SPGB Meetings (1989)

Party News from the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Discord Meetings (2020)

Party News from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The following SPGB Discord Meetings from November 2020 were recorded for posterity. Sound quality varies:

• Belling the cat: Marx and Engels on the practical organization of socialism. (Speaker: Bill Martin) Link.
• Attachment Theory (Speaker: Tim Kilgallon) Part 1, Part 2.
• The new atheism (Speaker: Nigel McCullough) Part 1, Part 2.
• Bitcoin and the Dark Web (Speaker: Paul Edwards) Link. 

SPGB Meetings (1995)

Party News from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

What happens when there is no housing market? (2020)

From the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Decent, functional and even beautiful living accommodation is unarguably one of humanity’s prime needs. It is the one prime need in fact that, more than any other, save food and water, is vitally conducive to harmonious and pleasant living at all. Conversely, the lack of it is almost always a cause of misery, meanness and domestic strife. The question of housing allocation in a socialist society is therefore by no means a novel one, and has been discussed and debated for a very long time. That old Fabian fraud George Bernard Shaw, for example, once said that he was often asked who would live in the big house on the hill in this socialist society of his, and Bernard Shaw’s ever-ready response was ‘The same as now, whoever can afford to live there will’.

We beg to differ. All of what we say below notwithstanding, if there is one certain fact concerning life in a future socialist society that we can predict, it’s that how much money you have will most definitely not be the deciding criterion that determines where you live. There won’t be any money for a start – bits of colourful paper, or, more so these days, numbers on a computer screen, that denote how deserving you are of living decently as a human being.

Shaw’s solution to capitalism’s housing problem, like that of the other 56 pseudo-brands of ‘socialism’, was simply an ill-thought out version of reformed capitalism, inexorably welded to and determined and dictated by the market for houses. In socialism, there won’t be any market for houses. Shaw’s ‘solution’ was, bizarrely, simply predicated on the continuing existence of the very cause of the housing problem in the first place.

But, to be fair to him as much as possible, Shaw’s non-solution of reforming capitalism in such a way as to solve the housing problem, has been practically everybody else’s non-solution too. Long before Shaw was preaching his illogical nonsense, one of the pioneers of socialist ideas, the co-author and life-long friend of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, wrote a short series of articles entitled The Housing Question. Engels was writing in the mid-Victorian period, a time when the ‘success‘ of British capitalism was at its height and yet, a time also, when the housing conditions of the working class were especially miserable, unspeakably wretched and degrading. Needless to say, then as now, all manner of reformist nostrums were proposed by a whole range of political activists; from followers of the French anarchist Proudhon, who advocated that every worker within existing capitalism should have their own little private property dwelling, bought on the ‘never, never’, to representatives of the capitalists themselves, with their ‘factory-provided houses’ abominations. These, needless-to-say, were not only factory-provided, but factory-owned and job dependent, with all of the horrors of job loss and consequent eviction that were entailed. Indeed, in criticising these proposed multi-various reforms, Engels’ work is almost entirely devoted to dealing with the ways and means of how not to solve the housing question.

Not a problem of housing

As a matter of fact, as Engels explained repeatedly, the real issue is not at all a ‘housing’ problem – that is, a shortage of labour power or a dearth of nature-given materials that are necessary to provide everyone in society with housing accommodation commensurate with their needs – but a capitalism problem. Deal with the real issue of capitalism’s general diktat of production for profit, and the housing question, like every other misnamed ‘problem’ in capitalism, will solve itself. It is the only concrete solution to the problem of lack of housing, the inferior quality of housing and the location of housing. If there is any other solution, apart from the common ownership of resources proposed by the Socialist Party, it has never been revealed. All we hear today, from Housing Associations, charities and political parties are mere echoes of the ideas and social quackery that Engels exposed and lambasted as absurd nonsense 150 years ago.

Having stated the general solution to the housing ‘problem’ we are invariably questioned as to how the solution of common ownership will work in practice. Socialist society will undoubtedly require administration at a local level, a regional level and even a world-wide level. How this administration is organised and functions will be a matter for the inhabitants of socialism. What decisions these socialist bodies take, and how they will be implemented and even enforced if necessary, will be entirely up to them. That goes without saying. Although we refrain from crystal ball-gazing, we can, of course, make some general points as to what might happen in regard to housing provision in socialism. There are two things, we would imagine, a socialist society will want to deal with immediately. The first is the homeless problem.

