Passing Show (1989)

From the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jockeying for position

Had he been a footballer, John Prescott would have been right under the moon about the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle last November. Perhaps as punishment for standing against Roy Hattersley for the deputy leadership, he lost his job as Energy spokesman and was instead put to shadowing the Ministry of Transport, which was not highly rated as fertile ground for a sprouting political ambition.

It did not help his case that Prescott, who looks and sounds like a bulldog about to savage an imprudent burglar, promised to be more aggressive in the conduct of the meaningless parliamentary sparring and larking which is called opposition to the government. The other hopefuls in Labour's seething ranks are more discreet than to make such criticisms of their leader. There is the eminently sober duo of John Smith and Gordon Brown, who would like to organise the financial affairs of British capitalism as Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is boyish, articulate Tony Blair, who has Prescott's old job as shadow Energy minister and who is a formidable TV performer — which means that he is precociously skilful at evading difficult questions while making the most of any similar evasion by an uncomfortable opponent. There is smooth Michael Meacher, who first made his name by discovering the amazing fact that however capitalism may be reformed there remain millions who suffer from the direr pressures of poverty. Meacher recently angered Labour's top brass by speaking out for the legalising of sympathetic strikes and secondary picketing, just as if the winter of discontent had never been and just as if his party is not now desperately trying to obscure its trade union connection.

These burgeoning ambitions are feeding off Labour's inability to seduce the voters away from what seems a chronic addiction to the Thatcher way of running British capitalism. Labour's policy review may be the beginning of Kinnock's last stand, a desperate attempt to make the Labour Party resemble the Tories so closely that the voting public won't know which one to vote for — or won't care — and so may end up. in their utter confusion, by electing another Labour government. According to another aspirant leader, Bryan Gould, the policy review ". . . will, we hope show that Labour is ready to take up the reins of government in the 1990's”. But if the review doesn't have that effect, if it fails to attract the votes so that Labour suffers yet another emphatic electoral defeat, Kinnock may be forced to disappear from the scene, to swap reminiscences with Michael Foot.

The reason is that the Labour Party is dedicated to winning political power over British capitalism. This is not so trite and obvious a statement as it may seem, for there are plenty of Labour supporters who are sustained by the delusion that their party is still based on the principles of socialism, that it aims to bring about a fundamental change in social relationships and will continue to advocate that change whether it is popular or not. The truth is that Labour will promise almost any reform, almost any policy, which will attract votes. It will try to exploit any issue when it thinks that this will gain it some support and it will shy away from any issue which is likely to lose it votes. If necessary it will perform the sort of policy U-turn to impress Ted Heath (for example Bryan Gould writes: “We are clear that the market and the private sector have an enormously important and valuable role to play in any modern industrial society . . .").

That is why Labour is going through yet another policy re-appraisal and why the party leadership begins to look like a steeplechase when the horses are coming to the last fence and the run in to the winning post.

Prescott's luck

And that brings us back to John Prescott and his job as transport spokesman. When he was reshuffled the media were still juggling with the most recent exposure, by the capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise and the fire at Kings Cross, of the fact that capitalism's priority has to be profit before safety. This is perfectly apparent to anyone with any insight into what happens in the world, and why it happens, but insight and clarity are things which the media are not noted for.

Since then a series of outrages, misnamed accidents, have provided Prescott with one opportunity after another to boost his public image. At one stage it seemed as if no day was complete unless it included Prescott on our TV screen, snarling and snapping and posing as the outraged guardian of the travelling public. Slack security, after the Lockerbie crash, was exposed by a series of journalists and other pranksters wangling their way on to aircraft. Botched production standards and inadequate maintenance caused the Boeing 737 to come down on the M1. The Clapham rail crash came about because electricians were being overworked to the point of exhaustion The only way we could put all this to rights was . . . to get bulldoggish Mr Prescott in charge at the Ministry of Transport, or better still at Number Ten.

Channon's pure genius

A rather different person is the target of many of Prescott’s barbs. Paul Channon is an extremely wealthy member of the Guinness family. He sits for the Southend constituency which is regarded as more or less the electoral property of his family; it was previously held by his father who was one of capitalism's mega-parasites and who didn't seem to care who knew it. Channon cannot match Prescott for being bulldoggish: he looks more like a mournful turtle with a complexion which often signals an over-indulgence in the beverage on which the family fortunes are based. Or perhaps he spends too much time in the sun; he owns a place in the West Indian paradise island of Mustique. where only the super-rich can afford to enjoy the silver sands, the turquoise sea and the temperature held steady in the eighties.

It was to Mustique that Channon sped, just after the Lockerbie crash, excusing himself by saying that he wanted to spend Christmas with his family like everyone else — which did not. of course, include the people killed in the crash and their families. Since then the Guardian has revealed his contemptuous treatment of a couple whose son was killed at Lockerbie, an incident which hints that Channon has a view of society which, as a Tory politician, he would do better not to make so obvious.

