Rear View: Revolutionary romantic (2016)

The Rear View Column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionary romantic

‘A TV interior designer and curators at the William Morris Gallery were among the speakers at a school’s exhibition and celebration of his life last week. Over 330 people crowded into the chapel at Forest School in College Place, Snaresbrook last Thursday (March 24) on the artist’s birthday for an evening of talks and an exhibition of his work. One of the guest speakers was TV personality Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, who is part of the campaign to put Morris on British bank notes ahead of the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2034’ (guardian-series.co.uk, 31 March). What a silly way to celebrate the birthday of a Marxian socialist, author of the Socialist League’s manifesto – upon which our Declaration of Principles, written some 30 years later, drew heavily – countless pamphlets and polemics and the utopian novel News From Nowhere, which describes what life could be like in a moneyless post-capitalist world of common ownership and democratic control.

Ferengi-free future

Morris and those who founded the Socialist Party would likely be astonished and appalled that worldwide capitalism continues into the 21st century. Even the confused James Connolly saw over a hundred years ago that the day for patching up the capitalist system had passed and that it must be replaced. Yet we must not despair as more recently groups and individuals who would not necessarily describe themselves as socialist embrace ideas that are clearly part of our tradition: ‘what makes Star Trek particularly attractive for many viewers is its progressivism. Star Trek depicts a future where the scourges of sickness, racism, poverty, and war have been eradicated on Earth and throughout much of the Federation, an inter-planetary alliance of which the Earth is a founding member. The elimination of poverty, hunger, and wage slavery has resulted from overcoming capitalism, markets, and currencies’ (dissidentvoice.org, 1 April). Add to this books such as Life Without Money and Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek and we just need to convince those excited by a world of free access and production for use to join our movement and make it so.

War and want

‘Weapons spending worldwide increased in 2015 and now stands at a mind boggling $1,676 billion, according to new data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute today. This 1% increase from 2014 marks an important shift: since 2011, military spending stayed at more or less at the same level. It is now going up’ (greenpeace.org, 5 April). War is endemic to capitalism as is poverty. Ending the latter would cost just a fraction of the wealth spent on weapons: ‘eradicating extreme poverty and hunger – two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations in 2015 – may seem far out of reach. But, according to a new study, it could done with about ten percent of the world’s military spending’ (commondreams.org, 6 April), yet, armageddon aside, ending war and want can only achieved in a world without wages.

Chinese capitalists

The Panama Papers are a reminder that the 1 percent, like capitalism itself, exist worldwide. They also add another nail to the coffin of Chinese so-called communism. ‘Directly connected to Xi is his brother-in-law, Deng Jiagui, who is named in the documents. Deng married Xi’s elder sister, and it was reported in 2012 the couple already held hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets including real estate and shares. In 2009, at the time that Deng was the sole director and shareholder of two British Virgin Islands-based firms under Mossack Fonseca’s purview, Xi was rising within the Chinese Communist Party, en route to becoming its head. The documents also name Jasmine Li, the grand-daughter of Jia Qinglin, a top ranking official in the Communist Party. Li reportedly received her first offshore company as an undergrad at Stanford University, and through a number of complicated ownership agreements, Li was able to hide her holding of several offshore companies (mashable.com, 5 April). Putin, his family, and entourage have also apparently stashed funds overseas. Joshua Kurlantzick adds to the socialist nail gun: ‘the most serious threat from state capitalism is that the two big state capitalist authoritarian powers, China and Russia, will use their state companies as weapons in conflicts with other countries, as vehicles to control certain types of natural resources, as vehicles for obtaining and stealing sensitive technology from other nations, or as tools for undermining environmental and labor norms in countries where their state companies invest’ (State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World, OUP USA, June 2016).

50 Years Ago: The Law and Homosexuality (2016)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the election out of the way, Wolfenden ― or rather his famous report ― may get back into the news again. This document, presented to Parliament in September 1957 after more than three years of painstaking work, called forth at that time a mixed public response of support and violent opposition. The government of the time fairly quickly implemented the committee’s main recommendations on prostitution (incidentally with a resultant increase in call-girls and a more highly organised poncing system), but did not make any move concerning the law on male homosexuality.(…)

In May last year, Lord Arran managed to get a second reading in the Lords for his Bill to make private homosexual acts between consenting male adults no longer a criminal offence. But a similar measure introduced into the Commons a fortnight later by Labour MP Leo Abse was defeated, the opposition to it having been led by that self styled guardian of our moral welfare and champion of intolerance Sir Cyril Osborne, Tory MP for Louth. However, not long before the election, a Bill on the same lines was sponsored by the Tory Humphrey Berkeley and managed to survive a second reading. (…)

When the law is eventually changed, then, a minority will be released from the shadow of vindictive penalties (although only in one provision of Wolfenden is this so; his proposal for the under twenty-ones is that the penalties be retained and in some cases even increased), but this will not be the end of the homosexual’s problems. Apart from the backlog of fear, ignorance and prejudice which will impinge on his life still, the legal change will at most be an offer to absorb him, so to speak, more easily into the present set up. Which will mean, if he is a worker (and most homosexuals certainly are), that the grey day-to-day existence and struggles to make a living will still be there.

(From article by E.T.C., Socialist Standard, May 1966)

Votes for some women (2016)

Book Review from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital'. By Sharon Smith. Haymarket Books. 2016

This is a ‘fully revised’ re-edition, with a new subtitle, of a book with the same title that came out in 2004 by an American Trotskyist. In the meantime Smith had revised her previous derogatory attitude towards ‘middle class feminists’ (who merely want equality under capitalism). She also wanted to emphasise more her view that there is a need to unify feminist and black struggles.

One interesting fact that emerges from a couple of passages is that we were not alone in opposing the suffragettes, who were demanding votes for women on the same terms as men then had, for wanting 'Votes for Rich Women'. Some in the German Social Democratic movement took the same position in regard to the same demand in Germany (where universal male suffrage did not exist either). Smith tells us:

'… the early-twentieth-century German women's suffrage movement did not challenge the property requirements that denied working-class men the right to vote – knowing that such requirements would also deny voting rights to working-class women. Maintaining such property requirements could only strengthen the political weight of the middle and upper classes, while the working class would remain politically voiceless.'

and

'Some women's suffrage organizations demanded (and in some European countries, won) partial suffrage for women – with voting rights based upon property holding and the payment of taxes (that is, restricting voting rights to those women of financial means). But in many of these same societies, male suffrage was also partial, denying working-class men the right to vote. Thus, partial suffrage merely increased the voting power of the upper classes.'

