Running Commentary: Famine Relief (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famine Relief

In a hangar at Khartoum airport in the Sudan, an aeroplane sits loaded with milk powder, butter oil, high protein biscuits and medical supplies. Elsewhere in the same city warehouses contain enough food to meet the basic needs of several thousand people for a number of months. Lorries able to transport the food to where it is needed also stand idle.

Meanwhile on the outskirts of Juba, several hundred miles south of Khartoum, at least 50,000 refugees are camped with a further 40,000 expected to arrive from the countryside in the ensuing days and weeks. There is food in Juba's shops but the refugees have no money with which to buy it. They are dependent on emergency food supplies handed out by the aid agencies which are now almost exhausted.

The plane in the airport at Khartoum cannot take off and air-lift the food supplies into places like Juba in the south because no company can be found that is willing to insure it. No company will insure it because the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has said that it will shoot down any plane that tries to land in the towns of Wau, Malakal or Juba. This is no idle threat: the SPLA claims to have shot down 24 planes over southern Sudan in the past three years. The trucks cannot move the food because it is feared that they will be attacked or diverted by fighting between Ugandan government troops and Sudanese rebels.

So while politicians and the military play their war games, while insurance companies haggle over premiums, innocent refugees must die of starvation — unwitting victims of power struggles in which they play no part.

Political circus

As another summer season drew to a close and the holiday entertainers packed their bags and headed for home, some seaside towns prepared for the arrival of the circus. Not the usual big top and sawdust affair but a collection of clowns, jugglers and illusionists who make up the political circus, each group demonstrating that no one party has the monopoly of political ignorance.

Possibly, with the media providing saturation coverage, many workers were deluded into believing that these events should be taken seriously. But whatever importance a minority of the working class attached to these proceedings for the vast majority the speeches, interviews and standing ovations were of little significance. After all, once you have seen one circus you have seen them all.

How many times have we watched the juggler with the unemployment figures. Up they go higher and higher, out of control then suddenly they drop when a new set are plucked out of the magician's hat.

Year in, year out it is the same old material. Even when it is borrowed or stolen from one of the other parties, it is always presented as something new. Dress an elephant in a tutu, parade it around the ring and it will still be an elephant. Do the same with some forgotten economic theory and in the crazy world of the political circus it becomes a wondrous new idea capable of solving all manner of problems.

To some people a man with a red nose and baggy trousers who talks nonsense, squabbles with his partners and makes rude noises is a clown, but to others he is an elected representative entrusted with the responsibilities of running the country. A figure of fun he may appear to be but his contribution to the greatest illusion of all is no laughing matter.

For the famous "Make Capitalism Operate in the Workers' Interest" trick is one that has kept the clown and other buffoons employed for a long time Like all good illusions this one relies heavily on deception and the willing participation of the audience. It is not in performing the trick that the deception lies but in convincing the audience that it can be done. For their part the audience has possibly assisted in the deception. Duped into supporting the very system that causes the problems around them the answer must lie with themselves. Because of their acquiescence capitalism continues. In a world of potential abundance this sickening farce should have no place.

It is up to the working class to bring down the curtain on the present economic system and introduce socialism. Only then will the world be able to live in peaceful co-existence freed from the constraints of the profit- motive and the absurd posturings of a small band of professional idiots will be as out of place as a one-legged cyclist in a present day circus.

Independent It’s Not

The new "quality" newspaper the Independent is, we are told, politically, financially and editorially independent. So is this the breakthrough we socialists have been waiting for? A chance to put across our ideas to workers through the columns of a newspaper that claims to be politically non-partisan?

Well, this socialist hasn't actually tried submitting an article to the Independent putting the socialist viewpoint, but then I haven't much confidence in the "independence" of a newspaper whose editor. Andreas Whittam Smith, previously worked on the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Investors Chronicle and who is described by those who claim to know as a "wet Tory or Social Democrat". An editor who had relatively little trouble in raising the £18 million necessary to start the new paper because he enjoyed the confidence of City investors with whom he had developed extensive contacts when working for the FT etc.

It is hard to believe that a newspaper that has such close ties with the capitalist class can really be taken seriously as independent. If the Independent gives good factual news coverage on a wide range of issues so that people can make up their own minds about those issues, then that would be a small step forwards. But the question will still remain which facts are we being given; on what basis are they being selected; and by whom? The Independent may be politically unaffiliated and editorially independent, despite the editor's personal political views; it might even be financially independent in that a number of investors have bought shares in it rather than just one member of the capitalist class owning it outright; what is extremely unlikely is that it will offer us anything like an alternative perspective on the world around us.

Socialism and democracy (1986)

Book Review from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Battle of Democracy by Keith Graham, Wheatsheaf Books, £8.95

What is democracy? Why should it be considered a good thing? Why should an individual accept a democratically-arrived-at decision with which they disagree? These are the questions Keith Graham sets out to answer in the first, more philosophical, part of his book (The Battle of Democracy, Wheatsheaf Books, £8.95)

The simplest definition of democracy is that it is decision-making by the whole people (“rule by the people”, as the Greek words from which it is formed mean) involving procedures such as free and open debate, free access to information, one person one vote, and the accountability of public officials and elected representatives. Graham argues that such a decision-making system can be regarded as desirable because one key aspect of the nature of human beings is their ability to reflect and weigh up options before deciding what to do. In other words, a system in which the people as a whole freely decide what to do is the only decision-making system worthy of humans as self-determining (“free”) agents.

The idea of democracy is also bound up with that of equality, if only in the sense that it is a decision-making procedure in which every human deemed capable of making a reasoned decision has a vote of equal weight. Pursuing this further, Graham shows that ensuring each person an equal as possible say in the decision-making process requires a high degree of social equality and not mere equal political rights. This introduces the idea that it is not only political democracy that is desirable for humans as self-determining agents but a democratic society. As Graham makes clear in the second, more political, part of his book where he discusses the views of Marx, Lenin and others on democracy, this democratic society would have to be “a world where private ownership of the means of production, buying and selling, the wages system have all been abolished, in favour of the communal ownership of the earth’s resources”. In other words, the philosophical justification for democracy is also, even more so in fact, a philosophical justification for socialism—though, of course, as Graham is quick to point out, Marx himself did not justify establishing socialism on such “an appeal to abstract, timeless principles to do with the nature of human beings”.

