the only way it can be and so is inevitably brought into conflict with the mass of people who work for a wage or salary. This has been proved time and again.

So it is not because the politicians are not determined enough or are incompetent or dishonest that they fail?

No. No matter how determined or able or sincere the members of a government may be they still could not make capitalism work for the good of all. The politicians fail because they have to accept the class system which causes the problems they are always promising to solve.

If you agree with these views or have any questions, please write to us or come along to one of our meetings

Economic policy: nothing new (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like other post-war Labour and Tory Prime Ministers Mrs. Thatcher is conscious of the long decline of British capitalism as a manufacturing power and anxious to reverse it. The extent of the decline is shown by the place of British exports of manufactured goods in the world total. In 1883 Britain's share was 37 per cent. By 1938 it was down to 21 per cent. Apart from a brief recovery to 29 per cent in 1948 when Japan and Germany were out of the market. it has gone on falling. In 1984 it was 8 per cent and Britain is now, on balance, an importer of manufactures.

While the 1987 Tory Election Manifesto told of "our manufacturers . . . traveling the globe with a new confidence" it would appear that Thatcher has no real hope of a recovery of manufacturing industry, and relies instead on the expanding so-called service sector (tourism banking, finance insurance and technical know-how) which, the Manifesto said, "generates a vast surplus of foreign earnings".

Denationalisation Measures

The same 1987 Manifesto made much of the governments efforts to attack monopolies and encourage competition.

On competition, the argument is that it increases efficiency, reduces cost and prices and thereby enables British industry to capture a larger share of world trade at the expense of other countries. It is the reverse of one of Keynes' arguments. Keynes held that competition for foreign markets was one of the main economic causes of war and advocated that government expenditure be increased so as to (as he believed) expand total demand in the home market and therefore make it unnecessary for British manufacturers to seek markets abroad. In fact, of course, increasing or decreasing government expenditure makes no difference to total demand in a country.

The traditional Tory policy for dealing with private monopolies was to nationalise them in the interest of the rest of the capitalist class. Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific shared the view that governments would be forced to adopt that policy. It was a Tory government in 1884 which passed the Act giving them power to take over the railways, intending to use it as a threat to deter the companies from exploiting their transport monopoly. Among later nationalisations supported by Tory governments were the telegraphs, the telephones cross-channel cables the BBC London Passenger Transport Board, Central Electricity Board and British Overseas Airways Corporation. And as late as 1943 Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had supported nationalisation all his political life, spoke in favour of extending it, saying in a broadcast:

  There is a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise especially in relation to monopoly. (Times, 6 April 1943.)

In the first post-war Tory government, elected in 1951, policy began to change. It declared a halt to further nationalisation, denationalised steel, and greatly strengthened the law to deal with monopolies, in this following the example of American governments since'the beginning of the century.

One of the factors leading to denationalisation by the Thatcher government has been the losses that have been incurred since 1945. While some have made profits most have made losses, and the overall loss has been enormous. D.R. Myddleton, Professor of Finance and Accounting, estimated in 1976 that the total loss on the nationalised industries as a whole since 1945, had been £25,000 million (Financial Times, 19 February 1975). And Professor Walter Eltis, covering the years 1961 to 1977, had this to say:

  The financial surpluses of the public corporations have at no point been sufficient to cover the interest costs on their accumulating debt in addition to wages and salaries (Lloyds Bank Review, January 1979.)

The losses have continued since 1977.

Continuing inflation

By the mid-seventies fast rising unemployment convinced the Labour government that the Keynesian belief that increased government expenditure increases employment is a fallacy. Prime Minister Callaghan said at the 1976 Labour Party Conference at Blackpool:

  We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that this option no longer exists (Daily Mail, 29 September 1976.)

At the same time the Tories under Thatcher were likewise rejecting the Keynesian “full employment" doctrine and adopting “monetarism". The present line-up is that the anti-Thatcher Tories, including the Heath faction, have remained Keynesian, as have the Liberals and SDP. and the Labour Party has gone back to Keynes.

Like the Labour Government 1974-79. the Thatcher government has already more than doubled the price level during its ten years in office. Governments in the nineteenth century and many economists (including Marx) knew quite well that the relevant factor in price stability is the amount of money (notes and coin) in circulation. If issued in excess of what is needed to carry out economic transactions then prices go up. If reduced below this level, as in 1920-25, prices go down. If kept in balance, as under the Gold Standard, prices are stabilised. Since 1938 the amount issued has been continually in excess and the present total is more than 30 times what it was in 1938.

When, in 1978, Labour Prime Minister Callaghan said that “the government was not going to print the money to finance inflation", and in 1979 Thatcher said "we will not print money", it may have seemed that they were both endorsing nineteenth century currency theory and practice. It was not so. When they talk of "money supply" they do not mean notes and coin but, predominantly, bank deposits. The government's advisers and most modern economists deny that the amount of notes and coin in circulation governs the price level, and the Bank of England in 1978 and 1979 (and in all the years since then) never ceased printing more notes and putting them into circulation.

Why the Labour and Tory governments have chosen to go in for half a century of inflation does not permit of a simple answer. There are three possibilities. The first is that they have done it out of pure ignorance. An example is the fatuous statement by Professor Milton Friedman to Thatcher that Karl Marx was a monetarist like Thatcher and himself.

The second is that the Treasury quietly points out to each Chancellor that continuous inflation has the great merit that it reduces the real cost of the interest payments on the national debt which have to be met out of the Budget.

The third is the one to which Keynes drew attention. Inflation is good for borrowers because, while interest rates rise when there is inflation, they rise less than the rise of prices. The biggest borrowers are the business community and farmers, both of whom have a lot of political pull and could influence government policy in favour of inflation.

Mid-Victorian values

The Thatcher government takes pride in the success it claims to have had in promoting home-ownership, proft-sharing and the "spirit of enterprise" which makes capitalists and workers willing to stand on their own feet instead of relying on state protection and assistance. What they don't admit is that this is as old as capitalism.

Better-paid workers, partly from choice and partly because rented accommodation was not available, have always aimed at owning their own houses. The first of the early type of building societies was set up in Birmingham in 1775 and there was something of a boom in Yorkshire in the early nineteenth century. In 1890 there were 2,800 such societies. The first reported profit-sharing scheme was in 1829. Their record is one of increase in every boom and decline in every depression.