For the first time ever, a problem that has been grappled with constantly in all modern societies, that has been discussed ad nauseam, fought over, lied about, written about endlessly, and thousands of charities and other organisations have done to death for as long as capitalism has existed , will at last be capable of solution. The administrative bodies in a socialist society will know best at the time how to do this.

The second task will be to look at the existing occupied housing stock, its condition and the needs of its occupiers, with a view to rehousing those in the worst of circumstances immediately. Again, decisions will need to be taken by socialism’s representative bodies over how best to implement this aim.

As a party, we have never claimed to be in possession of ready-made solutions for each and every question that the future socialist society will need to take up. Nor would it be sensible or desirable for us to do so. In regard to housing alone, the actual considerations and requirements are seemingly inexhaustible. The production and transportation of bricks, copper piping, slates, sand, cement, glass, wooden batons, joists and fencing, to name but a few of the most obvious that spring to mind, are each a major operation in themselves. Plumbers, electricians, roofers, bricklayers, joiners, glaziers and gardeners, will all need to be coordinated. Further, surveying, land availability, planning, road traffic considerations, amenities provision, public transport, again to name only those that readily spring to mind, give an additional idea of the complexities involved. It is absurd to suggest that we living today should make concrete plans for all this.

Likewise, the number of people involved in existing professions that are tied economically (and are mostly useless, with little or no connection to the actual construction of buildings) to housing in capitalism, that will be unleashed by socialism’s construction for use economy, run into the tens of millions. Our pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism, lists over 70 of these professions themselves. And that’s only in regard to housing. The number of people engaged in useless jobs in capitalism generally and not connected with housing but who would be available to be deployed in that area where required is astronomical.

We don’t know

How will socialist society allocate Shaw’s big house on the hill? Our answer is, and can only be, we have no blueprint. It will be up to the inhabitants of socialism to decide ‘who gets what’. More importantly, even if such a question is legitimate, it certainly has no significant bearing on the case for socialism that we argue in the present.

However, such questions can be useful in one sense, for they highlight the chief difficulty of prediction: why should we assume that the social norms of today will be exactly those of the future? Certainly, there is no reason to believe that the attitudes of those living in an entirely different type of society will be exactly the same as today. To expect the norms of life in capitalism as it exists now to remain exactly the same as when there are, for example, a billion socialists, is naive enough. To expect a socialist society to be, in the first place, established on the notions and ideas of capitalism, and even more unlikely, remain completely static, is patently absurd and flies in the face of all past human experience.

Is it likely that people in a future socialist society will have the same desires, concerns, views, needs, aspirations or requirements that we find so ‘natural’ and indispensable in capitalism today? No matter how rigid and seemingly set in stone they appear now, it is absolutely certain that our present concerns for property ownership, for big houses, for big cars, for the baubles and trinkets so beloved of capitalism’s apologists, and in a nutshell, a concern for ‘who gets what’, will be simply looked upon with astonishment and incredulity and, eventually, intense curiosity.

Is such a belief in the possibility of such a profound change taking place idealistic or utopian? The history of a mere couple of decades or so tells us no. Not even the imaginative genius of Oscar Wilde could have ever dreamed of such an utterly unimaginable event as two men getting married – to each other! Think about that and consider the extraordinary change in attitude that has taken place in such a short historical time span, so that, apart from a small minority of religious bigots, no one bats an eyelid at what once was, barely yesterday in historical terms, such an inconceivable proposition as to be simply dismissed out of hand by practically every human being on the planet. Yet now it is widespread and the ‘norm’.

But to speculate, perhaps, in the immediate aftermath of the transition from capitalism to socialism, as a start, the inhabitants of socialism will decide, after making adequate provision for the existing occupants, to agree a list of the 500 (1000? 2000? 5000?) biggest and most beautiful private dwelling buildings in a metropolis such as London. Perhaps they will then decide to convert 100 into havens for the mentally ill, 100 into centres for the care and healing of victims of sexual abuse, 100 into centres for the study and treatment of those suffering from seemingly uncontrollable and socially harmful sexual urges, and 100 into recuperation centres for those suffering the effects of being incarcerated under capitalism for crimes against property.