Channon’s wealth originates from the labour of the workers employed by the Guinness company. It comes from their unpaid labour time, from the wealth they produce which is surplus to what they receive for the sale of their ability to work. This is called (although so unpleasant a word probably never sullies the lips of a member of the Guinness clan) exploitation. The exploited people in society — the working class — are the majority: they are the non-parasites, the useful, productive people. Yet they do not have, nor are they expected to desire, any real say in how society is run, in how significant decisions are taken. It is assumed that they will accept their lot — their poverty, repression, their needlessly truncated lives — without complaint or question. If they should die in one of capitalism's "accidents”, in a capsized ferry or a train trapped by a faulty signal — why. they are sacrifices to the god of profit and that, after all the hypocrisy about their deaths, should be satisfaction enough for them.

If that is degrading — well, so is this social system. Capitalism is kept going by working class sacrifice. It churns out the wealth of people like Channon and it boosts the ambitions of those like Prescott. Perhaps sacrifice is the wrong word; perhaps suicide would be better.

Ivan.

Running Commentary: End of a hero (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

End of a hero

Nobody could look less like it, but Menachem Begin is an adored national hero and Israel was swept with consternation and grief when he announced that, worn out in the service of its ruling class, he would throw in the job of prime minister.

The reaction showed that Jews are as susceptible to deception as workers elsewhere, in this case about the indispensable mystique of a political leader. For the emotions expressed at Begin’s retirement could not have been related to any of his achievements.

He leaves a deep mess of problems to his successor, as Israel is sunk in economic stagnation — like many other countries in the current slump — and bogged down in a long and expensive war.

Begin’s departure is a useful time to remember the kind of state Israel was supposed to become, when people like him were fighting a guerrilla war with the professed object of establishing it. It was claimed that, above all, Jewish people would have learned a unique lesson from their desperately sad history; the new state would be a haven of peace, equality and compassion.

It is not accidental that it has turned out to be very different from those noble, misconceived ideals. Israel is now the Middle East’s greatest military power (its arms industry is its biggest employer). It suppresses Arabs, hounds and terrifies Palestinians and, as in Beirut just over a year ago, it does not shrink from condoning genocide and massacre.

Far from opening the way to peace and compassion, Begin's time in office has prepared for the succession of Yitzhak Shamir, ex-member of the militant, murdering Stern gang and a hard-liner on matters political and military. If Shamir in time becomes a national hero like Begin it will mean that he too has kept to those noble ideals, that he has talked of humanity and peace while serving his ruling class through all necessary excesses of cruelty and destruction.

Fact

Some of the runners in the Labour Party leadership contest advocated a national minimum wage, with Roy Hattersley leading the way with assurances that it would bring . . a more equal society . . . narrow the gap between rich and poor . . and Michael Meacher claiming that it was “a price which can be paid”.

Fact. A national minimum wage of a sort has been in existence in this country ever since Tory loony Keith Joseph was in charge of the Department of Health and Social Security, at least that's what they called it. Joseph brought in Family Income Supplement, a state benefit designed to ensure that nobody in work — earning a wage — would fall below a certain defined level. It didn’t work.

Fact. The Labour candidates are discovering that poverty still exists in this country after most of them have been members of past Labour governments which got in power partly on an assurance that they had a simple solution to the problem. That didn't work either.

Eyeless in power

From Thatcher’s first complaints of grit in the eyes to the private surgery, there intervened only one week. Although the condition remained unnoticed by Thatcher's doctor until a few days before the operation, it had been spotted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain many years previously.

Socialists detected the presence of the Prime Minister’s infamous blind eye from the very start of her political career. It is a malady she shares with every MP who has ever taken a seat in Parliament; it is an affliction with both advantages and disadvantages.

While she and her fellow members maintain the capitalist system, it is a useful thing to be able to turn a blind eye to the human suffering this causes. Indeed, if it were not for this fortunate ailment how would our elected representatives subjugate any pangs of doubt they might feel?

How would they sleep if the glare of their own ambitions did not blind them to the degradation, pain and anxiety that capitalism pours on the exploited working class? If the visions of suffering that are better not seen could not be ignored by such a selective method of sight, would they not be campaigning for the end of such an inhumane system rather than paying homage to it?

When the working class cease to elect members with such imperfect sight and turn instead to men and women who have seen and analysed that which our contemporary MPs defensively refuse to acknowledge. then something will be done about its removal. The causes of working class suffering are known to all who have eyes to see.

NL

In the swamp

Colourful phrases do not spring easily to the lips of Len Murray so perhaps he did not describe the 1983 TUC's tendency to move away from the traditional connection with the Labour Party as “the last twitch of the dinosaurs”.

In any case there is no cause for excitement. for the TUC may at most abandon one outdated idea for another. To develop ties with the SDP/Liberal Alliance and to begin a dialogue with the dreaded Norman Tebbit instead of with the Labour Party hardly comes into the description of fresh, relevant and optimistic ideas.

Then there is the matter of the unions’ motivation. If they do break with Labour it will be because that party’s chances of power are so dismal that there is little to be gained from affiliation with them. Better to look for a likelier prospect, even to negotiate with the Tories if they are the people in power.