In 1831 the Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published a piece of pure Thatcherite doctrine in a booklet on the results of machinery entitled The Working Man’s Companion: An Address to the Working Men of the United Kingdom. It advised the workers not to join a union or resist machinery but to prepare in advance to meet possible unemployment. Work hard, keep away from the ale-house and the gin shop and gambling and save part of your wages. When he loses his job the worker then "strikes into some new line of labour, or he resolves to see what his capital and labour together will do as a workman on his own account”:

When there is a glut of labour, go at once out of the market: become yourselves capitalists.

Thatcher may well have imbibed her philosophy from that mid-Victorian bestseller, Samuel Smiles. Among his popular works were Thrift, Workers Earnings, Strikes and Savings, and Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct. This last-named sold a quarter of a million copies.

Ups and downs of production

Governments like to be able to show that while they have been in power production has increased at record rates. The 1987 Tory Election Programme had this: “Britain today is in the seventh year of steady economic growth". It sounds impressive until it is remembered that in the first two years of Tory government production fell sharply. At January 1989 the total increase of industrial production since 1979 was less than the increase that took place in the previous ten years 1969-1979. When the next depression comes along it will fall again.

Thatcher however is confident that this time the boom really is here to stay. She has spelled out all the things required to guarantee no more depressions: Free trade, no inflation, low taxation and less government expenditure, weak trade unions and low wages, competitive industry, little nationalisation and of course a Tory government.

Early in the 1870s these guarantees were there. Free trade: highly competitive British industry; no inflation; low taxation (Income tax was 1¼ per cent against the present 25 per cent): government expenditure was only about 8 per cent of National Income against the present 40 per cent: real wages were far below present levels: the unions were small and weak and trade union law more restrictive: not much nationalisation and last but not least, a Tory Prime Minister, Disraeli.

So what happened in 1875? Here is the answer from a government publication, Industrial Relations Handbook, (the 1957 edition published by a Tory Minister of Labour) "A period of trade depression followed the year 1875 and lasted for almost twenty years".

Edgar Hardcastle

Order on the terraces (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may seem amazing that a government that speaks so much of freedom as the present Thatcher administration does should in practice be so authoritarian and restrictive. Amazing that is to anyone not acquainted with traditional government doublespeak. The 1987 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto declared that the election mattered more for our freedom than “any election since the Second World War".

Most people would like to have more freedom whether it be money in our pockets or just fewer signs around saying "keep off the grass", and of course, this is where the politicians' rhetoric comes in. But on a practical level keeping the wage slaves in line when there is so much to complain about requires control and discipline. As a result a vast state machine has developed with the aim of maintaining "law and order" and ensuring social stability. The armed forces, police. Special Branch. MI5 and others exist to back up the legal system which protects property from 'anti-social' behaviour such as theft or criminal damage.

The ID Card Scheme

Sometimes though threats to order and stability arise which cannot be readily dealt with and require special attention. The present Government has decided that football is currently in need of some of this attention — hence the ID Card Scheme. The Football Spectators Bill, if unamended, proposes that entrance to all Football League matches and Cup matches will be restricted to holders of identity cards. The ID cards will carry a photograph and the name of the team supported by the holder and they will only be able to be obtained in person with proof of identity. Any holder of a card who is convicted of a "football related offence" will immediately have the card withdrawn for a period of two to five years. The supervisory body for the scheme, the Football Membership Authority. will also have the power to impose a ban on membership even if no football related offence has been committed.

The ID card scheme is therefore designed to keep known “troublemakers" away from matches, hopefully leading to a massive drop in violence. However, it ignores a number of important things. Foremost among these is the fact that most of the violence does not occur in the grounds anyway — it takes place outside the grounds and in the town and city centres. Rigid segregation of fans and the use of closed-circuit television has reduced violence in the grounds to low levels while organised gangs of young thugs battle it out outside. As an increasing number of hooligans don't even bother entering the grounds in any case there is absolutely no way that the proposed Membership Scheme could do what the government wants it to do — stamp out football related violence.

What is more, banning fans from grounds has not stopped them from traveling to matches in the past. The present writer has been witness to a number of instances where away supporters have been banned from a ground but have been admitted in large numbers on the advice of the police for fear of the trouble they may cause outside if they are not let in. Who is to say that those who have their membership cards taken off them will not continue to travel to matches to provoke trouble?

Daft Reform

Indeed, it is likely that the ID card scheme may end up causing more trouble than it prevents. At the moment it has been estimated that it takes three seconds for a paying supporter to pass through the turnstile. However, when the ID card scheme is introduced it is likely that the checking of the card will mean that it will take eight seconds to pass through the turnstile. If a thousand people pass through it will take them five thousand seconds longer than at present — in other words nearly one and a half hours (When Saturday Comes, No. 23)! If this is not likely to lead to crushes and crowd violence it is difficult to imagine what will. Indeed, this difficulty was partially noted in the Minister of Sport's Working Party's Report on Football — Membership Schemes, where although it was argued that photographs on the ID cards were essential, "there would be unacceptable delays if turnstile operators were asked to check photographs as well''

The Football Spectators Bill is arguably the daftest reform to be proposed by any of the Thatcher governments, and there have been many contenders for that particular title. It is so ill thought-out that it has been opposed by clubs, supporters and police alike. Outside of the Cabinet and the dewy-eyed Tory backbenchers eager for promotion at the word of Mrs T.. it has been almost universally condemned.

The reason for this condemnation has ranged from the restrictions that fans feel are being placed on them, the unworkability of the scheme which has concerned the police and the financial aspect which has worried the clubs. It will not only be costly to instal computers and the electronic card readers but as the entire scheme is likely to prevent casual supporters from attending matches it will adversely affect attendances. This will in turn affect income, and the majority of clubs who already run at a financial loss may have their very existence called into question. On a commercial level individual football clubs don't so much compete amongst themselves but compete as a whole against other sports and entertainments which have in recent years become increasingly popular at football’s expense. Discouragement of the casual supporter is the last thing that the football clubs want.