Perhaps also, in an advanced socialist society of 20 years standing, when most or all of these problems have been eradicated, the majority of the very same buildings will, one by one, be simply left to run themselves as examples of by-gone notions of desirable (or even undesirable) architecture, with accommodation upstairs for those who want to preserve and protect them. The point is, we simply cannot predict what will happen.

How will socialist society come into ‘possession’ of these buildings? Again, we don’t know. Is it possible that they will be simply requisitioned for the use of everyone? Absolutely. After all, to describe the matter bluntly, the capitalist revolutions of the past were to privatise the earth and everything in it and on it, to proclaim the rights of private property and to convert it into the ownership of a few.

A socialist revolution will be aimed at taking the property back we have created, taking it out of the hands of a parasitic few and to place it at the disposal of society. That is what a socialist revolution is.

How the inhabitants of a future socialist society will act, what their priorities will be, and what is important and desirable for them, can be safely left to them to decide.

What happens to an insignificant number of ‘more desirable than others’ buildings is only one aspect of the matter, and by far the least important. The question of housing provision in general, both now – as in the lack of it – and the potential that socialism will undoubtedly open up, is far more important.

To make glib, possibly well-intentioned – though usually ultimately utterly futile – proposals to deal with housing problems in capitalism’s restrictive profit-driven market for houses is one thing; to deal with the necessity to provide healthy, decent, and even – a purely subjective opinion, of course, beautiful – living accommodation in socialism’s production for use on the basis of a free access economic system, is quite another.

We would make it abundantly clear again, in any discussion of how a socialist society will deal with the general allocation of housing, that we cannot speak for a future society in regard to what decisions will be necessary in the construction or location or provision or allocation of housing – any more so than we can on the future prospects for harmonicas or hairnets.

Our only concern at present is to drive home the necessity for the one over-riding solution to the problems of capitalism and that is socialism. This will create the only possible basis for solving the so-called housing problem. And this, as we say repeatedly, for the simple reason that it isn’t a problem at all, but merely a consequence of the artificial scarcity in housing created by capitalism’s disgraceful and disgusting inherent drive for profit. Socialism will unleash the tremendous construction capability necessary so that we can begin practical steps towards not only solving issues like homelessness and slum-dwelling, but constructing beautiful housing accommodation – we are, after all, admirers of the ideas of the early Marxist William Morris – so as to meet the self-defined needs of every human being.

Nigel McCullough

Obituary: Richard Montague (2014)

Obituary from the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with great sadness that we have to announce the recent death of our comrade Richard Montague in Belfast only a few days before his 89th birthday.

Richard was political from a very young age. As a boy he found himself in the Republican Movement, and, at the age of 16, he also found himself in jail – or as he always referred to it, ‘Chokey’ – for a short spell. He soon became disillusioned with nationalism. When he looked at the problems that affected the vast majority of the working class in every country, he realised that nationalism, and concern for artificial borders between people, held no solutions and he quickly turned against it. One of his favourite stories was how, when he left the Republican Movement, he was proud that he’d taken 4 or 5 people out of the IRA with him.

Richard came across the SPGB when he was working in London. He vividly recalled sometime later how, after reading some of the Party’s literature on the big questions of the day, his first thought was ‘where have these people been hiding?’

In finding the Socialist Party, Richard had found his political home for the rest of his life, and the Socialist Party had found one of its most stalwart, most articulate, most enthusiastic, most liked, most respected and most admired members. During the coming decades the sheer ability of the man was revealed: writing, speaking, debating, organising, letters to newspapers, electioneering, answering correspondence – even printing Party literature! Richard bought and trained himself to run an old duplicator, turning out leaflets and makeshift pamphlets in the days when that was no small feat. When he wasn’t physically active, he was talking socialism. With him, the personal was indeed always the political and vice versa.

When he was a young man, Richard kept company with some local Trotskyists – though he was never a member of any of their groups. The question of socialism was bound up at the time with the question of what existed in Russia. Richard knew instinctively that he was opposed to what existed in Russia, for he naturally detested anything based on coercion, or leadership or hero worship. And besides, he knew his Marx well enough not to be taken in by bogus Leninist claims.

