Sting in the Tail: So What’s New? (1992)

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

So What’s New?

America is determined to remain the world's sole unrivalled superpower and is ready to guard against any Western European challenger, It is claimed.

The New York Times, quoting a Defence Department document, said the US must convince potential competitors "that they need not aspire to a greater role".

Instead, a single superpower will use its military might and "benevolent domination" to deter any challenger.

The US would "selectively address" those wrongs which threatened America and its allies' interests.

ITN's Oracle 8 March

Breaking into Jail or Militant Martyrdom

Tommy Sheridan, the leading light in Scottish Militant's anti-poll tax campaign, contested Glasgow Pollok from his cell where he is spending a six month sentence for defying an interim interdict.

According to his election leaflet Tommy is, as every good Trotskyist aspires to be, a "hero” and a "martyr": He runs in charity marathons and if he spots any local laden with shopping bags he will stop and say "c'mon, jump in". Mother Teresa isn't in it.

In case all this wasn't enough to impress the voters then much was made of his "university education” but Tommy's trump card was to be his list of reforms which he would pursue "when elected”. These included a Scottish Parliament, the re-nationalisation of privatised Industries, mortgage-to-rent conversion, and many other measures which would leave capitalism untouched. Incidentally, the word "socialism" didn't appear once.

And what was the result of all the martyrdom and goodies offered to the workers of Pollok? Tommy still lost by nearly 8,000 votes.

Jumping the Queue

In a report in The Herald (6 April) the medical correspondent reported that nearly 2,000 staff, most of them nurses, stand to lose their jobs in Glasgow's psychiatric hospitals over the next four years. This would cut nursing staff by half.

The unit general manager, Mr Tim Davison, said of these cuts that they would serve to increase further the "relative efficiency and competitiveness" of the unit.

Competitiveness in treating mentally-ill workers? This is the economics of the mad house indeed!

So while mentally-ill people roam the streets lacking even the minimum of health care, patients are being turned away from psychiatric hospitals. As the waiting list grows there is always one way to beat the system. According to a psychiatrist working in Glasgow:

  "They have to be placed somewhere else. Occasionally, you get the situation where there isn't a bed available in Glasgow at all. You have a suicidal patient you want to admit, and you have to leave him to turn up at out-patients next day, hoping he hasn't killed himself In the meantime."

Empty Slogans

"My Vote", "It's Time For Labour", "The Best Future For Britain". These were the election slogans of the three big parties, and the Socialist Workers Party had to have one too.

Remember some of their past slogans, gems like "Labour To Power Minus The Bomb" and "Vote Labour But Without Illusions"7 This time it was "Vote Labour And Build A Socialist Alternative”.

The one constant factor here is their urging workers to vote Labour, but with such a talent for slogans surely the SWP ought to be in advertising — just think of the mountains of soap powder and the rivers of lager they could be selling!

Well, maybe, but we can be sure that one slogan we'll never get from the SWP is "Abolish The Wages System".

A Deeper Slump

Capitalism's long-promised economic recovery will eventually come but things may get worse before they get better.

This would be due to the international nature of capital and in particular to the recent plunge in share prices on the Tokyo stock market. From a peak of 39,000 in 1989 the Nikkei share index has fallen to below 17,000.

These falling share prices mean falling profits for Japanese banks which own vast amounts of shares, and it is these banks which are responsible for providing much investment worldwide — 24% of British financial assets are held by Japanese banks and they provide 14% of the ECs direct inward investment (The Guardian 8 April). They also fund America's huge budget deficit and we all know that when America's economy sneezes then the world economy catches cold.

If these falling share prices mean that Japanese banks severely reduce their lending then the recession will deepen. Of course all of this may not happen; the Nikkei climbed by over 1,200 points in one day (9 April), but it shows that events in one part of the world influence events elsewhere and it also shows that the economic plans made by businesses and governments are — well, just plans.

Rich Pickings

The popular press never tire of telling us about working class scroungers. Those workers who actually have the effrontery to claim social security payments while working part-time in a public house, or doing a spot of gardening on the side.

Little or nothing is ever reported about the gigantic legal frauds carried out by members of the ruling class. The Observer Magazine (5 April) did however carry a report about a group of well-heeled landowners who have a nice little earner.

Under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act many of them are coining it in. This was an Act intended to keep some land free from the overdevelopment that is the norm of capitalism. All the owner had to do was threaten to develop the land and the Act would provide him with lavish compensation for doing nothing.

John Grant of Rothiemurchus owns 25,000 acres of Scottish wilderness. The government are about to give him a payment of £670,000 for not developing it and he is claiming an annual payment of £92,000 on top of that!

What about pension rights? (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we looked at figures provided by the Inland Revenue and concluded that although the distribution of all forms of wealth was unequal enough—the top 1 percent own 18 percent, the top 10 percent own 53 percent while the bottom 50 percent own a mere 6 percent—the distribution of capital, as forms of wealth yielding an unearned income, was even more unequal. The top 1.5 percent of wealth-owners with £200,000 or more owned 36 percent while the bottom 65 percent owned virtually none.

Others have used a different set of figures to reach a different conclusion: those for the ownership of shares traded on the London Stock Exchange which show that only about 17 percent are now owned by private individuals (see graph). The rest are owned by commercial and financial institutions of one kind or another, in particular by insurance companies, pension funds, unit trusts and investment trusts or “institutional investors” as they are collectively known as. Since a large part of the funds of these institutions comes from small investors, the claim is made that these figures mean that the capitalist class now own only 17 percent of capital in Britain and even that the remaining 83 percent is owned by the working class.

Whatever may be the significance of the decline of the private Stock Exchange investor—what it means is that the person of the capitalist has become even more redundant, not only to organising production but now also to the specifically capitalist function of finance, making it clear that what we are up against is an impersonal system—it does not alter the figures for the distribution of capital given in last month's article.

Just because the rich no longer invest directly on the Stock Exchange to the extent that they used to does not mean that they don't do so indirectly. They too have bank accounts. They too have insurance policies (Maxwell was reportedly insured for £20 million). They too resort to investment trusts. According to the Inland Revenue figures, those with £100,000 or more (not enough at the lower end, it is true, to be a real capitalist but still only 7 percent of the population) own not only 85 percent of company shares (not just the 17 percent mentioned above but also of those held via unit trusts and investment trusts), but also 47 percent of bank accounts and 47 percent of insurance policies as well as 81 percent of other financial assets (mainly government and local authority bonds) (see Table 1).

Money invested in insurance policies, personal pensions, unit trusts, banks and building societies is taken into account in the Inland Revenue statistics—and they show that those with £100,000 or more own 61 percent of all capital. The one exception is the money in pensions funds, but would this alter the figures and who does it belong to anyway?

The Inland Revenue in fact publishes three sets of figures for the distribution of wealth. The first covers the distribution of "marketable wealth”. The second adds in occupational pension rights. The third adds in both occupational and state pension rights. The results of these additions, for what they are worth, for 1989 are given in Table 2.