The Other Hooligans

A large part of the problem is that the government sees hooliganism that has attached itself to football as a mere aberration within society as a whole, and therefore as something which can be reformed out of existence. However, in the extremely unlikely event that the ID card scheme eradicated football violence hooliganism would only move more noticeably than it already has done to other sports such as cricket and rugby league. For although football matches provide a particular outlet for hooligan behaviour, they are not the cause of it. Capitalist society both breeds violence and sanctions its use. "Legitimate" violence such as the Falklands War or the police beating people up during the Miners' Strike is seen as entirely necessary and acceptable whereas soccer violence is something totally different which cannot be tolerated. It even used to be argued that a reintroduction of National Service would provide discipline for the hooligans and channel their aggression. The absurdity of this was shown during the 1988 European Championships in West Germany when a large proportion of the English fans arrested were in fact members of the armed forces stationed there.

Hooliganism is a product of a society which values aggression, competition and violence above peace and co-operation. It is only when this aggression gets out of hand and threatens stability that it becomes a real concern. What better example is there of the sort of ruthless competition extolled by Thatcher and Colin Moynihan. the Minister for Sport, than the frightening activities of the football mobs vying for the position of "top dogs” every Saturday?

The ID card scheme is as pathetic as it is hypocritical. The Government is not interested in the freedom of working class people and is prepared to restrict the limited freedoms and liberties that we have in a sad attempt to solve a problem which the system that it upholds so clearly threw up in the first place.

Perhaps in the light of increasing drunkenness and late-night violence we can expect the self-proclaimed lovers of freedom in Westminster to issue us with ID cards to enter pubs in future (complete of course with a photograph and the name of your local). The queues to get past the electronic card reader on New Year's Eve don't bear thinking about.

Dave Perrin

50 Years Ago: May Day before the 1939 War (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no practical effective internationalism except that which springs strong and self-reliant from the workers' community of interest, sweeping across national frontiers like a cleansing wind blowing away bestial hatreds and fears. The future of the human race demands the destruction of the national barriers which divide the peoples of the world. Not the defence of national independence but the destruction of capitalism must be the watchword of those who would build for the future of the human race and at the same time help to stem the flood of war in which capitalism threatens to engulf civilisation. The doctrine that each group of workers should rally round their own ruling class in defence of the "national interest" only plays into the hands of the warmakers in every country. Just as British and French workers gain hope and courage whenever they read of German and Italian workers who have resisted the mass propaganda of their rulers for war and nationalism, so also the internationally minded workers in Germany and Italy would be inspired to further brave efforts if they heard that their British and French comrades were refusing to ally themselves with Anglo-French imperialism: and correspondingly depressed to learn that many of those workers were falling into line behind their capitalist rulers For, make no mistake, Europe is not on the verge of war for the sake of Nazism and democracy, but for the sake of a re-division of the spoils of the last great capitalist war.

(From an editorial "May Day and the War Clouds", Socialist Standard, May 1939.)

Socialist candidate in European Elections (1989)

Party News from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is planning to contest the Tyne and Wear constituency in the elections to the European Parliament that will be taking place on June 15.

Our candidate will be standing on an exclusively socialist programme against Alan Donnelly. Labour candidate who is replacing the sitting Labour MEP, Joyce Quinn. As the constituency covers 8 Westminster seats (Gateshead East. Houghton and Washington. Jarrow. Newcastle East, South Shields. Sunderland North. Sunderland South, and Tynebridge) over half-a-million voters in an area of Britain where this has never happened before will be offered the opportunity of expressing agreement with a socialist society based on common ownership and democratic control and the application of the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".

Further details, offers of help and money write to: Tom Oakley. 44 McCracken Drive. Wideopen. Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE13 6NG

Alternative socialist alphabet (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Action: What makes you angry? The destruction of rain forests? The threat of nuclear weapons? Apartheid in South Africa? Do you believe that support for, or membership of, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, African National Congress and Amnesty will help solve the problem? There are so many problems and causes that call for attention. Where will you find the time to write all the protest letters, go on demonstrations and earn the money for all the donations? Don’t try to alleviate the effects. Act against the cause.

Brave New World Throughout history the idea of a perfect world has captured the imagination. Thomas Mores book, Utopia, published in 1516, described an imaginary island with a perfect social and political system. The term "Utopian" is used to describe what is thought to be unpractical. Ask yourself, whose interest does it serve for you to think that a better society is an impractical proposition?

Class: No one admits to being working class. It conjures up pictures of flat caps, three ducks on the wall, breeding pigeons and keeping coal in the bath. Even being thought lower class is more acceptable. Ask anyone, they'll tell you that Britain is the most class-ridden country in the world. This may come as a surprise, but there are only two classes in society If you have no means of providing the necessities in life other than by selling your labour power for a wage or salary, you belong to the vast majority, the working class. If, however, you are one of the minority who own the means of production and distribution, who get their wealth from exploiting the working class, then you belong to the capitalist class. Wouldn't you rather live in a classless society?

Depression: Haven't you ever said, “I'd rather be rich and miserable than poor and happy?". Everyone gets depressed with life at some time. Isn't one of the major causes of depression money? Or rather, the lack of it. The incidence of depression is highest in an economic slump. Capitalism is cyclical. Economic depression follows boom as surely as night follows day. Economic depressions result from over-production. What kind of society is it that is capable of producing enough goods to satisfy everyone's needs, but which refuses to let those who need, have, if they cannot afford to pay?

Exploitation: When your teenage children come home after a week working for a fast-food chain, and shows you their wage-packet, you may describe that as exploitation. But every day, all of us who belong to the vast majority of the propertyless working class are exploited by capitalism. By paying workers less than the value of what they produce, capitalists appropriate surplus value. Profits come from the unpaid labour of the working class. How long are you prepared to be exploited?

Freedom: “Man was born free and everywhere he is chains”, wrote Rousseau. Capitalism gives the world the freedom to go hungry, thirsty, homeless and naked. Tommorow, when another day of wage-slavery begins, ask yourself, how free am I?

Government: Essential to the smooth running of a modern civilisation. Everyone knows that. Why. without it we'd have anarchy! A society without government? Unthinkable. Who tells us so? Politicians! Abolish government? You'll be wanting to abolish money next!

History: It's all about remembering the dates of battles isn't it? It’s about Kings and Queens and Generals and it’s boring. Wrong. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. History is about you and me, not just about those who control what goes into the history books.

Idleness: You must have heard it at work, or in the pub. or in the post office. “Idle sods, they don't want to work. It's you and me what's keeping them while they're out enjoying themselves all the time. I don't know where they get all their money to smoke, drink and gallivant.” Dole scroungers? Or capitalists? 