It would have been more encouraging if the delegates had discussed severing from the Labour Party through a recognition of the reasons for its futility. They might also have acknowledged the Labour Party’s miserable history of trying to force down workers’ living standards and of fighting against the unions. The fact that this was all done in the interests of the British ruling class provides a conclusive reason for the unions to break with Labour — indeed to oppose it with all their power.

A debate at the TUC which ranged around that sort of awareness would have been a sign of real evolution in the unions, perhaps the first stirrings of class-consciousness which would expose and discard all connections with all the parties of capitalism.

For the present that must be a dream; but the workers can make it come true. Meanwhile the present is less happy, as the unions remain in the primeaval intellectual swamps, a long way behind reality and a proper grasp of what must be done to solve society's problems.

Voice From The Back: Down the sink (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down the sink

Angela O’Hagen, the campaign and communications manager of Oxfam in Scotland was so incensed by the plight of the poor in Mali and the Dominican Republic that she wrote to the Herald (26 June) about it. “Encouraged by Europe’s Common Agriculture Policy, Europe’s farmers are producing mountains of milk that no-one has the appetite for. Instead of pouring the milk down the sink, we dump our left-overs on the developing world undermining local dairy farmers in the likes of Dominican Republic and Mali who cannot compete against our artificially cheaper milk.” No, your eyes don’t deceive you, here is a spokesperson for Oxfam regretting that milk isn’t poured down the sink! Truly, capitalism is a mad house.

Hobson’s Choice

“Digby Jones, the Director-General of the CBI, yesterday argued for businesses to keep an opt-out on the European Working Time Directive that restricts the working week to an average of 48 hours . . . Mr Jones said, “This is about choice. People should have the right to say ‘no’ to long hours and the directive rightly gives them that protection. But they don’t want unions and politicians telling them when they can work, or for how long.” Times (26 June) Why would anyone want to work more than 48 hours? Could it be because they need the overtime pay? Could it be because they don’t want to be overlooked for promotion or, more likely, to be sacked?

It’s not funny

Bernard Manning is a stand-up comedian who has been accused of being a “foul-mouthed racist bigot”, but, as a report in This Week (28 June) of his trip to India shows, he is not stupid. “It was effin’ awful . . . You’re either wealthy in India or you’ve got eff all. The hotel was absolutely wonderful, and people were living high on the hog, beautiful meals, swimming pools, but you get out the front door and . . . effin’ poverty. There’s no in-between. You’ve got women queuing up for water and they’ve got an atom bomb! The last effin’ thing they need in India is an atom bomb! They want reservoirs and plenty of water coming through the tap. Effin’ upset me I can tell you.”

A voice from America

In the New York Times Magazine (6 July) there is a photograph of a woman wearing a flimsy looking plastic bag on her head. Underneath her photograph are the words of Darline Stephens of Anniston, Alabama. “ I live about 5 or 10 miles from chemical weapons. We’re over there searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we have them here in our hometown. I didn’t know this stuff was at the Army Depot all these years. I just heard last year. It takes seven years to burn the chemicals to get rid of it all. We didn’t really believe they were going to burn something that could kill us until they told us to get our masks. My family lives payday to payday, so we sure can’t say, ‘Let’s quit our jobs and move.’ I wish we could. The government does some ignorant things – they just give us a plastic mask? If you could send our boys to war with real masks, I don’t understand why we can’t have the same masks. Everyone in the rescue squad and fire department has high-dollar masks. I just don’t understand why they think some people’s lives are worth more than ours. My son and I are Christians, so we’re saved. He knows where he’s going if he dies.”

Mind the gap

“Almost half the world’s population, or three billion people, live on little more than £1 a day and the gap between the world’s poorest 20 percent and its richest 20 percent has more than doubled since 1960, the International Labour organisation said.” Times (7 July) So where does that leave the notion that the market system would lead to prosperity for all?

Worse than Thatcher

The Labour MP Michael Meacher, formerly the environment minister, revealed in the Guardian (15 July) that the gap in income between the bottom 20 percent and the top 20 percent has increased under Labour. “The share of the bottom fifth has slipped back to 6 percent while the share of the top fifth has moved up to 46 percent. Therefore, the rich now have a bigger share of the nation’s post-tax income than at any time under Mrs Thatcher.”

In the News: Oldham (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The workers of Oldham were battling in the streets, against each other and against the police, for three days from the 25 to 28 May this year. The poisonous despair, powerless and poverty of the area, caused in large part by the decline of the town’s traditional textile manufacturing industry, lead to workers turning upon one another. Differences in skin colour and culture became the focus for the pent-up energies and frustrations engendered by these social conditions.

The spark was, apparently, the provocative actions of followers of the British National Party and their ilk, who damaged property and harassed and attacked brown skinned workers, seemingly without reprisal from the police or authorities. Their targets eventually responded to the provocation, coming out onto the streets to fight them. As a part of the conflict, the unfortunately named Live and Let Live pub was attacked, and windows in the area were bricked. The police turned out in force, and a series of running battles ensued, leaving some 25 workers (including police officers) injured.

