Editorial: Socialism is democracy (1979)

Editorial from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy is something to which almost all capitalist politicians pay ritualistic tribute; to declare that they are against democracy is regarded by them as inviting the kiss of death. Sometimes they tell us that democracy—or rather their version of it—is under attack, which usually means they are about to demand some vast sacrifice from the working class, allegedly to protect democracy.

The result of such sacrifices—and the working class are usually only too ready to make them—is not to strengthen democracy. Today, for example, there are huge areas of the world and tens of millions of people living under dictatorship—and this after several wars which were supposed to defend democracy. The fact that many of those dictatorships refer to themselves as democracies exposes just how the word is misused and distorted and, therefore, how precarious is democracy’s hold.

How does the socialist view democracy?

How will socialism be a democratic society?

A socialist is, first of all, a politically conscious being, someone who has come to an understanding of social dynamics so that they know how and why capitalism works and how and why socialism will abolish capitalism’s problems.

Socialists do not have any political leaders. Nobody can deceive us that, say, Tory monetarism is good for us, that Labour stands for working class interests, that socialism exists in places like Russia, China, Cuba.. .

Nobody gives political orders to a socialist. No member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain lays down policy statements for the rest to accept and carry out. Socialist policy, based on our understanding, is made by our members, all standing equally.

Every SPGB meeting is an open event. Our branches, our conferences, our executive committee meetings—all are open to anyone who likes to come in and see how a democratic socialist party runs its affairs. We have no secret sessions. Socialists know what is going on in their party and so can participate in it to the full.

And here we have three interdependent elements which are essential for any democratic society: knowledge, freely available information and participation. In a socialist society people will be knowledgeable, not in the sense that they have ploughed through every word ever put down on paper by Marx and Engels but because they will be aware of what sort of society they want, how it had to be achieved and how it must be kept in being.

In socialism all decision-making processes will be open and free—which implies that social knowledge will be available to everyone. (Only a short time ago this presented some huge technical problems, but with the recent rapid developments in computer technology and communication systems, these problems have diminished.)

People in socialism will process information through their social awareness and in this way will take full part in forming decisions and in carrying them out. Indeed, their participation in making decisions will itself carry the responsibility for implementing them.

All of this, and much else, will make socialism a vibrant society in which the world’s population will be aware of what is happening, how it happens and will themselves make it happen. For the first time in history, the human race will assert its control over natural forces with a control over its own future. This is the true meaning of democracy.

In contrast, capitalism offers an arid prospect, in which humanity’s abilities and co-operative drives are stifled. Socialism is exciting because it will set us free. We will not only want abundance; we shall design it and we shall work together to bring it about.

Running Commentary: Man of Steel (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man of Steel

Is your boss a bastard? Does he refuse to accept anything but the highest standards and does he berate you when you produce, as you often do, less than the best be it engineering, sales or documentation?

If he is, then do not be too hard on him; he may only be doing as he is told. Perhaps he was present at the September meeting of the Steel Industry Management Association when Sir Charles Villiers, chairman of the British Steel Corporation, advised all managers to be “bastards” to any of their workers who turned out sub-standard work.

It may be that Villiers is a sensitive man. BSC is not famous for being a vastly profitable concern and he, as its £30,000 a year head, is often under fire from the press. A little aggressiveness towards his employees, he may have calculated, could do his reputation no harm.

Or perhaps he meant it. Villiers is not just a representative of the capitalist class—he is a member of it. Educated at Eton and Oxford, a member of the exclusive Beefsteak Club (where none of his steel workers would be allowed past the doorman), living in Eaton Square (where none of his steel workers could afford much more than the space for a garden shed) and, before taking over at BSC. chairman of merchant bankers Guinness and Mahon.

Yet his speech was a curious thing. Firstly, what if all workers took him at his word and refused to turn out anything less than the best? What then would happen to capitalist industry, which turns, out mountains of trash when it is trash which pays?

Secondly, what was a member of the capitalist class doing, being so frank about class relationships under capitalism? The idea that we all live in a happy, united society of common interests is hardly best served by such a hard headed attitude.

He who lifts a comer of the truth about these matters will not be popular with the other members of the ruling class. Will Villiers soon be crying all the way to the Eaton Square dole office?

Pym's number one 

Another member of the ruling class to be offering some urging to workers recently—although with a rather different attitude—was Sir Francis Pym and all his friends will hope to see this ambitious politician's keenness rewarded.

Pym also went to Eton, then on to Magdalen College, Cambridge. He belongs to Bucks, the Cavalry and the Guards which are not brands of cigarettes but expensive West End clubs. He has a stately home in Bedfordshire. Clearly, he knows on which side of the bread is the capitalists' caviar.

So it is natural that Pym should be anxious to see the working class, who don’t go to posh schools or join exclusive clubs and who live in council fiats or mortgaged semis, readily accept the cuts in their living standards which the Tory government is so busily planning.

But of course Pym is a gentleman so he does not use coarse language. Instead, he hopes to inspire us all; speaking at the recent Manchester Central by-election, he said he thought we are “. . . fighting another Battle of Britain, only this time it is to the Many that we need to turn."

Politicians often use the trick of persuading workers to accept their lot by referring to former military events which are described —at least in British history books — as triumphs. Harold Macmillan was fond of ruminating tearfully on the agonies of the 1914/18 trenches. Harold Wilson, at a time when he seemed to be convinced that he was Winston Churchill, once urged us all to have a little of the Dunkirk spirit.

Both were playing the same game. Both were making pretty speeches about poverty, which is not pretty and which no worker should willingly accept.

It is likely that Pym was not aware of one very important implication of his speech, when he talked about the Many. It is, in fact, the Many who really matter. He did not appeal to the the capitalist minority to fight another Battle—to look up their shares in the Financial Times more assiduously, to buy extra large estates in the country, to lounge with greater intensity in the tropical sun. He addressed his plea to the majority, to the people who count because they produce everything and who run capitalism from one end to the other. He was talking to the working class.

And the workers, who are on the receiving end of government policy should beware. They should look with complete scepticism on all politicians' blandishments and know that—like Passchendaele, like Dunkirk—there is something nasty in store for them.

China syndrome

It must be very difficult being a supporter of the idea that socialism exists in China, when you get so little help from that country to back you up.

One after another, news from Peking indicates that, far from being a place where the means of production are owned in common, where there are no classes, no money and where there is free access to wealth (not that such a state of affairs is possible in any one part of the world), China is steadily seeking a prominent place among the powers of world capitalism.

Recently, for example, the Chinese government has signed some big trade agreements with the Western capitalist states; symbolic of this has been the normalising of its relations with the United States.

Now comes the news that China is trying to join the International Monetary Fund and in line with this is making what are meant to be reassuring noises to any capitalist thinking of investing in that country.

Chinese Vice Premier Gu Mu said in Peking recently that China is preparing new foreign investment regulations which would make it more attractive to investors. He added that overseas investors need not fear another “cultural revolution”—in other words that there will be political safeguards for such investments.

If China gets into the IMF it will be able to borrow from the World Bank, something it may see as essential if it is to expand its export trade into new areas. This comes as an emphasis to the fact that China is a rising threat to the more established capitalist powers—and may one day assert this threat, like Germany and Japan, by emphatic military means.

It also comes as an embarrassment to those who cling to the unsupportable idea that there is something different in China, something worth working class support, even sacrifice. The facts say otherwise; capitalism exists in China and increasingly makes no bones about it.

Trotsky: the Prophet Debunked (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lyov Davidovich Bronstein was born a hundred years ago this month in Yanovka in the Southern Ukraine. He attended schools in the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Nikolayev, and by the age of 18 was a committed Russian revolutionary, with the basic aim of overthrowing Tsarism. In the 1890s the revolutionaries had become divided into two main streams, differing over the tactics to be adopted. One stream called themselves Social Democrats and claimed to be Marxist; they held that Russia would have to pass through the stage of capitalism even if the Tsar were overthrown and that the mass movement for this overthrow was to be sought in the industrial working class. The others were known as Narodniks (Populists) and held that a ‘socialist’ regime could be established in Russia alone following the overthrow of Tsarism by the peasant masses.