Graham’s discussion of the views of Marx and Lenin on democracy—in which he convincingly makes the point that “the terrible fate which befell Marx was that he was Leninised—corresponds exactly to our own position on this subject: Marx stood for the establishment of a democratic, classless society as a democratic act on the part of the wage and salary working class as a whole. In contrast, Lenin saw the agent of social revolution as a minority “vanguard” of professional revolutionaries who, on winning power, would establish their own undemocratic, even if supposedly temporary, rule over the rest of society. Graham’s discussion of the differing views of Marx and Lenin also allows him to clarify the reform versus revolution dilemma, often seen as a choice between gradual, constitutional change and violent insurrection. He can also set out, for the first time in a book of this sort, the case for a revolutionary but essentially peaceful use of existing political institutions as the means of establishing socialism.

Marx’s presuppositions enable a distinctive challenge to be made to the two alternative positions on the question of constitutionalism as we have been considering them. In one way, the most important political development for Marx takes place prior to any revolution and outside parliamentary institutions, namely in the growth of working class consciousness. This is distinct from Kautsky’s parliamentary constitutionalism, where the entry of a party into parliament, which may form alliances with non-revolutionary groups and the like, is seen as the chief means to revolution . . . On the other hand, Marx’s position is distinct from Lenin’s. The state is not to be smashed but taken control of, so that it cannot be used against a revolutionary working class: and some of the institutions of a parliamentary system, notably universal suffrage, will be something to foster for a majoritarian like Marx, though not for a vanguardist like Lenin. In the light of Marx’s presuppositions, there do seem to be oversimplifications in the terms used to express the original dilemma of the route to the new society. There need be no straight-forward, exclusive and exhaustive choice between constitutionalism and violent seizure of power. Certain elements within existing institutions may be valued, and action taken in conformity with them, while others may not. Connectedly, the aspiration to a peaceful transition need not be identified with an attempt to effect it by piecemeal means, an identification which both Kautsky and Lenin are prone to make. It is consistent with Marx’s presuppositions to recognise parliament as an institution geared to the needs of capitalism, and therefore inappropriate as the vehicle for a fundamental transformation, but yet to regard its connected electoral practices as coinciding, to some extent, with the principles governing that transformation, and to that extent adding the possibility of a peaceful transition. This is not tantamount to the view parodied by Lenin as the expectation that the ruling class will meekly submit to the working class, as minority to majority. It does, however, limit violence to the role of counter-violence in the event of resistance when a clear majority for revolutionary change is apparent, rather than seeing the use of violence as itself a primary means of change, even in the absence of majority support.

Leninists sometimes try to argue that this is only a question of tactics, that they too share the ultimate goal of a truly democratic society (socialism) but that because a majority of workers can never be expected to acquire a socialist understanding within capitalism (“the ruling ideas of an epoch are those of the ruling class”, as Marx put it), a minority must act on their behalf. Graham answers this by pointing out that, in the case of socialism as the democratic society, there is a very real sense in which the end determines the means to achieve it.

What is the nature of the transformation which, according to Marx, it is the role of the proletariat to bring about? In place of the compulsion to work which is characteristic of their position in capitalism, there will be a free association of people. In place of the exploitation of one section by another there will be common ownership of the means of production. In place of the political domination of a bureaucratic elite there will be widespread participation and revocable delegation. Leaving aside all question of the realism of Marx’s proposals, these are the arrangements which he regards as meeting the real interests of the proletariat. But these are arrangements which in their very description are incapable of attainment without the voluntary co-operation of the proletariat itself. Whereas you can make people do what they do not wish to do, you cannot make them adopt a set of social relations which require their voluntary co-operation if they do not voluntarily co-operate (Graham’s emphasis).

In other words, democratic organisation and methods are not just one among many possible means to establish a democratic society; they are the only such means. Leninist minority action can only lead, as historical experience has confirmed, to some form of minority rule—in fact to a more undemocratic society than the sort of capitalism we know in countries like Britain.

The Battle of Democracy, is a very useful book about the nature of democracy written by a socialist. It is hoped that it will spark off a wide-ranging discussion about the desirability and feasibility of “a world-wide society of common ownership” and of the means of bringing it into being.

Adam Buick

Co-operation makes sense (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are you a sucker? Do you cheat? Or are you one to bear a grudge? For biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene (1978). such questions impinge on a subject of great importance: what is the most effective behavioural strategy to ensure survival in evolutionary terms?

By the title of his book, it seems that, for Dawkins, this was a foregone conclusion — that natural selection would tend to favour, above all. behaviour that was nasty and ruthlessly competitive. As he says himself: 

The selfish gene view follows logically from the accepted assumptions of neo-Darwinism. It is easy to misunderstand but, once understood, it is hard to doubt its fundamental truth. Most of the organisms that have ever lived failed to become ancestors. We that exist are, without exception, descended from that minority within every earlier generation that were successful in becoming ancestors. Since all we animals inherit our genes from ancestors rather than from non-ancestors, we tend to possess the qualities that make for success in becoming an ancestor rather than the qualities that make for failure. Successful qualities are such things as fleetness of foot, sharpness of eye. perfection of camouflage, and there seems no getting away from it ruthless selfishness. Nice guys don't become ancestors. Therefore living organisms don't inherit the qualities of nice guys (The Listener, 17 April 1986).

Yet Dawkins is at pains to disassociate himself from the rather pessimistic implications of such views for society. Interestingly, in the Horizon programme on television (on which the above article is based) called Nice Guys Finish First he related how, after the publication of his book, he was wooed by various people of right wing persuasion who saw his book as a vindication of their belief in a system of cut-throat competition. Conversely. he found himself under attack from the left, one critic going so far as to suggest that the impact of The Selfish Gene was partly to blame for the subsequent election of the Thatcher government.

But Dawkins insists that both sides had misunderstood the point he was trying to make. Paradoxically, the pursuit of self interest is not necessarily incompatible with being "nice" — that is, co-operative. This is what is confusingly referred to in socio-biological circles as "reciprocal altruism". Since altruism implies the genuinely intended sacrifice of one's interests, it is difficult to see how this fits in with the idea conveyed by the term "reciprocal altruism", that if you scratch my back I will scratch yours and both will benefit as a result. It would be more accurate to call this "enlightened self interest": no "sacrifice" is involved.

Nevertheless, to show how this might operate. Dawkins refers to game theory — in particular a game called The Prisoner's Dilemma:

In the simplest version of this game, two players have each to choose between two moves. Co-operate and Defect (hereafter C and D). Unlike in chess or ping pong, the players don't move alternately but simultaneously, in ignorance of the other's simultaneous move. If you and I both play C we get more (say £3) than if we both play D (say £2). If one of us plays C and simultaneously the other plays D. the D player gets the highest possible score (say £4) and the C player gets the "sucker's payoff" (say £1). So. from my point of view, the best outcome is that I play D and you play C. But if I calculate this, and play D accordingly, you are just as capable of working out the same thing and playing D yourself In this case we both only get the low payoff. If only we'd both played C. we'd both have got the comparatively high payoff of £3. But, if I work this out and play C you do even better if you choose D. Therefore, rational players will always play D and will always obtain the low payoff of £2. But — here is the paradox and maddening dilemma — each rational player simultaneously knows that, if only he and his opponent could somehow manage to enter into a binding contract to play C. both would do better (ibid).

