The GDR: up against the wall (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The German Democratic Republic’s location on the periphery of the Soviet bloc and its constant confrontation with one of the most powerful economic forces of the Western world, the Federal Republic, has had its effect on the formation of internal opinion and dissent. In contrast to its East European neighbours, there is no sustained civil rights movement and manifestos of ‘opposition’ have appeared in official publications. As the country celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, however, there are signs that the East German leadership cannot re-establish with the population an understanding similar to that which existed in the early 1970s.

A new, tough orientation on the regime’s part is linked to a challenge to the Communist Party leader Honecker’s authority. His failure to manage the economy over the last few years (and what some see as his dangerous concessions to consumerism) have laid him open to attack from sections of the leadership who fear a general decline of political controls. Since the spring, the government has sought to link political repression against writers directly to its drive against the ‘grey’(Deutschmark) market. Sharply rising prices for raw materials and a deterioration in the terms of trade with the Soviet Union have led to demands for greater effort, without the Party being able to provide adequate rewards. Wages of East German workers have risen faster than the supply of consumer goods, with private savings at the beginning of last year standing at a record level of 80,000 million marks. A reluctance to respond readily to yet another call by the Party for increased production, voluntary shift work and rationalisation points to further clashes.

Although rents, electricity, transport services and basic goods like bread, potatoes, sugar and salt are relatively cheap, their sales price does not cover production costs — the low prices of these products correspond to the extremely low wages drawn by the majority of the population. The state takes its subsidies, which maintain the price of necessary goods at a low level, from the enormous differences which exist between the production costs of luxury items and the sales price to the consumer. For the majority, then, there are low wages, and therefore necessary goods are cheap and permit the reproduction of their labour power, while the privileged receive high salaries and have access to luxury items. ‘Illegal work’, normally undertaken at weekends, brings more income than a whole week of regular work in state enterprises.

Additionally, the suicide rate in the country is striking. According to the most recent figures it stands at 35 for every 10,000, while there are 22 for every 10,000 in the Federal Republic.

Widespread anger and resentment exists, on the one hand over the privileges enjoyed by the ruling elite in the form of exclusive shops selling Western goods, and on the other over the scarcity of items such as cars, television sets, good clothes and furniture. Recent strikes in the Fritz-Hekert-Werke in Karl Marx- Stadt, the Narve electric lamp factory in Berlin, and demands for payment in hard currency (Deutschmarks) for workers who are employed in export production for the West, indicate the scope of the difficulties with which the Party is faced. An ‘affluent society’ similar to the West is not just the ambition of the rulers anxious to perpetuate their power, but also corresponds to the immediate interests of the ruled.

While the size of the country and the thoroughness of police surveillance have prevented the growth of a significant underground, the last two years have seen the coming into the open of the first dissident, inner-Party opposition in Eastern Europe. Coping with such internal critics has posed more of a problem than would be the case with religious/ ethical reformers and ‘anti-Marxists’.

At the beginning of 1978 a manifesto purportedly drawn up by the ‘League of Democratic Communists of Germany’ was published in the West German magazine, Der Spiegel (2 and 9 January). Predictably, the document’s main concerns were with the establishment of a pluralist democracy in the East and the reunification of Germany. Attacks on the Soviet Union and the corrupt and inefficient system in the GDR were the manifesto’s other main thrusts:

No ruling class of Germany has ever sponged so much and secured itself against the pepple as those two dozen families who run the country like a self-service store. None has ever had such excessively golden ghettoes built in the forests which are guarded like fortresses. None has so shamelessly corrupted and enriched itself in special stores and private imports from the West, through decoration, bonuses and special clinics, pensions and presents, as has this caste.

Calling the Soviet leaders ‘Red Popes’, Communist leaders generally ‘Red-lacquered Nazis’, and the East German Party’s Politburo ‘Polit Quislings’, the League seek an end to what they call “the Asian production method of bureaucratic state capitalism”.

The most telling attack on the Party in the 1970s has come from a middle ranking cadre, Rudolf Bahro, presently serving an eight-year sentence after being found guilty of ‘treason’ in July 1978. Published in West Germany in 1977 (and in England last year), The Alternative in Eastern Europe is a left-Communist critique of the GDR system and what he calls a “strategy for a real communist alternative”.

Bahro argues that the Soviet type system, which is a model for the GDR. constitutes a distinctive type of social formation which is neither capitalist nor socialist. He suggests a parallel to Marx’s concept of the Asiatic mode of production in which there exists a ruling class not based on private property ownership but organised as an administrative and ideological apparatus. But he ignores the hallmarks of capitalism which predominate in the GDR just as much as in the West. The fact that a monopoly of the means of production is not legally recognised is immaterial — wealth is in effect the property of an individual or group if there exists a right in fact against the other members of society to use it and control its use.

Bahro’s position is not the familiar Trotskyist one, however. He shares our view that the objective backwardness of revolutionary Russia and the weakness of the working class there led inevitably to a new omnipotent state apparatus; that Lenin and the Bolsheviks, whatever their intentions, had paved the way for Stalin’s forced industrialisation and all the “practically unavoidable consequences of a definite historical progress”. For him, as for us, the East European system is not a deformation of socialism.

In the GDR, social and political needs are subservient to the goal-rationing objectives of the state Party apparatus. The oligarchy at the top of the pyramid decides the goals for which the surplus product should be used, and subjects the entire reproduction process of economic, social and cultural life to its regulations. Bahro’s concern is with the conception of the division of labour in society, and he argues that the basic attitude of the producers to ‘their’ state is not essentially different from that of workers in Western society to ‘their’ corporations. He points out that “given the perpetuation of the division of labour, commodity production and money, nothing has altered in the principle of how work is assessed. Wages are simply the price that the appropriator state pays for the commodity labour-power.” (p.205). Just as the worker in the West not only improves his own conditions of existence by productive activity, within the given limits of the system, but above all expands capital, so in the GDR “he increases the potential for the Party and state machine’s power of disposal, and thus increases his own impotence in relation to it” (p.241).

Bahro maintains that for the last twenty years the GDR has been spending labour on a growing scale for luxury goods for the privileged strata. “We can hear”, he says, “ the director of a Berlin textile works, a factory moreover which predominantly employs female labour, say on the radio that ‘the growing needs of the population dictate to us the three-shift system’ — even if wardrobes are bursting! If you do not want to remain ‘backward’, you must throw out your furniture three times in the course of your life. We accelerate the ‘moral depreciation’ of technical consumer goods.” (p.269). This pressure on workers to keep buying is depressingly familiar, although Bahro rightly points out that while in the West trade unions are a reality, it is scarcely possible in the GDR to influence the relative level of income since it is the Party and government which adjust the proportions in favour of particular groups.

Bahro places his hopes in an accumulation of what he calls “surplus consciousness” which can no longer be satisfied and contained within the system of subordination and hierarchical division of labour. For the first time in human history, he argues, an energetic capacity is no longer absorbed by the immediate necessities of human existence. Whereas previously the scarceness of the means of satisfaction always opposed educated elites with uneducated masses, the increasing demands of technology bring about the conditions for widespread growth of individual development and consciousness.

Unfortunately, though perhaps inevitably, his ‘alternative’ programme leaves much to be desired: the abolition of all bureaucratic privileges and the democratic control of administrative processes is its extent. A new ‘League of Communists’ is to implement a series of measures, including university education for all and the rotation of manual and intellectual work, and the result (which he calls socialism) will demand the continued existence of the Party.