Trotsky associated himself with the Social Democrats, though the extent to which he really absorbed Marx’s ideas on history and economics is very much open to question. One thing cannot be doubted however: he was a courageous fighter for the Russian anti-Tsarist movement. Arrested for the first time in 1898, he spent two years in prison before being exiled to Siberia for four years. The abortive Russian revolution of 1905 found him a leading figure in the St. Petersburg council of Soviets, which earned him another period of deportation to Siberia. He escaped and spent the period until 1917 in exile in Austria, Switzerland, France and finally America.

While in prison after the 1905 uprising, he developed a theory which casts doubt on his understanding of Marxism. Under the influence of Plekhanov, the ‘father of Russian Marxism’, the Russian Social Democrats held that Russia would have to pass through the capitalist stage before becoming ripe for socialism. The coming revolution in Russia was thus seen as inevitably a ‘bourgeois revolution’, not necessarily in the sense of being led by the bourgeoisie but in the sense of establishing the political and economic conditions for the development of capitalism. Even Lenin at this time shared this perspective, not differing from the Mensheviks here: socialism was out of the question in Russia; the coming anti-Tsarist revolution could only be a bourgeois revolution, during which the working class might indeed play a prominent role, but after which it would find itself in the same position as the working class in the countries of Western Europe. (The disagreement between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was not over the nature of the coming revolution but over how the Social Democrats should organise themselves; into a vanguard party or into a mass democratic party.) This perspective was quite in accordance with Marx’s materialist conception of history, which teaches that socialism is only possible on the basis of developed capitalism and a majority working class which has become socialist.

Trotsky, who had refused to take sides in the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (though on the question of party organisation his sympathies were with the Mensheviks), rejected this. He argued that if in the course of the coming anti-Tsarist revolution, the working class were to get political power, it was unrealistic to expect them, or ask them, to hand over power to the bourgeoisie. According to Trotsky, they would not do this but would continue the revolution in a ‘socialist’ direction by measures of nationalisation.

“One may reassure oneself that the social conditions of Russia are not ripe for Socialism, without thinking that the proletariat, taking power, by the very logic of its position, must inevitably press forward the introduction of State management of industry.” (Quoted in Marx and the Marxists by Sidney Hook, p.201.)

This theory that the coming revolution in Russia should not stop at the bourgeois stage but should continue on towards ‘socialism’, Trotsky called ‘the theory of permanent revolution’. He borrowed this phrase from Marx at a time when the latter was under the illusion that the 1848 revolutionary wave would see a bourgeois revolution in Germany rapidly followed by a socialist revolution (an illusion soon abandoned).

Trotsky was not saying that socialism could be established in Russia alone (as did the Narodniks) but only that steps could be taken in this direction while awaiting the socialist revolution in the West. This was an opinion he held for the rest of his life, and was the basis of his later analysis of the Russian revolution. According to him, the Russian revolution of 1917, starting as a bourgeois revolution in March with the overthrow of the Tsar and ending as a ‘socialist’ revolution in November with the Bolshevik seizure of power, was the permanent revolution he had predicted in 1906. Russia under the Bolsheviks, according to Trotsky’s analysis, had started to move towards socialism but would not be able to complete this transition until the socialist revolution had occurred in the rest of the world too.

Actually, the measures which Trotsky regarded as ‘socialist’ (essentially state ownership and management of industry) were really of a state capitalist character. And in fact throughout his life Trotsky failed to make any distinction between state capitalism and socialism. Even during the periods when Lenin was frankly referring to Russia as state capitalist — in 1918 and again after 1921 — Trotsky refused to employ this term. For him, the state industries of Bolshevik Russia were basically socialist, not state capitalist, a view shared by Stalin (the disagreement between Trotsky and Stalin was not over this but over whether or not Russia in the 1930s had completed the transition to socialism).

Trotsky, then, with his theory of ‘permanent revolution’, was expressing a point of view which had more in common with Narodnik views about Russia being able to avoid capitalism. Trotsky had held this view even before 1917, and of course believed that after 1917 Russia actually had avoided capitalism. In short, he never really understood Marx, though he was an astute theorist of the Russian anti-Tsarist revolution. If we understand his reference’s to ‘socialism’ as references to state capitalism, then well before 1917 he foresaw that the Russian revolution was not going to be a simple bourgeois revolution, and that those who overthrew the Tsar could establish a state capitalism rather than a liberal capitalism as in the West. Lenin did not come round to this view until 1917, when Trotsky, for his part, overcame his misgivings about Lenin’s ideas on organisation. Lenin and Trotsky together can be said to have been the theorists of the Russian state capitalist revolution, with Lenin providing the theory of a centralised and highly disciplined vanguard party and Trotsky the theory that state capitalism rather than private capitalism could be established immediately in Russia.

But Lenin and Trotsky were not just theorists. They were also practical revolutionaries. Trotsky was in fact the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in whose name the Bolshevik seizure of power was carried out. This is what makes his History of the Russian Revolution fascinating reading, in fact essential reading for anyone studying this event. For it is not the work of some historian studying in a university library but an account — and a well-written one — by a person who had played a key role in the event. It is also revealing in that it again shows to what extent Trotsky was not a Marxist. For, as Trotsky saw it, insurrection is an ‘art’; leaders attempting an insurrection must know the right slogans to put forward to mobilise the masses and exactly the right ‘psychological moment’ to launch the call to insurrection. He even suggested that the Bolshevik insurrection might not have been successful had it not been for one man: Lenin. A return to the Great Man theory of history if ever there was!

After the Bolshevik coup, Trotsky became a leading member of the government, first as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, then as leader of the Red Army, which under his command had by 1921 successfully defeated the counter revolutionary White Russians and their allies (including Britain, France and Japan). Trotsky carried over the military approach he had learned here to economic matters and advocated that the labour of production should be militarised, should be forced labour under military discipline. It was he who personally supervised the crushing of the Krondstadt uprising in 1921. Particularly revealing as to his frame of mind at this time is the pamphlet he wrote in 1922, Terrorism and Communism (first published in Britain under the tendentious title In Defence of Terrorism), in which he defends the use of terror against the Bolsheviks’ political opponents.

Trotsky quite clearly played a leading role in laying the foundation for Stalin’s later dictatorship, of which he was to be one of the first victims. Eased out of power in 1925, expelled from the Bolshevik Party in 1927 and exiled to Alma Ata near the Chinese border, he was finally forced to leave Russia in 1929. In exile Trotsky set out his analysis of the Russian revolution and its outcome in Revolution Betrayed. The Russian revolution, he argued, had been a capture of political power by the working class; under Lenin (and, of course, Trotsky) Russia had been developing towards socialism (state capitalism); the coming to power of Stalin represented the usurpation of political power in Russia by a bureaucracy but had left unchanged the social basis established by the Bolsheviks in 1917 — the state ownership and planning which Trotsky had always regarded as being in some way ‘socialist’. For him, Russia was a ‘degenerate Workers’ State’ in a period of transition between capitalism and socialism.

The theory is of course nonsense. It brings out once again Trotsky’s failure to make any distinction between state capitalism and socialism — in fact he actually says in Revolution Betrayed that state capitalism is impossible as a full society (chapter IX). This book is, however, still worth reading, since apart from being written by someone who had been prominently involved in the construction of the Russian regime, it became the starting point for the discussion that went on in the 1930s and 1940s about the nature of Russian society (and which still goes on in the Trotskyist sects). This polemic eventually led to some correctly coming to see Russia as state capitalist, a view Trotsky combatted until his murder in 1940 by an agent of his ‘degenerate Workers’ State’.