The centre of the trouble was the Glodwick area, with groups of up to 500 workers throwing petrol bombs and firecrackers at the police lines. Over the three nights of clashes a post-office was looted and the offices of the local newspaper became the target for firebomb attacks.

It has been suggested that the trouble was stirred up by the British National Party, as a part of their election campaign in the area. The BNP advocates divisive confusionist policies, based upon the scientifically absurd idea of racial differences. Its leader Nick Griffin, their candidate in Oldham West & Royton, advocates communal separation, along the lines of the so-called “Peace Wall” in Londonderry/Derry. This is supposed to be the only way of ending the allegedly irreconcilable differences between people of different “races”.

Their campaign turned out to be highly successful, with workers continually let down by the promises of reformism and the lack of any prospect for change from any other parties, being attracted to the radical posturings of Griffin’s band of would-be leaders. Their promises, geared toward insularism, putting a mysterious group called “The British” first, by protecting their “homeland” and ending their unemployment by prohibiting “foreign” products, attracted a high number of votes for such a small party. In Oldham West and Royton the BNP recorded 6,552 votes (16.4 percent) and in Oldham East and Saddleworth they scored 5,091 votes (11.21 percent). Each total is almost twice the entire number of anti-capitalists who turned up to the London Mayday event.

Naturally, the left is outraged. One commentator in Socialist Worker expressed shock that police refused to prevent the BNP members canvassing for their candidates, stating it was “perfectly legitimate election activity”. Presumably, the SWP must believe that the state should be allowed to vet and permit candidates’ campaigns.

They and other groups blame the failure of leaders, Socialist Worker observed that Oldham workers couldn’t identify with Many-Homes Meacher (their MP), and no-one in power listens to them but instead neglects them; while Militant noted that “the community leaders should be fired” for being out of touch. The problem, apparently, lies with the leaders and not the social system. Michael Meacher himself blamed William Hague and his “foreign land” speech for stoking up xenophobia.

Of course, the leftists see the fascists as rivals for leadership, and are thus happy to join with liberals in relying on emotive tactics and censorship to impede them. Such tactics back-fired badly at the announcement of the vote, because the local council forbade any candidates from speaking. This allowed the fascists to pose before the television cameras, wearing t-shirts proclaiming “Gagged for telling the truth”, and sporting large and visible gags in their mouths. This played into their victim posture, along with their attempts to claim they were trying to defend “whites from racism”. It also effectively prevented anyone from being able to hear how ridiculous their policies really are.

Liberals and leftists alike will not debate fascists, because they have no real answers to their arguments. They both support nationalism and its logic, albeit qualifiedly. Their differences with the fascists are those of degree not of quality. After all, the SWP has unfurled openly reactionary banners by merging with the Scottish Socialist Party whose slogan is “for a Scottish Socialist Republic”, the capitalist politics of national self-determination. What is the differences between “moderate nationalism” and “moderate racism”? Both are absurd creeds used to mystify and divide the workers.

The SWP calls upon workers to “turn anger on the real enemy”, by which they mean not the capitalist system, but the fascists. It means a futile programme of continually trying to suppress the manifestations of fascism, without destroying its root cause: the fallacy that workers share in some national interest. Without that understanding then the privations of capitalism will always lead to workers misidentifying the cause of their problems as not the capitalist system, but other workers.

Dividing the workers against the fascists will not ultimately bring the resolution of these problems, nor will simply appointing a different set of leaders to save us. Only the clear understanding that workers of all types share a common interest against the capitalist system, and that its replacement with socialism will end the social conditions that breed such violence will be of any use to us. That understanding will only come about through trusting the workers to think for themselves, instead of trying to crush the fascists with state power or street politics.

Pik Smeet

A familiar story from Japan (1998)

From the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

In August of last year, analysing the Earth II Summit, we hinted that nothing much should be expected from the December 1997 Conference on Climatic Change which was to be held in Kyoto, Japan.

Judging by the pessimistic headlines that carried news of the Conference’s closure, it would seem we were again proved right.

The Guardian on 12 December, for instance, announced: “Kyoto Deal Leaves US Free to Pollute”, and the story was the dominant one to emerge from the talks.

After hundreds of hours of arguing, the 10,000 who attended the conference from 160 countries agreed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent over the next 15 years. The compromise basically involved the cutting of such gases by 38 leading industrial countries—the developing nations being under no obligation to reduce emissions—the EU by 8 percent, the USA (the world's biggest polluter) by 7 percent and Japan by 6 percent.

Long before the compromise had been reached there was evidence of its hollow echo, with US congressmen, representing coal, iron and steel interests, intimating they would scupper any treaty by voting to oppose it when it comes up for ratification by Congress later this year.

Similar fears were echoed by Japanese officials who pointed out that the fuel lobby can assert considerable influence on Japanese governmental decisions.