In the USA universal male and female suffrage was instituted in 1920 but only on paper in the ex-Confederate States where black men let alone black women were excluded under various pretexts, an anomaly not put right until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Smith sees not insisting on this at the time as a failure on the part of earlier feminists which, she argues, should now be rectified by seeing the black and women's equality movements as part of the same struggle. Multi-identity – gays and lesbians are invited to join too – politics, if you like, instead of class politics.

She argues that the basis for women's equality has to be pay for housework. But this is not going to happen under capitalism and won't be necessary in socialism where people won't have to have a money income to access the goods and services they need. Instead, the principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' will apply, a much better and more rational way of putting women and men in a position of equality in that respect.

Adam Buick

Socialism and Climate Change (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

That global climate change has been caused by the excessive emission of carbon dioxide, (CO₂) since the Industrial Revolution is now accepted by the worldwide scientific community and (as the attendance at the Paris international conference, COP 21) in December last year indicates) by the ruling political class of all countries as well. Though there are still important reservations and much follow up work will be required, the agreement at the Conference to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade (2^oC) above pre-industrial levels was a breakthrough regarding tackling the huge problem of climate change.

Stabilisation

However, it does raise the question of how the countries of the world are going to go about this formidable task. One practical approach worth recalling is that proposed by Socolow and Pacala (A plan to keep carbon in check, R H Socolow and S A Pacala, Scientific American, July 2006). The key features of this are shown in the figure which is a graph of carbon (i.e. CO₂), the dominant greenhouse gas derived from burning fossil fuel and released into the atmosphere over time. The straight line labelled BAU (business as usual) shows a fairly straight line increase from about 1.6 billion tons carbon per year (BtC/y) to 7 BtC/y* over the period 1956-2006 followed by a straight line extrapolation for the next 50 years. It is a basic assumption in Socolow and Pacala’s analysis that the level of production of goods and services will go on unabated and steadily increase as it has in the past. These emissions have led to a buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere from about 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to 375 ppm in 2006 to 400 ppm today and when it reaches about 500 ppm a rise of 2^oC is likely to occur.

What Socolow and Pacala address is how to use existing technologies to bring about a reduction in the amount of fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) used to power society and so limit the increase in global warming to 2^oC. In the first instance the objective is to hold emissions at 7 BtC/y for the next 50 years. The area, marked ABC on the figure, between the BAU line and this steady level is called the stabilisation triangle. Socolow and Pacala further divided the stabilisation triangle into 7 wedges, each representing the same amount of CO₂ emissions. (The wedge is a convenient unit because its size and time scale match what specific technologies can deliver). Socolow and Pacala identified 15 technologies each of which is equal to the task of removing a wedge of emissions of CO₂. They were careful only to use tried and tested not 'pie in the sky' technologies and excluded improvements that are currently taking place. The idea is that one of the 15 technological solutions is applied in a controlled manner to eliminate a wedge of CO₂ release.

So let us take for example one of the technological solutions proposed, carbon capture and storage (CCS). The process involves the capture of CO₂ from coal fired power stations in a liquid solvent, then compressing it before transporting it by pipeline for burial deep underground, i.e. putting it back where it came from. In the first year this would reduce power station emissions by 0.5 Bt of carbon. In the second year more plant is introduced and a similar reduction is made so by the end of the second year, 1.0 Bt of carbon from coal-fired power stations would have been diverted from the atmosphere. And so after 50 years the target of no increase above current levels from this source of CO₂ would have been achieved and a total of 25 Bt of carbon would have been prevented from entering the atmosphere. Socolow and Pacala’s work indicates that CCS plant would need to be installed at 800 large coal-fired power stations to achieve this target, a not inconsiderable engineering feat. The same approach can be applied to the other six wedges of CO₂ emissions. The outcome would be that over the next 50 years or so CO₂ releases/year would be held at the level of 7 BtC/y.

For this level of CO₂ release into the atmosphere, global warming as predicted by widely accepted climate change models, would continue to increase before levelling off at around 2^oC above pre-industrial levels. After this, to ensure this temperature rise would not be exceeded, further wedges would be required to drive down CO₂ releases.

Other technologies identified by Socolow and Pacala for eliminating a wedge of CO₂ release include:

●       Increase fuel economy of two billion cars from 30 mpg to 60 mpg

●       Replace 1400 large coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants

●       Increase solar power from photovoltaic electricity to 2000 Gw of installed capacity.

●       Forestmanagement. Reduce cutting of primary tropical forest to zero over 50 years. Reforest hundreds of millions of hectares in temperate and tropical zones.

●       Cut electricity in homes, offices and stores by 25 percent by making them more efficient.

●       Increase wind power to replace coal with 2 million * 1mw peak wind turbines

Since the proposal by Socolow and Pacala in 2006 the release of carbon has now increased from 7 BtC/y in 2006 to 9 BtC/y today. This does not alter the basic idea of the wedge concept. But it does highlight the years wasted when little action was taken and it could mean that 9 wedges would now be needed. However the wedge strategy remains an eminently practical approach to the problem but one that would require an enormous effort and an unprecedented degree of cooperation worldwide to bring about.

The Red Wedge

The question is: can capitalism deliver? Or more pertinently what could be done in a socialist society? In socialism a similar approach could be adopted to the one outlined above with one big advantage. On the advent of socialism a considerable reduction in CO₂ emissions would be obtained by ending the enormous wasteful economic activity and production inherent in capitalism. Principal contributors to this waste are the maintenance and preparedness of the armed forces and occupations and products handling money. The enormous sums of money spent on the military represent the use of land, facilities, machinery, materials and human resources to keep it in a constant state of preparedness for and participation in war. The Socialist Party's own publication From Capitalism to Socialism  provides a list of dozens of occupations and products for the financial system as diverse as accountancy, advertising, banking, income tax officers, VAT inspectors, stock brokers, stock exchanges, banknotes, armoured cars, gas and electricity meters, postage stamps, tickets and TV licences. Socialism would eliminate the need for these industries and thereby rapidly introduce a large cut in power generation and consequent CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere. This would serve to relax the onus on (i) the introduction of the mitigating technologies discussed above and (ii) enable the power generation required for the pent up demand for improved living standards in the developing world to be met.

Following Naomi Klein’s analysis of the politics of climate change (This Changes Everything,  2014) it is difficult to believe that capitalism will heal itself, notwithstanding the apparent success of COP 21. It is hard to disagree with her conclusion that the opposition of the hugely powerful companies with vested interests in fossil fuels will be too great for any government(s) to overcome.