Trotsky himself took an active part in these discussions, and there is something genuinely pathetic in the sight of a man who had once been a leading anti-Tsarist revolutionary reduced to the leader of just one of many Trotskyist sects, to the level of a Tony Cliff or a Gerry Healy.

In conclusion, Trotsky is best seen not as a Marxist, nor as a theorist of working class revolution, but as a Russian revolutionary, as an exponent, in theory and later in practice, of the anti-Tsarist revolution which cleared the way for the further development of capitalism in Russia in the form of state capitalism. In urging the working class to adopt tactics that had proved successful in this non-socialist, state capitalist revolution, Trotsky helped in no small measure to sidetrack a part of the workers’ movement in Europe and North America and hence to delaying the coming of the world socialism to which he claimed to be committed.

Adam Buick

(A later article with the same title - and by the same author -  was published in August 1990)

It’s a lock-out (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Suddenly, the cry “All out, brothers” threatens to take on a new meaning, becoming not the command of the shop steward but the frustrated wail of the locked out worker, pressing round the unyielding factory gate.

For over a year now, workers in The Times newspapers have been locked out —and there are reports that, rather than face another twelve months of negotiations, the Thompson Organisation will close the papers down permanently. In case anyone has forgotten, this dispute began over the workers’ resistance to new methods of compositing, with likely redundancies. During the recent two day strikes in the engineering industry, the companies who are members of the Engineering Employers’ Federation retaliated by laying off workers and locking out others—notably at Rolls Royce. An article in the Observer (23.9.79) by Robert Taylor gave the substance of some guide lines issued by the EEF:

“Industrial action, such as go-slows, refusal to work normally and blacking of employees, products or machines should not he tolerated for more than a few days. After warning, with a sufficient period allowed for reflection, suspension without pay should be the normal response.”

This attempt at the sort of solidarity more usually expected from trade unionists —which employers, because of the essentially competitive nature of capitalism, will find rather more difficult—was illuminating. When factories stop because of a strike, we are subjected to a barrage of clap-trap from the press about, disruptive workers preventing the production of essential goods needed by pensioners, sick children . . But when the employers, also in the act of protecting their interests in the class struggle, bring production to a halt there is not a word of protest; withers in Fleet Street remain unwrung over jeopardised export markets, frustrated customers, deprived consumers and so on.

Agriculture

Perhaps the press will need a little time to catch on. The relative prosperity of British capitalism for some twenty years after the war outmoded lock-out; it was usually better to pay up on a wage claim than to shut the firm down. But it was not always so.

In the earlier days of British capitalism, before the unions were strong enough to offer effective resistance, the lock-out was often wielded to beat down living standards. In the 1830s it was used against the attempts to form an Operative Builders’ Union: the employers won, as the lock-out forced the OBU into deep financial trouble. In 1897 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers struck for an eight hour day, after a prolonged wrangle over the introduction of new machinery. The employers retaliated, with the first national lock-out ever. After six months the ASE was crushed and the employers, proclaiming themselves “masters in our own shops”, dictated the terms of the surrender.

There was a similar’ bitter story in agriculture, where workers were trying to live on appallingly low wages. In 1872, in Warwickshire, 200 farm labourers struck for a rise to 16s (80p) a week for their eleven hour day. Their case was such as to attract some support from the press (although not, presumably, in Church Times; the Bishop of Gloucester advocated throwing the strikers into the village pond). It was a bitter fight, which spread as the farmers imposed a general lock-out. At Chipping Norton, two magistrates who were also clergymen did their duty by both god and Mammon by sentencing sixteen women, some still suckling their babies, to hard labour for “intimidating” blacklegs. The strikers were defeated, partly by the effects of the agricultural depression of the 1870s, which helped to cripple their union.

Coal Mines

The Webbs described this type of dispute as the “.. . insurrection of the village and the autocratic spirit which it aroused in the owners of land and tithe. . . ” an attitude which lingered, even in more modern industry, almost as if the employers saw some advantage in behaving like feudal barons.

Before the First World War, there were about 1,500 separate companies owning the coal mines in Britain. In many cases, the company was personified by one rich, influential owner—Lord Londonderry, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Rhondda, Evan Williams. Some of these companies were more “liberal” and “enlightened” than others — and some more efficient and profitable—and the mines were a traditional battlefield over wages and conditions, marked like shell-holes by strikes and lock-outs. The miners were bonny, experienced fighters and among the higher paid workers in Britain.

As part of British capitalism’s war effort, the mines were taken effectively under state control in 1917. After the war, there was a brief, hectic boom for the British coal industry as it filled the gaps left by the devastated French mines and the immobilised German pits. This did not last long and the British export markets in Europe and South America abruptly contracted. Coal had been the basis of the power of Victorian capitalism; now it symbolised that power’s decline. By 1921 the losses of the mines were growing beyond the scope of government subsidies and in April that year, with a wage claim pending, the industry was abruptly passed back to the private owners.

Far from being about to negotiate a rise in wages, the private owners were proposing a reduction of over £2 a week. Flexing their muscles as they took over the pits again, they posted lock-out notices. The miners expected support from the railwaymen and the transport workers and when this did not happen the episode became notorious as “Black Friday”. The struggle went on for three months, until the miners were forced back to work on terms worse than they might have hoped to get originally.

Newspapers

More recent times have seen little use of the lock-out in Britain although, according to Robert Taylor, in France and Germany it is more common than the strike. But now, with the employers struggling from the desperation of a prolonged recession, may be the time for its revival. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph (23.9.79) Peregrine Worsthorne gloated over the engineering workers:

“Last year an engineering strike might have shown the workers to be invincible. So may one next year. But the same could be said about any momentous historical miscalculation — even the Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Of course Worsthorne, like all the conventional observers of capitalism, is seeing things very much in the immediate, superficial sense. Every dispute has its immediate causes and how it is fought out—and who wins—must depend on the conditions prevailing at the time. Strikes have a better chance of succeeding in a boom and by the same token a lock-out is more likely when there is a slump. This was the case with the farm labourers and the engineering workers in the 19th century and with the miners in 1921. And it is so today.

The Times shut down was an episode in a long decline in the newspaper industry, in which many papers perished and the profits of the survivors have been under strong pressure. The malaise is widespread; the September report of the Confederation of British Industry showed how the rest of the employers view their prospects. They expect their profitability for 1979 and 1980 to fall below the previous poor levels of 1974-5.

Behind such immediate prospects, and behind the temporary changes in balances of strength, lies the basic, inescapable fact ‘of the class struggle. This struggle continues without pause — often without its participants realising that they are involved in it.

Firstly, the struggle is about the division of wealth in capitalist society and this is where the unions and the employers’ federations operate. There are still a few strange people who doubt the need for the struggle, who doubt that wealth is divided so that some people have vastly more of it than others.

Poverty

Reality is against them. For a long time a mass of evidence has been accumulated, using different methods—income tax returns, estate duties, social surveys—measuring the extent of this inequality. Sir Joshua Stamp, in 1919, estimated that one per cent of the population owned over 65 per cent of the national wealth. Nearly sixty years later Louie Burghes found that one per cent owned 31 per cent of the wealth and the top 10 per cent owned 70 per cent. An article by Anthony Giddens in New Society (4.10.79) estimated that the top five per cent of “the rich” own 98 per cent of the total of privately held corporate stocks and shares. At the other end of the scale the Low Pay Unit reports that at the end of 1977 one family in eight was living at or below the supplementary benefits line, which itself is little better than starvation. The figures, along with the methods of collecting them, may vary from time to time. But the fact of inequality—and of the existence of riches alongside poverty—remains.

This brings us to the wider, more fundamental, aspect of the class struggle. In this case we are not discussing a struggle participated in by thousands of trade unionists, which gets the big headlines and has union leaders hurrying to and from Downing Street. We are talking about the ultimate, about the struggle over who owns the means of production and about establishing a new society of common ownership and free access to wealth.