Moreover, critics have pointed to one clause of the agreement—the trading of emissions quotas—which would enable the US to make no cuts at all, and perhaps even increase emissions. Impoverished countries would be all too tempted to sell portions of their quota on emissions to countries such as the US where powerful fuel interests care more for short-term profit than the long-term damage to the environment. In short, this clause—and one the US insisted was included before they would agree to anything—is a loophole designed to let Western corporate élites buy their way out of the obligation to cut emissions.

What becomes of the brave words spoken at Kyoto when the time comes for the promises to be implemented is anyone’s guess. One thing is certain. We can not expect obligations to be met so long as there are profits to be made.

Perhaps Michael Meacher, Environment Minister, said it all when he complained: “We in the EU cannot be expected to reduce our emissions more than our competitors” (Guardian, 10 December). Nice one, Michael. Need we say more?

John Bissett

Alternative Economic Strategy or Socialism? (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The current crisis of British capitalism has clearly demonstrated the failure of the strategy which had dominated government policies (both Labour and Conservative) since the end of the Second World War: to manage the economy for continued growth, and a steady expansion in the social and welfare services. The capitalist propagandists insisted that Keynesian policies had cracked capitalism’s biggest problem. The period of cyclical crises during which there were attacks on working class living standards had, at last, come to an end. It was, they said, uphill all the way. Ideologies (by which they meant Marxism) were a thing of the past.

Since the late 1960s, however, it has become widely accepted that Keynesian policies were not the reason for the postwar economic boom. Rather, government policies (Labour and Conservative) were riding the crest of the economic wave. It was not that government policies were controlling the economy; that was a mere illusion. On the contrary, it was only because of the economic boom that governments were able to pursue their Keynesian policies of increased state intervention. As the economic wave came crashing down, governmental attempts to bail out the economy by more and more state spending became increasingly frantic. They found that the Keynesian bucket was full of holes. The Conservative Party, in particular after the failure of the Heath government, ditched its allegiance to Keynesianism and publicly declared its conversion to what it called “monetarism”. The monetarists had a religious faith in the ability of “market forces” to direct capital to where it was most profitable. Also, they believed that this policy of allowing the “invisible hand” of the market to hold sway would result in benefits to the working class as well as the capitalists.

The Labour Party did not at first reject its Keynesian past. In 1974, Harold Wilson led them into government with a so-called radical manifesto of policies intended to bring about “a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families”. But the Labour government did nothing of the kind. Instead, the rich got richer, and it was the working class instead of the rich who were “squeezed until the pips squeak”. The Labour government imposed severe austerity measures upon workers and their families. These, we were told, were because of economic necessity. Once again, as during the 1964-1970 government, Labour had been ‘blown off course”. In response to the deepening crisis, the government cut welfare and education services and, with the collaboration of the TUC, imposed a “voluntary” wages policy which resulted in a fall in real wages. The aim of these policies was to increase the level of profits kept by the capitalists for the accumulation of capital, and to reduce the proportion of profits spent on the reproduction of labour.

Since its defeat in the 1979 election, a debate has been going on within the Labour Party as to whether its programme in office was the appropriate one, and what it will offer the working class at the next election. A large number of Labour Party members and supporters, who view the last Labour government’s policies as a betrayal by the leadership of genuine socialist policies, have increasingly been talking about an Alternative Economic Strategy (AES). Although there is more than one version of the AES it will, whatever its form, be the main plank of Labour Party and left-wing propaganda in the run-up to the next election.

The aims of the AES
The AES seeks to get British capitalism out of its present crisis whilst at the same time meeting what are considered to be the immediate needs of the working class, and to weaken the role of the profit motive in production. This is seen as providing a platform for a “socialist transformation of Britain”. Thus, the AES is not viewed as a programme that will in itself create a socialist society, but as “a strategy that can win tangible gains in the form of greater working class control over production. Moreover, rather than pursue such gains within the constraints imposed by the existing structure of economic relations, it seeks constantly to anticipate, challenge and progressively dismantle those constraints and substitute new forms of control” (Conference of Socialist Economists London Working Croup, The Alternative Economic Strategy, CSE/Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980, p. 7; hereafter referred to as CSE). All that lies beneath this veil of words, however, is yet another attempt by the Labour Party and its left-wing followers to pass off reforms of capitalism as socialism.

Adopting a radical Keynesian stance in opposition to the “monetarism” of the Conservatives, the AES proposes a massive increase in government spending (figures range from £6,000,000,000 to £16,000,000,000, depending on which version of the AES one reads). The argument is that it is the lack of investment which is at the root of the crisis. Capitalists, according to the left-wing, prefer to invest in property and in foreign countries (in 1980, £7,000,000,000 was invested abroad) and to indulge in conspicuous consumption. The blame for the crisis is put at the door of traditional Labour Party bogies: the City, financiers, currency speculators, foreign multinationals, the IMF, and so on. It is the inability of these institutions to invest in Britain on their own accord which necessitates their being brought under control of the nation. The interests of these individual institutions is in opposition to the interests of Britain as an economic unit distinct from other national units. Aaronovitch has stated: “The dominant forces of capital and government have sacrificed the productive base of the British economy at all critical stages (except for world wars). This has been in striking contrast with, for instance, the policies of the ruling groups of those of our main rivals who have grown faster” (Aaronovitch, The Road From Thatcherism, Lawrence and Wishart, 1981, p: 5). In other words, the Labour Party is saving British capitalism from the capitalists!