Here Dawkins provides an example of how this situation could arise in real life. Take a group of friends who like to eat out at a restaurant and split the cost of the meal equally between them. There will always be the temptation for any one of them to order a little more than the others, knowing that the extra cost will be equally shared. Conversely, any one of them will realise that if they do not order as much as the others they will be subsidising their friends. Therefore, there will be a built-in tendency for each of them to order as much as they can get away with.

The worst that can happen in such a situation is that some of them will benefit at the expense of the others and perhaps as a consequence they will fall out with each other. Come what may there will be both winners and losers. But it is possible to imagine a situation — even to point to real life examples such as the destruction of the herring industry through over-fishing in the early part of this century — in which this same competitive logic can result in everyone losing out.

In such a situation, no-one actually intends that as a consequence of each of them competing against one another they should eventually all lose out. Yet they are obliged, even in full knowledge of the fate that could await them, to continue with the very actions that will make that fate a reality.

This situation has been described by the American biologist, Garrett Hardin, as the Tragedy of the Commons (Science vol 162 13 December 1968). As he puts it:

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximise his gain Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2. The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of - 1

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination towards which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in the commons bring ruin to all.

Hardin's solution to this tragedy of the commons is "mutual coercion". An appeal to conscience, he argues, is altogether futile. Mutual coercion can be effected through, as it were, enclosing the commons and instituting a system of private property which will enforce a sense of responsibility among herdsmen as to the appropriate number of cattle their land can provide for without resulting in overgrazing. Since they cannot encroach on land owned by other herdsmen, the consequences of keeping too many cattle will be exclusively borne by them. This knowledge will therefore deter them from acting irresponsibly in the first place.

The problem here is that Hardin has quite obviously got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It is not the "inherent logic of the commons" which "remorselessly generates tragedy". The "commons" simply provides the setting in which this tragedy is played out. It does not embody the cause of the tragedy itself — that is, the overgrazing of the land by too many cattle.

That cause lies elsewhere, in the dynamism of competition which compels each herdsman to increase his herd beyond the carrying capacity of the land since his own livelihood is directly dependent on the number of cattle at his disposal. Had the cattle. like the land, been the communal possession of the herdsmen then it would have been possible to make a rational decision about the total number of cattle. In that case, the livelihood of each herdsman would be directly dependent on their collective wellbeing, which in turn would rest on securing an optimum ratio of cattle to land. As it was. each was obliged to make what was the only rational decision open to him within an irrational framework of decision-making, with inevitably tragic consequences. So much for the view expounded by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations that the individual who "intends only his own gain" is "led by an invisible hand to promote the public interest".

"In a reverse way", argues Hardin, "the tragedy of the commons re-appears in problems of pollution. Here it is not a question of taking something out of the commons but of putting something in". Just as in the case of the herdsman, a factory owner will be "locked into a system" that will ensure that the commons are treated as a convenient cesspool for the disposal of waste products. The owner will see that it will pay to avoid the costs of purifying the pollutants by simply dumping them in the environment because the saving this represents far exceeds the environmental cost the factory may have to bear though others bear it as well. Rational self interest will therefore demand pollution.

Following Hardin's suggestion let us assume that the commons have been enclosed. In theory, this would mean that anyone could prevent their neighbour from polluting their land just as the herdsmen could prevent their neighbour's cattle from straying onto their land. Anyone who chose not to purify their pollutants would be obliged to contain them within their own property and bear the total costs such pollution entailed. But what sounds fine in theory will prove quite unworkable in practice since what we mean by the "commons" embraces not just the land but the air and water surrounding us. These, as Hardin concedes, "cannot readily be fenced".

A simple example will make this clearer. Suppose my neighbour decided to build a factory alongside a stream into which were pumped the factory's effluents Suppose I delighted in fishing but now with all the fish killed I could no longer pursue my interest. What could I then do? I could of course purchase the right of ownership of that section of the stream that flowed past my back door but my neighbour, upstream of me. could do the same and argue plausibly for the right to use that section of the stream as they chose. Of course, the consequence of my neighbour's decision to site a factory on their property need not be confined to this. Its visual impact on the neighbourhood could depress the price of residential properties all around. The constant noise might disturb my sleep. The lorries carrying the raw materials it processed may congest the roads making commuting to work a hazardous slog.

If I were to grant my neighbour the absolute right to dispose of their property as they chose, it would be inconsistent of me to complain of the consequences. If, on the other hand, I sought to restrict the ways in which my neighbour could use their property then I would be asserting the need to retain the "commons" as an entity in one or other respect — the tranquillity of the neighbourhood or the right to fish in an unpolluted stream. We cannot live in a cocoon. Even capitalism itself, the most competitive and atomistic form of society that has ever evolved, cannot afford not to make some concession to this stark fact.

We see this in the way conventional thinking approaches the problem of pollution. Hardin himself points out that while (according to him), "our particular concept of private property deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth" it actually "favours pollution. The solution which he and many others suggest is the direct intervention of the state in the form of legislation to temper the excesses of competition committed by private citizens. "Mutual coercion", apparently, will not suffice.

The weaknesses in this approach are twofold. It does not strike at the root cause of the problem at the competitive advantage to be gained by minimising costs — in this case, the costs of purifying and disposing of pollutants in an ecologically acceptable manner — incurred by capitalist enterprises. It blandly assumes that the state is a more or less autonomous institution which presides over society and legislates in the interests of the whole community. But in fact the state is a class institution, financed through taxation by the very enterprises whose activities it seeks to regulate. Legislation is a matter of finely balancing the losses and gains that accrue to the capitalists themselves. Too lenient an approach might be politically unacceptable and excessively ruinous to the health of the workers who create the profits for the businesses that employ them. Too punitive an approach, on the other hand, can erode profit margins and drive investment into other parts of the world where regulations are more lax. And all the time, the dividing line between what is acceptable and what is not shifts as the economic climate itself changes: the more desperate the plight of business, the more lenient does the law become.

This brings us back to Richard Dawkins. What does he think is the way forward? Political scientists tend to see so much of life as a Prisoner's Dilemma. Many would argue that we therefore need to have some authority to take more of the decisions out of our hands — rather like the way the state supposedly denies the option to a capitalist enterprise to release its toxic wastes into the environment by declaring this illegal. But as we have seen things don't happen that way. The state, too. is enmeshed in the irrational framework that is capitalist competition.