For the present this struggle is the work of a minority, of a few who are aware of what capitalism is and of how it operates. This conscious few know that industrial disputes are not moral issues; they know that workers who strike, and employers who lock out, are simply acting in accordance with their interests in the class struggle. They are expressing the fact that capitalism does not produce its wealth for the benefit of its people, that capitalism is a society of disharmony.

And capitalism continues only because the rest— the unconscious majority—want it to. This was the symbolic quality about those pictures of the engineering workers hammering on the factory gates. The limit of their ambition is another style of exploitation. They are, brothers and sisters, on their way to nowhere.

Ivan

Vodka-cola (1979)

Book Review from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Co-production deals between Western enterprises and East European governments are becoming big business and attract a lot of notice in the press. These deals now represent 10 per cent of East-West trade and are rapidly growing in number and importance.

Co-production is distinct from normal East-West trade, which is handicapped by the fact that it doesn’t allow the Eastern bloc to buy all it needs. The West doesn’t want payment for exports in roubles or other Eastern currencies as these are practically worthless. Russia has been paying for much of its imports with large amounts of gold but as this tends to reduce its price then Russia’s trading position simply worsens, while other Eastern countries have little or no gold anyway.

Barter deals are hopelessly inadequate as Western exporters rarely want the commodities being offered in exchange. Even so, barter does exist. Pepsi-Cola, long reviled by communist propagandists as a “monopolist”, has built a plant in Russia capable of producing 74 million bottles a year for Russian consumption. Since Pepsi wouldn’t take roubles and Russia needed its gold for American wheat, payment is made in Vodka and Pepsi were given the monopoly for selling Russian wines in the USA.

Despite Kruschev’s boast that Russia would surpass the West economically within 15 years, she has fallen further behind and the gap is widening all the time. To catch up, Russia and her satellites need Western technology but cannot acquire enough of it for the reasons given. Also, they already owe the West such a staggering debt (at least 80 billion dollars) that they cannot count on extended credit forever.

However, steps are being taken to rescue the Eastern bloc from its predicament, for a price, by none other than Western big business —the very “multinationals” who are supposed to be the mortal enemies of “international communism”. Just how and why this is being done is explained in a new book, Vodka Cola, by Charles Levinson. (Gordon and Cremonesi, £7.90.)

In the book Levinson lays bare the reasons for the current “detente” between the West and the Eastern bloc. This has nothing to do with either side learning to love the other but is dictated by their respective economic needs. The East must modernise its industry in order to keep its population passive. After all, expectations of a better life must be met someday. For Western big business there is the glittering prospect of a potential new market of 400 million people, plus the opportunity to switch its production away from a unionised, high-wage, strike-prone labour force to one which is state regimented, low-wage and forbidden to strike.

So the last thing the multinationals want to do is disturb the status quo behind the Iron Curtain. Any growth of political freedom there would produce genuine trade unions and the inevitable inroads into profit margins. Hence their enthusiasm for detente. Levinson also points out that the agreements signed by Eastern and Western politicians are only political window dressing. It was the businessmen of both sides who made the real breakthrough and all the politicians have done is merely help smooth the way for future deals. When it comes down to it, ideological differences are demolished by economic realities.

These co-production deals enable the West to sell the East what it needs and get paid, not in dud currencies or shoddy, inferior products, but in cheap Eastern made goods manufactured to Western standards which can be sold on the world market at a fat profit.

Co-production takes a variety of forms:

LICENCING: until the early 1960s only a few licences to use Western technology were purchased in the East. Now there are several thousand. These were previously paid for in scarce hard currency but now payment is likely to be in the products being made under licence. For example, Fiat, Volkswagen and British Leyland have been paid for their licences in vehicles and parts.

BUY-BACK: this means that industrial giants like Renault of France and Montedison of Italy will supply—in this case Russia—with an entire car factory and chemical plant and be paid in cars and chemicals for sale throughout the world. The Eastern partner is also helped to market its share of production through distribution companies specially set up for the purpose. In this way much needed hard currency flows back to the East to enable it to buy more of what it requires.

LEASING: the Eastern bloc also uses equipment rented from Western companies. So far this has not happened within Russia itself, but its merchant fleet has leased thousands of cargo containers and other equipment from the West, so privately owned means of production and distribution exist in part of the Russian economy. Levinson’s view is that leasing will increase because of the advantages it offers the East, among which is the acquiring of modem technology without spending huge amounts of hard currency. He predicts that it is only a matter of time until leasing will be allowed within Russia.

The list of “monopolists” involved in co-production deals makes fascinating reading: General Motors, Exxon (Esso), Ford, Unilever, IBM, Krupp, ITT (played a leading part in setting up Pinochet’s regime in Chile), Coca-Cola, Du Pont, Westinghouse, ICI, Union Carbide, Fiat . . . Many of them are bitter opponents of trade unionism in their own plants and all of them, needless to say, collect their share of the surplus value created by the Eastern workers employed in the various projects.

Cyrus Eaton, the American multimillionaire, revealed how it is done when he explained his 40 million dollar 50/50 deal for building a tyre factory in the East in 1970. The communist state partner would own and operate the plant. Eaton’s half would be in tax-haven Switzerland and would market the tyres in the West. Eaton says

“This enabled the Eastern country to earn hard currency and because of lower labour costs the venture can sell tyres cheaper than Western countries can. The plant in the East sells the tyres to the marketing subsidiary at cost —thus leaving profits to the joint marketing subsidiary.” (p. 87.)

Nice one, Cyrus.

All of this must have its effect on Western jobs. Naturally, the co-production partners deny this and claim that the increased trade will provide the West with 2 million new jobs. But the Eastern products, because they are made by low-wage labour, consistently undercut similar Western products. Indeed Western manufacturers and trade unions are forever protesting about “dumping” on Western markets. In Britain the footwear, textile, tailoring, motor car and TV tube industries, to name a few, have been badly hit by cheap imports from many countries and thousands of jobs have been lost. So while the British Communist Party demands action to “fight unemployment” their Eastern counterparts are busily contribute: it.

Unfortunately for the Eastern bloc the present type of co-production deal cannot fully solve their problem. The technology they are buying tends to be second rate and outmoded by Western standards. The West will not hand over the latest developments because it feels it does not have sufficient safeguards as things stand. For example, equipment and know-how supplied under one deal can easily be pirated and used by the East for other projects of its own, so Western companies are increasingly demanding a 50/50 share in the ownership of the plants as well as the products and profits. Because the Russians have refused to allow this they have failed to clinch several important deals. The Russian government’s refusal stems from an unwillingness to lose face: how would it be able to explain away such a blatant example of private, as opposed to state, ownership of part of “socialist industry?

Hungary and Rumania have gone some way towards meeting this problem. Although not allowing Western-owned plants, they do permit Western companies to own a large share of the profits of the joint venture (payable of course in hard currency). Volvo of Sweden has an agreement with Hungary for the assembly of Volvo cars with 48 per cent of the profits going to Volvo shareholders. This represents legal ownership of part of Hungary’s means of production. In Poland the government has gone all the way; foreign companies can legally own the entire project and if the deal is terminated then company can take out its original investment plus its share of capital gains.

The pressure on Russia to come some sort of compromise is enormous. Russia apparently needs the latest in mini computers but IBM and other suppliers are refusing to provide them. They want to protect their technology by retaining control over its use and means joint ownership of the project where it is being used. Only in this way can the company prevent its technology being applied outside of the contract.

Levinson frequently refers to the theories of Karl Marx and seems to have understood these better than most writers. For example, he says

“The end result of co-production operations is profits for the capitalists, and this means that the socialist enterprises are involved in creating the surplus value which Marxism regards as the basis of the capitalist class’s exploitation of the worker.” (p. 261.)