Richard didn’t hide his views on religion. At the age of 13 he was able to embarrass his would-be teachers, the Christian Brothers, by explaining back to them the absurdity of their own nonsense. .

Richard soon became a contributor to the Socialist Standard. Writing was in his blood, he loved to write and he was certainly one of the best writers the Socialist Standard ever had in my opinion – and we have had some great writers over the years. His articles on Irish history have been praised by many. A history of the Party published in 1975 by a non-member rightly states that anyone wanting to get an understanding of what was called ‘The Irish Question’ would do well to read Richard’s articles. The Party’s stock pamphlet on Ireland entitled Ireland, Past, Present and Future was written by Richard and his novel, Frank Faces of the Dead, was a story about the troubles. Published at the height of the conflict, nothing sums up Richard’s hatred for violence and division within the working class better than the dedication he wrote for his book. It was dedicated to all the victims of the troubles – including the British soldier, IRA member, protestant paramilitary, RUC member and UDR member.

Not only was Richard a fantastic writer – and he wrote great poetry and short stories just as he wrote articles and pamphlets and books – but he was an avid reader too. His knowledge of literature was extensive and would easily put any professor of the subject to shame. He effortlessly connected numerous writers to politics and his own socialist views. Joyce, Wilde, Shaw, Marx, Shelley, Keats, Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam, to name but a few - Richard had them all at hand and could quote them all.

His knowledge of Shelley’s poetry in particular was second to none and he could quote huge swathes of it, for he loved Shelley. The Mask of Anarchy, a poem Shelley wrote in protest against state violence, was a particular favourite and Richard knew it by heart. And he didn’t just recite it. Indeed, he sometimes claimed that Shelley was the true originator of many ideas accredited to Karl Marx.

Socialists don’t follow leaders, and we don’t give much credence to what’s called the great man theory of history. But we do recognise the worth of a person as an individual. Richard was one of the worthiest of individuals.

Nigel McCullough

The Masquerade and the Reality (1994)

From the October 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having spent a quarter of a century trying to force the British government to sever its political and military connection with Northern Ireland and of trying to coerce the Unionist population into accepting a United Ireland against their will through the threat of violence, the IRA has finally called it a day and called a permanent ceasefire. In some quarters at least, notably amongst desperate Dublin politicians, this is the interpretation put on the statement from the IRA that they had ordered “a complete cessation of military operations”. The hard reality of countless IRA atrocities, however, has taught most people living in Northern Ireland to be somewhat more cynical of the IRA’s words and motives than the Dublin government appears to be. The overwhelming response to the Provo’s “Peace Process” is to question why the people who brought us La Mon House, Abercorn, Teebane, Shankill Road, to name but some of the worst outrages, and who had no compunction in placing entire working class ghettoes under the iron heel of Nationalist conformity, have suddenly let go of the armalite for a two handed grip on the ballot box.

The Unionists, of course, are particularly sceptical and distrustful. Not withstanding the predictable antics of Paisley, whom more and more Protestants are dismissing as a political clown, there is genuine concern amongst the majority that something has been done behind their backs. Reasons for the distrust are not far to seek. It has been common knowledge now amongst the majority of Unionists that the British government considers Northern Ireland as an economic black hole into which £3 billion of its revenues disappears annually. They know that the British would dump them if they could, and they fear that pressure from what they call the “pan-Nationalist front” — a supposed alliance between the SDLP, Sinn Fein, the Catholic Church, Dublin government and powerful American allies — has nudged the British Government in the direction of a United Ireland.

It is this fear that fuels the activities of the Protestant paramilitaries, whose immediate response to the IRA ceasefire was to murder a Catholic worker, carry out further, unsuccessful, gun attacks on others and to try to blow up Sinn Fein’s Press Office on the Falls Road. Despite the self-delusion of the Protestant paramilitaries that they have significant support amongst the Protestant working class for their activities, most Protestant workers, however misguidedly, are looking to the Unionist establishment to protect what they perceive as their “constitutional position”and their “British way of life”. Aggrieved as they might feel over the actions of a mercenary British government which, as Lord Palmerston once pointed out, has no long-term friends or enemies, only interests, few would sanction the indiscriminate murder of innocent Catholic workers as a legitimate response.