Non-existent billions

The third set of figures—that incorporating state pension rights—is completely worthless. The government actuary has estimated the total value of state pension rights in 1988 to be £573 billion (Economic Trends, November 1991). As anybody who works or has worked acquires state pension rights this amount is assumed to be evenly divided amongst the adult population. So half, or £286.5 billion, is attributed to the bottom 50 percent. This is three times the total “marketable wealth” owned by this category and an average of £13.000 a person, so, by this simple device, increasing their average holding from £4000 to £17,000! Since only 1 percent of the total, or £5.73 billion, is added to the total wealth held by the top 1 percent, the overall effect is to considerably reduce the degree of inequality in the figures for the distribution of wealth. The share of the top 1 percent falls to 11 percent and that of the top 10 percent to 38 percent while that of the bottom 50 percent rises to 17 percent.

But this exercise is quite fraudulent. This figure of £573 billion—equal to more than a third of “marketable wealth”, which is wealth that really exists and is recorded in the first set of figures in Table 1—is purely fictitious. It has no real existence. There are no real assets “owned by the working class” and invested on the Stock Exchange that correspond to it. The figure is obtained by converting the flow of income represented by present and future state pensions into a notional lump sum. This is legitimate for some accounting purposes, but what is not legitimate is to go on to assume that this sum actually exists and to attribute it to individuals, in the event mostly workers, as part of their wealth.

State pensions in Britain are paid out of taxation. They are what the National Accounts statisticians call a “transfer payment”; someone else’s income is taxed and then transferred to state pensioners as their income. As taxes ultimately fall only on property incomes there are real capital assets somewhere which, through the exploitation of productive labour, yield the income out of which state pensions are paid. But these assets belong not to workers with state pension rights but to the rich property-owners on whom the taxes to pay the pensions fall.

The absurdity of converting a transfer payment into a notional capital sum and counting this as part of the wealth of the recipient can be seen when other transfer payments are given the same treatment. Income Support, for instance. It, too, could be converted into “wealth" and used to show that the poor are not really poor at all. In fact, since in many instances Income Support is higher than the basic state pension and since, being paid to people below pension age, it is payable over a longer period, the “wealth” which would be attributed to many on Income Support would be much greater than the extra £13,000 state pensioners are supposed to possess. Because attributing wealth of, say, £20,000 to someone on Income Support would be dismissed as absurd, the government's statisticians have not dared to do this calculation. They’d be laughed to scorn, as they should be for doing the same thing with state pensions.

But what about occupational pensions, those paid by employers? Most occupational pensions are not transfer payments since they are paid out of a fund that really does exist and which really is invested, among other places, on the Stock Exchange. The government actuary estimated the value of occupational pension rights in 1988 to be £441.6 billion, or on average £21,800 for each of the 20 million people in occupational pension schemes (Economic Trends, November 1991). But the total value of all pension funds is only £330 billion. It is the inclusion of civil service pensions, which are transfer payments, that is the main explanation for this discrepancy. So these must be taken out before we can even begin to take the figures seriously.

Once this has been done, there still remains £330 billions worth of real capital. Who does it belongs to? Legally it is the property of the trustees of the pension fund, who are required by law to manage it in the best financial interests of the scheme's existing and future pensioners. But this is not the whole story.

Employers are not obliged to set up a pension scheme for their employees, so those that do can be assumed to have done so in what they perceive to be their own best interest; in other words, with a view to enhancing their profits and profitability. Such factors as winning the loyalty of white collar staff, attracting and keeping skilled labour, and having a generally contented, and so more productive, workforce enter into the calculation.

If an employer wants to set up a pension scheme the law lays down that the money to pay present and future pensions must be kept quite separate from the rest of the firm's capital. Otherwise of course the temptation would be there for the employers, when they needed more capital or when they get into financial difficulties, to raid the money in the pension scheme. In most schemes the trustees are employer representatives wearing another hat and, although few go as far as the late great Robert Maxwell, they sail as close to the wind as they can. The law permits up to 5 percent of a pension fund to be invested in the employer's business. Employers can also quite legally appropriate a part of any surplus in their pension scheme:

  Companies throughout the country are wondering if they can. or should, follow Lucas by siphoning cash from their own pension funds.
 The group, based in Birmingham, has swelled its coffers by £150m. using a new rule giving companies access to what has been an untouchable source. The money came at a useful time for Lucas, whose automotive arm has been hard hit by the recession: it reduces the ratio of shareholders’ funds to company debt from 39 to 16 per cent.
 Attempted raids on the pension fund are a favourite tactic by finance directors looking to shore up balance sheets and are usually the catalyst for heart-rending schemes in which pensioners, having given the company the best years of their lives, feel distraught. insecure and betrayed . . .
 The freeing of the Lucas pension fund surplus results from a change to tax legislation governing occupational—that is, funds linked to employers’—pension schemes. (Independent, 26 November 1991).

There have also been cases where firms have been taken over by rivals hoping to get their hands on the surplus in their pension fund.

So, who do pension funds belong to? As can be seen, a strong case can be made for saying that they belong to the employers who set them up. The existence of the scheme benefits them; they have the final say in how the scheme is run and what benefits it provides; they pay most of the money into the scheme and, as the Lucas case shows, they can get some of it back when there is a surplus. On this view, the funds belong to the employers but are kept, by a legal device, in a fund separate from the rest of the capital of the business.

That there are serious difficulties in saying that pension funds are owned by the workers who receive or are due to receive payments from them is in part recognised by the Inland Revenue itself which excludes them from the figures it issues for the amount and distribution of “marketable wealth”. Their grounds for doing so are that, although in their view the capital in pension funds can be attributed to individuals and then counted as part of their wealth in the same way that they do for state pensions, these individuals don't exercise full ownership rights over it— they can't sell it or bequeath it to their inheritors; in short, they can't “market” it. To get round this the Inland Revenue has invented the strange concept of “non-marketable wealth” as wealth owned by individuals but over which they cannot exercise the basic right of ownership, namely, to sell it!

Workers have a more sensible conception of what occupational pensions are, seeing them, not as part of their “wealth”, but as deferred wages paid by their former employers.

Adam Buick

Next month: Do the rich get richer?

Story of an election (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the end the workers voted for the devil they knew. Kinnock, whose readiness to sell his soul and any physical parts of his anatomy to the devil as the price for power, finished with neither principles nor power. Ashdown, the shady middle man, ended the day firmly in the middle of the wilderness. dealing cards in a game which nobody needed to play with him.