If the words “Eastern state capitalist” had been substituted for “socialist” then we couldn’t have put it better. He mistakenly attributes the failure of Russian nationalisation to “Marxist ideas” but continues

“Nobody (in Russia), unfortunately, had raised the minor question, ‘Whether the business be private or nationalised, how does it profit the worker who is subjected to the same authoritarian labour methods in either case?’ ” (p. 224.)

Although the book contains several other mistakes regarding Marx’s views, these cannot obscure the value of Levinson’s work as an aid to understanding how business, East and West, operates and what its priorities are. And we cannot help noticing that the analysis of modern society by Levinson, and many others outside our ranks, is very similar to our own. Nowadays, you don’t have to be a socialist to be struck by capitalism’s glaring contradictions and antisocial nature.

Vic Vanni

Blogger's Notes:

Charles Levinson replied to this review in the March 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard.

In connection to Levinson's book, the following might be of interest to some readers. In 1981, there was a fictional adaptation of the book entitled Beloved Enemy. Directed by Alan Clarke (who also directed Scum, The Firm and Elephant) and adapted for television by David Leland, it was transmitted on the BBC as part of the Play for Today series of dramas.

Beloved Enemy is available to watch on YouTube:

Political Notebook: The tale of the arrogant man . . . (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tale of the arrogant man . . .

The Liberal Party goes on a lot about ‘The Great Spirit of Liberalism’ which it so passionately cherishes. In his essay ‘On Liberty’ John Stuart Mill argued that liberals should be prepared to debate all subjects from every point of view so as to arrive at the correct conclusion.

Cyril Smith is a Liberal MP. So when Bolton branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was looking for a defender of capitalism to debate with, they wrote to him anticipating a liberal-minded response. Smith replied thus:

Thank you for your letter. No, I do not provide audiences and publicity for my political opponents, much less ones with whom 1 totally disagree.

Firstly it is supreme arrogance on the part of the Liberal Party to imagine that we would have to rely upon the personality of Cyril Smith to provide us with an audience for a debate. Secondly we wonder which of his political opponents Mr Smith does not ‘totally disagree’ with. Thirdly it is a pity that the Honourable Member for Rochdale’s mind is not as broad as his backside.

. .  And the ignorant man

Dr Rhodes Boyson MP does not claim to be a liberal. He is a firm believer in the highly disciplined inculcation of the correct attitudes in schools and Universities. Which in layman’s terms means that he believes in training children to be efficient wage slaves. He recently received a letter of criticism from one member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (who presumably had a second-class stamp that she could find no better use for). She received a reply which demonstrates the confusion of the MP for Brent North’s mind. He wrote, “You may have noticed that, since the socialist reform and the comprehensive schools came in, less working class children are going to University.’’ 

What socialist reform does he mean? Socialists have never concerned ourselves with the reform of the capitalist education system. Rhodes Boyson makes the fundamental error of referring to Labour as a socialist party. He then goes on to use another incorrect definition of socialism:

All one would need is to look round the world where Socialist Governments are in control and see the inequalities there are far wider than in Britain . . .

Which socialist governments does he mean? If he is referring to the state capitalist dictatorships which the SPGB has consistently opposed, we would have expected him to show great admiration for the system of suppressing free trades unions, enforcing the law by means of brutal terror and organising education on the basis of strict discipline which has been mastered by the Russian and Chinese regimes. They are, after all, the very policies which he advocates in the name of freedom. Rhodes Boyson is clearly a man of many illusions, such as that Labour is socialist and state capitalism is socialism. He shares his illusions with millions of members of the working class. But Dr Rhodes Boyson is currently a government minister with responsibility for Higher Education. Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Free Press? Free Speech?

Copies of the following letter were sent to The Guardian, The Bolton Evening News and The Manchester Evening News. As they would not publish the letter, we reproduce it here.

Dear Editor,

That Britain is supposed to be a free country in which all shades of political opinion are given an opportunity to be heard is one of the more persistent myths of capitalism. On Saturday 28th September a crowd of over one hundred people in the Bolton shopping precinct were given a chance to observe socialist freedom of speech in action. An outdoor meeting of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was in progress; the speaker was presenting our party’s case for a society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution; a number of interested people were usefully and critically joining in what is a traditional and long established medium of free discussion. Then the police arrived. Not because they suspected our speaker of being a criminal or because they believed that there was any danger of violent disorder or even, because as members of the working class, they wanted to find out what was in their interest. Their announced intention was to stop the meeting because it did not have the prior authorisation of the police. One and a half hours later, after a long wait in an interview room at the Bolton Central police station, two members of our party were charged, nominally for causing an obstruction to the highway (which did not occur until the police arrived and shoppers came to see what was going on), but in fact for attempting to address people in public without consulting the police.

There are two principles involved here. Firstly, the opportunity to set up a platform and address a crowd without police authorisation has been an accepted political tradition in Britain for most of this century. If it is now to be denied to us, may we know whether this is a government decision or, as we suspect, a further example of the increased use of police powers at the expense of the freedom of the weak and the powerless? Secondly, we consider that the freedom of assembly of those of us who are prepared to commit rational ideas to public scrutiny in the shopping centres, the parks and the factory gates should be recognised at least as much as the freedom of others to hold military processions, commercial displays, slogan-shouting demonstrations and pre-election walkabouts.

When our members appear in court they will plead ‘Not Guilty’. If the magistrate is typical he will accept the word of the police regarding the obstruction and will be indifferent or hostile to the principle of freedom of speech as it affects the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Next time I am on an outdoor platform and I am told that such a privilege would not be allowed in Red Square (which is part of a system that we have consistently opposed since 1917), 1 shall remind those present that state oppression is not confined to the state capitalist dictatorships, but is alive and kicking on the streets of Bolton.

Steve Coleman

Papal bull (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The weekend visit of the Pope to Ireland at the end of September was a spectacular occasion. Following a careful build-up by the media, ‘his holiness’ landed to a reception that football stars and pop groups dream of. Crowds were estimated at more than one million; people collapsed in the crush and women gave birth in the excitement; and a mint was made from the sale of blessed knick-knacks, from gnome-like effigies to embossed papal scribblings. The whole show was managed with a TV professionalism that must have made Lord Grade envious.

Medieval pageant

But the visit was not just a twentieth century version of a medieval pageant — although it was about as relevant. Desperate politicians and churchmen fell over in the rush to humble themselves at the papal feet. A revitalisation of the catholic faith (and obedience) was hoped for by some; and they all prayed for an end to the misery of the war in the north that spills over into the south. Well briefed by his Vatican ministers of state, the Pope knew he had been sent to create the illusion that the catholic church somehow cares about peace. It is noteworthy that, while papal visits to politically sensitive spots have the effect of reinforcing the status quo (the American visit took in the slums of Harlem and the Bronx), the area must not be too sensitive. Northern Ireland, for example, was not left off the itinerary because workers there weren’t suffering enough.

The Pope sought, in the course of his stay, to impress upon the Irish people the need to reject “materialism “in favour of “spiritual values”. By this of course, he did not mean that the capitalist class in Ireland should cease their insatiable quest for profit, but that the workers should reconcile themselves to their poverty. Neither could he find it in his heart to remind his flock that the organisation he represents is one the richest in the world, and invests a portion of its loot in that most worldly of profit-making enterprises, the arms industry. The Economist magazine estimates the Vatican’s wealth at around 9,000 million dollars, while the American economist Nino Lo Bella (in his carefully researched book, The Vatican Empire) states that the Vatican state now possesses assets equal to the gold and dollar reserves of France. So much for Christian charity.

Hypocrisy

The first major speech was at Drogheda where, predictably, the Pope pitched into the cameras and the swooning crowd with a long plea for peace. Unfortunately, the history of the catholic church exposes this for the hypocrisy it is; from its inception it has either directly waged war or urged others to do so, often being active on both sides at once.

But leaving aside the blood-drenched hands of the Church of Rome, what relevance did the Pope’s visit have to workers of Ireland? How does his message bear on the political reality they, and workers everywhere, face?