Joke: Have you heard the one about the planet where starvation, famine, misery, homelessness and the threat of nuclear extinction reign? All because a minority owns most of the wealth. It's a very sick joke.

Krypton: The planet that Superman comes from. But superheroes don't exist. No one's going to save you in the last reel from the clutches of capitalism. You don't need "heroes", you need socialism.

Leaders: Only sheep need leaders, to fleece them. English soldiers in the 1914-18 conflict were described by a German General as “Lions led by Donkeys". Don't be misled into believing that civilisation would descend into anarchy without leaders. Leaders need you more than you need them.

Money: Something you never seem to have enough of. Money plays an essential role in capitalism. Money dispenses with the need to barter commodities; with commodity-production money serves as a universal equivalent which allows commodities to be exchanged. When goods are produced for need, not profit, money becomes unnecessary. Abolish your ration of poverty! 

Nationalism: My country right or wrong? When this planet is viewed from outer space there are no frontiers dividing one country from another. Whose country is it anyway? Yours, or the capitalist ruling class who own most of the wealth? Bugger the flag, sod the national anthem, stand up for one human race!

Opportunities: One of the biggest regrets in life is to reflect on what might have been. So rather than worry over the poverty of the pension, yet another hospital being closed, and the general awfulness of being a worker nobody wants, find out about socialism. The opportunity hasn't passed, but it's up to you to ensure that it isn't missed.

Politics: It is said that politics and religion are the two subjects of conversation to be avoided if you don't want to cause an argument. Religion is a device of the ruling class to help keep the workers quiet, but politics affect everyone. Only by capturing political power through the ballot box can a class conscious working class bring about socialism.

Questions: Go on, ask yourself, is this really what life is about?

Revolution: Socialists do not advocate manning the barricades. Those who tell you that violent revolutions have resulted in socialist states, like Russia, are kidding you and themselves. Violent revolutions merely result in the continuance of capitalism.

Status Quo: Not just a pop-group. Capitalism is a bit like theories about the origin of the Universe. Some say the Universe has always existed. Capitalists would like you to think that about capitalism. If capitalism has "always been" there's no point in trying to change it. Or is there?

Taxes: The policies of the present government and its attempts to privatise the health service, education, electricity and so on, are designed to reduce the burden of taxation for the capitalist class. Who benefited most from tax cuts in the 1988 budget? Taxes are not a working class problem, capitalism is.

Untiring efforts: If some Dr. Strangelove doesn’t blow us all to hell first, socialism can eclipse capitalism. But capitalism will not collapse of its own accord. Socialism has to be worked for, untiringly and unceasingly.

Value: Socialists do not argue for the abolition of capitalism because it is unfair, immoral or evil. Capitalism continues because the vast majority of the working class are unaware that they, the majority class, are economically exploited by a minority property owning class. Wealth is created by the labour of the working class; wealth which, in a socialist society, would belong to the whole community.

Wages: The price an employer pays for your labour-power. Also your ration of poverty, because your ability to purchase the commodities produced by other members of the working class is restricted by the amount of money you earn. Trades unions call for a fair day's pay for a fair day’s work. Socialists call for the abolition of the wages system.

Xerox: A great little capitalist invention, photo-copiers. A wonderful tool to help in the spread of socialist ideas.

Yoke: As surely as the oxen are tied to the plough, capitalism is a burden that oppresses the working class. Unlike the oxen, the means of releasing yourself from bondage are in your hands. Socialism is the road to freedom.

Zeal: Socialists aren't zealots but zealous, defined in my dictionary as “Fervent in advancing a cause, and persistent in their endeavour". Are you going to wait until capitalism's ruthless pursuit of profits makes the world uninhabitable? Time is running out. The need is for socialism, now. Isn't it a cause worth striving for?

Dave Coogan

Letters: Will capitalism collapse? (1989)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will capitalism collapse?

Dear Editors.

The sense of the last paragraph of my letter (March Socialist Standard) was completely lost because of your typographical error. I repeat the question I asked you which I notice you did not answer. How can capitalist production which only operates through the prospect of profit, continue to operate prior to the political capture of power when the socialist aim to abolish the profit system becomes itself a serious prospect once the socialist movement reaches a significant size? I think it is important that your readers should have an explanation so that they may judge for themselves the feasibility of obtaining an entirely new economic system more or less overnight without some change in economic relationships having occurred prior to this apocalyptic event.

Louise Cox

Haslemere

Reply:

Sorry about the error that made the last sentence of your letter incomprehensible. As to the point you wanted to raise, you appear to be saying that the growth of the socialist movement will bring about the economic collapse of capitalism before a socialist majority has come into being.

We have heard this sort of argument before. but we don't see why the socialist movement merely growing to a “significant size" should make profit prospects disappear. An analysis of the way capitalism works discloses, perhaps unfortunately, that the capitalist system will be able to stagger on, even if this involves increasing government intervention, until it is abolished by the conscious political action of the working class.

In any event, the socialist mode of production and distribution, i.e. production geared exclusively to meeting human needs and free access for all to goods and services according to their self-defined needs, cannot gradually evolve within capitalism. Whatever may be the political, economic and social effects within capitalism of the growth of the socialist movement, production for use — and the consequent disappearance of money/commodity relations and wage labour — cannot begin until after the socialist movement has democratically won control of political power and established the common ownership of the means of production by the whole community.

Editors.

Independence and Culture

Dear Comrades,

The brutal history of capitalism has often involved invasions from abroad as part of the process of its local development. Cromwell's occupation of Ireland, with all its savagery, was an early instance. In Marx's day, when capitalism was still young and insufficiently widespread in its establishment, it might have been valid to argue (and he did) that its further extension was a progressive necessity. Indeed at the time of the Crimean War Marx regarded the possibility of a Tsarist victory as such a retarding factor in historical development that he felt able to look favourably upon the opposing Anglo-French and Ottoman Turkish forces. By the twentieth century the world dominance of the capitalist system was no longer in the balance even if to this day large areas of the under-developed world have yet to undergo their own thoroughgoing changeover to commodity production and wage- slavery.