Dawkins would set rather more store by the Law of the Jungle than the Law of the State as a model for encouraging co-operative behaviour. Suggesting that we have a lot to learn from the animal world around us, he gives the example of gulls which need to groom themselves in order to remove parasitic ticks. The difficulty arises in grooming their heads; which requires the co-operation of another gull. Gulls that cheated on other gulls would soon drive the suckers into extinction. But cheats themselves would eventually follow the suckers since there would be no gulls left willing to groom them.

What are the implications of this for society? Dawkins argues that we saw evidence of a tit-for-tat strategy developing in the trenches of the First World War. Soldiers would deliberately fire above the heads of their "enemies" to signal their desire to cooperate in minimising the mutual damage they could inflict upon one another. Their alleged enemies would respond in kind. Such was the extent to which the "disease of peace" took hold that after two years of this, the generals were eventually forced to completely re-write their battle plans turning instead to surprise tactics which served to destroy the unspoken trust that had been built up on both sides.

Though the insights that game theory has to offer are valuable, their possible application in the sort of society we have today — as the above example makes clear — is limited. We live in a world in which the means of living are monopolised by a small minority. Just as the hierarchical structure of an army invests a general with the power to command his troops so capitalist society itself can only ever be run in the interests of that capitalist minority. But the great majority of the population, the working people, whose interests are constantly thwarted by the dictates of capital, cannot do much to redress the balance within a social system which requires that we remain compelled to prostitute our working abilities for capitalist exploitation.

Real co-operation can only flourish on the foundations of social equality. Until then, for the great majority at least, we remain suckers with good reason to bear a grudge.

Robin Cox

Blogger's Note:

Yes, before you ask, that was the original accompanying picture for the article in the November 1986 issue of the Standard. Yes, I don't get it either. It's a still from the 1971 Ken Loach film, Family Life. The young woman in the picture is Sandy Ratcliff and the old bloke is Bill Dean. Both better known for being in soap operas in the 1980s. (EastEnders and Brookside.)

The struggle in South Africa (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa is the fourth most populous country in Africa, after Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia, but it is by far the richest in terms of wealth produced and capital accumulated. Although representing only four per cent of the land area of the African continent and only seven per cent of its population, it has been estimated that South Africa has 30 per cent of its income, 43 per cent of its mining production, 87 per cent of coal production, 75 per cent of steel production, 57 per cent of electricity production, 56 per cent of rail traffic, and 50 per cent of its motor vehicles and telephones. South Africa, then, is by far the most developed capitalist country in Africa. Its economy is based on the export of minerals (gold, platinum, chromium, diamonds) whose earnings have permitted the development of sizeable manufacturing and service sectors.

The special feature about South Africa is of course what for want of a better term will have to be referred to as the "racial" breakdown of its population. Of its 26 million people, some 18 million (70 per cent) are of African origin, a little under five million (18-19 per cent) of European descent, the remaining three million or so being made up of about three-quarters of a million Indians and of people of mixed European. Asian and African descent.

Everyone in South Africa is by law classified into one of four “groups": European, Bantu, Coloured and Asian. The first group is also officially described as "Whites" and the others (as on park benches) as "Non-Whites". These, it must be emphasised, are the official legal classifications. They are not biologically-defined, but politically-defined groups, even though an individual's biological features and ancestry are used in this political definition. These classifications are absurd even on their own terms. For instance, some "Non-Whites" are whiter than some "Whites", while some "Europeans" are just as much of mixed origin as are those classified as "Coloureds": however their ancestors were able to pass as Whites sufficiently long ago to escape the race classifiers’ investigations. Further, Bantu (like Aryan) is a linguistic not a biological classification and, besides, is completely rejected as contemptuous by those so classified

Needless to say, "Non-White" too is also rejected as being the equivalent of "non-existent". Some political activists and groups in South Africa use the term "Black" as a substitute for — indeed as a reply to — "Non-White", thus including the Africans, the Coloureds and the Indians in a single group facing the Whites. Others, however, use "Black" to mean just the Africans. This can obviously lead to confusion, especially as in British usage the terms "Coloured" and "Black” are synonyms.

This whole discussion of so-called racial classifications shows that, in the end, no term is completely neutral, all are more or less political as the term used indicates the group or groups of human beings that the user thinks should unite (or be separated). In this game, then, the only terms that are acceptable to socialists are such terms as human race, citizens of the world, world working class and workers of the world.

Your racial classification in South Africa is important as it determines where you can live (and where you can’t) and. until very recently, who you could marry and who you could have sexual relations with (and with whom you couldn't). It also determines whether you are a first, a second or a third class citizen. For in South Africa there are, legally and not just factually, three classes of citizenship.

The first class is composed of those who have full political rights, the same for instance as those nearly everybody has in Britain and in particular the right to elect the members of the national law-making body. Such full political rights are enjoyed only by the Whites — by only one in six — less than 20 per cent — of the population.

The second class, constituted as recently as 1984, is made up of the Coloureds and the Indians who were allowed that year to elect their own members of the national parliament who have a limited (very limited in fact) role in the law-making process. This limited role was recognised by the overwhelming majority of Coloureds and Indians who boycotted the elections — there was a turnout of only about 20 per cent — seeing participation as an acceptance of their second-class status.

The third class is composed of the African majority — representing 70 per cent of the population — who are without any political rights whatsoever at national level. Some do have a vote at local level, while others (some four million) can, on paper, vote for the parliaments of the so-called Bantustans like the Transkei. In fact these latter are not regarded as being South African citizens at all, let alone third-class ones.

Apartheid — which is merely the Africaans for segregation — originally had a much more ambitious project than maintaining White political supremacy by denying the other groups full citizenship rights. As laid down by the National Party which has held power in South Africa without interruption since 1948, it wanted to prevent the Africans from becoming permanently established in the "White" towns and to allow them to be there only temporarily as migrant labourers (and. of course, domestic servants). But what apartheid, as embodied in rigid laws which the National Party government enacted after coming to power in 1948 sought to keep apart, the development of capitalism brought together. Over the years a permanent African urban working class, employed at all levels in manufacturing and service industries and not just in mining, has come into being. In fact since 1975 the majority of urban dwellers have been Africans.

The National Party governments have had to recognise this and to make concession after concession to the economic facts: Africans have been permitted to form trade unions and have taken strike action, the notorious pass laws are soon to be abolished, while other reforms have granted urban Africans property and even municipal voting rights in the towns. Only two of the original pillars of apartheid now remain — the Group Areas Acts laying down residential segregation (and reserving 85 per cent of the land area for the Whites) and the discriminatory political structure — but this latter too is now beginning to totter.