The Greens suffered what future historians may decide to call The Fate of Kinnock: after a heated Conference debate as to whether they should be pragmatic and voter-friendly or say what they meant, the opportunist majority won, but the workers refused to offer the Green politicians the remotest lick of power. The Natural Law Party, created in 1992 with the backing of hippy millionaires and the ability to buy their way on to TV stations which have refused electoral broadcasts to socialists since TV started, proved that you can buy a few hundred votes in a few hundred constituencies if you have enough money and enough voters with enough madness.

It was a dull election which was dominated by media rambling and boring polls which proved to be wrong. It is too unkind to wish that the pollsters, together with the now obsolete kremlinologists, enjoy a short while on the dole queue followed by a long while doing something useful with their lives?

The essence of the election was negativity. The Tories did not win; indeed, most voters opted for parties other than Major’s. The Tory election campaign, backed by nearly every newspaper, was designed to scare workers against voting Labour. The Labour Party, wedded to the market and virtually the same in policy terms as the Conservatives, used most of its fire attacking the wicked Tories and presenting slick, sick ads with film stars and no ideas. As ever, the Liberals played it dirty. The most interesting poll of the election showed that negative motivation amongst younger voters outnumbered positive reasons for voting choice by three to one (Guardian, 12 March).

The socialist campaign

The Socialist Party decided to contest the London seat of Holborn and St Pancras. The campaign, organised by Camden branch, owed its success to enthusiastic support from many people, both members and supporters of the party. Manifestoes were printed by the party printers on our own presses and delivered free by the Post Office. Thousands of posters and stickers were printed and displayed. Open-air meetings were held in Camden Town. Kentish Town. Brunswick Square and Lincoln’s Inn. A loudspeaker car toured the constituency blasting out somewhat different messages from the other parties. Three different types of leaflets, in addition to the manifesto, were printed and delivered across the constituency. One thousand extra copies of the election issue of the Socialist Standard were distributed and so were many more back-issues. An eve-of-poll rally in Conway Hall had standing room only and was followed by a less formal gathering in a nearby bar where those interested met and talked with us. It was hard not to notice us in the area: the campaign is but a beginning of our serious work in Camden where we are determined to make the Socialist Party a force that the defenders of capitalism will be unable to ignore.

It was not all cheer and beer. The campaign had its down points and these told us a thing or two about how the capitalist system works. This party, which is hostile to both the market and to the rule of bureaucrats, was more than once the victim of both.

First, the market and the election. For the days after the election was called we roamed the constituency looking for an election office to rent. There was no shortage of empty shops in prime sites, but a combination of ridiculously high rents and lousy premises kept us out in the cold.

Finally, we found a shop which was affordable and more than half decent. The price was fixed with the agent and we arrived on the first Friday of the campaign (three weeks from the election day) ready to set up for action. A complication had arisen, said the agent: a well-known property company was the owner of the shop and was uncertain about letting us use it for “political reasons”. No Socialists Wanted Here. This is called democracy. We were told to wait for the directors to think further on the matter, but gently suggested that they jump somewhere where the water is less than fresh, and by that same Friday evening we moved into a shop in the less convenient area of Chalton Street, off Euston Road. The election office was transformed from a slum into a pleasant environment and was used efficiently for the three-week campaign.

Bureaucratic interference in our campaign came from the Post Office who told us that our manifesto, which had been stamped and approved by them, could not be delivered because it advertised our election rally. We pointed out to them that our last manifestoes had advertised meetings, and that the Post Office stamp of approval was placed right next to the rally announcement. They accepted that they were in the wrong, but not before wasting two days when the manifestoes could have been distributed by them. We are now in dispute with the same bureaucrats concerning several thousand manifestoes which they failed to arrange to distribute in the Kentish Town area.

Honest Politics

As ever, we made it clear to our fellow workers that while it is in their interest to vote for our candidate, we did not want their votes unless they were socialists. We asked the workers not to vote for us unless they agreed and they obliged: we won 175 votes.

Little can be said about our vote, but, for the psephologically-minded, here are a few points worth thinking about—“just for fun”, as the man with the silly swingometer might put it. Firstly, 175 votes equals 0.4 percent of those who voted, or four voters out of every thousand. It is a higher percentage of the vote than any national election we have contested for over twenty years, and since we were up against the Greens, the Natural Law Party and a Leninist outfit, as well as the big three parties, we may presume that our votes were not all mere protest votes but represented genuine support for our unequivocal socialist manifesto.

Secondly, even if we assume that not all the votes were as sound as we would like them to be, even if we halved the number of votes and then projected it across the country (assuming that socialist consciousness is not innately higher in Camden than elsewhere) we would have had 50,000 genuine socialist votes. If such a calculation is reasonable, it is amusing to think that there are already twice as many socialists in Britain as there arc millionaires!

Thirdly, the tactic of Leninist opportunism has been discredited by our result. Standing against us was the Revolutionary Communist Party, a disreputable Leninist sect. Being opportunist tricksters, they employed the old tactic of standing under the name of a front organisation: “Workers Against Racism". Yet, despite their reformist campaign and their efforts to appeal to populist single issues, the Socialist Party’s undisguised principles won more votes than them. This was not only the case in our constituency: the Socialist Party won more votes than any of the Leninist candidates standing in London constituencies. In times past parties like the Communist Party told us that appealing to the workers on the basis of tactical reformism was the only way to win votes. It is gratifying to note that honesty was respected more than tactics.

As for the other Leninist sects, their position in the election was just as disgraceful. Their call was to vote Labour. Workers News, the paper of the “Workers International League (Leninist-Trotskyist Ten- dency/Britain)” had as its election headline: “Kick Out The Tories! Vote Labour . . . But Reject Kinnock's Cowardly Policies”. The election headline of Workers Power stated “Vote Labour—But Organise To Fight!”. Rather like telling workers to jog on the M1, but remember to take some bandages.

As ever, the barmiest Leninist nonsense came from the SWP whose 4 April issue of Socialist Worker (the paper for those students who can only achieve a Leninist level of consciousness) had the following headline: “Major Out. Vote Labour. But Build A Socialist Alternative". Of the Labour Party, which they urge workers to waste their votes on, the same issue states that:

  the word socialism is not used once in labour’s election manifesto. Labour leaders have hardly uttered it throughout the campaign. Labour's priority in recent years and in its manifesto has been to appease big business and the bankers. (Our emphasis)

So, here is a so-called socialist organisation bemoaning the fact that Labour never speaks about or stands for socialism and instead supports the interest of the class enemy and therefore workers should vote for them.

In order to diagnose the symptoms of this political insanity (as well as put socialist leaflets into the hands of workers attracted to it by the pseudo-socialist title of the SWP), we attended their rally in our constituency where they were urging workers to vote for the party of “big business and the bankers” against the Socialist Party. Their speaker, one Alex Callinicos, a politics lecturer from York University, declared how delighted he was that Labour was ahead in the polls and how workers must be persuaded to vote Labour in order to learn that a Labour government will attack them just like the Tories!