To conclude, in the first period of socialism clearing up this mess left by capitalism would be a priority project. However it is certainly the case that despite the reduction in CO₂ emissions that would be brought about by socialism, the introduction of the wedge strategy would still be a necessary and formidable challenge, but surely one that would be grasped wholeheartedly in a sane, socialist world.

Finally to quote Socolow and Pacala regarding the future 'Critically a planetary consciousness will have grown. Humanity will have learned to address its collective destiny - and to share the planet'. Let us hope so.

Tony Gluck

*A billion tons is 1000 million tons. As in reference 1 the units of release are expressed as carbon not CO₂. One ton of carbon is contained in 3.67 tonnes of CO₂.

Figure: Carbon emitted against year

 

Pathfinders: Capitalism's War On the War On Drugs (2016)

The Pathfinders Column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may come as a surprise to some that the Tory government has since the coalition years been promoting the idea of 'evidence-based policy' and using it as a buzz-phrase in their publications. Insofar as they are genuinely pursuing this laudable aim we could hardly object. But are they?

Not according to anyone who's looked at the terms of the new Psychoactive Substances Act, which blanket-bans anything 'intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect' and which was due to come into force on 6 April (Link).

The Act has already hit a major snag, forcing the commencement date to be postponed, with no new date set. The problem is that the government has offered no meaningful and unambiguous definition of the term 'psychoactive'. The result is that ministers don't know exactly what they are banning, which means that the police can't enforce the Act (Politics.co.uk 30 March).

But surely the government, committed to 'evidence-based policy', would have sought the advice of its own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which was set up over 40 years ago in order – theoretically – to provide the scientific case for the war on drugs? The problem is that, ever since the days of ACMD chairman David Nutt, who was famously sacked by New Labour for stating that taking ecstasy was less dangerous than horse-riding and for describing government drug policy as 'beyond absurd', the government has not trusted the ACMD to toe the line and has cut them out of all consultation on the new Act. This despite the fact that 'It is actually a legal requirement set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 that the ACMD must be consulted before alterations to the Act or new legislation is brought in' (Link). Not surprisingly, members of the ACMD were reported to be 'furious'.

Health campaigners have, also not surprisingly, ridiculed the illogic of a universal ban on relatively harmless drugs while exempting some of the worst, notably alcohol and tobacco. But Mike Penning, the minister responsible for the bill, was ebulliently unapologetic: 'We will ensure that we insert what we want to insert [into the exemption list], while at the same time having a blanket ban'. Insurrection duly followed from the Tory benches over the use of amyl nitrate 'poppers', which are highs and muscle relaxants popular among gays and which now were threatened with criminalisation.

'Sometimes when something is proposed which becomes personal to you, you realise the government is about to do something fantastically stupid' said Crispin Blunt, gay Tory MP and popper-user, in a Commons speech in January which served to create an embarrassing association between banning party drugs and homophobia (Telegraph, 20 January). After further lambasting from the Labour benches the government retreated in some confusion and instructed the ACMD to find a way to get poppers onto the exemption register in order to avoid a back-bench mutiny. The almost equally mutinous ACMD, commanded to produce 'evidence' in support of a stupid Act but to keep silent otherwise, duly obliged with a technical fudge arguing that as poppers mainly affect blood vessels and do not directly target brain cells they couldn't be said to cause a genuine psychoactive effect (New Scientist, 2 April). The fact that this is pseudo-sciency-sounding-codswallop is abundantly obvious to any popper user getting the instant highs, and often the banging headaches afterwards.

This draconian and ill-conceived Act isn't just illegally-drafted scientific nonsense, it's really the last desperate cheer in the UK for one of capitalism's biggest avoidable own-goals, the 'war on drugs'.

Worldwide, state anti-drug policies are in total disarray. While China, Russia and remarkably, Sweden, are trying gamely to stay hard-line on prohibition, the Americas are in the process of hoisting the white flag, at least in the case of cannabis, by far the world's most popular illicit drug. After years of decriminalisation, California is set to legalise cannabis this November, after Colorado in 2014 and Washington DC in 2015. Federal regulation is expected within five years, while Canada has already announced plans to create its own regulated cannabis market in 2017. Uruguay 'went legal' in 2013 and other South American countries including Argentina and Ecuador are likely to follow suit. The Czech Republic legalised 'medicinal' marijuana in 2013, and Germany is soon embarking on a huge medicinal cannabis programme. Spain, Italy and Australia will probably to do the same. The World Health Organisation came out in support in 2014. In the UK, cannabis-related arrests have fallen by 50 percent since 2010 and several police commissioners have stated that they will not arrest users or growers of small amounts. The Lib Dems, with the reckless daring of the electorally doomed, are proposing a new Cannabis Regulation Authority to oversee a legal retail industry (politics.co.uk 20 April). As things stand, however, Labour and Tories both still see drug liberalisation as political suicide.

Even in its own terms, capitalism has done some bizarre things, and prohibition must count among the most logic-defying, because it has forced a decoupling of the capitalist market from capitalist legislation, thereby shutting down the normal operations of capitalist production (including quality control) and instead opening up an entirely unregulated black market, a kind of 'dark capitalism', which is today worth around $500bn globally, more than the market value of Google or Microsoft. This has in turn produced a global disaster of racketeering and murder that dwarfs what happened in Al Capone's time. The policing cost to the ruling class has been staggering, but the cost in deaths is even more so. Mexico's average life-span has actually lowered due to the gigantic number of drug-related deaths (New Scientist, 9 April). Whoever has been winning the war on drugs, it isn't governments, it isn't the (licit) capitalist class and it certainly isn't workers either.

The history of drug prohibition has nothing to do with science and everything to do with racism and anti-worker condescension by governing classes. Drugs were first banned in the UK in 1916 under the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act, after a moral panic about drugs in the front line. But where post-war bans on alcohol failed quickly due to its universal popularity, the prohibition on other, relatively niche narcotics, remained sustainable until globalisation in modern times has created a Frankenstein's monster.

Exactly a century later, the signs are that capitalism is beginning to realise what it's missing out on, and is not going to allow its own legislation – which normally exists to protect it – to continue getting in its way. How to sell this enormous policy U-turn to voters who have grown up being brainwashed by government propaganda against drugs is currently the problem proving precisely too much for Cameron and his Tories, or for Labour hoping for re-election, but there's no doubt where the smart money wants to go next.