South Africa's present political structure where your say in the political decision-making process depends on your racial classification and which completely excludes 70 per cent of the population is so anachronistic that it is universally — and rightly — condemned, especially since political power is now being brutally used to impose the government’s authority on the unwilling majority. Even the capitalists and Thatcher condemn it. There is no reason to challenge their sincerity here since the South African system is anachronistic even from a capitalist point of view. Historically capitalism has sought to reduce all relations and differences between people to one: economic, to whether you are rich or poor, employer or employee, capitalist or worker. It didn't demolish feudal relations based on birth and legally-defined estates to see such distinctions re-introduced as racially-based citizenship classes.

Basically, capitalism wants a political structure which protects and enforces the property rights of the owning class and which ensures political stability within which the extraction of surplus value from the working class can proceed undisturbed by extraneous. non-economic considerations. Although both theory and practice have shown that political democracy is the ideal capitalist political form, this is not something that the ruling class anywhere has ever spontaneously applied nor, when faced with the choice between political stability and political democracy, will a capitalist class automatically prefer the latter. Historical experience (Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy, Franco Spain. Greece under the Colonels for example) shows that they will sacrifice political democracy and embrace dictatorship, at least for a temporary period, if this is the price of securing a stable political regime.

So political democracy has generally had to be forced on capitalism by popular pressure, in particular from the working class. Workers were right to press for political democracy since this provides the best framework both for the propagation and spread of socialist ideas and for the peaceful establishment of socialism. Since political democracy does not exist in South Africa, workers, besides becoming socialists, need to struggle for its establishment there too.

Over 50 per cent of the population of South Africa now live in the towns and, as indicated, since 1975 over 50 per cent of this urban population — which is overwhelmingly working class — wage and salary earners — has been African, a percentage which is growing all the time. This African and Coloured urban wage and salary working class majority, representing an even greater percentage of factory workers, could bring enormous political pressure to bear on the government to move towards granting them the same political rights now enjoyed exclusively by White workers. In fact the South African capitalist class has already got the message and has also been putting pressure on the Botha government to move in this direction.

Of course it is not going to be easy. People are going to be thrown into jail. People are going to be beaten up. And people are going to be killed by the "security" forces. Indeed, all these things are happening at this very moment. Sooner or later, however, the South African government is going to have to retreat as it did over economic apartheid and to move more and more towards political democracy. But the struggle should not stop there. Political democracy is not an end in itself — it leaves working class exploitation intact and working class problems unresolved — but merely as a means to the end of socialism. This more important struggle will still need to go on.

Adam Buick

Observations: Your country? Your interest? (1986)

The Observations Column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Your country? Your interest?

Does Paul Hogan, the Australian comedian, have more in common with his fellow countryman Rupert Murdoch than with Billy Connolly or Lenny Henry? Does an English electrician. doctor or fireman have more in common with the Duke of Buccleuch and his 268,000 acres or the Duke of Westminster and his land value of over two billion pounds than with a Spanish. Russian or Mexican electrician, doctor or fireman? One glance into your back garden or at your alarm clock will help you to answer these questions.

According to government figures, the richest 3.2 per cent of people in Britain today own 84 per cent of listed shares. 91 per cent of private companies and 88 per cent of land. This is what a "property owning democracy" means — a democracy where three-quarters of the daily newspapers are owned by just three millionaire companies, where non-elective judges, generals and civil servants wield tremendous power. None of the lords, dukes and baronesses are elected, nor are any of the multinational companies who also have a marked effect on workers' lives. Wealth is owned and controlled by a small section of the population — the capitalist class. They are a parasitic, redundant class who are dependent on the vast majority of the world's population, the working class. The workers run the present system from top to bottom, they produce everything in it and own nothing except their ability to work, which they sell at a price called a wage in order to live. If you feel your wages are not high enough, that your rent or mortgage payments are getting you down, that you can never seem to save any money and that you are always dominated by money-related worries, then that doesn't make you typically British but a typical member of the working class. The only difference between workers from different geographical regions is sometimes the extent to which they are exploited.

What workers need to do is to question, not only their loyalty to "their" country, but of what benefit, and to whom is this loyalty of any significance? They need to question a system which is based on rivalry; which sees only a minority of the world's population living in luxury at the expense of the vast majority; where tens of millions die of starvation every year although scientists estimate that the present world population could be fed seven times over. It is a system based on profits rather than the satisfaction of human needs that needs to be questioned.

Edwina on health

Commonsense would be enough to tell most people that poverty is a major cause of ill-health. Nevertheless it is always useful to have intuition backed up by hard facts such as those contained in a report from Bristol University which shows that poverty in the North East of England is a cause of premature death, chronic ill-health and low birth weight.

But commonsense and statistical evidence are not enough to convince Edwina Currie, the newly appointed Health Minister, who suggested in a talk to an audience in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, one of the cities covered by the health survey, that ill-health had more to do with ignorance about good eating habits than with poverty or unemployment. She advised people to eat more vegetables and natural fibre and drink more milk. This advice is about as useful as telling starving refugees in the Sudan that they wouldn't suffer from malnutrition if only they would eat more sensibly.

Duke’s hazards

Independent is not an adjective usually associated with the BBC. No doubt as part of the Thatcher administration's campaign against alleged "anti-government bias", a new chair of the BBC Board of Governors has been appointed to replace Stuart Young, who died recently. The only qualifications that the new chair. Marmaduke, "Duke" Hussey, would seem to have that equip him for the job are his connections with certain aristocratic elements within the ruling class. He is married to Lady Susan Hussey, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, daughter of the 12th Earl Waldegrave and big sister to William Waldegrave. Tory MP and Minister for the Environment.

His connections with the media are somewhat less impressive. He was a chief executive and managing director of Times newspapers in the 1970s and was responsible for the confrontation with the print unions over manning levels and wage structures which took The Times and the Sunday Times off the streets. More recently he was brought in as a chair of the ILR station Radio West, when it was experiencing economic difficulties.

His new job as Chair of the BBC governors is just one of the many appointments that are in the gift of the Prime Minister. Rumoured to be even closer to the Tories than his predecessor he is likely to ensure that the diet of television offered to us by the BBC gets even more bland.

Without comment (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

For more than a decade now. the gap between population growth and food production in Africa has been widening. On present trends, says the FAO. the continent will have 650m more people and an annual deficit in cereal supplies of 100m tonnes by the year 2010 — more than the current yearly volume of world trade in wheat. 

Such shortfalls in the developing world have come to seem particularly offensive at a time when industrialised countries are struggling with budget-busting food surpluses that they cannot sell. The contrast between the two is probably the most striking and frustrating paradox of our age. 