To be an effective opposition, however, the workers’ struggle for legal rights of political expression in the GDR must be coupled with a determination to achieve socialism, a world society where goods and services are freely available according to need; where the state, national frontiers, political parties and the wage labour and capital relationship itself no longer obtain. Only this is worth an eight-year prison sentence.

It should not be forgotten that the GDR remains a Soviet military zone, with twenty Russian divisions kept on a war footing. The three million East German workers who voted with their feet between 1949 and 1961 doubtless have few regrets about leaving what is now considered the best example of ‘socialism’ in practice. Yet it would be wrong to say that the grass is greener over the Wall; seeds on both sides have scarcely taken root.

Melvin Tenner

SALT in the wounds (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the post-war struggle between East and West to establish spheres of economic and political influence, global networks of alliances have been sealed with aid in the form of arms and supportive technology. The foreign policies of the two major powers have been essentially nothing more than preparations for war. While direct confrontation has been avoided, opportunities to test the kill-effectiveness of their respective arsenals have not been lacking. The first thirty years of the United Nations saw 119 wars waged on the territories of 69 countries, involving 81 states, with a total duration of conflict exceeding 350 years and at a cost of tens of millions of casualties. The invitation of nominally independent, but in fact puppet, governments has been invoked to justify the presence of American and Russian armed forces in the Third World. An increase in the number of wars fought by proxy on foreign soil and the spread and strengthening of capitalism through nationalist movements and new states are responsible for the huge increase in conventional armament expenditure in the last decade.

Seventy million men and women are now fully engaged, directly or indirectly, in capitalism’s military programmes. Spending on ‘defence’, including research and development, has trebled in real terms since 1948 and now accounts for more than 7 per cent, of total world output, a figure representing the combined incomes of almost half the world’s population. No sharp contrast is evident between the general conditions of the Cold War and Detente eras; in fact, as far as actual war is concerned the latter is the more violent. The major powers have nevertheless gone to some trouble to ensure a truly lasting world peace. We have witnessed a considerably more polite use of diplomatic language and the number of nuclear weapons rise to 40,000, a figure exceeding the level of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). With fire strength increased a millionfold since ‘Little Boy’ fell on Hiroshima, present stockpiles are sufficient to annihilate the total world population a little over 690 times.

It was against this background that in June a United Nations Special Session on Disarmament was convened in New York (a monastic gathering to chat about the sanctity of life) and NATO heads of state at a Washington summit decided upon substantial military reinforcement in Europe.

The Big X-Ray

In April and May tentative agreement was reached in Moscow on the terms of the second SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty intended for signature next winter. We can safely state that its concern will not be with reduction of nuclear weapons, but the setting out of marginal differences in their increase. According to a spokesman from Washington’s Arms Control and Disarmament Agency the treaty ‘will not prevent the United States from doing anything that it would otherwise have wanted to do’ (Guardian, 28 April); the quantity of nuclear warheads ‘permitted’ by 1985 will be at least double that of 1974. On 8 May, when nobody was looking, the two sides adjourned indefinitely quite separate talks in Geneva on banning radiological and mass destruction weapons.

Seven thousand nuclear warheads are deployed in Western Europe and half that number, but with considerably higher yields, behind the Iron Curtain. The strategy of massive nuclear retaliation has fallen out of favour as the capabilities of both sides have increased and underground and submarine based delivery systems introduced. United States policy in the event of a (much discussed) Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg is that attempts should be made to restrict the war to Europe, using tactical nuclear weapons (‘the theatre nuclear rung of NATOs ladder of flexible response by controlled escalation’ as the military would put it — or calculated genocide in English). The concept of ‘limited’ war, with homelands as sanctuaries and Europe as the graveyard, has not surprisingly found little support among political victims. This scenario has been played out in five NATO nuclear war games in the last two years, with victory being secured at the expense of Europe and the copyright sold to Waddington’s.

In 1977 American military strategists, concerned at the increased ground attack capability of Eastern block forces and inspired by the President’s Human Rights campaign, enthusiastically adopted the neutron bomb. What endeared the device to them was its ‘increased kill capability, principally against personnel’ (US Defence Department spokesman) and relative sparing of property. Radiation emitted on impact would penetrate the armour of advancing tanks and kill cleanly those within a mile radius; after the crumbling off the skin, several days of spontaneous internal bleeding would be faced before death. The weapon could wipe out Russian armoured divisions in St. Peter’s Square without harming the Pope or damaging the Sistine chapel. Thus, not only would Christian civilisation survive, but the clearing away of bodies rather than the rubble of cities would mean significant savings. In short, a really effective labour killing and labour saving device. The diplomatic heat generated by the warhead’s proposed deployment led however to its temporary shelving; in June the United States Senate authorised procurement of components for its manufacture in 1979.

American capitalism’s investment has in the past few decades been increasingly transferred to ‘developed’ regions rather than raw material and extractive operations. Its vast investment in European industries, unsuccessful military intervention in Vietnam, and concern at the modernisation and expansion of Warsaw Pact forces (they are unsportingly weakening ‘NATOs historic qualitative advantage’) explain the desire to re-establish military credibility. At NATOs summit meeting members of the alliance agreed on an eighty million dollar increase in military spending for 1979 and outlined plans to bolster the morale of combat troops and patch up the southern flank. Calls were made to expand NATOs traditional military role, particularly to include Africa, where super power involvement is naturally discussed in terms of ideology rather than economic interest. On occasion however the military is liable to express clearly capitalism’s priorities, and in the week of the summit the last chairman of NATOs Military Committee stated:

The Allies are united in their detestation of the South African Government . . . but . . . South Africa produces three quarters of the West’s gold, she has three quarters of the world’s known reserves of chrome and is second only to the Soviet Union in its production, she has a similar share in industrial diamonds, and is second only to the United States in the production of uranium. All these undeniable facts make it mandatory for the Alliance to devise adequate defence of the Cape.

(Sir Peter Hill-Norton No Soft Options: the Politico-Military Realities of NATO)

Standardisation of arms equipment was also on the summit agenda, providing an example of possible conflicts of interest within the western capitalist class. Although its need is generally accepted, standardisation could mean a loss of home development and production programmes by some countries, leading to a loss of technological expertise and profits from arms exports.

Meanwhile, back at the UN Disarmament Session the main Soviet speaker Gromyko was radiating goodness and light, calling for an end to the production of nuclear weapons and the complete destruction of nuclear stockpiles. President Carter sent film actor Paul Newman along, John Wayne being indisposed. Those awake were treated to a brief repetition of the Soviet government’s views on unpleasant wars and cruel weapons of mass destruction; they very much favour old fashioned mass destruction and humane devices like their own chemical warheads.

The peculiarities of the Soviet language were further illustrated in two recent documents. In a letter sent to President Carter by Russian scientists, we read that "for the first time in human history, favourable conditions have been created for concerted international measures to curb the arms race” and learn of a “disarmament campaign which progressive forces around the world have been waging for years” (Soviet Weekly, 25 March). The architect of the Russian Navy, Admiral Gorschkov puts it in a slightly different way however:

Soviet naval power, merely a minor defensive arm in 1953, has become the optimum means to defeat the imperialist enemy, and the most important element in the Soviet arsenal to prepare the way for a communised world.