PJS

Making Nationalists (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is divided into almost 200 different countries and most of them celebrate some type of annual ‘national’ day.

The most widely known examples are the 4th July Independence Day of the United States and Bastille Day on 14 July in France. Mexico has its ‘El Grito’ in September which celebrates the beginning of its struggle to end Spanish rule and Cuba has its Liberation Day to mark the advent of the Castro regime. Britain is unusual in not having any widely recognised national day although the Queen’s Official Birthday and St. George’s Day (at least in England) partly fulfil the role. In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day on the 17 March is generally accepted as the national day (especially in the Republic) although Easter Monday (the date of the Rising in 1916) is also a calendar date of importance. National days usually commemorate the formation of the country in the sense of gaining ‘freedom’ from a governing colonial power, as in the case of the USA, or else mark some major change (erroneously called a revolution) in the social structure of a country as with France. Sometimes they have their roots in and take their context from cultural, religious or historical events. For countries that have experienced much social and political upheaval over the last 100 years, such as Germany or Russia, the day considered as the national day, has changed many times over the years.

In Ireland, this year being the centenary of the Easter Rising, the day was given a more pronounced significance. For the previous year, the government planned a whole series of ceremonies with the major commemorations held on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday; 27 and 28 March. What’s a socialist perspective on this? As the articles in the March Standard suggested, in spite of all the rhetoric of the state and media, there really is very little tangible to see in the day-to-day lives of the citizens of the Republic of Ireland that is connected to the Rising apart from the fact that most major railway stations in Irish cities are named after some of the leading participants.

It’s interesting to compare this centenary celebration with the commemoration that occurred in 1966 on the half centenary. The centrepiece on that occasion was a traditional old style military parade of the Irish Army down O’Connell Street in Dublin whilst being reviewed by Eamon De Valera and other elderly survivors of the Rising. Watching old film of it is very reminiscent of observing the May Day parades that the leadership of the Soviet Union indulged in with the massed ranks of marching troops, the armoured columns and the flypasts of combat aircraft. Of course for  Ireland, the military hardware on show was on a much smaller scale.

For this year’s anniversary, the aim was to be much more ‘inclusive’ with family events, educational lectures, historical re-enactments, street festivals, etc. Of course the underlying nationalist message was still present though in a more muted form; an example being that in the weeks prior to Easter, the Proclamation was read out in all school playgrounds under the Tricolour.

The correct attitude to adopt to the Rising has always been somewhat problematical for Irish Governments. While Irish Independence is nominally taken to have begun with the rebellion, in fact the origins of the state really date from the unplanned and erratic series of events that occurred from the Conscription crisis of 1918 to the end of the Civil War in 1923.

The undemocratic and vanguardist nature of the military operation of Easter 1916 has unpalatable parallels with the more recent campaign of the Provisional IRA. In fact during these more recent troubles, apologists for the Provisional movement liked to justify their struggle against claims that it had little popular support by reference to the minority action of 1916. The authorities in Dublin were keenly aware of this and certainly during the 1970s and 1980s there was little official observance of the date on any grand scale.

The participation of James Connolly in the planning and execution of the Rising has always given it left-wing appeal even though he was in a clear minority in terms of his political outlook compared to the other leaders. Connolly had an admirable record prior to the Rising as a social agitator and resolute campaigner against capitalism and militarism. The other leaders, while some of them had vaguely progressive ideas, were more straightforward cultural nationalists who envisaged the new state that would be formed as replicating other nascent European nation-states. For many of them, the aim of the Rising was to give Ireland its own lag, anthem, currency and  language; the usual trappings of a sovereign capitalist nation. A well-known phrase from the Proclamation ‘cherishing all the children of the nation equally’ has since been used to vindicate the claim that it was a progressive event even though that wording was placed there more for grandiose political purposes than a call to any specific programme of social action.

What’s the view from today? It can be debated over and back whether the 26 counties that eventually went on to form the Republic of Ireland would have been better or worse off if they had remained as part of the UK. It’s a calculation that has been and continues to be put forward to the Scottish people by the governing SNP in Edinburgh. To an extent it’s similar to the current debate in the UK about its own membership of the larger European political union.

While we constantly hear that we live in a globalised world, national sovereignty still resonates with many people. As socialists we reject the concept absolutely. The delineation of national boundaries within a system of world capitalism is just a reflection of the nationalist consciousness that currently prevails amongst the people of this planet. The celebration of national days, the supporting of the national team at international football tournaments, the organised remembrance of common history etc. are all manifestations of the constant encouragement to us to make identification with our fellow countrymen as the primary determinant of our political consciousness. This is a false proposition. The problems of the Irish people were not solved by independence; the hundreds of thousands of emigrants who left Ireland since 1922 are proof of that. The same will hold for the Scottish people. In the long term, the maintenance or relinquishment of membership of the EU will not improve or worsen the overall position of the majority of the people of the island of Britain. As socialists we say the only political allegiance we should give is to our fellow workers and our objective should be to finish with countries and their bogus ‘national’ days.

Kevin Cronin

Action Replay: You’ll Never Walk (Out) Alone! (2016)

The Action Replay column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liverpool FC fans walked out in protest at increased ticket prices during their home game against Sunderland earlier this season. In the 77th minute with Liverpool leading 2-0, droves of their supporters left the stadium annoyed at the proposed new ticket price of £77.

Nobody at Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the club’s American owners, could have foreseen the reaction of Liverpool fans to the price hike to meet the cost of a new main stand.

Ian Ayres, the Chief Executive, completely misread the supporters mood when calling their actions ‘disappointing’ adding ‘what’s affordable for one person isn’t for another…I’ve no doubt 200 people would be happy to pay £77 for a seat.’ Plainly, it’s not the sort of comment that will endear him to the Scousers.

Jamie Carragher, a former Liverpool player joined the walkout. He stated that Liverpool generate around £35 million in ticket prices, had FSG announced a freeze on prices when the stand was completed the revenue would have risen to £37million – all this for the sake of £2 million for the eighth richest club in the world.

Alan Shearer, former England International, backed the fans commenting: If you are a parent with kids and you want to take them to a game, the cost would be horrendous for a normal working family.

Fenway Sports Group later issued a letter of apology to the fans, signed by senior FSG figures: John W Henry, Tom Werner and Mike Gordon. FSG expressed concern that the supporters may perceive them as greedy, stressing they have not taken a penny out of the club and have invested £1m on a new stand and invested considerable sums of money to improve the squad

However we need to look at the perennial failure of the Premier League to regulate the game. Generally speaking, many of the premier teams, some who have a sole owner, seek maximum revenue from ticket prices whilst the Premier League is awash with £8.3 billion in TV revenues.