It leads many sympathetic people to suggest that the problem is not one of food production, but one of food distribution. Find a way of recycling the food surpluses of the North to the food deficit areas of the South, they argue, and the problem will be on its way to a solution. But that hardly seems an adequate long-term answer to the problems of hunger in countries which are without exception still agriculturally-based, and likely to remain so for many years. 

The conundrum can be put another way. There is a problem of distribution, to be sure, but it is more to do with money than with food. People are not hungry these days because food supplies are not available; they are hungry because they are poor. 

(Financial Times 4 September 1986)

Burn the mountains, say Euro experts (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

A secret report by Common Market officials recommends destroying huge stocks of surplus butter, milk powder, beef and cereals and writing off more than £1.700 million of taxpayers' money. 

The report, by the European Commission's market management experts in the agricultural directorate argues that there never will be a market for a large proportion of the surplus stocks.

Agra Europe, said much of the surplus would be inedible long before it could be sold and that the food mountains were a huge burden on international markets.

Destroying them by burning or some other means would cut the Community's costs by eliminating storage charges and cutting interest payments.

(Western Daily Press 12 September 1986)

Question and answer (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does the Socialist Party of Great Britain recognise that its Declaration of Principles cannot apply to those countries where political democracy does not exist?

Capitalism is a worldwide system which gives rise to both the need for socialism and the possibility of achieving it. It is not the type of government or the mode of election which now stands in the way of socialism; the factor common to all countries from parliamentary democracies to dictatorships — is an extreme shortage of socialists.

While in Britain the development of political democracy took place along with the growth of capitalism, there are very few countries which do not now have at least the machinery associated with democracy and hold elections. All governments need the passive support of their people and elections of some kind are a convenient way of demonstrating it.

Wherever capitalism exists, however administered. workers are not immune from the contradictions which underline the need for socialism. This includes peasants who are increasingly affected by world capitalism. Apart from anything else, modem communications make it extremely unlikely that the socialist movement could grow to any size in a few countries and have absolutely no impact in the rest of the world.

How does the Socialist Party propose that the working class of those countries (without political democracy) are to organise for a socialist revolution?

In those countries where there are severe restrictions on political activity any socialists must, taking all circumstances into account, do the best they can to carry on their work for socialism, as indeed the SPGB did during the two world wars. (Elections were suspended. The Socialist Standard was subject to censorship. In World War 1 because of Defence of the Realm regulations, we suspended all outdoor meetings; platforms had been smashed and members injured, a speaker arrested and imprisoned, others "bound over to keep the peace followed in some cases by the loss of their jobs.) At times it may prove nearly impossible to continue, especially while our numbers are still so few and not only because of state-imposed conditions. We have the example of socialists in Northern Ireland who. after a very difficult time, were ready to resume a full propaganda programme at the earliest opportunity.

The prospects are not quite as bleak as might be imagined; governments are not able permanently to prevent the dissemination of ideas not condoned by the state. A 19th century example is of the German Social Democratic Party which, while the Anti-Socialist Laws were in operation recovered from the initial setback and grew to be the strongest single party, polling 1½ million votes in the 1890 election (the Anti-Socialist Laws then came to an end). Bismarck also introduced reform measures aimed at undermining support for the SPD. More recently the tight control of the media, education and so on in Poland, did not prevent the emergence of Solidarity — 10 million strong. The current situation is unlikely to be the end of the story and it is still true that the actions of the government are tempered by the likely response of the majority. The careful attitude of the authorities to the Catholic Church in Poland reflects the mass support which that organisation has. Underground publications circulate in Russia and other East European countries.

This is not to underestimate the difficulties but to underline the fact that lack of political democracy is not. at this time, the main problem

In those countries where political democracy does not exist, does the Socialist Party advocate and support reforms that could lead to political rights for workers, free trade unions etc. ?

The Socialist Party learned from the experience of the early parties of Social Democracy; having a programme of immediate reforms and the ultimate aim of revolution meant trying to implement the reforms which led to compromise — taking part in running capitalism. It was the reform programme which gained the large following of people not interested in revolution. It is the failure of parties of reform to solve working-class problems that has brought the use of parliament into disrepute. We point out that the choice is not between parliament plus reforms and socialist revolution. Parliament has not failed, it has never been used by a vast majority of socialists as a means to revolution. The vital lesson is that the issue of socialism must be kept clear; the party aiming for socialism must seek support on that basis alone.

Co-operation with other parties, or groups, for any other purpose will always be on the terms of those parties. Democratic freedoms are seldom sought as an abstract ideal. People leading campaigns for democracy are likely to have some other purpose in mind, seeing democracy as a stepping stone to economic or political power in their own sectional interest as the rising capitalist class made use of working-class agitation in securing its own political supremacy in this country. Many widely differing interests came together to overthrow the Shah in Iran; organisations were there despite the Shah s secret police and the exile of some leaders, but though this is an extreme example, it does show that it is not enough to aim to get rid of a tyrant — or for generalised freedoms.

To campaign for constitutional reform as a separate issue will only serve to perpetuate capitalism — in whatever form. All attempts to gain freedom to organise politically must go hand in hand with working for socialism — but this presupposes that there are socialists.

In fact workers do not need any advice from us about the advantages of trade union organisation, and gaining a political voice. Socialists welcome the formation of independent trade unions organised along sound lines. In recent years millions of people who have been compelled to work for the multi-national companies which have taken advantage of cheap, non-unionised labour in "Third World" countries have begun struggling to improve their pay and conditions by organising in unions. Witness also the struggles of black workers in South Africa where, as elsewhere, there are many factors at work, including economic problems and the conflict of interests between different sections of the capitalist class.

While we are considerably cheered by any success achieved by fellow members of our class in the lightening of their particularly heavy loads, we also recognise the likely limitations of that success. Workers also act against their class interest, regularly voting for parties to run capitalism, and will even support anti-democratic parties and accept the use of repressive measures. Our specific and vital contribution is to keep the issue of socialism clear.

Will political democracy have to be established in the majority, if not all. of the world's capitalist states as a necessary precondition for a socialist revolution?

The short answer is yes. We always emphasise that socialism is by definition democratic and can only be established by democratic means. Parliamentary democracy is the means which, when we are in the overwhelming majority, socialists will be able to use to gain control of the machinery of government. It is not the prerequisite to the formation and spread of the idea of socialism. This is not to ignore the difficulties; we have already said that where there are particular problems socialists must do the best they can. Nor do we underestimate the usefulness of political democracy — it makes our task easier — but at this stage it is not the deciding factor, or there would be many more socialists in the more "liberal" democracies. The missing ingredient is still class-conscious socialist understanding, in democracies and dictatorships alike.