This means that the world-wide establishment of socialism no longer hinges upon the yet further spread of the iron heel of capital. But the state-capitalist bureaucrats of Moscow and Peking have not let this inhibit them where the extension of their control over Afghanistan or Tibet has been concerned. It is true that as the harbingers of industrial society the Russian imposed regime in Kabul and the Chinese colonial administration in Lhassa represent modernising trends as did British and French imperialism in their day. But in recognising this and in our repugnance for the superstitious, women-oppressive and backward-looking old orders we must not ignore, as I feel the article "Independence no benefit" in the April issue did, the harshness of imposed foreign ways and language by the latest conquerers. So whilst the notion of “national independence" is rightly shown as being, from the working-class point of view, merely a change of rulers imagine how any of us would feel if the purchase of a postage-stamp, the reading of a "news" paper or our kids' schooling required the use of Chinese! Our rejection of nationalist delusions ought never to show insensitivity to the valid concerns of oppressed people. Moreover. it strengthens the appeal of Socialism to show that in contrast to the imposed uniformity and centralisation of commodity production we aim for a way of life which, of its nature, fosters cultural freedom and diversity.

Yours for the revolution 

Eddie Grant 

London NW4

Editorial: Thatcheritis (1989)

Editorial from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now ten years since Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham, became Prime Minister. Since then she has earned her place in the Guinness Book of Records. First woman Prime Minister, longest-serving Prime Minister, only Prime Minister to win three successive general elections. She has also earned a reputation for being heartless and indifferent to the lot of ordinary people and concerned only about helping the rich. No wonder she is so intensely disliked by so many people.

She has indeed been the head of an openly pro-capitalist government that has deliberately set out to attack the working class. Her government has legislated against the unions — the only effective weapon workers have to defend themselves under capitalism — and reduced the payments the State pays to workers not in employment. It has ended subsidised housing and made workers pay for a whole range of services which in the past were available on a free basis (the latest being eye tests). It has reintroduced the Victorian distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor and again made submission to a Means Test a condition for access to most State benefits.

It would, however, be a mistake to attribute the sufferings workers have had to endure over the past ten years to the actions of one particular capitalist politician, however ill-intentioned, class-prejudiced and domineering she might be. There is no such thing as Thatcherism as something different and worse than ordinary capitalism. What Thatcher has done is to have presided over the operation of capitalism during the worst part of the slump phase of its economic cycle. During such a period redundancies and unemployment reach a maximum and governments are forced to slash social benefits as a way of lowering the tax burden on the reduced profits of capitalist enterprises.

When Thatcher endlessly repeated “There Is No Alternative” she was in fact displaying a clearer understanding of how capitalism works than did the Labour and other opposition politicians. There really was no alternative (apart from socialism, of course). Any government of capitalism during the worst part of a slump would have had to behave in essentially the same way. In short, it was capitalism not Thatcher that has been responsible.

What has distinguished Thatcher has been style rather than content. Whereas other politicians, even Tory ones, would have apologised for having to take the measures capitalism was imposing on them, not Mrs Thatcher. She applied them enthusiastically, seeing them as steps in the cultural revolution from “dependency culture” to “enterprise culture” she believes it her mission to carry out. She has openly proclaimed her aim to be the complete eradication of “State Socialism”, by which she means the theory and practice of the Labour Party — nationalisation, government intervention, redistribution of wealth from rich to poor by means of improved State benefits, subsidised housing, transport and other services — what should more properly be called state capitalism. What she wants is “to roll back the frontiers of the State” and allow the freest possible operation of the forces of the market. In this respect she is more of a Free Trade Liberal than a Tory.

The Labour Party in power has indeed been a failure — the Labour governments of the sixties and seventies not only failed to improve working class living standards as promised, but worsened them for many workers while at the same time mismanaging the finances of the capitalist State by massively inflating the currency — but this has not been the failure of Socialism. It has been the failure of reformism and state capitalism to which we in the Socialist Party have always been opposed.

Unfortunately, this has been seen as the failure of Socialism and has allowed the intellectual defenders of capitalism to seize the initiative. The Free Marketeers re-emerged from the dustbins of history to preach laissez-faire, the survival of the fittest (the profitable) and death to lame ducks and other weaklings and to proclaim that capitalism, profits, inequality, the market were no longer dirty words. Indeed their views can almost be said to have become the official State ideology under Thatcher. Faced with this intellectual offensive, the leaders of the Labour Party have conceded defeat and now promise to run the market economy better than the Tories. Few believe them and most of their activists remain nostalgic for state capitalism, but in any event capitalism whether private or state can only run in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of a profit-taking class.

So workers should not be taken in by the so-called Thatcherite Revolution which is essentially only window-dressing, one of a number of possible ideological justifications for what any government of capitalism would have been forced to do under the same circumstances. Indeed, the Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand have pursued the same policies, not excluding the denationalisation measures particularly associated with Thatcher.

It is for this reason that we say that Thatcherism is a myth and refuse to fall for calls for the return of a Labour government or some anti-Thatcher coalition. Capitalism without Thatcher would remain capitalism, and it is capitalism and not Mrs Thatcher that is the cause of the problems facing wage and salary workers.

Why the Left Needs a Thatcher (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, Thatcher is dead, the victim of a rotten egg that she told the workers it was safe to eat. The offending chicken has been ritually slaughtered by the Guildford Association of Conservative Ladies. The funeral cortege passes slowly through the streets of London, which have been cleared of beggars the night before. Behind the coffin march vast rows of stockbrokers and workers with red-rimmed glasses and portable telephones; they have gone from deepest Surrey and deepest Sussex, from Hants and Herts and Bucks and Beds. In Dorset the firm selling black armbands (made by cheap labour in Hong Kong, of course) is expecting a boom. The cops and soldiers, saddened by the loss of an Empress, pacified by the overtime bonus paid out for funeral duties, march tearfully. Behind them shuffle the silly old proles who will weep at anything: they wept when Charles and Di got married and when the Queen Mother swallowed a trout bone (who would have believed she’d outlive Thatcher) and when The Firm got Dirty Den in East Enders. They cried with joy when they received the letter telling them that Maggie was going to let them buy their council slum, and with fear when a letter came informing them that the whole estate had been bought by a property company on the Isle of Dogs. The media whores march along, forgiving the old girl for her excesses; after all, she was a character to write about. And who is this tailing on to the procession? They are weeping more than anyone. They feel deserted, they have lost a cause, Satan has descended to Hell and the children of righteousness have no-one to blame for their misfortunes. With Thatcher goes into the grave Thatcherism: a decade of leftist illusion being carried away to be chewed up by the worms. What will they do without her?