The first thing to note in all this is that god, whom the Pope is supposed to represent, does not exist. The Pope kept calling for prayers for peace: “a prayer from the heart for the peoples who live on this earth, peace for all the people of Ireland. He can hardly have forgotten catholic church has been continuously praying for peace (except of course when involved in wars, when it prays for victory) ever since its establishment. There is only one possible conclusion: if that god of theirs is not deaf he is a very good non-listener. Not that the Pope’s own confidence in god very deep. He was so concerned for own skin that, rather than leave his protection to a non-existent deity, he wore a bullet-proof vest throughout the the trip (Sunday Mirror 30.9.79).

Property baron

If one thing is abundantly clear it is that peace is not going to be brought to Ireland (or anywhere else) merely because some descendant of a medieval property baron dressed in a funny hat drops from the sky to ask for it. The Irish situation ration is a complex result of more than one hundred years of barbaric treatment of a largely peasant by mainly absentee capitalist landlords (all of them no doubt good christians). The misery has been whipped up by this same catholic(and by the protestants) into Irish bog of prejudice that is not going disappear in the face of a disingenuous mass of words, however, very much in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole that workers heed the advice of the Pope, so that a minority may continue to live lives of idle luxury amidst poverty. The catholic church, like all other religious bodies, is an enemy of the workers and a long-time friend of ruling classes. Its oppressive and exploitative nature is a reflection of ignorance and superstition.

Bad for business

Clearly it is no longer the wishes of any but a small, demented handful that the atrocities in Ireland continue. The Capitalist class in the north and south are fed up with their property being destroyed and their expensively trained workers maimed and killed. The disruption of trade is bad for business and makes capitalist politicians look as in effectual as indeed they largely are.

The majority of workers on both sides of the border do not want the killings either. They suffer from them and are certain to lose, whichever side wins. The one thing that is absent from the argument about war and peace in Ireland is this: what are the prospects for the Irish working class? The Pope could not be expected to point out to the workers that apart from the fact that one group of workers is busy killing another, both sides support the same social system. He omitted to mention that this means a society of exploitation of the majority; of second rate existence for the class that produces a first rate existence for the exploiters. A world of insecurity and, inevitably from time to time, violent conflict. The Pope’s message boiled down to a plea to the working class to behave like good little workers and stop disrupting the arteries of profit with unnecessary clots of blood.

RAW/VM

Harvest hunger (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

While millions starve, it is a fact that humankind possesses the technical potential to feed everyone. Yet this potential is not being realised because of the restrictions imposed upon production by the present world system of buying and selling. In this system, food (and indeed, anything else) is produced only on condition that a profit will be realised if there exists what the economists call ‘effective demand’ (human need backed up by ready cash).

This point was forcefully made in a BBC Radio 4 International Assignment broadcast of November 11 last. In what turned out to be an astonishingly frank expose of the absurdities and contradictions of the production for profit system, BBC correspondents from all over the world reported on the gathering of the world’s harvests. The presenter began by pointing out that last year’s bad summer may seem to have had a disastrous effect on food production, but that in fact modern techniques were such as to have all but eliminated the consequences of bad or unexpected weather conditions.

Hence, we learned, most parts of the world had had a bumper harvest, and even in South East Asia, where severe flooding had limited rice production, use was being made of the massive crop from the previous year, much of which had not been put on the market.

In America next, farmers had reaped record’ harvests yet faced the problem that with so much food about, prices were being forced down, and they were having to lobby the government to fix higher prices. In view of this, the government had warned them to keep production down for this year (1979). In the meantime, part of the American grain crop had been sold to the Russians, whose own production could easily cover domestic needs but who preferred to leave their own fields fallow and import food more cheaply.

Conversely, many producers the world round had actually grown food but couldn’t afford to put it on the market as the price was too low. They would therefore stock it, hoping for a better price later, let it rot in the fields, or destroy it.

The presenter’s conclusion on all this was that we had a “world bursting at the seams with food, but beset with problems of distribution”. The situation was described as “paradoxical” in so much as those who had got the food couldn’t sell it, and those who needed the food hadn’t got the money to buy it.

With India’s ‘Green Revolution’, the programme went on, vast progress had been made in agricultural activity over the past twelve years. There was now a permanent stock of 21 million tons of grain (more than the whole annual production of the UK), yet malnutrition was still rampant. In addition, vast acreages still remained unexploited through lack of fertilisers, insecticides and modern techniques generally.

The correspondents in Africa and South America had the same kind of tale to tell. “In Nigeria”, one reported, “it’s said that if you plant a broom handle it will grow.” But here too, he went on, production was severely limited, this time by the system of land tenure in operation.

After pointing out that in a century’s tune the world’s population should stabilise at twice the present level, with the need for three times the present output, the presenter concluded with a question put to an academic expert on the subject; “Can the world feed us all?” The academic’s reply was: “Yes, if exploitation is rational, and even at the present level of technology.”

The key words in this reply are, of course, “if exploitation is rational”, for in a world where the means to produce food, and indeed everything else, are the property of a small minority of human beings competing to sell their produce at a profit, exploitation of resources car. never be rational. It can only be carried on in the overall interest of this small owning minority. ‘Rational exploitation” can only come about when the means to produce food and other goods are the common property of the whole of humanity and are used co-operatively in a system of free access and democratic control.

In the meantime, the small minority will continue to have it their way. Their political control, either through state dictatorship as in Russia, China and Cuba, or through representative government as in Britain and the USA, safeguards their economic position while assuring continued waste and artificial shortage in all parts of the world.

It is up to the vast non-owning majority to take this political control for themselves and to use it to create a non-class divided society which will release the rich abundance of food and other goods which the earth has to offer.

Howard Moss

50 Years Ago: Work for All (1979)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sunday Pictorial, October 6th, 1929, gives prominence to an article by Mr. G. Ward Price, who, according to the headlines, “shows that industry is suffering from several definite ailments. If it were “rationalised and brought up to date, we should not have a capable worker unemployed. There is no mystery about what is wrong with the great British export trades,” says Mr. Price. “Their costs of production are too high.”

Further, he says, “There are only two “remedies for unemployment. . . . One is the compulsory rationalisation of our big industries on lines of which America and Germany furnish the example, and the other is the reduction of Trade Union restriction.”

Mr. Price may be guilty of some slight exaggeration when he says the result will be jobs for every capable worker. That fulness of employment has not yet been reached by America or Germany, although, he says, they furnish examples of rationalisation we might copy.

There is no question with the capitalist about reducing unemployment. So far as he is concerned he desires to increase it. If he rationalises his concern he reduces the number of workers employed while increasing the amount of the product. He may not, it is true, reduce the number of workers in his own factory, but workers must be displaced somewhere if he succeeds in capturing markets previously held by his competitors.

[From an article “Work for all” by F. Foan, Socialist Standard November 1929.]

Letter: Taking the Oath (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taking the Oath

From what I understand, after reading the August issue of the Socialist Standard, the SPGB views Capitalism with implacable hostility, and that no compromise with such a dreadful system is possible. It appears that abolition of Capitalism and the implementation of Socialism is the sole object of the SPGB. Further you mean to achieve this desirable state of affairs democratically by means of the Ballot Box.

A condition for an elected MP to take his seat in the House is the swearing of the Oath of Allegiance to the Sovereign and his or her heirs. The dilemma of the first elected Socialist MP will be whether to refuse to take the Oath, in which case he will not be allowed to represent his Constituency, or to swallow his principles and swear allegiance to the popular face of Capitalism.

Why do you advocate membership of Trade Unions, albeit on a voluntary basis? I refer to the August issue of the Standard page 143 last paragraph. Surely it must be clear to everyone that Trade Unions are as much a part of Capitalism as the Board of ICI.

Firstly the TUC is not interested in doing away with the present system as the elevation of several Union leaders, over the years, to the Peerage is proof enough. After several years of covering the ruling class with buckets of manure they rush to don the robes and insignia of a clique they profess to despise.