SWP meetings are stage-managed and most of the “questions" from the audience take the form of pre-arranged harangues from members of the cult. The SWP is a party of confused capitalist reformism and urges workers to vote Labour "without illusions”. Interestingly, the rather less confused. but equally non-socialist Financial Times came out on election day with exactly the same recommendation to vote Labour but without illusions.

In place of leaders

Our candidate did not stand as a leader or potential leader. What he called for was a democratic socialist mandate. All of the other parties called on the workers to follow rather than think.

The manifesto of the Natural Law Party informed its readers that "our candidates have demonstrated greater orderliness of brain functioning, indicated by EEG coherence; and greater command of Natural Law, indicated by improved mind-body co-ordination—Yogic Flying”. On the basis that these self-styled superbrains can fly through the air in ways that would have left Lamont and Smith standing in silent awe, it behoves the floating voter to examine the economic section of the manifesto of their local floating candidate: "The Natural Law Party upholds the principle of free-markct economy".

Not to be outdone by such spectacular activities, Frank Dobson, the elected Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, performed the much-admired circus feat of The Disappearing Man: he ran no meeting in the constituency throughout the campaign and appeared on BBCTV on election night saying that he had spent the best part of the campaign touring Britain.

Should he ever extend his tour into the constituency which political ignorance has made his, he might like to consider that there are two as yet unacknowledged challenges to debate awaiting him from the Socialist Party and there are 175 local voters who would like to see him respond to the genuine case for a socialist transformation.

Steve Coleman

Election Result

Abstentionists 23.863: Dobson (Lab) 22,243; McHallam (Con) 11,419: Horne- Roberts (Lib-Dem) 5.476 Wolf-Light (Green) 959: Hersey (NLP) 212; Headicar (Socialist Party) 175; Lewis (Trot) 133.

Letters: Crime statistics (1992)

Artwork by George Meddemmen. 

Letters to the Editors from the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crime statistics

Dear Editors,

As we witness the second highest increase in reported crime statistics since records began in 1857—up by 16 percent in England and Wales, and up by 120 per cent since the Tory government took power—it seems almost customary now that with them should come the time-honoured, trite and pathetic reasons.

Some commentators point to a lack of parental responsibility, low educational attainment standards, and even the influence of television. Roy Hattersley, the Shadow Home Secretary, missing the point as usual, said “the truly appalling figures were the result of ministerial inactivity, insufficient police officers and an inadequate crime prevention programme." (Guardian, 10 March).

The best John Patten, the Home Office Minister of State, could do this time round was to suggest that we take too few precautions and that “we must not forget who is to blame. The only people to blame are the criminals”. (Guardian, 10 March).

But after 13 years of Thatcherism/Majorism, did anyone really think we would witness a reduction in crime? Crime is an inevitable aspect of capitalist society and its component parts, inequality, exploitation and rampant individualism, which were highly recommended by Mrs Thatcher herself.

We live through times in which the rich have become richer and the poor poorer; in which there are more homeless people than at any time in living memory; when falling profit rates have been responsible for factory closures, bankruptcies, redundancies and unemployment, and when thousands of homes have been repossessed.

If anything, crime statistics reveal a growing protest against alienation and powerlessness. David Owen, Chief Constable of North Wales, was right when he commented that “we live in a materialistic and acquisitive society” (Guardian, 20 December 1990).

Under the ground rules of capitalism, only those with enough money have access to the benefits of civilization. Take an underpaid youngster, working for a pittance, who lives on a run-down inner-city housing estate with few social amenities, and with even fewer prospects. Everywhere they go they are reminded of their position—in the shops they walk past with the goods they can’t afford, in the souped-up cars that whizz past them, and even in the television adverts they view, portraying sunshine families going into orgasm over a bowl of cereal. They live in a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog society that they can’t comprehend. As Engels observed in his The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844:

  It was not clear to his mind why he, who had done more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole . . . Theft was the most primitive form of protest. (Panther edition. 1969, p. 240).

For so many, the pangs of alienation and powerlessness, coupled with that sense of betrayal and dashed hopes born of the broken promises of the governing capitalist class, have never been so bitter. Engels’s words still ring out a century and a half after they were penned:

  There is . . . no cause for surprise if the workers, treated as brutes, actually become such; or if they can maintain their consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most glowing hatred, the most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power. They are men so long only as they burn with wrath against the reigning class. They become brutes the minute they bend in patience under the yoke, and merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break the yoke, (pp. 144-5).

Crimes against property make up 94 percent of all crimes. In socialism property crime would be non-existent. With common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution, and an end to the money system, there would be no incentive to steal what could be given for the sake of asking. For instance, at present millions of machines lie idle in factories. In socialism these could be operated by those willing to do so—the present-day unemployed and those who do unnecessary work—producing goods not for profit but because people wanted them. Bulletins informing people of the availability and quality of goods and their outlets would replace advertising. Burglaries and car theft would be crimes confined to the history books. Robberies in a moneyless society would be unimaginable.

Crimes against the person, currently up by three percent, would significantly diminish. Many are committed under the influence of alcohol, and as inebriation is often an escape from the harsh realities of everyday life there would be less incentive for people to numb the pain of their existence.

Crime, however, is not only inevitable under capitalism it is also necessary. By highlighting crime statistics, crime that is said to be committed by working class people (let’s forget fraud and tax evasion by big business), attention is diverted from the real culprit and on to workers caught up in the mess created by their “betters".Thus, the ruling elite find the pretext to enforce more law and order which in the long run helps maintain their ideology and power.

John Bissett 

Hebburn, Tyne & Wear

What choice?

Dear Editors,

As society’s technological knowledge advances it would seem only logical that the long-lasting lightbulb and the re-usable match would be available everywhere but I haven't seen many of them either (Scorpion’s comment on my letter to the Guardian in your March issue). This would seem rather at odds with an ideology which places such a high priority on "freedom of choice”. However when such an ideology has deployed and is prepared to use a weapon which gives me and millions of others who have no wish to be consumed by a nuclear war no choice whatsoever, it is in fact being entirely consistent.

David Bishop

Nottingham

Obituary: Dave Conn (1992)

Obituary from the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

To those of us who remember him as a quiet, kindly, jocular figure at socialist meetings, the sudden death of Dave Conn was reason for real sadness. Dave’s involvement with the Party was in Hackney where he was enthusiastic in his efforts to create a society without money, nations or states. Never a one-dimensional socialist, Dave was a keen listener to many kinds of music— especially live jazz—and also a collector of rare comedy records. He had the unimposing capacity to advocate revolutionary ideas and share a joke; to support others in their efforts to debate and organise, and to entertain us at private gatherings with his quite remarkable skill on the accordion. Those who knew him liked him. Our condolences go to his partner, Cissy.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: An Open Letter to the Director General, BBC (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

We note that your news and current affairs department allocated two hundred journalists to cover last month's British general election. Some spent the duration of the campaign following the three big party leaders around the country; others attended the daily news briefings by the three big parties; some reported from marginal constituencies; others paid careful attention to the now discredited poll results. We assume that you would justify this as a useful expenditure of journalists' time in covering what the BBC tells us is a democratic election.