(The Sea Power of the State, Moscow 1977)

This confusion of peace with war is not an easy mistake to make. The Soviet Union has 87 strategic nuclear powered and 286 conventional submarines, with an armoury of 845 nuclear missiles. They have not been sitting back contemplating their naval strength either. The tank force has increased from 47,000 to 60,000 in ten years, 4,600 combat planes are deployed on the Eastern front lines and 3.67 million people are under arms or engaged in support activities. The Soviets are also planning a new intercontinental missile family for the late 1980s.

The recognition that war may be suicide does not affect the drive towards a new world war. To argue, as would the liberal, that arms production and trade arc a cancer on the body politic is to misunderstand the nature of society. Militarism is a natural growth of capitalism. Armament expenditure offers the liberal a convenient explanation of world poverty; the transfer of ‘scare resources’ and money to areas of need is viewed as simply a question of will. In fact under capitalism war is the extension and consequence of underlying international conflict in trade and other spheres, and for the ruling class arms are essential for the maintenance of their privileged position and defence of their interests against rival states. Indeed in some cases, greater economic aid could result in radical changes in the economic and social structure of developing nations and so lead to the overthrow of political alliances favourable to the superpowers.

There is evidence of a strong association between high military spending, high rates of industrial growth and foreign dependence. The rise of weapons system armies coincides with the beginning of industrialisation and the need to create or preserve a social structure in which economic expansion can take place. The overwhelming part of aid received by underdeveloped nations consists of military assistance. Although Third World defence industries are growing in size and becoming more widespread, international trade in arms remains the chief source of major weapons. America and the Soviet Union have captured, respectively, 38 per cent. and 34 per cent. of the conventional arms market, with Britain and France bringing up the rear. In the Middle East, with its resources vital for the economic expansion of the major powers, arms spending has now increased at an annual rate of 22 per cent. since 1965, compared with 15 per cent. in Asia and Africa. Iran has one of the world’s most sophisticated defence systems and in May signed a protocol with the British Government which could lead to the latter’s biggest ever arms contract — £750 million.

Force has played an essential role in the process of economic and social change throughout history, the particular form of force reflecting its social setting. Whereas formerly the weapon was the instrument of the soldier, the soldier now appears to be the instrument of the weapons system, reflecting the importance of machines in society as a whole and minimising the possibility of individual action. Developments in electronics are rapidly rendering weapons platforms, aircraft carriers and tanks vulnerable and completely depersonalising the killing between enemies at war.

The barbarism of the Twentieth century cannot be explained in terms of conflicting ideologies of malevolent leaders and nothing is more fallacious than the idea that increases in knowledge and the progress of what is called civilisation bring with them increased social harmony. The sterility and waste of capitalism are laid bare in its wars — men fall in their millions that shares might rise.

Melvin Tenner

Obituary: Melvin Tenner (2021)

Obituary  from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to report that Melvin Tenner died in April after failing to recover from a serious health incident in November. He was 74. He joined the old Paddington Branch in 1972 after meeting a member selling the Socialist Standard outside a tube station in West London. He had previously been associated with various left-wing groups. He had been at art college but at the time was working at a university bookshop. Subsequently he set up his own mail order bookselling business, the Academic Book Club. He used to recount how on one occasion after innocently selling a collection of difficult-to-get technical books to an Iraqi he was interviewed by MI6. Maybe they mistakenly thought that his politics inclined him to support Saddam Hussein. Whatever, the Iraqis weren’t pleased either as the books were old and they thought Melvin had diddled them when they compared the old pounds shillings and pence on the cover with his standard finder’s fee.

In the Party he was one of the editors of the Socialist Standard in the 1980s both as a writer of carefully crafted articles and as designer. We reproduce one of the covers he designed.

Somewhat lugubrious but with a dry wit that reflected his dexterity and intelligence, Melvin was a dedicated socialist and involved in a range of other Party activities too. These included more recently being a member of the Executive Committee, and, at the time of his death, a Party Trustee and Secretary of West London branch.

Outside the Party he was a lifelong Fulham FC supporter and previously Chair of the Fulham Supporters’ Club, leading a successful campaign to raise money from fans to keep the club going. Our condolences go to his family.

Blogger's Note:

A non-political obituary for Melvin was posted on the website of the Fulham Supporters' Trust.

It's a shame that the obituary didn't mention that Melvin was the partner of the late comrade, Eva Goodman, another stalwart member of the SPGB.

Rest in Peace, comrade. 

SPGB Manifesto (1976)

Party News from the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has no connection with any other political party or group and cannot be held responsible for wrong theories and incorrect ideas held by them. In this category we include the major parties, the Communist Party, International Socialists, IMG, etc. The Socialist system we advocate has never been tried. It is not based on leadership, nationalization, state control or the systems operating in Russia, China, Cuba, etc. The description of “socialist” as applied to these countries is a distortion of the word and arises through ignorance or a deliberate attempt to discredit Socialism.

Election after election has been fought over issues which were held to be in the interest of the working class. The promises made by Tory, Liberal and Labour in the past if carried out, they say, would have removed poverty, established security of jobs and solved the housing problem. As you are aware, none of this has happened, nor could have happened. This does not prevent them again making the same promises which they will be unable to keep.

Despite their excuses, you must judge them on their record. You should enquire into the reason why these political parties cannot run capitalism in the interest of the working class. Most of you accept the world of capitalism with its wages system, price structure and private property in the means of production as a permanent condition of human existence. You take for granted that you will sell your mental and physical energy, your brain, muscle and nerve to an employer for wages. You accept the fact that you have to pay for permission to inhabit the globe through rent and mortgages. You never challenge the ridiculous claim made by politicians that poverty and bad housing and insecurity are due to circumstances outside the control of men and women.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is asking you to question the whole basis of your life under capitalism. Acceptance of the wages system means submission to the perpetual robbery practised on you by a small group of international parasites who own the means of wealth production and in whose interest wealth is produced. We realize how difficult it may be for you to break with ideas held for most of your lives, but break with them you must if the problems of poverty, starvation, disease, war and unemployment are to be abolished.

There is no shortage of natural wealth in the world and no shortage of people capable of transforming that wealth into useful articles we can enjoy and freely consume. Capitalism has created a shortage because the productive powers of society can produce more wealth than the market economy can cope with. Access to the factories, workshops, mills, mines and land can only be obtained through wage labour. Goods can only be produced provided that they can be sold. These conditions are rigidly enforced and periodically, as you are well aware, millions of workers are removed from production in every field because they would produce too much. According to the Prime Minister, the ten largest industrial countries in the world have an unemployment figure between them of over 14 million (Daily Telegraph, 20th January 1976).

Consider the position in the world today where each year over 15 million children die of diseases caused through lack of proper food and where millions more are underfed and underhoused. This in spite of the fact that the World Food and Agricultural Organization reported (Times, 5th January 1976) that, for the third year running, they expect a world glut of dairy products. No sane society would tolerate these crimes against its members. Capitalism produces wealth but it produces poverty at the same time.

It is because of this contradiction that society must be reorganized on an entirely different basis. Men and women everywhere must have direct control over their means of production.

The only obstacle to the introduction of a Socialist world is the lack of Socialist understanding. This means that the majority of workers at the moment are unaware that Socialism can be introduced simply by voting for it, based on this understanding. Capitalism rests on the political support given to it by the working class through the ballot box. Take that away and capitalism is finished. But until such times as you are convinced that Socialism presents an immediate solution to working-class problems you will continue to vote for capitalist candidates.