Secondly most strikes and industrial disputes arise over pay claims. Now if, as you say, we are wage slaves then why ask the workers to support an organisation that merely thickens the chains? Your position on this issue seems to be that if the worker cannot have the whole loaf then a thicker slice will do. This is reform pure and simple towards which you are bitterly opposed. Your reasoning escapes me.

Lastly the closed shop gives the Unions the same power as the factory owner, namely depriving the worker of his livelihood. If the worker doesn’t like the deals cooked up between the boss and the Union reps then the threat of dismissal from the Union is more than enough to bring the disgruntled into line. I have seen this threat applied several times and it is most effective. If the bosses and the Trade Unions ever see the logic of their respective positions and combine then it will be a sad day for the working class. Both sides have the same aim—the efficient running of the Capitalist system. To think otherwise is merely to bring 1984 to reality. It is well on the way.

P Steed

(Tyne and Wear)

Reply:

You correctly state that we are uncompromising in our opposition to attempts to reform capitalism, and that we view socialism as an immediate objective. Our case on trade unionism is not inconsistent with this.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the trade unions have a common origin in the class struggle. The former is the organised expression on the political field of the conscious recognition of the that struggle by workers. So long as capitalism remains it is necessary that workers combine democratically to offer the utmost resistance to worsening pay and conditions. Such action can achieve benefits or preserve living standards from being depressed, but it must be pointed out that this pressure on workers is inevitable. Industrial action in support of a wage claim is not an example of reformism but part of the class struggle, which exists independently of the will of particular groups in society.

It is true that the TUC is steeped in capitalist ideology and that the effectiveness of trade union action has been blunted by support for the Labour Party. It does not follow from this, however, that workers should cease to combine in unions against the employing class and accept wage cuts. (This is not a new phenomenon, incidentally — at the time of the General Strike we praised the solidarity of the workers and condemned the conniving treachery of TUC leaders.) The class struggle involves all workers, whether they are conscious of it or not; our task is to point out that they are only half participating and must organise politically for their emancipation.

The Socialist Party attitude to the closed shop was stated in the Socialist Standard you refer to: “whatever may seem to be the advantages of compulsory trade union membership imposed by the union or the employer, the interests of the working class are best served by seeking to expand union membership on a voluntary basis only”. The existence of the closed shop does not weaken our support for the principle of trade unionism.

If we are to refuse to take Oaths, then there is no chance for controlling parliament. Socialists are not simply waging war against detailed grievances in the system. They are fighting against the system as a whole. As political action is necessary to establish socialism we cannot stop at taking Oaths imposed upon us by the ruling class. The taking of Oaths has never prevented them being ignored when interests dictated it; if it did, the ruling class could keep on imposing conditions which they think socialists will refuse.

Editors.

Letter: Not amused (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not amused

Let’s be serious. . .

After reading SC’s wide-ranging expose of the entertainment industry (“We are not amused,” Socialist Standard, August 1979) I felt I was being a real traitor to the working class when, against my better judgement, I was conned by the Two Ronnies into emitting a tiny snigger.

Waves of guilt led me to tear my favourite Picasso print from the wall. I made sure that The Onedin Line was switched off immediately I walked into the sitting-room. And I became really nasty when they tried to condition me with a spot of catchy reggae on the jukebox in my local pub.

In short, I realised what a naive and philistinic twit I have been all these years for deluding myself that we shall still be able to enjoy silly jokes, trendy art, TV serials, songs, dances and general merriment—even, dare I say it, fat ladies wobbling their bums-when socialism is established.

Tom  Price, 

Daventry Northamptonshire

Letter: [Also] Not amused (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Also] Not amused

I am writing because I take very strong exception to an article in the August issue of your party journal, “We Are Not Amused” by SC. It is anti-working-class.

If SC wants to announce that entertainment is commercially based: that isn’t news. But he presents this profound information in the form of one long sneer at the working class. Anything they enjoy is mindless and only “someone else’s values” pushed at them by the capitalists. “Some kid themselves that they’re cultured”—of course, the workers are incapable of any culture of their own!

I’ve read and heard all this before, from middle-class “intellectuals” of whom SC obviously thinks he is one. He even puts in “bloody” and “bum” to show he knows how to talk down to ignorant workers who (between visiting strip clubs and watching “Crossroads”) might read the Socialist Standard.

“Someone else’s values”? Sorry, but I can’t see the difference between ITV’s and SC’s.

However, my question is; Are they endorsed by your party as the publishers of the Socialist Standard.

J Wolveridge 

London E1

Reply:

One task of the Socialist Standard is to expose the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system. Many articles deal with what capitalism is, why it cannot run in the interest of the working class and what it must be replaced by. We also spend a considerable amount of space exposing the means through which mystifying ideas are expounded, such as the political parties, the churches, the schools and the universities. The intention of the article, We Are Not Amused (August 1979), was to demonstrate not only that ‘entertainment is commercially based’, but that its “values are only put before a mass audience by courtesy of a class whose interest is hostile to yours, whose values will be hostile to yours”.

A number of commercial TV stations, theatres and newspapers are run at a loss and paid for from profits accumulated by capitalists from other industries. This occurs because the entertainment industry has valuable political, as well as simply commercial, advantages for its owners.

It is not necessary to be a “middle class intellectual” (whatever that may mean) to express the view that the working class does not possess a culture of its own. The ruling culture of any property society is that of the ruling class; The only meaningful culture for the subject class is that activity which leads to the erosion of the ruling ideology. Crossroads, The Two Ronnies and strip clubs do not constitute an independent working class culture. There can be anti-establishment entertainment (the article mentioned the satire programmes of the 1960s), but that is insufficient without a commitment to political action.

It is wrong to deduce from the article that jokes, art, TV serials, songs and dances will not exist in socialist society. The difference then will be that people will freely create these activities not buy and sell them.

On the matter of values, it is significant that ITV is currently involved in an expensive battle with its employees which largely relates to the control of programme output; we hold the view that the means of communication should be the common property of the people.

Editors.

Blogger's Note:

'J. Wolveridge' was Jim Wolveridge, who co-wrote the book Muvver Tongue with SPGB member, Robert Barltrop.

Letter: Pioneer (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pioneer

The “mystery” of the Party’s first Branch in Scotland, Fraserburgh (Socialist Standard, September) may be solved by the fact that a vigorous campaign was carried on between 1900-1908 in that area. This was the work of James Leatham (1865-1945), by trade a printer but most of his life a speaker and writer on behalf of Socialism. A biography Portrait of a Socialist Pioneer (People’s Press, Aberdeen) has been written by Bob Duncan, a history teacher. Leatham published the first Socialist journal in Scotland The Workers’ Herald. Later he printed and edited the Gateway in Yorkshire as well as Turiff (Scotland).

Leatham belonged to the Social Democratic Federation, I believe. He invited Keir Hardie, anarchist Peter Kropotkin and his hero, William Morris, to speak in Aberdeen where he was born and brought up. Due to his speeches and activities he was sacked with winter coming and a wife and bairn to keep. Later he set up a printer’s business in Aberdeen, where he produced the Workers’ Herald in 1891.

An amazing man indeed!

John Keith (Aberdeen)

Blogger's Note:

As mentioned in the September 1979 article cited above, the Fraserburgh branch of the SPGB was listed in the Socialist Standard from August 1910 until May 1911. There is no James Leatham listed in the early Party membership records, but here is a list of the six members who were recorded as members of the Fraserburgh branch:

• William Anderson
• S. Ford
• William Lawrence
• A. Macdonald
• William Noble
• J. A. Noble

Standard Leeds OK (1979)

Party News from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

After unsuccessful attempts to sell socialist literature in Bradford two members of West Yorkshire branch switched their attention to Leeds City. Sales were slow at first but now persistence has paid off. We sell between fifteen to twenty copies each Saturday. We have found that our “special offer” deal of the current Socialist Standard plus a back-issue, for “only” 20p, also pays rewards.