Various measures have been mooted to quell some fans’ disenchantment, e.g. imposing caps on away prices; maximum charges and percentage increases; plus funnelling some of the massive TV revenue to reduce ticket prices. Otherwise, it is argued, we may face a situation where increasing numbers of fans are forced to watch football on TV because ticket costs will have priced them out of the football stadiums.

Kevin.

But Which People? (2016)

Book Review from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class'. By Selina Todd. (John Murray £10.99)

This is intended as a history of the working class in the UK from 1910 to 2010. Although Todd’s view of who counts as working class is not always clear, she appears to see it as primarily manual workers, so only part of the story is presented here. However, she is quite right when she describes class as ‘a relationship defined by unequal power, rather than a way of life or an unchanging culture’. 

The narrative she provides can be summarised as follows. In the early part of the last century, there were nearly one and a half million domestic servants, the largest group of workers. Factory workers tended to be regarded as unskilled (and so lower-paid) if any of their work involved using machinery. In the First World War, domestic servants almost disappeared as women went to work in munitions factories and joined unions; they often resented being forced back into ‘service’ after the war. The defeat of the General Strike meant that the labour movement supposedly became committed to constitutional change, with workers’ strength not being used as a political weapon.

The thirties saw Depression, unemployment and the Means Test, and the number of servants increased slightly, as women whose fathers were out of work had to find employment somewhere. Families were broken up, and many people slid down the social ladder, with apprenticeships rarely leading to a skilled job. By the mid-thirties, things were improving for many workers, though by no means all. Mass production on assembly lines was a new development, imported from the US.

The Second World War was ‘the people’s war’, and many workers benefited from increased wages and job security. Their lives improved even more after the war, with higher wages and ‘full employment’. One area where there was little progress, however, was housing, with not enough houses built and council housing generally inferior to private building. By 1951, the metal industry employed 15 percent of male workers. By the late fifties, many working-class families experienced a reasonable standard of living, but only if they had two parents working overtime and relying on debt, especially hire purchase.

From around that same time a cultural revolution took place, by which being working class supposedly became fashionable (as seen in novels such as Room at the Top). In the late sixties, workers became readier to strike for higher wages, and many women got involved in rent strikes as council rents rose. In the eighties, the government attacked unions, most notably in the miners’ strike, and cut social security, leading to increases in inequality. It was no longer clear that children could look forward to better lives than their parents had known. By 2000, 70 percent of workers were employed in non-manual work, yet a growing number of people saw themselves as working class.

As this suggests, there is a lot of useful material here, enlivened by reference to, and quotes from, surveys and interviews with workers, many carried out by Mass Observation. But there is an unfortunate tendency to romanticise the post-1945 era and exaggerate its ongoing effect on the lives of the great majority. We are told that ‘[b]etween 1945 and 1951 the lives of working-class people greatly improved’, but then that ‘the 1950s were a decade of insecurity and fear for many people’. And the book is a bit naive in places, such as the claim that by the end of the seventies the main political parties had made a ‘decision to govern in favour of capitalists rather than in the interests of the majority of the electorate’: when was it ever any different?

An afterword takes the story up to 2015, and is in some ways rather more convincing, as in the statement that ‘class arises from the conflicts between different groups, who are defined primarily by their relationship to the means of production. In capitalism, the profits of the few depend on the exploitation of the many’. A consistent approach to class, with little or no reference to a vaguely-defined middle class, would have made this a better book. 

Paul Bennett

Material World: St Kilda and Socialism (2016)

The Material World Column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last native resident of St Kilda died in April. This remote part of Britain used to practise a communistic society.

Socialists, when asked about examples of common ownership and control in action, often refer to peoples who live or lived in a social system that we term ‘primitive communism’, often tribes in the Amazonian rainforest. Yet 110 miles west of the Scottish mainland there are a small cluster of islands known as St Kilda, inhabited for at least two millennia and with a population probably never exceeding 180, where a form of primitive communism prevailed.

In theory St Kilda was part of Scotland but it was effectively overlooked. The Inland Revenue never attempted to impose taxation, and the inhabitants of St Kilda were never invited to register on an electoral roll. No crime was ever officially recorded. No one from St Kilda was called up into the armed forces. Until the nineteenth century money was not used on St Kilda. On the islands the islanders had developed a self-sufficient communal economy based on seabirds (meat, oil and eggs), Soay sheep, fishing, and some small scale crofting.

On the whole the people were left free to develop their own type of society. The outcome was a form of communism in which decisions affecting the whole community were taken in a collective manner (though only by the men), work was assigned on the basis of individual skills, and there was no private property apart from accommodation, furniture, and other personal items. The community made sure that those who were sick, disabled, or elderly could live at the same standard as anyone else. A large proportion of the communal work involved the catching of sea birds and the gathering of eggs. After a day capturing fulmars, for example, all the dead birds would be placed on a large pile, and then distributed to each family according to the size of the family. Men who returned with especially large quantities of fulmars would receive the same share as any other.

In 1838, a traveller, Lachlan MacLean wrote ‘If St Kilda is not the Eutopia so long sought, where will it be found? Where is the land which has neither arms, money, care, physic, politics, nor taxes? That land is St Kilda. No taxgatherer's bill threatens on a church door, the game-laws reach not the gannets. Safe in its own whirlwinds, and cradled in its own tempests, it heeds not the storms which shake the foundations of Europe  –  and acknowledging the dominion of M'Leod, cares not who sways the British sceptre. Well may the pampered native of happy Hirt refuse to change his situation – his slumbers are late – his labours are light – his occupation his amusement. Government he has not – law he feels not – physic he wants not – politics he heeds not – money he sees not – of war he hears not. His state is his city, his city is his social circle, he has the liberty of his thoughts, his actions, and his kingdom and all the world are his equals. His climate is mild, and his island green, and the stranger who might corrupt him shuns its shores. If happiness is not a dweller in St Kilda, where shall it be sought?’

In 1887 Robert Connell observed in his St. Kilda and the St. Kildians: ‘To discover the socialistic principle you have only to toss a roll of tobacco – an ounce will serve the purpose as well – to the first man that accosts you. True to the apostolic theory of ‘all things common’ this latter-day Ananias will share his spoil, to the last leaf, with every smoker on the island.’