The spread of socialist ideas, the expansion of the socialist movement with its democratic aim and organisation, will ensure the fullest appreciation of democracy in every country and the speediest adoption of political democracy and independent trade unions in those countries where they do not yet exist. Workers who have understood their class position and are ready to work for socialism will insist on taking an active part in their unions. They will not rely on leaders, they will not be misled into supporting dictatorships of any kind, and they will certainly not be fobbed off by any calls to nationalist sentiment.

It is inconceivable that the growth of the socialist movement could accelerate and yet those millions of class conscious workers leave the administration of capitalism untouched — by this stage there could already be socialist delegates in some parliaments. Long before the necessary majority is near governments would have to take their views into account. It is unlikely that when most countries have got substantial numbers of socialists, a few countries will still have only a minority of socialists and be without political democracy. If this did happen the worldwide socialist movement would decide, in close cooperation with those minorities, how best they could be helped. We repeat that this event seems unlikely. There would be no question of an increasingly socialist working class in, say. America, allowing the government to prop up dictatorships in other countries.

William Godwin, Shelley and Communism (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just over a hundred and fifty years ago died William Godwin, author of Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, one of the seminal works in Britain of radical criticism of existing class society. Godwin had been born in 1756, the son of a nonconformist preacher, as he himself had been for a few years before coming to see through religion as untrue. The first edition of his Political Justice appeared in 1793, his contribution to the ferment of social and political ideas sparked off by the French Revolution, then still in progress. In 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the pioneer feminist work, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Godwin was also the author of a number of novels expressing his views, one of which—Caleb Williams—has been a television serial. In addition his Of Population, written in 1820, was the classic contemporary refutation of the nonsense peddled by Malthus.

Godwin has been described as a “utilitarian anarchist”. This is not an unfair description since he was very much in the Age of Reason philosophical tradition which saw humans as isolated individuals pursuing happiness as a measurable quantity and he could be described as an anarchist insofar as he looked forward to the “euthanasia of government”.

In Political Justice Godwin set out to examine what form of society would have to be established to conform to the principles of justice as laid down by Reason. Defining government as “regulated force”, he came to the conclusion that this would have to be “a simple form of society without government”. What he envisaged was the division of a country like Britain into self-administrating districts which would run their own affairs without the need for laws, or prisons, or “regulated force” in any form and which would send delegates to a central confederal assembly in the rare event of any situation requiring co-ordinated action on a national scale. It is this proposal for a “society without government” that has led to anarchists regarding him as one of their forebears.

But Godwin was not simply an advocate of a society without government. He was also an advocate of “equality of conditions”, “a state of equal society” as he called it. “Equality of conditions”, he wrote, “or, in other words, an equal admission to the means of improvement and pleasure, is a law rigorously enjoined upon mankind by the voice of justice” (All quotes are from 1976 Pelican Classic edition). His argument went as follows:

Human beings are partakers of a common nature; what conduces to the benefit or pleasure of one man will conduce to the benefit or pleasure of another. Hence it follows, upon the principles of equal and impartial justice, that the good things of the world are a common stock, upon which one man has as valid a title as another to draw for what he wants.

In every society, the produce, the means of contributing to the necessities and conveniences of its members, is of a certain amount. In every society, the bulk at least of its members contribute by their personal exertions to the creation of this produce. What can be more desirable and just than that the produce itself should, with some degree of equality, be shared among them?

This was a familiar argument with advocates of an equal society in place of existing unequal class society. It led some of them to advocate “a community of goods to be maintained by the vigilance of the state” as Godwin described one such proposal current in his day. Naturally, as an advocate of a society without government, he strongly rejected this speaking of “how pernicious the consequences would be if government were to take the whole permanently into their hands, and dispense to every man his daily bread”.

What, then, did he propose? How did he envisage goods being distributed in his “free and equal state of society”? Here a misunderstanding has sometimes arisen due to the fact that, in Book VIII (“Of Property”), Godwin defends a right to property. He distinguishes three “degrees” of property. The first is property in the goods an individual uses personally. The second is property in the product of an individual’s own labour. The third is property which entitles the beneficiary to appropriate the labour of others.

For Godwin, this third type of property was unjust as it involves exploitation:

All wealth, in a state of civilised society, is the produce of human industry. To be rich is merely to possess a patent entitling one man to dispose of the produce of another man’s industry.

Privilege entitles a favoured few to engross to themselves gratifications which the system of the universe left at large to all her sons.

This “monopoly of property”, exercised by both landlords and capitalists (Godwin actually uses the term), should simply be abolished by the state ceasing to uphold it. The other two types of property should remain inviolate. Nobody, neither another person nor the community, had a right to deprive a person of their personal effects nor the produce of their own labour. This is where the misunderstanding has arisen, with some misinterpreting this defence of a right to property as meaning that Godwin was not a “communist” but merely a “leveller”, somebody who did not want to abolish property but merely to equalise property holdings within the framework of a commodity society.

But this was not at all what Godwin meant. For although he argued that no-one, not even the community as a whole, had the right forcibly to deprive someone of the product of their own labour, he argued equally forcefully that it was the duty of everyone to make available to other people the products of their labour over and above their own needs. In other words, instead of selling their surplus produce for money and accumulating wealth from the proceeds, they ought to make it available free for other people to satisfy their needs. Godwin did not go into the practical details of how this would work but he was quite clear that buying and selling would not enter into it. Discussing the division of labour, he wrote:

Shall each man manufacture his tools, furniture and accommodations? This would perhaps be a tedious operation. Every man performs the task to which he is accustomed, more skilfully, and in a shorter time than another. It is reasonable that you should make for me that which perhaps I should be three or four times as long in making, and should make imperfectly at last. Shall we then introduce barter and exchange? By no means. The moment I require any further reason for supplying you than the cogency of your claim, the moment, in addition to the dictates of benevolence, I demand a prospect of reciprocal advantage to myself, there is an end to that political justice and pure society of which we treat.

And in The Enquirer, a collection of essays he published in 1797, he was even more explicit:

Were the members of any community sufficiently upright and disinterested, I might supply my neighbour with the corn he wanted, and he supply me with the cloth of which I was in need, without having recourse to the grovelling and ungenerous methods of barter and sale. We might supply each other for this reason only, because one party had a superfluity and the other a want, without in the smallest degree adverting to a reciprocal bounty to be by this method engendered; and we might depend upon the corresponding upright and disinterested affections of the other members of the community, for the being in like manner supplied with the commodities of which we were in want.