We ask you to examine the case of the Socialist Party of Great Britain before you once again commit yourself and your children to yet another spell of unnecessary misery, frustration and poverty.

SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE.

Production and class (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classes are defined by their respective connections to the productive forces within a certain type of production relation, and arise as soon as it is no longer necessary for everyone to work in order to sustain society. A social division of labour has been transformed into a relation of oppression and exploitation.

Thus, history may be roughly divided into periods characterised by a predominant mode of production and, based upon it, a class structure consisting of a ruling and oppressed class. The struggle between these two classes determines the social relations between people. Further, the ruling class, which owes its position to the ownership and control of the means of production, controls in a subtler way the whole moral and intellectual life of the people. In the period of its ascendance each class is “progressive”: its economic interests are identical with technical progress and its ideas and institutions have a liberating influence. On becoming the ruling class, however, it assumes a reactionary role, resisting attempts to change social and economic organisation. The resulting tensions and conflicts lead to revolution.

This materialist concept of historical change is not to be interpreted mechanistically, however. It is mistaken to imply that only technical and economic factors are important and that the whole social, political and intellectual realm is of secondary significance. Socialist theory is a tool for political action and the materialist approach serves as a guide to the study of, and not as an excuse for ignoring, historical events.

Why do we stress the importance of the organisation of production as a determinant of social class, rather than sociological favourites such as status difference? The reason is simple. Since it is labour that makes history, an understanding of the conditions of production, of man’s struggle to provide for his subsistence, is the key to the understanding of historical change. The satisfaction of basic needs makes work a fundamental facet of human life. The more new needs that are created, the more important it is that the instruments of production are improved and that individuals co-operate socially to this end. This implies the division of labour over and above the techniques of production employed.

The experience gained in the effort of making a living foster common beliefs and actions among members of a social class. Conflict over economic reward, communication of ideas between members of a class, and common suffering (not only material) experienced in exploitation help overcome differences and conflicts between individuals and groups within a class and encourage the growth of class conscious political organisations. Under capitalism this process, arising alongside inherent and growing social contradictions, has formidable obstacles in its way: individual competition for jobs, and between employed and unemployed and, perhaps most important, habitual assumptions about the existence and automatic functioning of capital. Social relations are taken for granted and codified in laws and custom. Transactions between workers and capitalists have the appearance of freedom on both sides, of “fair” exchange. This masking of reality, of things appearing what they are not, is a basic characteristic of class society. In reality, “the wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is maintained by a constant change in the person of the individual employer, and by the legal fiction of a contract” (Capital, 1, xiii p. 719, Penguin). He is regarded and treated as an adjunct to the productive forces.

If a worker acquires the consciousness of an exploited individual, this is of little significance unless it is part of a collective, antagonistic movement extending outside the work situation. As an individual he may resist exploitation and hence develop “trade union consciousness”, but to the point that he challenges the capitalists’ legal right to expropriate the product of his labour at all, involves the emergence of class consciousness. In that they have common economic interests, wage and salary earners are “already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle . . . this class becomes united and constitutes itself as a class for itself . . . [And this] struggle of class against class is a political struggle” (Poverty of Philosophy, p. 150, Moscow edn.).

Karl Marx did not discover the existence of classes or their historic struggle. The modern notion of class —as distinct from rank—arose in the course of the French Revolution, from an awareness that the removal of legal privileges did not in itself result in social equality. The sharpening of class antagonism by the Industrial Revolution brought to the fore an awareness of the dynamic element of class. Marx’s class concept was a fusion of historical and economic elements, of which surplus value was central. In Capital he summarised it thus: “the specific form in which unpaid labour is pumped out of the immediate producers determines the relation of domination and subjection”, which in turn constitutes “the final secret, the hidden basis of the whole construction of society, including the political patterns of sovereignty and dependence, in short of a given form of government” (Vol. 3, p. 772, Moscow edn.). The class that controls the means of production will wield effective political power.

Capitalism has largely absorbed the remnants of classes from the previous mode of production (land- owners and peasants) and polarised society into two main classes. The enormous increase in wealth production has brought about the integration of the ownership of land and capital. (Marx loosely referred to two other groups as classes: the intelligentsia — “those who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief sources of livelihood”— and the lumpenproletariat—“a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals”. There is no evidence to support the theory that these two groups merged in the course of struggle to give us today’s professional politicians.) Marx’s views on the increasing poverty of the working class follow logically from his class analysis of society. Contrary to common belief, he never claimed that workers would become increasingly poor in absolute terms and could not improve their living standards. His case was that the gap between worker and capitalist would widen and that any increase in workers’ standards would always go hand in hand with increased wealth for the capitalists. He makes this clear in Wage Labour and Capital:

A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside a little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.

(p. 32 Moscow edn.)

The class struggle is not a moral assertion about the inhumanity of the capitalist system. Against the background of the failure of humanist ideals and reform movements of all kinds, the last two classes in history confront each other with their needs and interests in direct opposition. The days of both are numbered.

Melvin Tenner

Obituary: Eva Goodman (2013)

Obituary from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eva Goodman (1927-2013)

One of the most long-standing members of the Socialist Party has died at the age of 85. Eva Goodman became a member in 1947 at a time of intense activity for the Party, especially in the London area, when indoor rallies and outdoor platforms were common and attracted large numbers of people. Eva threw herself wholeheartedly into this activity, cycling to and between venues. She grew to be a commanding presence at conferences and meetings over the years, knowing exactly what she wanted to say and saying it without standing on ceremony, with clarity and humour and, above all, in a way that compelled the attention of her listeners.

Her family had been refugees from Hitler’s Germany and were lucky to find asylum in London just before the Second World War broke out. After the war, in 1946 and before joining the Party, Eva found employment at Marks and Spencer’s Head Office and worked there for 40 years until retirement as a packaging technologist. She was well aware of the fact that being a socialist and wanting a completely different kind of world, one of co-operation and economic equality, didn’t mean that you could, or should, exclude yourself from the world as it existed. You had to get by in capitalism, often with people who didn’t necessarily share your view of the world or your social and political aspirations. So, apart from gaining the respect and admiration of those she worked with, Eva cultivated many interests outside the Party such as opera, theatre, cycling (she was a member of the Cyclists’ Touring Club and cycling was one of her passions for much of her life) and, latterly, football. She was an enthusiastic member of Fulham Supporters’ Club, for many years being a season-ticket holder and rarely missing a match till ill-health kept her away.

Over the years Eva took on a number of important jobs in the Party. She was elected to the Executive Committee on many occasions, she was Secretary of her branch, Overseas Contacts Secretary, and Secretary to the committee that produces the Socialist Standard – whatever her roles were, she always carried them out with the utmost diligence and efficiency. One of her concerns was that, when the Party put its case in print – and in particular in the Socialist Standard – it should do so in the most effective and convincing way possible. To this end she conducted a persistent and persuasive campaign against what she called the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ – the formula words that all too often ended articles in the Standard. Her argument was that the Socialist solution should emerge clearly and naturally from the arguments in the article and not have to be tacked on at the end like some kind of ‘hosannah’. 

After she retired from employment, Eva carried on enthusiastically with Party activity but also became a volunteer teacher at Brackenbury Primary School in Hammersmith, assisting pupils with learning disabilities for a number of years and stopping only when the stairs became too much for her.