Doing what the system demands
The British Left needs Margaret Thatcher. Bankrupt of ideas or vision, all that is left for them to do is detest hers. The Left rarely talks of capitalism—except, as at the Labour conference last year, when Kinnock said that his government would have to run it better than the Tories. The aim of the left-wing has always been to establish state capitalism, the profit system planned centrally by a miracle-performing state. Eight Labour governments have demonstrated that the miracle cannot be performed. Whoever runs it, the capitalist system must exploit and oppress the working class; that is its inherent nature. So, the debate on the Left is about how to run capitalism. And to do the job as ruthlessly and callously as the system demands has come to be called Thatcherism.

Most of the Thatcher policies are hated by the Left for good reasons. Thatcher is a militant class warrior. Not even The Daily Express would ever have called Wilson or Callaghan that. Laws have been passed in the past ten years which have hurt workers and blunted our instruments of self-defence. The unions have taken a battering; services like the NHS, which Labour had boasted was the cream of the reformist gains, have been attacked and then attacked again. It is understandable that many workers see in Thatcher the personification of all that is wrong in society. The question they must ask themselves is, Would society have been a much better place to live in had Thatcher never come into office? The answer, based on the hard evidence of history, is that Thatcher has not been governing capitalism, but that it has governed her. Just as it governed the Labour government before she came to power. That is why the last Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, introduced the policy of monetarism as a means of cutting the state budget in a bid to deal with inflation. It was under the last Labour government that expenditure limits within the NHS were first introduced. It was the last Labour government which took on the low-paid workers of NUPE and NALGO in the winter of 1978—when Callaghan told the unions that they would have to take cuts in real wages. Back in the mid-Seventies there were “Fight the Cuts” rallies being organised across the country. Whose cuts were being fought but those of the last Labour government? It was under the last Labour government that unemployment doubled to the then “wholly unacceptable” level of one and a half million.

And those Thatcher policies which Labour did not implement before 1979, they are now ready to accept as their own. Before 1979 Labour was opposed to British membership of the Common Market. Now they agree with Thatcher that Britain should stay in. Labour was opposed to selling off council houses. It is now Labour policy to sell them. Labour was opposed to selling off nationalised services, such as Telecom. It is now official Labour policy not to take back such services from private hands, lest the votes of the shareholders be lost. Labour made noises of opposition to the monstrous Tory laws aimed to limit union powers. Kinnock is now on record as opposing any substantial alteration to those laws in the event of a future Labour government. So, where does the Labour Party actually disagree with the wicked Thatcher who is supposed to stand for everything that they are against? Membership of NATO? Both parties agree that Britain should stay in. Troops in Ireland? Both parties want to keep them there. The nuclear bomb? With passionate unilateralists like Neil Kinnock, the men at the Pentagon need have no fears that both British parties of capitalism will be with them on the day. The chief differences between Thatcher and Kinnock are these: she admits to being a swine who will do whatever the system requires of her, he lies about it; she is in power, he is not.

What Lesser evil?
Some of the Left are of the view that capitalism has been fundamentally changed by the Thatcher years. It is no longer the same system. It is now a new phenomenon called Thatcherism. It is, to be frank, very difficult to know what such people are talking about. The Communist Party’s latest policy document New Times, claims that we are now living in a period of “post-Fordism” in which the old working class has disappeared and been replaced by a new Thatcherite breed. The CP’s response to these “new times” is to seek some sort of broad, popular front reform movement, comprising every brand of political timewaster from the SNP to the SDP, with a view to offering the voters a better lifestyle under the system than Thatcher has offered them. The entire theory is flawed by two basic mistakes.

Firstly, the working class never was just that group of people who wore cloth caps and worked on the line at Ford. “Post-Fordism” is a mourning at the funeral of a class which has not disappeared at all, but is now exploited in new areas of the economy. There are vastly more workers in the service industries now than in manufacturing, and over the last ten years the move away from making to selling has been a characteristic of the European and US economies. But the workers in these countries are still wage (and salary) slaves, legally robbed by their employers. You don’t have to be a miner to be in the class struggle.

Secondly, the assumption that the way to fight a system is to concentrate all of your forces into defeating its leader of the moment is as foolish politically as it would be militarily for the Warsaw Pact to imagine that it could win the next world war by knocking off the current head of NATO. The Communist Party theorists argue that the crucial battle is at election time when a non-Tory alliance must win the day and slay the Thatcherite dragon. But what if a new dragon in the form of an Owen or a Kinnock or a Hattersley is elected instead? Surely, it is the job description and not the person appointed to do the job which is the real issue. The point of the battle should be to put an end to the dirty job of running capitalism. But, disloyal to the working-class interest in its death throes as much as it was at the outset, the CP is of the view that it is better to have capitalism run by “the lesser evil”. And who are they, who spent most of their political history telling us that Stalin was “the lesser evil”, to advise the workers on such matters? The foolish tactical plans of Professor Eric Hobsbawm for a broad anti-Thatcher alliance are to the cause of socialism what Groucho was to Marxism.

Back in 1979 the Socialist Party took the same principled position that we take now. We are opposed to capitalism and all who seek to run it. We do not want reformed capitalism or the profit system better managed. We are not looking for “nice” leaders or any kind of leaders for the workers to follow. The wages system is against the interest of the workers and only workers’ self-emancipation will solve the problems that we face. We were told not to waste our time upon such revolutionary ambitions. Many on the Left urged us to join the Labour Party and achieve what little could be achieved. After all, that was the party of the workers, so we were told. The present writer was even urged by Neil Kinnock no less (when the latter was Shadow Minister of Education and the former was a persistent questioner at a meeting) to join the Labour Party and help swell the ranks of “real socialists”. We were told that with just a little harder push Tony Benn would take the leadership and set the world ablaze. Those who joined the Labour Party in 1979 have not had much for their subscription money. The Tories have won three elections, with millions of trade unionists voting for them, despite the fact that the union leaders count them in as affiliated members of the Labour Party. Foot was elected as Labour leader (to loud cheers from the Left) and proved to be an utter failure; then Kinnock was elected as the Left’s choice against Hattersley. Now Kinnock is detested by the Labour Left—before he has even had a chance to betray them in power.