The Socialist Party was formed in June 1904. We contested our first local election before the Labour Party was ever officially formed. Whatever attitude you might have to our clear-cut case for world socialism and nothing less, we trust that nobody at the BBC would try to dismiss our party as either incoherent eccentrics or insincere publicity-seekers. Since 1945 no election year has passed without the Socialist Party mounting a campaign. Lack of funds prevents us putting up more candidates than one; in the recent election we stood in Holborn and St. Pancras. The right to stand in an election costs £500 and we have no rich businesses directors or union chiefs to supply such money for us. Standing in an election means more than having our name printed on the ballot paper. If elections are to be more than nominally democratic, the contestants must have the chance to put their case to those who are to vote. Neither locally nor nationally was one minute of air time devoted to our campaign or our message by the BBC in this recent election. Why not?

Permit us to anticipate your reply. There are agreements determining that only parties receiving enough votes to win seats in the previous election or contesting fifty or more seats in this one may have an official election broadcast. Small parties like ourselves must do our best to make "news". The BBC is not intentionally discriminating against the Socialist Party.

As for the election broadcast carve-up. into which our political opponents cynically and undemocratically join, we can only note the absurdity of the situation. For example, prior to the recent election the SDP was given a broadcast, on the basis of its 1987 vote, even though the party no longer officially exists. More absurd still, the Natural Law Party, a crankish cult backed by a few millionaires and formed only this year, was able to pay the £25,000 required to stand fifty candidates and therefore had an election broadcast on BBC TV and radio. Their right to such a broadcast rested on the £24,500 higher price that they could afford to pay than our mere £500. Is this the best way to determine the democratic dissemination of ideas?

As for "making news", we accept that there are cheap stunts that we could have performed which might have won us two or three minutes precious BBC time. We leave such electoral follies to the likes of "Lord Sutch" and others whose contempt for democratic and reasonable debate seems to make them attractive to TV producers. We are a thoroughly principled and peaceful party, but had we used our campaign to threaten bombing campaigns or mob violence that would doubtlessly be deemed "news" and we would be invited to explain our threat — if only so as to indict ourselves in public.

We note that the loser in the West Belfast constituency was given more than a little TV attention, regardless of the absurd media ban on Sinn Fein, when it became clear that the result of Adams losing his seat could well have had immediate military consequences. In Europe neo-fascists receive TV coverage for making disparaging racist statements. In this country left-wingers, in and out of the Labour Party, are often given BBC coverage disproportionate to their size because of the outrageous and politically embarrassing policies they sometimes espouse. Are we to assume that the price of "making news" would be for our party to descend to such a level? If so, the price will never be paid. If it is not "news" that a party stands in the election with the object of winning majority support for the establishment of a moneyless, frontierless, stateless society, then we shall have to continue to conduct our publicity without the aid of the BBC.

The question of whether the BBC's lamentable failure to give any coverage to our party and its ideas, in or out of election time, is intentional is not the issue. Our protest does not rest on any conspiracy theory. Nor do we seek to reform the BBC. Wc do not expect money-dominated elections to be fair. We leave it to the good sense of the workers, whose ancestors fought for the vote, to decide whether or not to give a democratic hearing to the case for a sane alternative to the profit system. In the meantime we are willing to publish any response which you may wish to make.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Political Parties and the Workers (1992)

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

Only Socialism can guarantee the conditions of a life worth living for all. Because its establishment depends upon an understanding of the necessary social changes by a majority of the population, these changes cannot be left to parties acting apart from or above the workers. The workers cannot vote for Socialism as they do for reformist policies and then go home or go to work and carry on as usual. To put the matter in this way is to show its absurdity.

Socialist ideas are not acquired merely by the experience of hardships and tragedy under capitalism. They must be propagated and learned. The party of the workers, therefore, cannot be anything less than a Socialist Party; its task, the conversion of the working class to the principles of Socialism. Nor can it at present be much more. (. . .)

So long as the workers do not comprehend the necessity and meaning of a revolutionary social change they will have no choice but to leave their fate in the hands of "parties" and "leaders". With the development of Socialist consciousness (class-consciousness) will come the realisation that they, the workers themselves, must take control of society. Knowing what has to be done will give them the will and assurance needed.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its fellow parties therefore reject all comparison with other political parties. We do not ask for power; we help to educate the working- class into taking it.

[From an article by S. R. in Socialist Standard, May 1942.]

Recovery—phantom of the economy (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the recent general election much time and argument in the media revolved around the current economic recession. The Conservative Party claimed that recovery was under way as a result of government economic policy. The Labour Party claimed that the Tory government had caused the slump due to high interest rates. Kinnock failed to explain, however, why the economic downturn is developing throughout the whole of the industrialised world.

Much of the government-inspired rhetoric put over by the orthodox economists claimed that a consumer-led recovery was imminent. Norman Lamont actually claimed that the recovery had begun last June. The Bank of England in its Quarterly Bulletin claimed last November that “a modest recovery may now have begun" (Daily Telegraph, 15 November). A fall in inflation has been given as a sign that recovery is on the way despite the fact that inflation fell to almost insignificant levels during the slump of the 1930s and that downward pressures on prices are a feature of all recessions.

For many months the public have been subjected to a whole new terminology with the object of convincing them that the recovery is under way. We are now bombarded with terms such as "kick-starting" the economy. The commencement of the present economic downturn was denied and described as a "slowdown in growth". When the facts emerged to indicate otherwise the term "soft landing" replaced the term "recession". As the economy continued to deteriorate, as instanced by increasing numbers of personal and business bankruptcies and housing repossessions, it was conceded that there was a recession but it was argued that it would be a "shallow" one of short duration. Every time the economic indicators fail to indicate recovery the likely date for it is extended by six months.

A consumer-led recovery is a myth. There has never yet been one in economic history. Consumer upturns come last in the economic recovery cycle. The indicators of recovery that one would expect to see are: a rise in commodity metal prices such as copper, lead and aluminium; an increase in machine tool production; an expansion of the construction industry (factories, plant, etc). In the money market long-term interest rates on borrowed money would become higher than short-term rates—at present the reverse is the case, indicating a lack of confidence amongst capitalist investors in the longer-term economic prospects.

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

A fall in the number of net bankruptcies would be another indication that the slump is ending, but this statistic was removed from the Central Statistical Offices indicators under Mrs Thatcher and replaced by CBI economic forecasts; in other words, the employers’ view of the economy. An increase in job vacancies accompanied by a fall in unemployment are also signs of an economic upturn. Increase in housing starts usually occur some months ahead of a recovery.