The main reasons for the increased sales of the Standard in Leeds are our perseverance, the new design of the journal and our gradually acquired “selling technique”. The latter consists of shouting our message like a couple of political barrow-boys: “Labour No, Socialism Yes!”. . . “Abolition of the Wages System! . . . “Capitalism No, Socialism Yes!” . . . “Labour-Tory; same old story!” . . .

Selling socialist literature in the streets is often illuminating and amusing. We frequently get abuse from fellow workers, ranging from a basic “Eff off, mate”, to a “Go back to Russia”. The first type of insult receives the reaction it deserves—we ignore it. The latter type of advice usually gets the reply: “If we tried to sell our communist literature in Red Square we’d be arrested”.

Recently, the Tories have ventured forth in Leeds selling their new comic, which they have the nerve to call Democrat. One member approached one of these lackeys of the ruling class and, respectfully touching his forelock, asked ‘”Ow’s life up at the ‘All, Sire?” He defiantly replied that he was a worker, lived in a council flat and had six kids to support. Clearly a case of ragged trousered philanthropism.

Also selling their wares in the precinct are the predictable group of “Socialist” Workers, sporadically shouting about the “Right to Work” and the need for a minimum wage. This contrasts sharply with the neighbouring shouts of “What bloody Right!” and “Forget minimum wages, support their abolition!”

The final rival group we usually is the Young National Front, looking menacingly militaristic in their bovver boots, cropped hair and sun glasses. Recently, we approached one of the Aryan Race asking him if he wanted to buy a Standard. He proudly referred to the fact that he and his mates “smacked up” the SWP paper sellers every Saturday. However, after a wasted attempt to explain the gist of Socialist thought, he abruptly ended the conversation stating that the SWP were hardly “democratic”, which was a true enough statement, but somewhat ironic coming from him. Finally, before he went on his way, we entered the worst deal of out and swopped the last Standard for National Front News (price 8p, for pages of racist rubbish) whose presentation resembled the Socialist Worker paper in layout and design, as did their complete lack of understanding of the cause of social problems.

However, despite such aggressive competition, literature selling in Leeds has recently left us with a greater sense of satisfaction as we leave for home with all our Socialist Standards sold.

If you are one of those people who buy the Socialist Standard from us in Leeds and you sympathise with the Socialist case, then please follow up your interest by getting in touch with us to find out more about Socialism. If you agree with the ideas you’ve read, don’t just sit there, get up and join!

RB (West Yorks)

Russian Revolution: III State Capitalism (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the other articles in the series, click on the following links: ONE, TWO, FOUR.

Although modern Leninists expound the myth of ‘Russian Socialism' as if there was a transformation from capitalism to socialism in the post-October days, it is doubtful whether Lenin seriously had any such illusion. He recognised, and stated on many occasions, that only state capitalism could be established in Russia. Within months of receiving information about the October revolution, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, despite acknowledging the Bolsheviks’ anti-war policy, foresaw the inevitable state capitalist outcome of the coup. The Trotskyists, it should be added, maintain the most absurd position of all: they accept the Leftist myth that Russia became socialist in 1917 and then claim that it reverted to capitalism when Stalin fell out with Trotsky!

The establishment of state capitalism presented a problem for the Bolsheviks. How could a revolution designed to overthrow capitalism be considered successful when it merely initiated a new form of capitalism? The myth of the transition period between state capitalism (referred to as socialism) and socialism (referred to as communism) was created by Lenin in order to disguise the reality. Broken promises, persecution, murder and tyranny were justified because Russia was still in the first, socialist, stage of revolution. Much has been written about the theory of the transition period which need not be repeated here, except to say that the idea that there must be a transition between consciousness and unconsciousness, between oppression and freedom, between property society and common ownership, is both illogical and historical nonsense. Bolsheviks like Bukharin and Preobrazhensky appear to have swallowed the theory:

Communist society will know nothing of money. Every worker will produce goods for the general welfare. He will not receive any certificate to the effect that he has delivered a product to society; in other words, he will receive no money. Likewise, he will pay no money to society when he receives from the common store what he requires . . .
Socialism, however, is communism in the process of construction . . . and in the proportion that the work of construction is successfully carried on the need for money will disappear.

Like the English Fabians, they thought that the system would wither away. Before the Bolshevik seizure of power in September 1917, Lenin predicted the nature of the state capitalist economy: “All citizens become employees and workers of one all national State syndicate.” (State and Revolution)

On 14 November 1917 Lenin presented a draft decree on workers’ control to the Congress of Soviets. This decree, far from meeting the aspirations of the factory committees which wanted direct control of each productive unit by the workers employed in that unit, established a centralised hierarchy of state control. Significantly, the leading Bolshevik trade unionist, Lozovsky, only agreed to vote for the decree on the condition that “. . . the workers in each enterprise should not get the impression that the enterprise belongs to them.” Shortly after the decree was passed a Supreme Council of National Economy (Vesenkha) was set up “. . . to organise the economic activity of the nation and the financial resources of the government.”

For the first five months of the Bolshevik regime, despite the erection of the machinery of State control, the economy was anything but regulated. Anarchy prevailed, born of the frustration and poverty of the masses: before they had been denied the fulfilment of their needs, now they were going to take according to their needs. Money became worthless, production all but ceased, peasant producers resorted to barter. Harry Young, an SPGB member who was in Russia at the time, describes how he had to pay millions of roubles in exchange for the most basic commodities. Economic anarchy resulted in chaos and the short taste of freedom was a prelude to rigid state coercion. In March 1918 the government signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, bringing Russia out of the war. The Congress of Soviets which approved the treaty resolved to put an end to the anarchy in the economy. Larin and Milyutin, two dedicated state capitalists, replaced Bukharin, Obolensky and Lomov (with their idealistic thoughts of the future communist society) as leaders of Vesenkha. On 28 June 1918 Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissars) issued a decree nationalising every important category of industry.

Nationalisation is not socialism. The soviet state was increasingly becoming the monopoly of the party leadership. As the control of the economy by the state continued, the pious ideals of fairness and equality dwindled. The party bureaucracy prospered at the expense of the exploitation of the working class. State capitalism is the accumulation of capital by the state officials. Where there is capital there must be wage labour and where there is wage labour there must be capitalism.

In the post Brest-Litovsk period, from 1918 to 1921, often referred to by historians as ‘War Communism’, two main industrial probems prevailed: excessive bureaucratisation and the erosion of the workers’ democracy which had developed in the post-revolutionary days.

A highly centralised economy required a bureaucracy which was removed from the centres of production and was primarily concerned with reaching planning norms. A division between state control and local needs developed. The former predominated.

Immediately after the revolution the workers did have a degree of control over their working lives. Committees were set up at the point of production to allow workers to have a say in the way things were run. Lenin, seeing the need for rapid industrialisation if Russia was to move on from its semi-feudal form of economic organisation, had no time for such democratic niceties as collegial management. In Current Tasks of the Soviet Power he argued that 

Unqualified submission to a single will is unconditionally necessary for the success of the process of labour organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry.

Some Bolsheviks, such as Tomsky, vigorously opposed the transition to one-man management, but their cries of protest were wasted. State capitalism meant the total subordination of the worker to the State. It is estimated that by 1920 one-man management existed in 88 per cent of nationalised enterprises. By then the trade unions had become sterile appendages of the state.

Leninists blame the failure of Bolshevism to make capitalism run in the interest of the working class on to external circumstances, such as the civil war. Certainly, the war did account for falling production levels and the absolute reduction in the size of the working class. But to portray the Bolsheviks as genuine socialists, overcome by unforeseeable events, is a gross distortion. Read what Lenin said before October 1917. It is clear that he advocated state capitalism, not world socialism.

Steve Coleman

(To be continued.)