The arguments of the Loyalists in relation to their “British way of life” are the arguments of patriots and nationalists everywhere; they are illogical, mythical and misguided. Socialists are not conned by capitalist propaganda; we see this “way of life” for what it is: a mean, restricted existence made marginally more bearable by a “cultural” diet of American sit-coms, Australian soap operas and all the crap you can eat at McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Garbage; an artificial culture which, for the present historical period at least, a triumphant capitalism has enforced everywhere from Moscow in Russia to Moscow Street on the Shankill Road.

It may be common for the Leninist Left to go into raptures at the very mention of the IRA and to sing hallelujahs to the so-called “armed struggle” (a struggle, which, incidentally, they have shown commendable, indeed, remarkable, restraint in furthering by any sacrifice on their part), but socialists refuse to support one group of misguided nationalist workers as opposed to some other group. Socialists no more support the myths of “republicanism” than we do “loyalism”. Lining up on the side of nationalists means two things; it means drawing battle lines between sections of the working class whose sole interest in capitalism should be to unite to abolish it, and it means promoting the capitalist myth of the “national interest” — in short, collaboration with the bosses. Attempts to solve so-called “national questions”, to rearrange capitalist borders, in other words, is a futile concern to occupy nationalists, not socialists.

It is because of the Left’s policy of mouthing the lunacies of Irish Nationalism in practically the same breath as they spout platitudes about their spurious socialism that most Protestant workers in Northern Ireland are openly hostile to even discussing socialism. This attitude is hardly surprising; for decades every shade of “Socialist” or “Marxist” opinion has reviled the Protestant working class, much as Marx and Engels, in The Communist Manifesto, reviled “The ‘dangerous class’, the social scum. . . ,” stigmatising such people as “the bribed tool of reactionary intrigue”. To view the Protestant workers in Northern Ireland as “the bribed tools” of British imperialism, bought off with a small fraction of the "super-profits" accruing to British capitalism through their “occupation” of Ireland, is comforting for people whose historical materialism is so deep that their entire vision of the world resolves itself into supporting “good” nationalists against “bad” nationalists, “good” governments against “bad" governments, and, ultimately, much as the religious superstitionists do, “good” people against “bad" people. The problem with this Leninist claptrap is that it is somewhat at odds with the reality which sees the saints, as well as the sinners, on the receiving end of £3 billion.

State-capitalism supporting “socialists” have done their best to alienate Protestant workers from real socialist ideas, but they haven’t entirely succeeded. Many workers from Protestant ghettoes are starting to recognise that, in a sense, the phoney “socialists” and the Unionist parties have been unwittingly fighting each others’ battles by preventing Protestant workers from coming to a realisation of their class position in capitalism. In the Shankill Road area of Belfast at least there are signs that this realisation is starling to dawn. For example, Eddie Kinner, an ex-UVF lifer who spent thirteen and a half years in jail and who, in conversations with the present writer, openly describes himself, and many of his acquaintances, as socialists, recently had published in The Irish Times an article in which he pointed out that:

  The working class Protestants feel that they have been held responsible for the misrule of the Stormont government under which they were exploited and oppressed just as much as the Catholics. They feel that the Unionists have represented the middle class Protestants and religious fundamentalists but misrepresented the views and position of the working class Protestants. (The Irish Times, September 3 1994)

Working-class Protestants are now starting to articulate their position in a more positive way. Although the activities of the fascists in the IRA have hardened their feelings towards those on the “other side”, many of them, probably the majority, would now admit that the original grievances of the Civil Rights marchers were justified. They accept there was discrimination over jobs and houses and that there were anomalies in the voting system which tended to be directed against Catholics. In no way, however, should Protestant workers feel that some act of contrition on their part is called for. They should recognise that the real discrimination in Northern Ireland, like everywhere else in capitalism, was not practised by those who fought over the crumbs, it was practised by those who took the cake and left the crumbs to be fought over. If Protestant workers were materially any better off, it was because their majority strength compelled the ruling class to fob them off with slightly bigger crumbs.

It was the bosses. Catholic, as well as Protestant, who decided who entered into wage-slavery and who languished on state hand-outs where these existed — or starved, where they didn't. The bosses could pick and choose. From the very outset, the capitalist class of the North East of Ireland had decided that their economic interests were best served by a retention of the union with Britain for the sole reason that this also retained their access to British markets.