So Godwin resolved the problem of who, in his “free and equal state of society”, was to distribute goods according to people’s needs by saying that it would be the producers of particular goods of their own free will. His equal society was to be a “spontaneous equality of conditions” not an enforced one. Although he did not use the term “communism” (which was not then in use) or even that of” community of goods”—in fact, to tell the truth, he was too much in the individualist tradition to have used such terminology—his system was equivalent to what might be called a “voluntary” communism (as opposed to one “maintained by the vigilance of the state”). For, if we assume that the producers deposit the surplus over their needs of their particular product in some general storehouse from which they can take the products of other producers that they need, then we have the classic distribution system proposed by previous pre-industrial communists such as Thomas More and Gerrard Winstanley.

Although the social change Godwin advocated—the euthanasia of government and the abolition of “the monopoly of property”—was a radical one, the method by which he saw this coming about—the slow and gradual “progress of the human mind”—was in stark contrast and led him to oppose any kind of organised political action to further the cause of an equal society. In fact the only kind of organised activity he would accept were philosophical debating societies. In this sense, Godwin was a classical armchair philosopher. However, as often happens in such cases, his radical social criticism was taken up by others who did not share his qualms about political action.

One of those to be influenced by Godwin’s ideas was the poet Shelley, who the previous year had been expelled from Oxford University for producing an atheist pamphlet. Shelley came across Godwin’s works at the age of 18 and was very impressed. He was eventually to marry Godwin’s daughter who, among things, wrote the original Frankenstein story.

So impressed was Shelley by Godwin’s proposals for a new society in which people would be motivated by “disinterestedness” rather than selfishness that he set out to express them in verse, in a long poem called Queen Mab which he published privately in 1813. This is a vision of the past, present and future of mankind. In it Shelley attacks kings, war, commerce and, in particular, priests and religion. In fact the criticism of christianity, in the poem as well as in prose notes attached to it was so hard-hitting that when it was republished in the 1820s the publisher was sent to prison for blasphemy. Queen Mab became the work that publishers used in defiance of the restrictive press laws of the time. Each time they were convicted of blasphemy. But as a result Queen Mab, and thus Godwin’s social ideas, came to be widely read in Chartist and radical circles.

In part V of Queen Mab Shelley attacks commerce which he sees as a product of selfishness in the sense of people wanting to sell their surplus for money rather than give it to others to satisfy their needs:

Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange

Of all that human art or nature yield;

Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,

And natural kindness hasten to supply

From the full fountain of its boundless love,

For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.

Commerce! Beneath whose poison-breathing shade

No solitary virtue dares to spring,

But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand

Scatter their withering curses, and unfold

The doors of premature and violent death,

To pining famine and full-fed disease,

To all that shares the lot of human life,

Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain,

That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind,

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,

The signet of its all-enslaving power

Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:

Before whose image bow the vulgar great,

The vainly rich, the miserable proud,

The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,

And with blind feelings reverence the power

That grinds them to the dust of misery.

But in the temple of their hireling hearts

Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn

All earthly things but virtue.

Later Shelley continues his criticism:

All things are sold: the very light of Heaven

Is venal; earth’s unsparing gifts of love,

The smallest and most despicable of things

That lurk in the abysses of the deep,

All objects of our life, even life itself,

And the poor pittance which the laws allow

Of liberty, the fellowship of man,

Those duties which his heart of human love

Should urge him to perform instinctively,

Are bought and sold as in a public mart

Of undisguising selfishness, that sets

On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign,

Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

Is turned to deadliest agony, old age

Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms,

And youth’s corrupted impulses prepare

A life of horror from the blighting bane

Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs

From unenjoying sensualism, has filled

All human life with hydra-headed woes.

It is quite clear that Shelley was expressing Godwin’s idea that, in a just society, producers would give away their surplus produce free rather than sell it for money, Hence his opening description of commerce as “the venal interchange of all that human art or nature yield; which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, and natural kindness hasten to supply”. When he later describes what will happen when people are motivated by the “consciousness of good” he naturally states that they will have no need of “mediative signs of selfishness”—of money—and that “every transfer of the earth’s natural gifts shall be a commerce of good words and works”.

This commerce of sincerest virtue needs

No mediative signs of selfishness,

No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,

No balancings of prudence, cold and long;

In just and equal measure all is weighed,

One scale contains the sum of human weal,

And one, the good man’s heart.

Part V of Queen Mab ends as follows:

But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt

Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave:

A brighter morn awaits the human day,

When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts

Shall be a commerce of good words and works;

When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,

The fear of infamy, disease and woe,

War with its million horrors, and fierce hell

Shall live but in the memory of Time,

Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,

Look back, and shudder at his younger years.

It is only by completely ignoring these passages that Paul Foot is able to claim in Red Shelley (1980) that “Shelley was not a socialist. Shelley was a leveller”. Shelley, at least at this time, was just as much an advocate of a “spontaneous equality of conditions” that amounted to a voluntary moneyless communism as was Godwin.

In one sense this argument as to whether or not Godwin and Shelley were socialists is anachronistic since the modern idea of socialism, as the solution to the problems of a majority wage-working class within a capitalist industrial society, had not yet come into being. This is partly why in this article we have used the word “communist” rather than “socialist” to describe the moneyless equal society advocated by critics of the essentially agrarian class society that existed before industrial capitalism developed. It was of course the low level of development of the means of production that accounts for the frugal, even Spartan, character which the pre-industrial communists were obliged to give to the egalitarian society they advocated, but it still remains true that people like (in England) More, Winstanley and Godwin and Shelley and (in France) Morelly, Babeuf and Buonarotti were forerunners of the socialist industrial society of abundance that we modern socialists now advocate.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Major Douglas and Unemployment (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing shows up so clearly the failure of Major Douglas and his followers to understand the nature of capitalism as their inability to explain the ups and downs of production and trade. A case in point is their forecast of constantly increasing unemployment.

In its issue of January 25th. 1934. the Douglas journal, New English Weekly, wrote:

As technology develops, there will be a growing mass of unemployed — 20 per cent. 30 per cent. 40 per cent or more — who are deprived of all demand-power, except such as we allow them by way of the dole.

Now let us contrast that prophecy of unemployment increasing for 20 per cent to 30 per cent, 40 per cent and more, with the actual happenings, as shown in the Ministry of Labour returns as to the percentages of insured workers unemployed. 

January, 1933 23 per cent.

January, 1934 18.6 per cent.

January, 1935 17.7 per cent.

January, 1936 16.3 per cent.

June, 1936 13.1 percent.

September. 1936 12.4 per cent.

In due course capitalism will experience another crash and then the Douglasites. silent as to their past failure, will rush into print, repeating their fallacious theories and prophecies.

[From an article "Douglasites Floored by Facts'", Socialist Standard, November 1936.]