The men of Hirta (the only inhabitable island) would meet every morning in what was the daily ‘Parliament’. It had no rules, no chairman and participants arrived in their own time. This was a meeting to share information, discuss current issues, resolve disputes, and make decisions, in particular in relation to work that needed to be done. Decisions were reached by consensus. ‘Often the proceedings are anything but harmonious, and the loud talking of the men at one and the same moment is suggestive of anything but a peaceful solution. However, when a decision is arrived at the malcontents readily give way, and co-operate cordially with the majority.’ Never in recorded history were feuds bitter enough as to bring about a permanent division in the community.

Like the free workers of Jamaica that Marx describes in the Grundrisse who, being ‘content to produce what was strictly necessary for their own consumption’, and how they were portrayed by the plantation owners as idle and indulgent, so the St Kildans were similarly held in contempt by visitors and churchmen for their production just of use-values and their adherence to their home-grown version of communism of directly satisfying needs.

The entire population was evacuated in 1930 and so ended perhaps the longest surviving example of a communistic system in action on British soil.

ALJO

Exhibition Review: The Rhubarb Triangle (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rhubarb Triangle, Hepworth gallery, Wakefield

In case you have never heard of it, the Rhubarb Triangle is an area between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell, where the soils and climate are particularly suitable for the growing of rhubarb. Though much reduced from its heyday in the 1930s, the rhubarb industry is still going strong, and provides one of many examples of locally-sourced food that has been boosted by the celebrity chef culture. Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb has Protected Designation of Origin status from the EU (like champagne and Parma ham), though this is something that growers have to pay for. Much of the rhubarb is grown by small family firms, and the younger generation are often less keen on the backbreaking work involved. A larger company with over thirty workers relies mostly on migrants from eastern Europe, and also welcomes coach tours as a way of increasing interest and profits.

Currently the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield is hosting a display of photos of the Rhubarb Triangle by Martin Parr. These make clear the hard and dirty work that is part of the special techniques required: the plants grow in fields, get the right amount of frost, and are then moved to darkened sheds. Global warming may mean a lack of frost and so disrupt the harvests. There are photos too of the coach tour visitors, and of Wakefield Council’s annual Festival of Food, Drink and Rhubarb, complete with someone dressed as a stick of rhubarb and walking around greeting the kids.

The exhibition also includes plenty of other examples of Parr’s work, going back a period of forty years. The earliest are in black and white, of chapels in places such as Hebden Bridge and Todmorden. From the 1980s are photos of workers on holiday in New Brighton, which were apparently criticised by some as ‘class voyeurism’, with a successful photographer providing unsympathetic portrayals of less well-off workers. These are perhaps balanced by photos of Tory supporters at parties and celebrating election victories. There is no doubt, though, which set of people look more alive.

Parr’s main interests have been in depicting people at work and at leisure; this exhibition – on until 12 June – provides an excellent overview, and includes some remarkable self-portraits in various guises (and it’s worth checking out martinparr.com). 

Paul Bennett

Obituary: Frank Duncan (2016)

Obituary from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with great sorrow that we report the death of Frank Duncan, a stalwart socialist and a fascinating man. He joined the Glasgow branch in 1944, just after he had played a key role in organising the Glasgow apprentices’ strike. An Apprentices’ Charter, produced by the Clyde strike committee in 1937, had called for apprentices to have day release for technical training and the right to join a trade union. When these demands were flatly refused by the employers, Frank and his fellow apprentices went out on strike. During this period he attended open-air meetings in Glasgow, found the logic of the case for socialism irresistible and joined the Party.

He later became the supervisor of the telephone exchange in Cricklewood, North London and joined Paddington branch. Frank was a great cyclist (taking annual cycling tours of the Canary Islands), a huge enthusiast for brass band music and a regular attender at concerts of many kinds at the South Bank in London.

I first met him in the 1980s when, after a period of inactivity, he threw himself back into energetic activity as a member – and then long-time secretary – of Islington branch. To say that his energy was not easy to keep up with would be an understatement. Frank was someone who was a 24/7 socialist; everything he said or did referred to his deep principles. Everyone who knew him knew what he was all about. He had a great influence on the many young socialists who joined during that period and played a pivotal role in several election campaigns in Islington. His knowledge, enthusiasm and playful sense of humour will be missed.

SC

Proper Gander: Legal Highs And Lows (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC3 is easy to overlook in its new online-only home, even though this is probably how we’ll watch more channels in the future, as the boundaries between television and the internet blur. Online, the channel can group together similar broadcasts, and their stash of shows and articles about drugs looks at the issue from some interesting and imaginative angles. Their titles follow the BBC3 tradition of a tabloidish, eyeball-grabbing headline which suggests the programme is going to be tackier than it turns out to be: Meth And Madness In Mexico, Why Are Women Putting Cannabis In Their Vaginas? and Whoopi Goldberg Wants To Cure Your Period Pain With Weed. More blandly titled is their Drugs Map Of Britain series, which in its first episode visits the people in Wolverhampton aiming at Getting Off Mamba.

Mamba is a ‘legal high’, now more formally called ‘new psychoactive substances’ (NPSs). These are synthetic versions of other drugs, produced by the kind of entrepreneurial spirit we’re supposed to admire. The manufacturers of these substances found the gap in the mainstream market left by the trade in drugs like heroin, cannabis and cocaine being illegal and therefore underground. As new psychoactive substances differ chemically from other drugs, they weren’t covered by existing legislation, until the introduction of the 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act. Before the change in the law, NPSs were openly sold online and in ‘head shops’, meaning they could reach a wider audience than other drugs, and therefore rake in the profits. Mamba, an artificial approximation of cannabis, is probably the most well known type; a few years ago it was mephedrone, aka ‘m-cat’ or ‘meow meow’. Others have names such as ‘happy joker’ and ‘holy smoke’, their packets marked ‘not for human consumption’, which used to be enough to protect the manufacturers from legal comebacks about the drugs’ downsides. One downside not shown in the documentary is a ‘mamba attack’, an extreme reaction to the drug which tends to involve being disorientated and losing bodily control, which in practice can mean collapsing and being unresponsive or acting aggressively or erratically.

Perhaps because of BBC3’s reduced budget, Getting Off Mamba isn’t complicated by a narrator or commentary from professionals. The camera follows Liam, who smokes mamba every few hours, and says it ‘makes you feel nice. It makes me forget about things that I don’t want to think about, like being homeless, having no family, no friends, no help, no nothing’. He and many others use it as a coping strategy for the pressures of effectively being on capitalism’s scrapheap. The rough sleepers and vulnerably housed people featured in the show all recognise that using mamba doesn’t really help them deal with their situations, and instead makes matters worse. Another mamba smoker, Bruce, says it has sapped his motivation and self-esteem as well as draining his money. In other circumstances, drug use can be more enriching, but not when it’s wrapped up in an otherwise unfulfilling, restricted lifestyle.