Utter lack of principles
Most political commentators, and most of the more candid Labour leaders, do not think that the Labour Party will win the next general election. Indeed, a split in the Labour Party is on the cards. Where Labour is in power locally it has shown that it can be just as ruthless at cutting essential services as the Tories. In short, after ten years of degrading and unprincipled compromise of the few principles that they once had, the Left stands without much hope, without much support and with a few cranky theories of further opportunism about joining with Dr Owen, the Greens and the Nats to form a reformist alliance. The so-called hard left retreats annually to Chesterfield to lick its wounds, praise the achievements of Gorbachev and listen with devotion to the guru, Benn. The other hangers-on to the Labour Party (who have urged workers to vote for them in every election) have turned into parodies of themselves. The Workers’ Revolutionary Party is now busy singing the praises of the Russian dictators and the SWP has degenerated further than ever, existing now as a group engaged in a few single-issue reform campaigns, such as opposition to the poll tax and—the sign of real senility—support for the Khomeni regime in its territorial conflict with Iraq. The Left which warned the Socialist Party that we would be left behind while they stormed the fortress has been left seriously wounded, largely by its own utter lack of principles.

That is why the Left needs a Thatcher. It needs that hideous voice and that look of contempt that leaves you in no doubt that you are being politically abused by the woman even when she is simply telling you the time. The hope of the Left is that hatred of Thatcher will cover up the fact that the opposition has nothing to offer in her place. The Socialist Party does have a clear alternative to the mean-minded narrowness of what Thatcher stands for. And when Thatcher is cold in her grave and another despicable faker is mouthing her lies, the call to the workers to transcend this system of misery will be as fresh and as urgent as ever.

Steve Coleman

Thatcherism: a PR gimmick (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is hard to believe this now, but in 1984 there was some doubt about whether Margaret Thatcher would carry on for long as prime minister. Of course she did not share these doubts and when she declared her intention of carrying on she did so in words which were not only unmistakeable but also illuminating:

I believe that five years ago the British people made me prime minister because . . .
I believe that I was re-elected with an overwhelming majority last year because . . .

This assumption of the status of a sort of president, elected by direct vote instead of relying on the support of her party MPs, could not have been re-assuring to the Tory hopefuls with nervous ambitions to succeed Thatcher. For one thing, she was asserting a line of contact with the voters which was unhampered by those inconvenient and irritating people she had given ministerial jobs to and who would like to insist that they should somewhere, somehow, come into the reckoning. But five years later, with a decade of residence at Number Ten behind her, there are no longer any doubts or questions: with no substantial opposition to her, Thatcher stays as Tory leader for as long as she chooses. The government is now very much her own creation, purged of almost all dissension. If any of her ministers seem to be in a muddle, to be cutting a less than masterful figure in public and so undermining popular respect for the government, Thatcher will quickly move in to take control, setting up some committee in which she is in the chair or herself taking on some negotiation. This may mean that ministers like Paul Channon and Colin Moynihan — even the Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe — are pushed to one side but it does give the voters the impression that decisive action is being taken on some pressing problem and that, in the long run. protects support for the government.

Thatcher Publicity Machine
A minister in a former Conservative government, Charles Hill, once said that the ‘most riotous fun" he ever had was when he was on the opposition benches: "then we could make speeches without responsibility and make proposals that hadn't got to be carried out". Well the 1979 Tories had had a lot of that kind of fun, such was the confusion and impotence of the Labour government in its struggles to protect the interests of British capitalism. Labour's battles with the unions over pay claims had exposed the fact that, no matter how close the ties between the union leadership and a Labour government, their power to restrain rises in workers' living standards had limits. Even so. the Tory manifesto in 1979 was by no means dogmatic or extreme as a statement of their intentions or as an analysis of the problems of British capitalism:

Some of the reasons for our difficulties today are complex and go back many years. Others are more simple and more recent. We do not lay all the blame on the Labour Party: but Labour have been in power for most of the last fifteen years and cannot escape the major responsibility.

There was no mention of any large-scale privatising of state industries although the manifesto did state a clear intention to cut back the bargaining power of the unions, to allow council tenants to take out a mortgage on their home and to look into the administration of the National Heaith Service (some of whose employees may now be surprised to learn that in 1979 the Tories planned to “cut back bureaucracy" in the NHS). A reasonable view of the 1979 election, then, is that the working class in Britain did not so much vote positively for a Tory government as against another dose of the Labour Party in power.

If there is such a thing as "Thatcherism" it has developed since then, as Tory Party propagandists have realised how successful a vote-winner is the image of a strong and resolute leadership and how reality can be distorted to give the impression of a clear-sighted, consistent policy for dealing with the affairs of British capitalism. This is an important political factor. The vast majority of voters are members of the working class, who depend on selling their working abilities for their living. Capitalism works against their interests but they continue to support it, which is another way of saying that they are unaware of the facts of life in this system: they are vulnerable to many kinds of deception. Among the most potent of these is the delusion that workers and their employers have some common cause, that if British capitalism is prosperous then so are British workers. Thatcher's publicity machine has effectively exploited this ignorance: for example she has been depicted as tirelessly travelling abroad in order to handbag foreign leaders who, as foreigners are liable to, have designs on pulling a fast one on the eminently reasonable and patiently peaceable British nation. Of course sometimes handbagging is not enough in which case it becomes necessary to send some British workers dressed up in uniforms and armed with an array of weaponry to do rather more than handbag — to kill other workers and to be killed themselves. But even this, as in the case of the Falklands war, did not damage Thatcher's standing: indeed the evidence is that it had such as appeal to the more absurd depths of patriotism among workers that it actually helped her to win the 1983 election.

Since then there has been an impressive sequence of successes for this government. They have got rid of a number of local authorities, such as the GLC. who were proving troublesome. Although they claim to stand for less state interference they have clamped down some rigid controls on local councils from Westminster. They have privatised a number of state industries, in the process allowing workers to buy a few shares, which again bolstered the delusion of a common national interest. They have killed off the assumption, which at one time had the status of an orthodoxy, that union leaders should hold a central and continuing place in decision making about the economy of British capitalism. They have passed laws which savagely restrict strikers' ability to carry out their part in an industrial dispute; the miners who once fought so long and so bitterly against pit closures now have no choice but to accept them, as British Coal decides. They have, while claiming to improve state benefits for the sick and unemployed, actually cut them back and in some cases, such as people under 18, have virtually abolished them. They have quickly learned to dress up inconvenient statistics so as to present an untrue picture, for example through various ruses which effectively remove workers (like those under-18s) from the right to apply for benefit and so reduce the figures of unemployed. They have promoted the idea that workers should stand on their own two feet (as if we ever did, or were ever able to do. anything else) rather than depend on the state machine to pamper them with its schemes of health care, social services and benefits.