A large number of people gathered to say their final farewell to Eva at her funeral on 14th June, including her nephew who had travelled from Spain and spoke movingly about ‘a favourite who brought so much joy into my life’. She will be greatly missed by all her family members, including her partner, Melvin, and by so many others both inside and outside the Socialist Party.

Obituary: Victor Vanni (2017)

Vic Vanni

Obituary from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with sorrow that we mark the death of Vic Vanni, a Party member for more than fifty years and an unflagging stalwart of our Glasgow Branch. He was 86.

The son of Italian immigrants who settled in Glasgow and had a fish and chip shop, Vic worked all of his life as a sheet metal worker in the Clyde shipyards, where he was probably its only Guardian reader. He joined the Labour Party soon after the 1959 General Election and became extremely active on their behalf, with prospects of becoming a parliamentary candidate. In the following year, however, he fortuitously came across an SPGB outdoor meeting and set about persuading our members to support the Labour Party and the CND movement. In subsequent encounters, our arguments against such a sterile course so impressed him that he abandoned labourism and eventually joined the Socialist Party in 1963. Since that time, he devoted all of his energies to Party activity, as an outdoor speaker, lecturer, writer and branch organiser. Vic addressed public meetings throughout Britain, from Aberdeen to Bristol, Norwich to Bolton, and spoke in London’s Hyde Park, Earls Court and Lincoln’s Inn Fields as well as in Boston and New York when visiting American socialists. A Party candidate and agent in General and Scottish Parliament elections, he was also a Glasgow Branch delegate at fifty consecutive annual Party Conferences.

Vic was known latterly for a tendency to pour tepid to cold water on what he viewed as fanciful optimism about, or proposals for, the advancement of socialism, which made his commitment and integrity all the more admirable. The only thing wrong with our case, he insisted, is that it has too few adherents. He always made a point of speaking to new Party members or writing them letters of encouragement, as well as occasionally posting missives of gentle admonition to those of longer standing who should have known better. Where he lately bought his typewriter ribbons remains a mystery. While his life was the Party, he did have abiding enthusiasms elsewhere: his knowledge of Scottish, English and continental football was extensive (he could name most players in London teams of the mid-1950s, when he briefly lived in the capital); he became an avid devotee of speedway’s Glasgow Tigers; and he was a regular cinema-goer familiar with both continental and American films, being especially interested in Hollywood and its industrial relations. A convivial, unassuming and self-disciplined man of routine (explained, perhaps in part, by his conscripted time in the army as Sergeant Vanni), it is impossible to forget him putting in his forthright two pennies’ worth at Party gatherings. All members will be hard-pressed to emulate Vic’s example, which is his singular legacy.

MT

Running Commentary: Embassy siege (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the June 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Embassy siege

May was a spiffing good month for jingoism and “those qualities which made Britain great”. Not only did the Arsenal beat those “Eyties” in Turin (a feat verging on the impossible) but we were all submerged in suffocating patriotism and national pride after “our boys” had shown those “Islam Wallahs” what we’re made of. No doubt the Iranian Embassy storming during which not many foreigners were killed — will be the subject of News of the World “I was there and our policemen are wonderful” exclusives for weeks to come, and a film starring Omar Sharif as William Whitelaw. True, Keith Joseph rather spoilt the month by muffing his presentation of the appointment of that Scots-American chappie to run “our” steel industry (what’s wrong with an Englishman?), but this was a minor abberration and surely Thatcher will take Sir Keith’s bootlaces out should he create any more bother.

On May Day Prince Charles set the tone for the month by defying his doctors and attending a five-course lunch at the Cafe Royal with an inch long sticking plaster reaching from the base of his nose to his earlobe; he had fallen off his pony during polo practice but could not be deterred from launching into a strong call to electrical engineers to buy British. This example of royal stiff upper lip was fallowed by noisy scenes in the House of Commons, when the Prime Minister reported on her tough stand in the matter of British EEC contributions. Anti- and pro-Europeans united in a “Wogs begin at Calais’’ atmosphere as she made clear her determination to defend the mythical “national interest”. Remind me not to send any more cheques to those greedy French farmers.

The Embassy storming, however, was enough to bring out the patriot in Anthony Blunt. We had the Prime Minister praising the SAS and police who “made all of us, on all sides of the House, proud to be British”; young Winston Churchill, an authority on Iranian affairs, contrasting the “heroic action of May 5” with the TUC’s intentions for May 14; and Tory MP Tony Marlow asking whether it wasn’t noticeable that there was a “new respect by which Britain is held by the rest of the world, based on the confidence, sensitivity and determination now abiding in Britain”. A group of about 100 British and Americans sang Rule Britannia and national anthems at Princes Gate and “Grateful” of Bexley wrote that she “certainly slept better last night . . . it (the storming) will give Britain a much needed boost after months of petty fogging wrangling in industry”.

It is not surprising that, in the midst of all this nationalistic ' fervour, reference should be made to the performance of the British workforce. The Daily Telegraph of May 1, under the heading “Modesty is ruining economy”, reported Trade Secretary John Knott’s speech to the Advertising Association’s annual conference. “Britain should cast aside its characteristic modesty and advertise its success more widely”, he said; it was modesty which did the greatest damage to the British economy and “workforces would continue to be demoralised if constantly accused of failure”. Yes, indeed. If only workers could be made to identify with, and feel proud of, “their” country and industry, think how much better they would work and how much more profit would be made for the employing class.

Labour discipline

The leadership of the Transport and General Workers’ Union also came in for some patriotic stick last month, after announcing its decision to contribute £5,000 of Union funds to the so-called Communist Party’s daily, The Morning Star. Possibly Moss Evans had been impressed by the Soviet government’s new plans for their workforce, announced in the Soviet press on January 12 but strangely unreported in the CP rag.

The Russian ruling class, which is working overtime to stir up patriotism in its less than contented population, issued a major economic decree last July to make workers abide by centralised instructions, thus destroying the last remnants of economic reforms of the 1960s which granted certain limited autonomy to factory managers. The present five year plan had forecast a very low rise in the output of consumer goods, but now not even this target is being met and some tightening up is therefore necessary. The new decree, on poor “labour discipline”, is a response to frequent absenteeism, alcoholism, wasting work time and constant job changing among a workforce deprived of any means to defend their interests collectively. Entitled “On the further strengthening of labour discipline and the reduction of labour turnover in the national economy”, it ties the receipt of various benefits, pensions and privileges to length of service. In future Soviet workers will have to repay any financial assistance they have received if they resign without showing due cause, and should they be absent from work without “valid reason” will lose their extra holiday entitlement.

What probably clinched it for the Transport and General was the-January 13 editorial of Trud (Labour), the Soviet trade union daily, which stated that: “We must actively struggle against slacking, disorganisation, absenteeism, which not only bring economic damage but do enormous harm to the work of educating the new man —the man of Communist society . . . to our regret certain trade union organisations have shown little interest in energetically taking up the task of strengthening labour discipline”.

Should we conclude that the TGWU prefers government controlled trade unions to discipline the workers to the inefficient method adopted in Britain, where private employers endeavour to follow government “guidelines” on how to control their workforce”? The “new man” of Soviet mythology might well have something to say about that. For our part, we advise workers to resist the attempts of union leaderships to involve their organisations in the campaigns of political parties, and to recognise that industrial action alone cannot achieve for them anything but modest and temporary improvements in their living standards. Unionists who want a society without imposed discipline —where the means of production will be commonly owned and democratically controlled — should examine the case of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Cheques sent to 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN will be used in furtherance of this aim.