Liam decides to get support to come off mamba, and visits ‘SUIT’, one of Wolverhampton’s substance misuse services. He meets with Sunny, who has recovered from addiction and now helps others do the same. He and Liam talk about how staying off drugs means making changes to different aspects of his life, such as how he spends his time and who he associates with. An update at the end of the show tells how he’s avoided using mamba and is on a work placement. Getting Off Mamba is less exploitative of its subjects than many of the similar documentaries which followed in the wake of Benefits Street. But it still approaches them in a distant, slightly patronising way, which veteran drama producer Tony Garnett has likened to anthropologists studying ‘natives’.

New psychoactive substances (NPSs) aren’t really all that new, but have become more widespread over the last decade, encroaching on the popularity of heroin, cannabis and cocaine. Some people have switched to NPSs from using traditional drugs because of their increased availability, and the decline in purity of traditional drugs is probably another factor. Producers dilute drugs with cheaper (and often harmful) substances in order to bulk out the deal and make more money. For them, this becomes a false economy when users turn to something else they hope will be more effective, such as mamba. The drugs market will change again with the introduction of the Psychoactive Substances Act, which makes it illegal to produce or supply NPSs. This won’t magically make demand for them disappear, so their manufacture and use will be driven underground, like other drugs. Nor will the change in law remove the pressures of poverty and homelessness which lead some people into problematic drug use. For Liam and the others in Getting Off Mamba, drugs have been a coping mechanism which hasn’t solved their underlying difficulties. Similarly, reforms like the Psychoactive Substances Act are just coping mechanisms which also don’t address the deeper causes of the drugs problem.

Mike Foster

The Panama Papers: All in it Together (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is an expensive business. In any society where the population is divided between those few who own but do no productive work, on the one hand, and the many who have to work but own little, on the other, it is obviously necessary to build up a powerful and far-reaching state apparatus to protect the owning few. Each country’s owning class has to safeguard itself both internally and externally. Internally, it must construct and maintain police forces (overt and undercover), courts, prosecuting machinery, prisons and so forth, in case the propertyless many should rise against them, and attempt to construct a different society – or even just to try and replace the present leaders. Externally, it must construct and maintain armies, navies, air-forces and so on in order to prevent any other country’s capitalist class trying to seize part of its property, and also to support any attempt it may make to seize territory at present held by another country’s owning class.

All this costs money, a great deal of money. Britain is building a new super-prison in Wrexham, with places for 2000 inmates, at a cost of £250 million. And that’s just building it. Apparently it costs about £40,000 a year to keep each prisoner in jail - or £65,000 a year if you include the costs of the police, courts etc. But these expenses, enormous as they are, are dwarfed by the amount a capitalist class will pay out to defend its property from possible attack by foreigners (or possibly to acquire more property from foreigners). The United States is planning to procure a new generation of bombing planes (to destroy the buildings of hostile countries and kill their citizens); there are 175 of them, the total cost being estimated at between $40 and $50 billion. (That’s somewhere between twenty-eight thousand million pounds, and thirty-five thousand million pounds – which comes to about £100 for every man woman and child in the United States.)

So where will the money come from? The answer becomes more obvious the more you think about it. If you want food, you have to go and get it (and pay for it) at a place where they have food, e.g. a supermarket. If you want clothes, you go to a place where they sell clothes. And if you want money, you have to get it from the people who have money. There’s no point in demanding significant contributions from all those people who have to work for a living. When the economists examine the finances of people with low and middle incomes, they always say it’s a matter of swings and roundabouts. Taxation is demanded from many such people, and many others get various kinds of benefits. At the end of the day, it’s merely redistributing the income within that (very large) group of people. Apart from all that, of course, if the working class as a whole did have to pay serious taxes, it would mean much greater pressure for higher pay to make up for it, and in the end the capitalists as a whole would be taking with one hand and having to give back with the other.

All this being so, the money to run the state and preserve it from dangers both internal and external has to come from the capitalists themselves. But while all ruling authorities acknowledge this, and have strict laws in place in order to collect sufficient money from the rich to operate the state machine, the individual capitalists will often be tempted to reduce as much as they can their own personal tax burden. And this is where ‘offshore’ companies and similar dodges come in. Recently many documents – emails, correspondence etc – have been leaked from an influential law firm, Mossack Fonseca, in Panama. The firm has apparently acted for many wealthy people round the world who wished to conceal money or property from the authorities in their own countries. The leaked data from this single firm make it clear that the further up the power scale a wealthy person is in their particular country, the more they will be tempted to fiddle their tax affairs in such a way that they end up paying very little or sometimes nothing: like a member of a tug-of-war team who cheers on the others but personally does very little tugging.

One way to make your affairs ‘tax-efficient’ as the lawyers say (i.e. putting your money where it is safely out of sight of the local tax-collectors) is to establish a company or trust in one of several countries round the world that advertise themselves as ‘tax-havens’. Money gained illegally can also be stashed away quietly, since criminals often find it difficult to explain how without any very obvious sources of income, they are suddenly in possession of a lot of cash (a Rolls-Royce parked outside a terraced downmarket house would cause inconvenient curiosity). Through these secretive companies it’s possible to ‘launder’ money, for example when offshore companies (with anonymous owners) buy houses in London’s booming property market. ‘World leaders, criminals and billionaire sheikhs have secretly poured hundreds of millions of pounds into London properties, leaked offshore data reveals. The cache of documents from a Panamanian law firm confirms the capital as the go-to place for wealthy foreigners and criminals anxious to protect their anonymity and assets’ (Times, 6 April).

Capitalism is fundamentally the same throughout the world, but local history and local conditions often mean that the local version looks different on the surface. Different politicians have different names for their own version of capitalism – some try to get votes by calling it socialism, some even have the nerve to call it communism – but in fact it is recognisably the same the world over. And being the same, the local politicians share the same desires: how to hide their own wealth, while at the same time getting the rest of the country’s rich people to hand over enough of the readies to enable the country’s capitalist system to survive and prosper. Here are a few of those listed by theTimes or the BBC as being connected with these offshore subterfuges, who appeared in the Panama papers – either their own names came up, or the names of family members or close friends:

·        Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s prime minister (in fact there are links in the data to twelve present or former heads of state or prime ministers); poor old Sigmundur had to resign.