It hardly needs emphasising that none of these indicators are at present positive. Unemployment is approaching 3 million. Business and personal bankruptcies have reached record levels according to Dunn & Bradstreet. and around 1200 businesses have failed each week during the first quarter of this year. Despite the budget car sales have failed to increase. Housing repossessions increased to over 70,000 last year compared to 44,000 in 1990 and 12,000 in the mid-80s.

Slumps are inherent in the capitalist mode of production based on the ownership of the means of production by a minority and where the motive for production is profit. The present economic crisis is occurring against a background of a fall in world trade throughout the advanced industrial economies. It is the longest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In terms of the housing market crisis, in the UK it is even worse than then. People have been conditioned to believe that rising prices are a permanent way of life, forgetting that this has only gone on since 1939 and that prices can come down.

At the same time we are witnessing a massive world-wide credit crunch commensurate with the colossal banking debt overhanging the world economy. This debt has been estimated at over $25 trillion weakening the banks in a way that has also not been seen since the 1930s.

Against this background the arguments of the politicians are irrelevant. It is significant that this potential banking crisis was not touched on in the election debate; neither was the cause of economic crises. Not understanding how capitalism works the politicians are reduced to frantically seeking signs of a visible recovery in place of the phantom one they insist is here but which defies identification.

Terry Lawlor

Letter: Socialists and Parliament (1992)

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

Dear Editors,

Having listened to many of your SPGB discussion tapes I think I broadly understand the Socialist Party perspective. However I still feel very unclear about the vexed question of social change and the agents by which the SPGB sees it coming about. I would be grateful if you could clarify matters for me.

The SPGB apparently favours a parliamentary road, but not a reformist one. It will be a revolution, through the mass vote of the people, which will install a majority of Socialist Party MPs. They will pass a single act which will restore ownership and control of the means of production to the people, and replace parliament by a body of delegates— presumably from communities and regions. They will be mandated to carry out the general will, which will be to establish socialism thereby abolishing classes. Is this broadly correct? If so, several questions come to mind:

1. Isn’t the SPGB position somewhat vanguardist, despite its ostensible rejection of vanguardism? I ask, because it seems that the Party sees its role as educational: to work out and communicate a theory and practice which the majority can learn and apply when they are ready to call for profound social change. At this time, would not the Party, in practice, have a leading position, showing people what to do: thus making it difficult to carry out its declared aim of disbanding and fading into the ranks?

2. How does this parliamentary revolution scenario stand up to the critique of such scenarios implicit in Chris Mullin's A Very British Coup? In that novel (as distinct from the more optimistic film version), I recall that the radical Labour Party was frustrated at every twist and turn by an international and national conspiracy on the part of the owners of the means of production, distribution and exchange. They used their economic and military power effectively to emasculate the nominal, political power of the elected government. In effect, nothing changed from what obtains today, except that the real power was more nakedly and forcefully exerted to put down revolution. And this is surely what would happen. Has the SPGB contemplated what would have to be done then to complete the transition to socialism? Does it envisage that the revolution would very quickly have to become extra-parliamentary, and possibly involve aggressive takeover of all the apparatus of real power? I can quite see the logic in the if-they-won’t-vote-for-it-they-won’t-fight- for-it maxim. But if they vote for it, will they then go on to fight for it if this becomes necessary?

3. Does the SPGB envisage any transitional stage when there might be some members elected as MPs, but not enough to form a majority? What would the strategy be? Would MPs have to behave strictly as delegates, or would they have latitude to develop a united parliamentary line for more effective opposition (effectively a whip)?

4. What is the view on how a mass desire for socialism will arise? I, myself, do not have much faith in a steady process of education and consciousness-raising as a trigger for social change. It will surely be material forces and events— perhaps a series of massive ecological disruptions, coupled with an immiseration of the third world proletariat beyond the point where they are willing to continue to be exploited by a first world bourgeoisie. (But the problem with this particular scenario, according to development expert Michael Redclift, is that third world people are already immiserated beyond the point where they would be likely to achieve revolutionary consciousness and take action). What do you think?

DAVID PEPPER, Oxford

Reply:

1. We do indeed say that the working class should use Parliament in the course of establishing socialism. But your summary of our position is not entirely accurate as it gives the impression that we think it will be the Socialist MPs who will establish socialism on behalf of an essentially passive even if socialist-minded majority outside Parliament. In actual fact our position is the reverse: it will be the socialist-minded and democratically self-organised working class outside Parliament who will establish socialism with the Socialist MPs as their passive instruments. The working class establishes socialism; the Socialist MPs are merely their delegates charged with carrying out certain formalities to try to ensure that the social revolution takes place in as coordinated and as peaceable a way as possible.

Similarly, although at present when there are so few socialists the role of a socialist party is essentially educational, when a majority or even a substantial minority come to want socialism its role will be transformed. There will be no separation between it and the working class since the socialist political party will be the working class organised politically for socialism.

2. Your question about a possible pro-capitalist coup is highly speculative but, yes, we have considered this. Basically, we think that such a coup would have no chance whatsoever of succeeding. Consider what an impending or actual socialist victory at the polls would mean. This would be a reflection of a desire for socialism but not by people who were prepared to do no more to get it than put an X on a ballot paper. It would reflect the determination to achieve socialism of an active majority, who would be organised at their places of work as well as on the political field.

In fact the existence of such a determined majority in itself could be expected to be a deterrent to any pro-capitalist putsch being attempted. But if such a putsch were to be staged then, clearly, the socialist majority would have to take steps to counter it. Obviously they could not, and would not, allow a usurping minority to thwart the majority will for socialism. How precisely to react would be up to the socialist movement to decide at the time in the light of the precise circumstances, but—since anyway we are in the realm of speculation here—it can be imagined that strikes and demonstrations would be organised and that in the armed forces (whose personnel would also have been influenced by the spread of socialist ideas) widespread defections and refusals to obey the usurping government would occur. The position of the putschists would be hopeless and would rapidly become untenable. The only way-out would be the very thing they sought to impede: the establishment of socialism. For once a majority want socialism nothing can prevent its establishment.

3. We have also considered the question of what a minority of Socialist MPs should do. In our view, their main task in Parliament would be to use it as a tribune to propagate socialist ideas; under no circumstances should they do deals or form alliances with non-socialist MPs; nor should they propose any reforms to capitalism. However, this need not preclude them voting for certain measures proposed by other MPs if the socialist movement outside Parliament judged doing so to be in the interest of the working class (safety and heath legislation, for instance). The Socialist MPs would at all times be answerable to the socialist working-class movement outside Parliament and be strictly mandated by it.

4. We agree with you that the "mass desire for socialism" is unlikely to arise solely from “a steady process of education and consciousness-raising”. What we say is that such campaigning for socialism will be an essential clement in the process of the emergence of majority socialist understanding. The other element will be the working-class discontent that is endemic to capitalism, and this is where “material forces and events” come in. You may be right that this could be a series of massive ecological disruptions. Or it could be a nuclear war. Or the growing dehumanization and break-down of social ties that capitalism is bringing about. Or even a particularly severe economic slump. Who knows? Who can know ?