Naturally, as most working class Catholics had been duped into believing that their interests were with the Southern capitalists, and said so, they were seen as hostile to the new set-up which served the interests of the northern capitalists. Discrimination was the result. What were Protestant workers to do? Refuse to take the jobs and watch their families suffer even more than they already were on the grounds that a Catholic worker might have been “unfairly” passed over? Are socialists to accept that if there had been a Catholic majority in the state, a Catholic parliament for a Catholic people and an overwhelmingly Catholic ruling class, that the attitude of these to a recalcitrant minority of Protestant workers would have been any different? To argue this way is to show an abysmal ignorance of how capitalism works.

Everywhere capitalism exists it creates conflict. Capitalism pits state against state over positions of military and economic influence, capitalist against capitalist over markets, raw materials and cheap labour power, capitalist against worker over wages and conditions and worker against worker over a continuous scramble for scarce jobs. Conflict is capitalism’s permanent condition; the problem is that there is no shortage of people whose ignorance and bigotry enables the conflict to masquerade as one based on nationalism, religion or race. Protestant workers in Northern Ireland have been among the worst victims of this masquerade. A community worker in the Glencairn area of Belfast recently complained to the media that his area, a sprawling, ugly estate, pock-marked everywhere by vandalised blocks of flats, had no community centre, no shopping area, no post office, no chemist, no health centre and that gangs of bored youths roamed the area using empty flats as drinking and drug-taking dens. For some, the mask is beginning to slip.

Nigel McCullough

The State and its abolition (Part 2) (1985)

From the Spring 1985 issue of the World Socialist

I. The state of capitalism

The popular conception of the state is that of a kind of neutral pendulum which can be swung in different directions in accordance with the philosophy of the dominant political party. In other words, that the degree of authority which the state institutions wield, the levels and methods of coercion and oppression which these institutions employ in practising this authority, and whether this authority is put to "good" or "bad" purposes (e.g. whether it is used to inaugurate or maintain a "Welfare State" or a police state dictatorship) is determined by the aims and aspirations, or indeed, sometimes even by the personalities within the party which constitutes the government.

To a certain extent this is true. Outwardly, the modern state takes many different forms, and is coercive and oppressive to varying degrees. The totalitarian state, whether of the "left" or "right", is undoubtedly more oppressive than the "democratic state" in as much as those who control it (regardless of how they came to do so) have to rely more heavily on the services of the police and army, the political allegiance of its "officials" and subjugation of its citizens.

To view the state merely as a passive, autonomous body, ready to be put to the service of "good" or "bad", to be steered in the "right" or "wrong" direction or to be manipulated at will by political philanthropists for the benefit of the population, or by tyrants for the benefit of themselves, is to imagine that the state exists in a kind of social and political void. It is to accept the assertion that the state (i.e. the armed forces, police, legal system, civil service, etc.) acts in isolation, uninfluenced by the social conditions and social relations within which it operates.

No matter what its form, or how its government is chosen, the state does not, and can not, act in isolation. It is a machine for the domination of one class by another, an instrument of class rule, and therefore can not be neutral, passive or independent.

ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE

The modern capitalist state with its armies, its police forces, its laws, rules and regulations for the defence of property, did not appear suddenly overnight. Neither is it the reflection of some innate propensity of the human race to be aggressive and unco-operative, as the more "holy" apologists of capitalism maintain. The state has neither a natural nor unnatural existence; it is the product of class conflicts, and as such, it has been forged in the social furnace of the three great epochs of class-divided society, chattel slavery, feudalism, and finally the world-wide system of society which we know today, capitalism.

It was the division of society into classes — a property owning minority and a propertyless majority — which gave rise to the need for the state. For, in order for the dominant class to maintain its property rights and to appropriate the surplus product of the dominated class, it was essential that it had at its command a coercive apparatus to enforce its laws and regulations. This coercive apparatus, consisting of a certain group of people set apart from society and engaged solely in ruling, administering, subjugating and oppressing in the interests of the monopolising class, is called the state.