Melvin Tenner

Running Commentary: PLO recognition (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

PLO recognition

“They’ve taken my legs, but it only means I’m more firmly planted in the soil.” Mayor Bassam Shaka of Nablus (3.6.80).

The terrorist attacks which maimed two West Bank mayors and wounded other Palestinians in Hebron last month were the climax of weeks of mounting violence in the area, provoked by what all governments would term “necessary vigilance for the security of the state”. The victimisation of communities, refugee camps and families by the Israeli security forces—together with arbitrary searchings and beatings—are having the effect of driving the most “moderate” Palestinians into the arms of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, something that Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in the heady days of 1978 was designed, in part, to prevent.

The nature of the Israeli government’s “civilising mission” on the West Bank was clarified last month with the publication of a letter (dated 19 May) by Uri Avnery, a Labour member of the Knesset. Reproduced was the following extract of orders from the military government to Israeli army conscripts: 

“Any one you catch outside, you first beat with the clubs all over his body, except the head. Have no mercy, break all his bones! Give no explanations. First of all beat, and when you are finished you can explain why you have done so. If you catch a small child, order his whole family out, make them stand in a row, and beat the father in front of his children. Don’t treat this beating as a privilege, it’s a duty! They understand no other way.” (Middle East International, 6.6.80).

It would be misleading to suggest that the PLO’s growing international respectability—the EEC states now recognise it—is the altruistic response to what is occurring on the West Bank (the Arab Community in Palestine were, after all, dispossessed and dispersed rather a long time ago). Rather, it is the consequence of an awareness that vital oil interests (and to a lesser extent, arms markets) depend upon Middle East “stability”, and that the Israeli government’s policies could lead to a further surge of Islamic extremism in the area. (The fact that the American government is internationally out of step on the question doesn’t mean its heart is in the wrong place Carter is doing nothing to upset a strong pro-Israel lobby in election year.)

With autonomy for the Palestinians more firmly on the agenda, can we expect a resolution of what appears to be an intractable problem, with both sides determined to give no ground? A homeland with “secure borders” may sound reasonable, but capitalism is not as simple as that. The PLO’s policy of “liberation” through violence veils the more important issue of whose freedom is at stake, and for what purpose. Peace has hardly gone hand-in-hand with the creation of nation states; real freedom will require self-determination of an entirely different kind.

WHSmenzies

“I believe in a poly-culture of the press from left to right, from cranky to sound.” James Goldsmith, proprietor of Now magazine (“Question Time” BBC1, 12.6.80.)

Owners of newspapers are fond of pointing out that we live in a country where the concepts of freedom of speech, assembly and publication are enshrined in the Constitution. Every one of us has the legal right to own a daily newspaper, provided we can get our hands on several million pounds. What they don’t mention however, is that you can expect some difficulty in getting W. If. Smith to distribute it.

Last month was published a thin book, Where is the Other News? (Minority Press Group) which attempts, among other things, to show why W. H. Smith and Menzies are prepared to display those old family favourites Dental Surgeon and Pig Farming (sales of 3,000 per issue) and not journals like the Socialist Standard (sales of 4,000 per issue). These big two wholesalers have cornered two-thirds of the newspaper and magazine market in Britain (Menzies have 93 per cent of the Scottish market), with total business in 1978 estimated to be 792 million pounds; and their domination of the market is increasing as small wholesalers close down.

Smenzies argue that a publication lacks “credibility” if it is not part of the advertising-funded, market-research based magazine industry. Should they agree to distribute a journal they will ask to vet the boards (not German for weeing on the floor; they only want to check the contents before it is printed—ostensibly for libel, but then aren’t the “quality press” more plagued with writs than anyone?).

But, you might ask, isn’t it naive to expect that Smith’s or Menzies could be other than conservative and not committed to the free availability of challenging opinion? Perhaps so; but in France it is mandatory for wholesalers to distribute periodicals of any circulation. What is clear is that, under capitalism, the free dissemination of ideas has less to do with legality than with the ability to pay—something to remember the next time you “read” Sir Larry Lamb’s Sun.

Hard stuff

Socialists have often shown that capitalism causes an immense waste of resources. An article in the shipping industry newspaper Freighting World, illustrates the point. On 26 March a Captain F. L. Cox points out that because airline passengers can buy cheap alcohol, most aeroplanes are priced to carry a much greater weight than is desirable. A Boeing 747 for instance could have over 500 bottles of spirits in the passenger compartment. Captain Cox points out that this extra weight causes the following problems:

1. Fire hazard. Most spirits would be classified under IATA rules as combustible liquids, some as flammable liquids. Fire would spread more readily after an accident.

2. Deceleration hazard. Violent deceleration can result in bottle missiles flying through the cabin. In one accident, where the aircraft was a total loss, all passengers were safe except for one whose death was thought to have been caused by a flying bottle.

3. Rescue hazard. Broken glass in the cabin is dangerous to both the passengers and rescue personnel after an accident.

4. Security risk. A hijacker has tried to use a broken bottle as a weapon.

5. Passenger comfort. A) congestion of packages in the cabin; B) extra risk of intoxication and disorderly conduct.

6. Fuel wastage. Extra fuel has to be used in carrying duty-free goods. While only a small proportion of the total fuel load, it is still an unnecessary waste. More travellers return with the type of spirit popular in their own homeland: and it was probably manufactured there in the first place. (our emphasis)

So it can clearly be seen that one minor feature of the present insecure system—the urge to buy cheap booze as an advantage of overseas travel—is responsible for serious social difficulties which could be eradicated tomorrow if the workers woke up to the idea of a society without buying and selling.

Melvin Tenner 

Running Commentary: Strikers condemned (1980)

The Running Commentary column from the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strikers condemned

More than 5,500 workers were out on strike as a wave of industrial unrest spread to hitherto uninvolved plants. The week-long spate of walk-outs and go-slows affected 27 firms in five cities. A total of more than 8,700 people had stopped work since strikes started and more than 750 of them had been dismissed as a result. The dispute was over pay, a shorter working week and guaranteed pension funds. A spokesman for the employers’ association said he was “gravely concerned’’ and the trade union congress issued a statement expressing hope that the government would “respond constructively in solving the problem”.

These familiar events took place a few weeks ago, not in Britain or the industrialised West but in newly “liberated” Zimbabwe. The government’s response, however, was somewhat blunter than European wage slaves are used to. (Give them time and they’ll no doubt learn to refine their language.) Mugabe’s spokesman pointed out that all strikes were at present illegal; that companies that had dismissed their workers were within their rights; and that strikers were liable to arrest and prosecution. Any of the black population who remained in doubt as to the nature of their recent “liberation” had the position forcefully explained to them by the new Minister of Labour, Mr Kumbirai Kangai. Freedom, he said, did not mean that a worker could do or behave as he wished. “Discipline at work must remain part and parcel of the freedom we have attained” (The Times, 22 March). He told the strikers that his colleagues were deeply disappointed in them, and that by behaving in such a manner they were hurting themselves and the government. The new Minister of Mines echoed his remarks: “We believe in a competitive economy . . .  a lot of teaching of the people is necessary”.