Will the mass movement for socialism start amongst the working class in the so-called Third World? Maybe, but if it did it would not be able to succeed without spreading to the working class in the developed capitalist parts of the world. This is where the main productive resources which will allow humanity to overcome the problem of material scarcity and eliminate world hunger, poverty and disease are situated. The fate of the working class in the “Third World" is indissolubly tied to that of the working class in the "First World”.

EDITORS

Violence at work (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Prince Charles falls off his horse or the Queen Mother gets a fish bone stuck in her throat we are invited to grieve over such matters by newspaper headlines and bulletin announcements to the accompaniment of Big Ben's chimes. When 500 workers are killed at work every year, however, this is not regarded as dramatic news. It is often looked at as something pretty much beyond human control. To describe these deaths as “accidents”, however, can be seen as perverse because although they are not intended by employers, neither are they chance, unpredictable incidents. They are, in most documented cases, plainly foreseeable.

In November 1991, Tony Linehan, the government's chief factory inspector, announced that industrial injury claims have doubled since 1985. On average two people a day are killed at work and 3,500 are injured. Almost half-a-million people each year suffer as a result of their working environments.

The violence of commerce

First let us consider the extent of the problem. Employment is violent. In 1989- 90 426 people, a third of them in the construction industry, died in violent incidents at their work. They were burnt, drowned, asphyxiated, electrocuted, crushed and impaled. In the same year over 21,000 suffered “non-fatal serious injuries"—amputations, for instance—and 160,000 suffered “serious injuries".

In addition, it is estimated that each year as many as 10,000 workers or more die a slow and painful death from the effects of industrial disease.

Most of these deaths are unnecessary and easily preventable. According to the Health and Safety Executive over 70 percent of workplace deaths are the fault of management and their failure to provide proper equipment or training or supervision.

Examining the same problem in the USA. one writer has given the issue a particularly striking perspective. He estimates that in 1972 the number of people in the USA dying from occupational hazards (diseases and accidents) was 114,000, whereas only 20,600 died as victims of personal homicide. Represented on a time clock, for murder there would be one personal killing every 26 minutes but:

If a similar clock for industrial deaths were constructed . . .  and recalling that this clock ticks only for that half of the population that is the labour force—this clock would show an industrial death about every four and a half minutes! In other words in the time it takes for one murder on the time clock, six workers have died just trying to make a living! (J. Reman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. 1979 p.75).

Blackspot Construction is a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report which analyses the circumstances of 739 deaths in the construction industry between 1981 and 1985. Referring to these deaths, John Rimmington, the Director-General of the HSE, said "they represent a very saddening loss of life, particularly because most of the deaths could have been prevented" (Emphasis added). The report shows that the immediate reasons for most deaths were lack of supervision, inadequate training and lack of attention to detail:

   The figures in this report clearly show that the basis causes of the deaths of 739 people from 1981-1985 have not changed over the last ten years. There were, on average, two deaths every week on construction sites. Ninety per cent of these could have been prevented. In 70 per cent of cases, positive action by management could have saved lives. (Emphasis added). (HMSO, 1988, p.4).
   In another report, Agricultural blackspot (1986), a study of 296 deaths between 1981 and 1984 the HSE concluded that in 62 percent of cases "responsibility rested with management”. Again, in Deadly Maintenance (1985), a study into deaths at work in a range of industries, the HSE concluded that "management were primarily responsible in 54 percent of cases".

There is some evidence, as you might expect. that the toll on workers gets worse during an economic recession. Serious injuries, for example, suffered by young people on the government's Youth Training Scheme increased by 86 percent between 1986 and 1990.

In fact, the Health and Safety Commission published research last December indicating that the number of accidents at work is six times higher than the official figure.

Consider the social system in which these deaths and injuries occur. We live in a class-divided society. One economic class of men and women between them own and therefore control the means by which we all live. They own the factories, offices, transport and communication systems and so forth: in short the means of producing and distributing wealth. The empty and fraudulent rhetoric of people like Margaret Thatcher and John Major speaks of a "property-owning democracy" and “classless society”, and the nationalistic nonsense of John Putnam, Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party tries to fool people into thinking that everyone beneath the Union Jack has a common interest.These are shibboleths which are entirely refuted by the economic facts.

As the Inland Revenue, a body not known as an avid supporter of the Socialist Party, reported in January in Inland Revenue Statistics 1991, the richest one percent of the population today own more marketable wealth the poorest 50 percent of the population. In fact, the top one percent owns three times more than the poorest half of the population.

In this system wealth is produced not directly to satisfy human needs but to produce a profit for the owners of the means of production. If something is not profitable it will not be produced. In the cutthroat economic rivalry between companies to win contracts or keep their customers, costs are cut to a minimum wherever that is possible. Employers do not get rich in capitalism by being kind or charitable. Safety is often an expensive matter to a company. It involves paying for training, equipment and, perhaps, using methods which take longer than those which are unsafe.

The reports of the HSE are replete with how the cost-benefit principle of capitalism operates to cause death and injury but two vivid examples from other sources demonstrate what often happens when profits and safety are counterpoised.

On 13 September 1978, Ford Motor Company was indicted in Indiana, USA, for reckless homicide. A Grand Jury decided after three days of deliberation that Ford was to be tried as a responsible party for the deaths of three teenagers, who were burnt to death when their Ford Pinto burst into flames following a low-speed, rear-end collision. Many people had died in similar incidents all over the USA. One writer on the issue has stated that “by conservative estimates Pinto crashes have caused more than 500 deaths”. (M. Dowie, in Injury and Death for Profit, 1987, cd. S. Hills). The actual trial resulted in the company being acquitted but evidence was produced in the case which demonstrated that Ford was aware of the danger posed by the Pinto but had used a cost-benefit calculation to decide that the cars should be left unaltered with their owners. It would have cost less that 11 dollars per car to remedy the defect but calculations had shown that subsequent insurance claims resulting from the number of people predicted to be killed and injured would not exceed the $137 million that it would cost to recall and alter all the Pintos it had sold.

This sort of cost-benefit analysis, which relegates human life below the considerations of profit, is not peculiar to Ford Motor, Company or to recent developments. It is a feature endemic to the system of commerce. Max Weber commented on this issue in relation to its implications for capitalism in American cities. In 1904 he observed that:

After their work, . . . [Chicago] workers often have to travel for hours in order to reach their homes.The tramway company has been bankrupt for years. As usual, a receiver who has no interest in speeding up the liquidation manages its affairs: therefore, new tramcars are not purchased. The old cars constantly break down, and about four hundred people a year are thus killed or crippled. According to the law, each death costs the company about $5,000 which is paid to the widow or heirs, and each cripple costs $10,000, paid to the casualty himself. These compensations are due so long as the company does not introduce certain precautionary measures. But they have calculated that the four hundred casualties a year cost less than would the necessary precautions. The company therefore does not introduce them. (Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 1958, H. Gerth, C. Wright Mills, p.16).