As the social relations of equality and freedom (arising from the common ownership of the instruments of production) of primitive society were eroded, and replaced with the new class relations of owner/non-owner, exploiter/ exploited, robber/robbed, the need for the minority class of property owners to develop and maintain a permanent apparatus of coercion took root. Chattel slavery which evolved from primitive society, was the first definite form of class society, and it is in this epoch in which we find the embryonic form of the modern state. After chattel slavery came feudalism, in which the class relations changed from that of slave-owners and slaves, to feudal landlords and peasant serfs. The class rule of a minority did not change, however, and the consequent domination and dependence of the majority of people in society remained.

CAPITALIST FREEDOM

Historically, just as chattel slavery gave way to feudalism and ushered in the rule of the class of landlords, so feudalism gave way to capitalism and inaugurated the rule of a new class of exploiters — the owners of capital. As world trade developed on an increasingly grand scale and the circulation and power of money grew with the exchange of commodities, the capitalists superseded the power of the feudal landlords and became the new ruling class. This economic revolution, in which the capitalists instigated their own mode of production, did not involve the disruption of the state to any great degree, as the function of the state is to protect property, irrespective of who owns it or whether that property is composed of land, people, factories or machinery.

As capitalism advanced against the feudal system and became decisively established, so also did the social conditions and relations which enabled it to flourish. Capitalist society proclaimed the new ideals of freedom, liberty and equality for everyone before the law. It proclaimed the right of property ownership to be the right of every member of society. And it maintained that the dark old days of slavery and serfdom, in which "the sword ruled without shame and club-law prevailed", when the division of society into classes severed the majority from the means of life and subjected it to the tyranny of a minority class of parasites, were no more.

Capitalist society declared that the state had miraculously conjured away the reasons for its own existence and had been transformed from an instrument of domination and coercion into the guarantor of this new-found liberty and freedom. Such were, and still are, the ideals of capitalist society. The reality for the majority of people was, and still is, very different. Even a momentary glance at the history of capitalism should suffice to convince any member of the working class who has emerged from the capitalist indoctrination clinics (schools, colleges, universities, to use their official titles) with their thought processes still relatively untwisted what this liberty and freedom meant in practice. "Liberty" meant the liberty of the capitalists to legally exploit and rob the new class of (wage) slaves, the working class. And "freedom" meant the freedom of the workers to starve if they didn't fancy the idea of being exploited or robbed. Or, if they protested that "the game wasn't straight" the freedom to be beaten, jailed or transported by the "guardians" of freedom — the laws and forces of the capitalist state.

From the time when the last peasant serfs were being forced from the land and herded into factories as wage-labourers up until the present-day, capitalism has not changed to any significant degree. Outwardly some changes have occurred, in that the capitalist system now dominates over almost the entire face of the earth, while its division into national segments has become more decisive. But the essential dynamic of capitalist production, the extraction of surplus value (profit) by means of the wages system, and the function of the state within each national segment in protecting property (regardless of the nationality of the owner) and perpetuating the rule of the dominant capitalist class has remained unchanged.

LEGALISED EXPLOITATION

In capitalism (including those countries like Russia, China and Cuba in which the ruling elite performs the role of private capitalists) society is divided into two classes. Those who monopolise the means of wealth production and distribution, i.e. land, factories, mills, offices, transport facilities and raw materials etc. (the capitalist class) and who constitute an insignificant minority, and those who own no substantial property (the working class) and who make up the vast majority of the world's population. Capitalism is a world-wide system of production for profit. In other words, the capitalist class, as owners of the means of production, will only allow production to take place on condition that they can sell what is produced on the market to realise a profit. A number of things result from this, which render the exploitation of the working class and its oppression by the state, inevitable.

The fact that production in capitalism is geared towards making profits means the very foundations of capitalism rest on the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation of the workers in capitalism is accomplished by means of the "money trick" — the wages system. As the working class throughout the world has no substantial property of its own, in order to live its members have to sell their mental and physical energies (their labour power) to the capitalists in return for a wage or salary. In effect, this means the capitalist class has virtual control over the lives of the workers. The reason for this is that not only do the capitalists control the activities of the workers during the period for which they have bought their labour power (the hours of employment) but how the workers spend their "free" time is also almost entirely dependent on whether they are earning a wage or not, how much they earn, the number of hours they work, how hard and fast they are compelled to work and the nature of their work. In short, the lives of the workers are enslaved and shackled by the iron chains of capital.