We, however, did not need confirmation that African nationalism is the ideology of a would-be ruling and exploiting class. It is those workers, black and white, who dreamed that the election of Mugabe’s Zanu PF party would further their interests that have had an early and rude awakening. African nationalism may talk of democracy, but this is not its concern at all. The history of the continent’s independent states shows that any attempts of the working class to organise themselves have been resisted. One function of the new Zimbabwe State will be to hold down the working class in the interests of capital accumulation, to train the work force to become hardworking, obedient wage slaves. And as in all other countries, the important social division is that of class, not colour or race.

Marx and the monetarists

Some of the Chancellor’s best friends are monetarists, but you’ll be relieved to hear that Karl Marx isn’t among them. In his budget day television broadcast, Geoffrey Howe suggested that the government’s policy of restricting the “money supply” as a means of combatting inflation would have met with the approval of socialism’s greatest theorist. “It is a great pity”, he said, “that its (monetarism’s) practical, commonsense importance has been so confused by arid, theoretical dispute”, adding that “even” Marx had believed in it. The Chancellor had possibly picked up this, to him, amusing titbit from the guru of “monetarism” himself, Milton Friedman. Interviewed in the Guardian (1 March), Friedman declared:

“The quantity theory of money is a scientific proposition. It is not political. Karl Marx was a monetarist, because he believed that increases in the supply of money push up prices.” 

Sir Geoffrey has not exactly got it right. The Marxian explanation of inflation and the views of modern monetarists differ in important respects and have been discussed in our pages many times. Over the years, the Socialist Party has been alone in pointing out that inflation is the result of governments printing too much money, but this is not synonymous with Friedmanite doctrine and should not be confused with the present government’s views.

First, Marx only accepted the Quantity Theory of Money (which says, basically, that the level of prices is determined by the amount of money in circulation) as valid where inconvertible paper currency is in use; where the currency was gold (and/or a convertible paper currency) this was not the case. On the contrary, said Marx, refuting the ideas of the classical authors of this theory, Hume and Ricardo, it was the level of prices (and of economic transactions) that determined the quantity of money in circulation — and which, we might add with Marx, still determines the quantity of an inconvertible paper currency that should be issued to avoid inflation.

Second, by “money” Marx understood basic cash — notes and coin. He did not include, as most modern “monetarists” do, bank deposits in the “money supply”. Third, Marx was merely concerned here with analysing and understanding how capitalism worked, not with laying down a monetary policy for capitalist governments to pursue. He must not be regarded, therefore, as an advocate of a non-inflationary currency policy.

Cheap life and death

The News of the World of 23 March told of an elderly widow who got into serious debt paying for her husband’s funeral, even when the insurance she had taken out was added to the Government death grant. The latter was fixed at £30 in 1967, since when prices have trebled. The Labour opposition’s move to increase the amount to £45 (intended, no doubt, to show their newly-found “compassion”) was resisted by the Government in the person of Mrs Chalker, Under Secretary of Health and Social Security. She accepted that some people had extreme difficulty in meeting funeral costs but had “nothing but understanding for them”. As if to compensate for this, a group of Tory MPs tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the Chancellor to increase child benefit by £1.20 instead of the proposed 75p.

In the same week, five Civil Service unions issued a pamphlet criticising the proposed engagement of 1,000 extra inspectors to stop what the government considers to be £50 million in social security “fiddles”, and claiming that the same number employed on income tax evasion would save ten times as much. (Since, over a 20 year period, only one business in twenty has its returns investigated, the unions may well have understated their case.) The general secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation remarked: “If we could get it all it would be enough to take 5p off the basic rate of income tax”. (Guardian, 20 March)

Two other recent articles in the Guardian emphasised yet again capitalism’s priorities, this time in the field of health. In one (10 April), Dr Alf Spinks, former director of research at ICI, stated that cost prevented the full testing of chemicals in daily use to see whether they could cause cancer. In the other (20 March), Dr Tony Wing o(the European Dialysis and Transplant Association remarked that many of the 1,000 kidney patients who die in Britain every year could be saved if money were available to give the treatment. We also had the Sunday Express (6 April) reporting, on its front page, the plans of American medical firms to set up in Britain and Europe “Buy your Blood” collection points that could also involve the purchasing of human organs for spare part surgery. The “British” blood would then be sold on what is a growing international market.

All these news items show capitalism for what it is: a system of society incapable of meeting the needs of its members; that employs cost-benefit analysis in the treatment of human suffering, as in all spheres of social life. The working class will be made the scapegoats for capitalism’s problems so long as they aspire to nothing better than “5p off” instead of “3p off’.

Still, there is some good news. The Daily Telegraph of 6 April reported the building of a factory at Old Buckenham, Norfolk, which will be producing veneered polystyrene coffins for workers at “half the price”.

Melvin Tenner

Running Commentary: Betting on ill-health (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Betting on ill-health

While some workers fatalistically accept their position in society as preordained (“if it was meant to be, there’s nothing you can do about it”), others consider their status to be largely determined by luck or, more accurately, the lack of it. That capitalism is a game of chance is true only to the extent that those born into the ruling class (odds of about 20-1 against) have a distinct advantage over the rest of us.

This emphasis on luck as the prime mover in human affairs received some support last month. In Britain the Tories, having slashed (no jokes about “wets” and cabinet leaks) public spending dramatically in the last ten months were busy getting their Health Services Bill through committee stage. This is intended to give public health authorities the legal right to raise money through bingo, rummy, find-the-lady and other such games of chance, as recommended in the philosophical writings of F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. Now while health, like every service under capitalism, is viewed principally with cost rather than human considerations in mind (you've got to have heart, but not if it’s too expensive), it is doubtful whether, say, cancer treatment has before now had to depend in part upon punters’ stake money.

A cheaper way of financing health services suggested itself in reports of goings on at a hospital in that home of free enterprise, the United States. A group of employees in the intensive care ward of the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas were suspended for placing bets on how long terminally ill cancer patients would live. This wagering was thought to have led to the premature deaths of at least six people, with oxygen supplies and life support systems tampered with to rig the stakes in favour of heavy wagers (Daily Telegraph 14.3.80).

Now while these two examples of private enterprise in action may not appeal to everyone as solutions to capitalism’s problems, they do have the advantage of being less of a burden on the ruling class. If only workers’ flutters paid for all public services or Littlewood’s prize winners could be persuaded to contribute to the genetic engineering of success, wouldn’t everyone be happy? Unfortunately not; the odds are permanently fixed against wage and salary earners, in health services as in all things, and the chances of any government running the profit system in the interest of human beings are approximately nil.

Saudi-Arabia

Connoisseurs of graffiti must be suffering slightly from withdrawal symptoms if London’s tube walls are anything to go by. For no longer are those underwear ads covered exclusively with “Hang Nixon”, “West Ham Aggro” or “This Exploits Women”—what appears to be demented doctors’ prescriptions, all squiggles and dots in the wrong places, have taken over. This phenomenon looks like continuing for some while, for after Iran it looks like Saudi Arabia is next on the agenda.

The autocratic rulers of what is, calculated per head of population, the richest country in the world are facing problems similar in many respects to those experienced by the ex-Shah of Iran. In the past year the iron grip of the Saud tribe has come under increasing pressure, both internally and from leftist forces in the Arab and Third World. A growing number of new generation Saudis, generously educated at overseas universities paid for by oil revenue, are returning home and questioning traditional Muslim values. A ruling class that can delay the opening of a multi-million pound government office block because its layout included unisex lifts, and that puts to the sword members of its own family found guilty of adultery can hardly expect the support of those educated in the “liberal” West. One consequence of this conflict between old and new is that an estimated 4,000 princes are jockeying for position should the House of Saud begin to crumble.