Previous attempts by Conservative and Labour governments to induce industrial growth have been based on generating increased demand in the economy through such measures as increased government spending and lower taxation. It was believed that to meet this increase in demand there would be a corresponding increase in industrial production. However, this did not happen. In order to ensure that production does increase to match demand, the AES includes policies which directly intervene in production.

The main means to achieve this is through planning agreements, based on a five-year plan, but negotiated every year with private enterprises. These will involve decisions on “investment levels and location, employment, price policy and the like” (CSE, p. 71), and would be negotiated between “management and government with trade unions playing an important role” (CSE, p. 71). These various planning agreements will be coordinated by a National Planning Commission. To ensure that the agreements will be fulfilled, the government will have the power to enforce a range of sanctions against both capitalists and trades unions. The ultimate sanction would be the nationalisation of the enterprise, which would give “a 50:50 sharing of control between labour and capital” (Labour Co-ordinating Committee, There Is An Alternative, Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980, p. 14).

Another important part of the AES is the proposal to ensure that finance will be available for investment. This is to be achieved through state control of the major financial institutions. The capitalists, it seems, are unable to do this by themselves. A future Labour government will utilise the pension and insurance funds as well as the revenue from North Sea oil through a National Investment Bank, comprising government, capitalist, and trades union directors. Also, there are plans to nationalise the four major Clearing Banks (Barclays, Lloyds, Midland, Natwest), and to create a State
Bank through the merging of the Bank of England and the National Savings Bank and the Girobank. These re-formed financial institutions would provide credit to industry at more favourable rates than at present. Finally, there is a proposal for an Investment Reserve Fund through which a proportion of pre-tax profits would be used for specific schemes.

According to the left-wing, the crisis is a product of Tory policies, precipitated to bring about a weakening of the industrial power of the working class. This it has achieved through allowing the “laws” of the free-market to operate unfettered. As the left-wing sees it, to overcome the present crisis and prevent a future one, requires that the market forces be tamed and brought under state control; “an essential part of the industrial strategy is to reduce the role of profit in the economy, both as a source of funds to finance investment and as a criterion that determines where investment should or should not be made” (CSE, p. 45). The policies mentioned above are supposed to achieve this. But the hope that the role of profit can be reduced is vain. The disastrous economics of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are examples of this.

Operating in a world economy in which capital flows between nations, capital is invested where it produces the highest profit. If the return on capital were lower in Britain than in other nations, capital would not be invested. If the AES were implemented foreign capital would not be invested. Furthermore, British capital would be exported to an even greater extent than at present. Any attempt to prevent the export of capital would not ensure that it was invested in Britain. Instead, it would not be invested at all. Only complete state ownership would ensure the use of this “idle” capital. Whatever policies were attempted, the likely result would be a further decline in industrial output.

In talking of reducing the role of the market, all that is meant is that there will be increased attempts at planning, and a reduction in the role of the profit criterion. It does not mean the end of production for a market in which independent producers attempt to sell their products. It does not mean the replacement of production for profit by production for need. On the contrary, the supporters of the AES are opposed to production for need: “Production only creates jobs if the products can be sold. Production for use is nothing more than a romantic fantasy unless there is some way of transforming social needs into effective demand . . .” (CSE, p. 50). Not even the most avowed supporter of capitalism would object to this Labour Party “socialism”.

Import controls
The Alternative Economic Strategy is not merely a national programme. It also has international implications. During the period of industrial re-structuring, British capitalists’ interests will have to be protected from “unfair” foreign competition, and the flooding of the British home market by cheaper imports. This flooding would have a disastrous effect on the embryonic British industries, which would be unable to sell their products even in the home market. This would mean that they would be unable to earn the profits necessary to invest in new productive plant, resulting in a further decline in competitiveness. To ensure that the new British industries are not aborted, the AES plans to nurture them behind a trade barrier. This would allow British capitalism a breathing space in which industries are tooled-up with the most advanced technology, and labour productivity increased (that is, the level of exploitation is increased), so that when the process has been completed, British capitalism will be better able to compete in the world market. That improved competitiveness is the aim of the AES’s call for import controls is made clear in the LCC pamphlet: “What we have to develop is not just a system of import controls to protect the profits of home manufacturers but a system of planned trade which seeks to develop exports” (p. 20).