After the capitalists have agreed to purchase the labour power of the workers, they set them to produce wealth in the form of goods or services. When this wealth has been produced however, it does not belong to the workers but passes into the possession of the owners of the means by which it was produced. The workers have no say in what happens to the wealth they have created, where it goes or who receives it, but merely receive a part of the value of this wealth in the form of wages and salaries. Of course, the capitalist class do not keep the wealth created by the workers for themselves. They have to sell it on the market, and, as the goal of production in capitalism is to realise profits, at a higher price than what their accumulated costs of production were. In this way the capitalist class is able to amass great fortunes, whilst the workers, who have to give back their wages to the class of capitalists as a whole when they buy the things they need to stay alive, are compelled to repeatedly sell themselves by the hour, week or month.

This legalised exploitation of the workers in the process of capitalist production is only the tip of the iceberg. Capitalism, because it is a system which puts the profits of a few before the needs of the many, oppresses hundreds of millions of people throughout the world by denying them access to the things which they need in order to live.

It denies tens of millions of men, women and children every year their right to life, by condemning them to systematic death by starvation, whilst at the same time destroying or discouraging the production of food, in order to maintain profit levels. In the "richer" countries capitalism lets people die of hypothermia and other curable diseases simply because the production and distribution of heating fuels, the building and equipping of hospitals and the developing and manufacture of medicines is manacled by the dictates of profitability. Production for profit condemns many more millions to the squalor of living in slums, yet building workers are thrown out of work in their thousands and rendered useless.

LAW AND ORDER IN PRACTICE

Irrespective of whether a government in capitalism is democratically elected or not, or whether it describes itself as Conservative or Communist, Social Democratic or Socialist, Labour or Liberal or whatever it is in office to run capitalism. Consequently, regardless of any good or bad intentions its members may or may not have had, it has no choice but to act against the interests of the working class, by wielding the forces of the state in the interests of capital.

Within each national segment of capitalism, the apparatus of the state, at every level, is staffed by personnel charged with the maintenance of the capitalist social order. This personnel comprises the police, army and navy, judiciary and legal system, prison staff, civil service and the "education" system, each in its turn, playing a part in making sure the working class constitutes a docile, indoctrinated and exploitable army of wage labour for the capitalists to feed off. "Ah!" protest the apologists of capitalism, "but they all play their part in maintaining law and order and ensuring that we can all sleep peacefully in our beds at night." Indeed they do maintain "Law and order", but what do these cherished words mean in practice?

Law and order means preserving stability in a society based upon class ownership of the means of life. It means people living on the streets of cities in every country in the world, because capitalism can't provide houses for them. It means houses remain empty because it is "unlawful" for people to occupy them. It means that people throughout the world go hungry and cold because it is "unlawful" for them to take food and heating materials from the shops and stores. Law and order means the right of a minority class of parasites to monopolise the resources of the earth, and legally to rob and exploit the rest of the human race.

A society based upon production for profit requires a police force because it produces criminals, by forcing people to steal, rob and kill in order to live or in order to "prove themselves" in its jungle of social and political madness. The construction and building of armies and navies, far from being capitalism's anathema, are its life blood, because it is a system divided into national segments, the capitalists of which are in constant conflict, a conflict which inevitably breaks out from time to time in open violence, over markets, resources, land and cheap labour forces from which they can wring their profits.

Capitalism needs "Law and order" to survive because it is riddled with contradictions and insoluble problems. It has long outlived its usefulness in the history of the human race and should be replaced with something new — socialism.

THE END OF THE STATE

Socialism will be a society in which there will be no place for governments, armies, police forces or any of the other oppressive institutions required by capitalism. In socialism the means of production and distribution of wealth will be held in common by society, enabling production to be carried on with the sole purpose of satisfying the needs of human beings. This means that, for the first time in the history of the human race, society will be in a position to eradicate forever the conditions of poverty, want, fear and insecurity, along with violent, aggressive beings which these conditions breed.

A society which caters for the needs of its members, because its members will be in control, will not need to set above itself a group of people to rule over it and dictate its actions. When all freely avail themselves of the wealth freely created there will be no need for policemen to stand guard over it to prevent people taking what they need from what they produce.

Socialism will not require the services of armies and navies because competition between the world's population will be replaced by co-operation and an understanding that the material needs of people in one part of the world are the needs of people the world over.

Nigel McCullough (Ireland)