Recession Gains Strength

The list is a very long one but it is a mistake to ascribe it to the whims of one person or to the collective malevolence of a government — to this thing called Thatcherism. Many of this government’s policies were in response to, and were possible because of, the recession. For example, since 1945 successive governments have tried to curtail the power of the unions. The Heath government of 1970-74 began its life with stated intentions towards the unions little different from those which Thatcher's government have been able to carry out. During its final spell the first Wilson government was split over the proposals in Barbara Castle's white paper In Place of Strife, which were aimed at weakening union power. All these attempts came to grief because the British ruling class felt they could not afford a fight to the death with the unions. This situation was changing, as the recession gathered strength and as the unemployment figures mounted, as the Labour government of James Callaghan came to its end. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in that Cabinet. Denis Healey, is in fact credited — if that is the right word — with being the first Thatcherite Chancellor, such were the policies he was implementing and planning for the future. Thatcher came to power as the recession deepened; one union after another was brought to heel and finally the miners, who were always expected to provide the strongest opposition, were beaten.

This type of experience has not been confined to this country. In France, the allegedly socialist President Mitterrand, whose advent to power was greeted so ecstatically by the French workers. did not take long to reverse the policies on which he had won the election. Under the pressure of the problems which the French capitalist class were going through, Mitterrand outdid Thatcher in the zeal of his policies of retrenchment and attacks on working class living standards. It is clear that Thatcher likes no-one so much as a politician who agrees with her; she and Mitterrand are said to have a cordial personal relationship — as she also has with Gorbachev and had with Reagan. 

So this Tory government is not an aberration in the administration of British capitalism, nor a breach in its continuity. It is simply an appropriate response to the conditions of its time. Although it assumes a character of infallibility in fact, in its own terms, it has made numerous blunders and its history is not one of steadfastly pursuing its objective but of a normal amount of inconsistency. For example in her five year anniversary statement Thatcher claimed one of her government's achievements to be that interest rates were at their lowest for 16 years. Be that as it may (for interest rates are not something affecting working class conditions in any significant sense) the fact is that they are now at their highest for seven years and likely to rise even higher during the immediate future. Thatcher claimed in 1984 that low interest rates were a sign of her government's success; how then does she assess the high rates which are now in operation?

Prejudice and Ignorance

The point is that she is not the Iron Lady of Tory mythology. Her achievement (which by any standards is impressive enough, if diabolical) is the guile with which she and her public relations caravan have seized on the historical opportunity to present her in that way. Thus even what have been called her knee-jerk reactions — which are actually finely tuned to exploit working class prejudices and misconceptions about society — are able to be depicted as responses from strength of conviction and rectitude. When another politician might flounder and fumble in face of a crisis Thatcher responds in what appears to be a direct, firm and clear sighted manner. Against all expectations of her, she is able to tap into the issues which preoccupy the voters, which does not mean that she speaks in their interests. In an interview in 1980 with Hugo Young, the political correspondent of the Guardian, she set out how she sees herself:

Deep in their instincts people find what I am saying and doing right. And I know it is. because that is the way I was brought up.

Prejudices and ignorance are, by their very nature, difficult to argue against. When they are in harmony on both sides of the class barrier it becomes even more difficult to deal with them. Perhaps that is why Thatcher seems to think that she is invincible. if not everlasting. However the cosy, pernicious circle in which one prejudice links with another to entrap human progress can be broken by the working class making a proper assessment of their standing in society, of the fact that the unimaginable wealth of a minority rests on the exploitation of the majority and that that majority suffer all manner of indignities and impoverishment. After ten years of Thatcher it may be hard for some people who are desperate about the world, to realise that her rule will not last for ever. But it won't. And if anyone thinks that is reason to rejoice let them take the argument a stage further. Capitalism won't last for ever either

Ivan

From Russia with profit (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the heading “Soviet Millionaire' in free-market fight", the Daily Telegraph (24 March) gave prominence in their foreign news to the Russian capitalist, Viktor Aksyutich. The newspaper did so on the grounds that he promised to sponsor "free-market candidates" in his country, to fight what he described as "conservative members" of the Russian ruling-class who are currently trying to cling to the state-capitalist monopoly of large-scale production and distribution and its resulting benefits.

Another reason for media interest is that Aksyutich is a director of a co-operative in Moscow, one of the consequences of the current reforms there, which has in eleven months of operation created capital of £2.5 million pounds. Indeed, the diversity of this co-operative's business operations is quite interesting since it includes cement, timber, computers, theatre groups, video shops, religious publications and management schools.

After Aksyutich's meeting with Alan Clark, Minister of Trade, to discuss joint capitalist ventures and current de-regulation in Russia which makes his kind of business operation legal, he told assembled journalists that he is under no illusion as to who are the "real enemy” to his company's future, naming it as the Russian Communist Party itself.

And like all fractional disputes within a ruling-class or the power struggle emanating between those on the periphery of political power and those wielding it for their own purposes, Aksyutich, and those like him who want political representation as a means to articulate their propertied interests, are now committed "to use our financial muscle to sponsor candidates for future elections". So in a manner reminiscent of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, Aksyutich and other "closet capitalists", as the Telegraph called them, must search for a political party. Glasnost and Perestroika are seen as instruments in this process.

Workers in Russia should pay close attention to this struggle for political power and the representation demanded by new legal forms of private business, no matter what they are called, and learn from history to have nothing to do with it. Glasnost and Perestroika are structural reforms within Russian capitalism and have nothing to do with the interests of the Russian working-class. Private capitalism, whether co-operative or corporate on the one hand, or state capitalism on the other, all exploit workers within the degradation and servility of the wages system. Instead, workers in Russia, and those elsewhere in the world should, where possible, organise politically in their own socialist parties and rapidly push the class struggle to its final conclusion with the abolition of world capitalism itself and its replacement with Socialism.

Richard Lloyd