The AES attempts to link the interests of the working class with the success of British capitalism in its trade war with its rivals. The aim of the import controls is to save “British” jobs by supporting British capitalism against Japanese, French, and German capitalism. To the workers however, it is irrelevant whether they are exploited by British or Japanese capital. This would result in retaliation by other nations, reducing the level of exports and consequently increasing unemployment. Furthermore, since import controls tax imports and force workers to buy more expensive home produced ones, they lead to an increase in the cost of living for the working class. The net result of import controls would be to increase unemployment among workers abroad, and to whip up hatred of “foreigners”. In other words, they would divide the working class of the world. The AES also attempts to reduce the militancy and independence of the British working class by incorporating it into the apparatus of the capitalist state, and reconciling its interests to the fortunes of British imperialism.

It is clear from the programme of the AES that the danger to “Britain” is not capitalism, but the domination of British capital by multinational and foreign capital. How else to explain the emphasis put on the failure of British capital to invest in British industry, and instead invest abroad. Capitalists who fail to invest in Britain are criticised for being “unpatriotic”, for not putting their faith in “Britain”, and not for being capitalists. Accordingly, the answer to such “unpatriotic” behaviour is for capital to be nationalised or brought under the control of the state.

Workers' control or control of workers? 
One of the main points emphasised to sell the AES to the working class is increased worker involvement in decision-making. Supporters of the AES “attach an overriding importance to the extension of workers’ power-both at the point of production and within the wider democratic process of arriving at economic and social goals” (CSE, p. 80). They appear to think that if there are workers (for them, the working class consists of the industrial workers and certain kinds of “white-collar” workers, and not all those who sell their labour-power, at whatever price) involved in making decisions about how a particular enterprise will develop, that the profitability criterion will not be so important. But is is already the working class which runs capitalism (although not all workers are involved in decision-making. However, it does not matter whether the decisions are made by capitalists, management-workers, or a combination of shop-floor workers, management-workers, share-holders, and the state. What matters is that they are making decisions in the interest of capital. It is not who plays the game which is important, but what the rules of the game are to begin with. The rule of capitalism is a simple one: No Profit, No Production. Opening the books, workers' plans, workers’ co-operatives, or worker directors will not alter this.

Supporters of the AES fear that a high rate of what they call inflation will threaten the hoped for expansion of the economy and lead to the abandonment of increased government spending. Ignorantly, they argue that control of inflation requires that workers do not demand high increases in wages. Although there is controversy on the left as to whether there should be a formal incomes policy, there is agreement that wage increases have to be controlled. Aaranovitch states that any increase in wages would have to “take into account the overall direction of the economy” (p. 44). Agreements on wages would attempt to ensure that wages would not fall, and that “consequently growth in real wages would be ensured except in the circumstances of an uncontrolled fall in the terms of trade” (CSE, p. 132, emphasis added). In other words, whenever things got bad for British capitalism, the working class would carry the burden as usual. No doubt the attack on the working class would be couched in the familiar terms of “the national interest”. If, as some have estimated, 5 million new jobs have to be created for unemployment to fall to the level of the 1960s, the Labour government, with the support of the TUC, would argue that this can be achieved only through wage restraint. Another ploy would be to make increased involvement in decision-making dependent on wage restraint. However, the experience of the last Labour government showed that “non-monetary” gains do not impress the workers in the face of reductions in living standards. As an example of a monetary compensation for wage restraint, Michael Meacher MP suggested recently: “This could be either government repayment, after say three-five years, of a proportion of workers’ income tax as index-linked savings according to the degree of pay restraint, or better still, once planning agreements were in place, a right to share in the firm’s capital appreciation tomorrow to match pay limitation today” (New Statesman, 14 August, 1981). But workers’ experience shows that such deals are not in their interests.

The socialist alternative
The AES is a bridge to state capitalism, not socialism. State capitalism is no more in the interests of the working class than free-enterprise capitalism. The state control of capital would strengthen the power of capital over the working class.

Socialists are not concerned solely with the standard of living of the working class and increased involvement in decision-making. Our opposition to capitalism strikes at the very root of the working class condition: the need to sell our ability to work to those who own and control the means of production and distribution. The only way to ensure that the interests of the working class are fulfilled is through the abolition of the working class itself. Indeed, the working class is a class whose interests are destined never to be fulfilled. This does not mean that it must give up the struggle to improve its conditions. That would be a disastrous course of action. What it does mean, however, is that in the struggle to improve its conditions, the working class will come up against the limitations of what can be achieved under capitalism. They will necessarily confront the conditions of their existence as a class. This leaves two courses of action open to the working class. First, it can work within the limitations of capitalism to obtain what it can. But the history of the working class shows that this is precious little, and there is no reason to believe that the future will hold anything different. Or it can take the second course of action: to confront the class limitations with the determination to break them down. To abolish the condition which creates and recreates the working class: the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the capitalist class.