It is this sort of thing that may have been in the mind of John Cullen, the Chairman of the HSE, when he said in 1989 that:

The enterprise culture, the opening up of markets, and the need to survive competition place businesses under unprecedented pressure . . . the scale and pace of technological change means that increasing numbers of people—the public as well as employees—are potentially at risk. (Guardian, 4 May 1989).

Within capitalism, economic imperatives will always prevail. In a contest between principles of profit, morality and religion, profit will always triumph.The Chairman of British Steel will not keep Ravenscraig steel works open this year because it is morally better that 1200 people should not lose their jobs. The government will not make Sainsbury and Tesco shut on Sundays because various vicars and priests implore commerce to respect religion, neither will they be shut to protect the economic interests of shop workers.

The economic mechanisms of capitalism mean that workers will be killed and injured on the sacrificial altar of profit whenever the pressures are strong enough.

Anyone in any doubt about this can consider the position of workers as a result of health and safety legislation. The annual pattern of death and injury has been no different under Labour governments than it has under Tory governments, and there is no significant change as the result of the introduction of legislation like the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974. The annual profile of deaths at work has remained the same every year for the last 17 years since the coming into force of the Act.

Even now there are people clamouring, often with the best intentions, to bring in new legislation to amend the rules of capitalism. They seek to raise the fines paid by companies who kill or maim workers; to make the police investigate all construction site deaths and to make coroners call directors as witnesses so as to incriminate them.

These proposals, however, even if implemented exactly in accordance with the wishes of the reformers, cannot really deal with the problem because they leave intact the system of commerce and the paramountcy of companies. As Marx observed, within capitalism large employers have an interest in supporting safety legislation. By supporting legislation like the Factory Act of 1867, many capitalists were able to improve their positions by, on the one hand, having a hand in making sure the law was not going to adversely affect them and, on the other, making sure that it did impose conditions which could not be met by their less prosperous rival firms who would be put out of business by the costs involved in meeting the new safety requirements.

Only by transforming the basis of the production of wealth can we eradicate the violence of work and make safety its number one priority. In those circumstances it may even be safe enough to allow walking disaster areas like the royals to have a go at some useful work.

Gary Jay

Questions—and the answer (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last issue of the Socialist Standard, in an article directed at people who are too young to have a vote, we raised three questions that we thought our young readers might like to consider. We also suggested that they might like to pass the questions on to their teachers or clergymen, their Member of Parliament, leaders of the political parties, and others of that respectable fraternity who give credence to the idea that there’s not a lot wrong with our world that can not be put right with a dollop of sensible planning.

We also advised our young readers that we would contribute answers to our questions in this issue.

The questions were:

1. Governments of different political parties, Tory, Liberal or Labour, governments of the Right, the Left and the Centre, come and go in different countries. But all the basic problems remain despite the fact that political parties achieve power on the basis of their electoral claims to be able to solve these problems. Why is this?

2. In this country—indeed throughout all countries—homelessness and slum dwelling is a permanent feature of life. At the same time, there are vast numbers of workers, skilled in the various aspects of building construction unemployed. Why are building and construction workers idle when millions of people desperately need decent homes?

3. In every country, poverty, in one or more of its forms, exists. Some 15 million children (averaging about 42,000 every single day) die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases. At the same time, massive amounts of foodstuffs are dumped or stored— much of it until it goes rotten—and governments deliberately restrict food production. Why do you think this is?

Why politicians fail

The answer to Question 1 is that all political parties, with the exception of those within the World Socialist Movement, contest election on the grounds that they are able to run the existing system better than all the others. Such a claim must be underpinned by the arrogant notion that they have got something that none of the others have, or ever had! They are elected on this basis, because the electorate believe that they have the skills, the honesty, sincerity or whatever other quality is required to put things right. As the question states, they always fail.

It is not the fault of the politicians and their parties that they fail; on the contrary, it is the fault of the capitalist system, the buying-and-selling system, which the parties, whatever they call themselves, choose to organise and administer. Capitalism is firmly rooted in the exploitation of the working majority by a parasitic minority. Its function is not to produce goods and services for the use of society as a whole but only to produce these things if, and when, they ensure a profit for the capitalists.

The basic problems that the politicians fail to solve arise inevitably out of the contradictions of capitalism. They are problems peculiar to capitalism and, as such, are ineradicable while that system lasts. That is why the World Socialist Movement does not campaign on its ability to solve problems like poverty, unemployment, crime etc but, uniquely, calls on the working class to organise for the democratic overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

Why needs are not met

The answers to Questions 2 and 3 are implied in the foregoing but to demonstrate our point we will take a brief look at the socialist alternative to capitalism, where not only would the problems set out in 2 and 3 not exist but where, along with the other myriad problems of capitalism, they could not exist. Socialism, as proposed by the World Socialist Movement, is defined in our Object as:

a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the. whole community.

In the world envisaged in this definition. every human being on Earth would have the opportunity to co-operate in the production and distribution of wealth and, again, every human being would have free and equal access to the means to satisfy their needs whether or not they had co-operated in production. Obviously, if enough people declined to partake in the productive processes it would be impossible for everyone to avail themselves of the things they need. That is why socialism can only be built upon the conscious democratic decision of a majority of socialists and why the fullest democratic control would have to prevail in a socialist society.

All people engaged in the wasteful functions that now exist in the world of capitalism, functions like selling, banking, insurance, armed forces, advertising and marketing, together with the unemployed, on the dole and on the stock exchange, would be available to help in the task of producing and distributing. Obviously, in such circumstances, where things like “investment” and “cost” would no longer exist, problems such as slums and homelessness could be quickly corrected.

Whereas today the purpose of food production is the maximization of profits without regard to the damage caused to the land and the prospects for future generations, in socialism the primary consideration will be producing enough food for ail in a manner consistent with the preservation of the land. The concept of socialism is wholly inconsistent with the idea of poverty or hunger for any minority on Earth however small that minority might be.

Today, it is a relatively small number of human beings who perform the work of providing essential goods and services; the rest of the working class, as we have noted, are engaged in functions that are meaningless outside the wasteful world of capitalism. It follows that, in socialism, the task of producing all the goods and services required by humanity can be accomplished with comparatively little effort. That which we now call employment—workers working for wages—will have ended with the abolition of capitalism so, effectively, there can be no unemployment.

Obviously, in a wageless, moneyless world where people freely avail themselves of their needs and are not required to work long hours for protracted periods of their lives, there will be much time for leisure. Speculating on how human beings might use that leisure, in a frontierless world where transport and accommodation, like everything else is free, might well be a further question worth discussing.

Richard Montague