·        David Cameron, Britain’s premier, who is going to host an anti-corruption summit in London  shortly; there were also calls for his resignation.

·        Gianni Infantino, the new head of FIFA (just installed to ‘clean up the mess’, because of the  peculiar financial transactions of the last lot).

·        Gonzalo Delaveau, head of the Chilean branch of the anti-corruption watchdog, ‘Transparency  International’.

·        James Ibori, ‘the corrupt Nigerian governor who is known to have bought property across London’.

·        Leyla and Arzua Aliyeva, who ‘are said to have amassed vast business empires’ since daddy –  President Aliyev of Azerbaijan – came to power in 2003.

·        President Macri of Argentina.

·        Two close associates of Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Front.

·        A close associate of President Pena Nieto of Mexico.

·        Alaa Mubarak, son of the former Egyptian dictator.

·        Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates.

·        Mariam Safdar, the daughter of Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan (and two sisters of hers).

·        Kojo Annan, son of the former head of the U.N.

·        Kalpana Rawal, Deputy Chief Justice of Kenya’s Supreme Court.

·        Ayad Allawi, former Prime Minister of Iraq.

·        Dr Saraki, President of the Nigerian Senate.

·        Rami Makhlouf, cousin and close associate of President Assad of Syria.

·        Li Xiaolin, daughter of the former Prime Minister of China.

·        Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine.

·        Kim Chol Sam, a senior official of the North Korean regime.

·        Close associates of Vladimir Putin.

·        Brother-in-law of Xi Jinping, president of China.

Plus lots of others: e.g. Hans-Joachim Kohlsdorf, former senior executive of Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company, Michael Geoghegan the former HSBC boss, David Hunt, ‘one of Britain’s most feared gangsters’ according to the Times, Dominic Chappell, now principal owner of British Home Stores, Tarek Obaid, the founder of Anglo-Saudi oil company Petro-Saudi (and a ‘leading investor’ in a company running a dozen academy-type schools). And, of course, Mossack Fonseca, with 300,000 clients, is only one firm among dozens in the business of helping people to hide away their assets. It will be seen that there are people here from all sides of the various hostile groupings and power blocs into which capitalist countries naturally cluster themselves. They may denounce each other ferociously, but they are all alike when it comes to seeing if they can avoid paying their fair share of the enormous costs of running capitalist countries. The laws operating in each country are very often different, but even so it is quite possible that none of those named broke any laws: it was merely a question of being able to enjoy wealth but not pay taxes on it.

David Cameron appeared on the list because his father, Ian, had operated two offshore trusts, one in the British Virgin Islands, one in Jersey. In 2012 he criticised Jimmy Carr, comedian, who had joined an offshore tax-avoidance scheme: he said it was ‘morally wrong’. When asked about Gary Barlow, a pop star, who had campaigned alongside Cameron for the Conservatives in the 2010 election, and who had joined a similar scheme, he said he hadn’t had time to look into yet; though he had found sufficient time to give Barlow an OBE in 2012. So it’s a little embarrassing that Cameron and his wife bought shares in his father’s off-shore fund in 1997 for £13,500, and sold them thirteen years later for £31,500, two-and-a-half times as much – a very acceptable profit made through offshore trading. Not to mention that Cameron’s education (Eton, fees now £32,000 a year, and Oxford, where Cameron joined the Bullingdon Club – dress-suit to wear at club dinners: £3,500) was presumably paid for by his father’s offshore activities.

So it seems that’s how ‘morally wrong’ can be financially right.

Alwyn Edgar

Family Circle (2016)

Book Review from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists'. By David Aaronovitch. (Jonathan Cape. 2016)

Aaronovitch is not, it is fair to say, universally popular as a political columnist but this book shows another side to a quite complex individual, centered on his upbringing and early life in the Communist Party of Great Britain. It is for the most part engaging and well written and there is much here that anyone familiar with radical and revolutionary politics will be able to identify with.

His father was Sam Aaronovitch, a working class full-time Communist Party official who later became an academic, while his mother Lavender was a radical activist and equally fervent in her leftist and pro-Soviet views. They were contemporaries of well-known CPGB activists like John Gollan, Jock Nicholson and Peter Fryer, and Aaronovitch deftly analyses their North London social and political milieu. This book is an attempt to explain why they thought as they did and to explore the cultural environment and reference points of those who set themselves in this way outside the mainstream of society. In this respect, it is a personal exploration of what it means to be ‘the other’ and how political ideology was reflected in music, holidays, food eaten and a range of other ostensibly non-political activities that were nevertheless impacted by the sense of being different and apart from the mainstream.

While the CPGB had its own distinctive internal culture and identity it would be churlish to deny there is a wider resonance here of sorts, including with organisations like the SPGB that have had a similar ancestry in the self-educated working class ‘autodidactic’ tradition. This has been a tradition often at variance to the prevailing attitudes and codes of behaviour in society (from say, negative feelings towards religion, to refusing to sing the national anthem at school).

In some respects there are interesting parallels with the approach taken in Alexei Sayle’s 'Stalin Ate My Homework', though compared to Sayle what this loses in humour it perhaps gains in terms of psychological insight. Aaronovitch is impressive in his analysis of psychological attitudes and responses in the CPGB towards the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 (including why some members left at this time while others reconciled themselves to stay), the Czechoslovakian events of 1968 and then the long decline of the CPGB from the 1970s. He takes in the split with the hardline so-called ‘tankies’ in 1977 and the final dissolution of the organization in 1991 with the founding of the Democratic Left. But by then the Party had been over for him for some time and this book is the culmination of many years – decades even – of soul-searching about his upbringing and involvement in it.

Some of what emerges about Aaronvitch’s family background is clearly uncomfortable (his father was an adulterer and it appears that the family were the thinly-disguised subject of a chapter in a well-known book by the psychologist Robyn Skinner, consequent on a series of family therapy sessions they had with him). There is a sense of some score-settling too as the book progresses, though this doesn’t detract too much from what is an otherwise insightful work. It is mainly an autobiographical and sociological account rather than an expressly political one perhaps, and it would have been interesting to have explored more closely at times the political assumptions that lay behind the belief in so-called ‘actually existing socialism’ in the Soviet Union and its satellites. For this was not a ‘socialism’ that degenerated over time, but a complete mirage from the outset, and one the CPGB were at pains to promote and uphold despite all the evidence to the contrary from 1917 onwards.

Dave Perrin