A reformist accommodation to capitalism’s problems, disguised as an embattled militancy, not only puts off the time when capitalism will be replaced by socialism, but also postpones the discussion of why only socialism is the solution to the problems confronting the working class. But the reformist argues that something has to be done now! If this or that problem can at least be ameliorated, then this is a worthwhile goal; they cannot wait for socialism to provide a solution. When challenged to give an example of a solution to a working class problem, the reformists will be at a loss. They will even go so far as to agree with the socialist that capitalism has no solutions. But, they will retort, at least a reform will ensure that fewer people are suffering from this or that problem: something is better than nothing, isn’t it? There is a gaping hole in this argument. The justification for supporting reformist proposals is the comparison of the position before and after the reform. Before the reform, there are, say, 60,000 people living in stinking, rotten houses, whereas after the reform there are hoped to be a mere 40,000. How could the socialist deny support for the reform? Not to support it would condemn 20,000 more people to living in stinking, rotten houses than need be.

But socialists, in not supporting the reformist programme, are not advocating that nothing be done. Far from it. We are calling for the working class to unite to introduce socialism now. In comparison with living conditions possible in a socialist society, the reformist changes are bloody disaster for the working class. The choice for the working class is not between Reform or Nothing. It is Reform or Revolution.

Cardiff Group

References:
1. Aaranovitch, S. The Road From Thatcherism, Lawrence & Wishart. 1981.
2. CSE London Working Group. The Alternative Economic Strategy, CSE Hooks/ Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980.
3. Labour Co-ordinating Committee. There Is An Alternative, Labour Co-ordinating Committee, 1980.

Inquest on the last Labour government (1972)

Book Review from the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour and Inequality. Sixteen Fabian essays. Edited by Peter Townsend and Nicholas Bosanquet. Hardback £3.50, Paperback £2.20.

There have been four periods of Labour government in this country—1923-4, 1929-31, 1945-51, and 1964-70.

Each one has ended with internal dissension and disappointment, and rejection by the electorate, and each has been followed by inquests to find out what went wrong and proposals to do better next time. For some groups in the Labour Party the explanation is always the simple one that they had the wrong leader. This book does not belong in that category. It is a detailed examination by sixteen “experts”, often a highly complicated technical examination, of Labour government policies in different fields, the effects of those policies and in general their failure to produce the results expected. The essays are grouped under three main headings: The Social Services; Inequality in Income, Wealth and Status; and Human Rights and Social Planning.

The editors admit that this book will not bring much joy to members of the Labour Party:-

In many ways this is a critical book. While noting the achievements, most of the authors have failed to find evidence of marked changes in the direction of fulfilling socialist objectives. Their analyses present a gloomy picture. They confirm the inability of the government to use its power on behalf of the weaker members of the community.

Of course when the authors write of the Labour Party’s “socialist objectives” they do not at all mean the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. What they have in mind is broadly the promise to eliminate extreme poverty and secure a greater degree of equality which featured in the Labour Party’s declaration of policy adopted forty four years ago (Labour and the New Social Order, 1918).

That 1918 declaration is of particular interest because it placed on record the Labour Party’s determination to deal with the inequality of wealth ownership. It referred to “the one-tenth of the population which owns nine-tenths of the riches of the United Kingdom”, and promised a "revolution in national finance” to remedy it. The present book examines what the last Labour government did about wealth ownership. The author is Michael Meacher, member of Parliament for Oldham West and formerly lecturer in social administration at York University and the LSE.

He quotes what he says has been a widely accepted estimate of less unequal wealth ownership, and refers to the belief that inequality is on the decline, commenting "Both assumptions are open to extreme doubt”.

He examines several calculations of wealth ownership and argues that they are seriously inaccurate because, among other reasons, they do not allow for the extensive evasion of estate duties payable on death—“Capital has not been taxed away, it has been hidden away”.

Of various methods of estimating the degree of inequality of ownership he thinks that used by the Economist is “perhaps more reliable”. This estimate, related to the year 1959-60, showed one per cent of taxpayers owning 40 per cent of total wealth, two per cent owning 55 per cent, and seven per cent owning 84 per cent. “Indeed the richest tenth of one per cent was actually found to own 13 per cent of total wealth, a sum of £7,033 millions, representing an average fortune of rather over one-third of a million each”.

While not in exactly the same form as the 1918 figures it is clear that little if any change has occurred in half a century and Meacher doubts if any change is going on now.

Two indications of the uselessness of Labour attempts to improve capitalism are mentioned in the book: male unemployment doubled under the last Labour government and in April 1970 5 per cent of men and 55 per cent of women had earnings under £15 per week.

The book quotes from a statement made in 1934 by the late Professor Tawney about “the degeneration of Socialist parties on assuming office” (by “Socialist” he of course meant Labour). He meant their failure to carry out their declared intentions. About the same time the leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, in his book The Will and the Way to Socialism, claimed that the Labour Party believed in “the abolition of classes and in an equalitarian society”. He explained clearly what he meant by equality. Under Labour government there would be “no little cottages and no large private houses. All would be reasonably well housed” and there would, for example, be no government subsidising of “luxury living for millionaires” because there would be no millionaires.

Attlee was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951, and Wilson from 1964 to 1970. Attlee’s pledge should be read in comparison with what the present authors have to say about housing and the inequality of wealth.

Edgar Hardcastle