Saudi Arabia’s ruling class is so rich that it could buy all the shares quoted on the London Stock Exchange in eighteen months, or all the gold in Central Banks in five years. Increasing alignment with the West, manifested in enormous IMF deposits, places it in the dock as far as poorer neighbours are concerned. Its military development programme, presently nearing completion and costing £20 million may be a sound financial investment—but then military might alone was not enough to keep the Shah on his throne.

Crown Prince Fahd said fifteen months ago: “If Iran goes, then God help us all”. No longer able to rely upon her neighbours to act as a buffer against “communism”, capitalism’s richest prize is attracting the benign, full-time attention of the CIA and western intelligence services. For if Saudi Arabia “goes”, not only will the Saud tribe suffer but the oil dependent states of the West will feel the cold.

Moscow Olympics

A small revolt by a number of Tory MPs took place in the House of Commons, although the Government carried the day on a free vote.

Our readers might be forgiven for thinking that the revolt is hardly surprising. After all, the Tories came to power on election promises of lower taxes and reducing inflation. There are now nearly 2 million unemployed; money available for schools, health services and housing has been greatly reduced; other amenities have been pared down. However, the slight reductions in income tax have been swallowed up by record inflation and mortgage rates, even for the better off, so-called “upper middle class” who benefitted most from the tax changes.

However, it seems that the MPs who did not support the government may have had a better appreciation of the workings of the capitalist system than they are usually credited with. Their revolt was against the bringing of pressure to bear on British athletes to “volunteer” to withdraw ‘from the Olympic Games in Moscow. (Government representatives meeting in Geneva to discuss possible alternative Games appear ignorant of the fact that 12 months' notice of such intentions must be given to the World Amateur Athletics Association, whose permission is mandatory for athletes wishing to compete in international Games.)

The Tory MPs (led by Mr. Terence Higgins, Conservative Member for Worthing) who opposed the Government’s stand, pointed out that the call to athletes to withdraw from the Games rings false while, far from even token withdrawal of diplomatic representation or recommendation of curtailment of trade, the government are actively assisting large-scale deals on machinery to go through. The obvious conclusion (to a socialist) is that Olympic athletes are unpaid amateurs, and even the possibility of a gold medal brings only “glory”, while commercial deals make profits. The fact that many athletes have trained for years to compete in the supposedly non-political Games counts for nothing compared with the ringing of cash registers. Dare we hope that this is an encouraging sign that some Tory MPs are not too brainwashed to see this?

Melvin Tenner

Running Commentary: Concentration camp art (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the March 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Concentration camp art

Culture lovers and those looking for sound investments from which to pay the next gas bill will have found the Art Sales columns of the Daily Telegraph of 6 February interesting reading. Their correspondent was reporting the forthcoming sale at auction of a collection of concentration camp money, including notes issued at Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and the “show camp” Theresienstadt. Believed to be the best of its kind, with 1944 Auschwitz creations expected to fetch a top price of £875 each, the collection included an exquisite example of the yellow cloth "Jud” badge which Jews were forced to wear. Noticeably absent were the unique specimens of lampshade design of the period, although this does not appear to have deterred potential buyers. The lot was purchased by the auctioneers, Stanley Gibbons, at the knock-down price of £20,000.

What could more accurately reflect the spirit and values of contemporary capitalism than this? Who said that art (whatever that is) is dead?

Iron-Curtain gold

One of the prime beneficiaries of the recent rise in gold prices has been the Soviet Union. Not only is the Russian ruling class moving in militarily on a grand scale, but they are also engaging in some pretty big extracting. Their gold mine at Muruntau in the south west is now the biggest in the world and despite their halving in volume, sales of gold to the West totalled 2,500 million dollars last year. The rise in price means that less Russian gold is required to pay for much needed technology and grain, and it increases their ability to intervene in the world market to the detriment of, in particular, American currency. The Americans fear that the Russians, now the second biggest source of physical gold in the west, will become increasingly capable of using their gold in a play against the dollar. Perhaps Chinese “communist” gold production, presently third in the world league, will expand to support the “imperialist” dollar.

The same cannot be said of Russian sugar beet production, which suffered a severe setback last year. The harvest dropped from 93 million to 76 million tonnes, compelling them to make substantial purchases from the west. This shortfall is one of the underlying factors in the continuing strength of the commodity on the world market, which in turn may be one reason the world’s most famous soft drink will never be quite the same again. Coca-Cola of America recently announced its decision to cut its sugar consumption by 50% by using corn syrup.

Could all this be part of a vast conspiracy by the American Government and Coca-Cola to prevent the dollar further depreciating in value? One theory bandied about in leftist circles is that the Americans are attempting to keep the dollar price from falling by reducing the corrosive content of Coca- Cola, which will in turn lessen the need for gold fillings in teeth. This will have the effect of maintaining the value of gold and propping up the dollar. Well, not really. Speculation in gold is not a result of conspiracy, but flows directly from the inherently anarchical nature of capitalist production. Governments have no control over the workings of the economic system and can only respond to trends as they become apparent. Karl Marx explained the present panic buying of gold more than 100 years ago in Capital (Vol. Ill, p. 673): “As soon as credit is shaken and this always appears of necessity in the cycles of modern industry-all the real wealth is to be actually and suddenly transformed into money; into gold and silver, a crazy demand which, however, necessarily grows out of the system itself.

Apocalypse soon

While by far the best defence against nuclear missiles is not to be there when they go off, this happy situation is not always possible to guarantee. It will come as no surprise, then, to learn that the British government, in the face of increasing international tension, has laid elaborate plans for your survival should a holocaust turn up. The only qualification is membership of the Civil Service hierarchy or of the Royal Family (on either side). Your chances outside these ranks are roughly the same as those of escaping unhurt after being struck by lightning—unless you can get to Switzerland quick.

Swiss Civil Defence is not of the impromptu sandbag variety. As one of their protection Service officials reassuringly put it (Daily Telegraph, 6 February): “We cannot afford to be as slipshod about survival as you are in Britain”. (Well, thank goodness we can afford to be; I was worried for a minute.) The Swiss ruling class, hardly naive when it comes to investment, has contributed three-quarters of the cost of the provision of underground fallout shelters for the entire population. Not only are these now compulsory they have 4½ million of them, all air conditioned—but the first of a planned 22 underground emergency hospitals capable of treating 450 victims was recently opened in Geneva. Close behind the Swiss come the Russians, whose every day-time industrial shift has a vast underground bunker within a few feet. In Britain the government contributes nothing to the cost of fallout shelters (in line with the philosophy that we must “stand on our own two feet”), and even charges VAT on the handful constructed for those rich enough to afford them.

Those of us who have, up to now, been “slipshod about survival” appear to have limited choice: either join the Swiss capitalist class (difficult): marry Prince Charles (more difficult still): or join the daunting struggle for a society in which the causes of war—nuclear and conventional—will have ceased to exist. Those who dismiss as utopian the socialist solution to capitalism’s greatest horror story should reflect upon the history of failure to curb capitalist armaments production. It is not socialists who are remote from reality but those who seek to eliminate the worst effects of the capitalist system while continuing to support it. We will not argue for more shelters, but for an end to the obscenity of capitalism itself. This can only be achieved by workers realising their class position and uniting to end their exploitation. Let Lord Denning try ruling against that.

Melvin Tenner