An accountant's charter (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January the government published its White Paper Working for Patients which put forward its plan for reforming the National Health Service. The leaks and rumours of the previous year were shown to be substantially correct and the government spent £1m on presenting its controversial proposals in an attempt to allay public fears, gain acceptance for the changes, and lessen the hostility which the majority of doctors and nurses had expressed.

Although the Health Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has claimed that the White Paper puts patients' interests first it reads more like an accountants charter, with its emphasis on management restructuring and financial arrangements. The White Paper aims to provide a greater collaboration between the NHS and private medicine, with tax relief on private medical insurance for the over-60s and extensions of competitive tendering which would put more services in addition to laundering, portering and catering in the hands of private firms. There would also be leasing of hospital facilities for commercial ventures such as shops and advertising.

Cheltenham Health Authority has anticipated this trend and spent £15,000 persuading firms to support hospitals in the area in return for publicity such as wards being named after them. The district general manager, Jim Hammond, has not ruled out the possibility of nurses advertising companies on their uniforms, although existing rules may prevent this from happening (Nursing Times 10 May. 1989).

Opting Out

The Health Secretary will have wide powers of appointment on the new NHS policy board and this will extend right down to the general managers of large hospitals, ensuring that pressure can be applied, if necessary, to carry out the government's policies. The government hopes to see the majority of Britain's acute hospitals opting for self-government, with the establishment of NHS hospital trusts which would allow these hospitals to set their own rates of pay and conditions of service for staff and. within limits, to borrow money.

The government knows that if rates of pay are negotiated separately in each hospital it will be difficult for the trade unions to operate effectively. At the independent hospital of St. John of God, Richmond, for example, nursing staff are faced with pay cuts of up to £3,000 a year. A skill shortage has been forecast for the 1990s, and with hospitals competing against one another this strategy could rebound if pay rates are increased in some areas to attract skilled staff, causing pay rates to spiral upwards instead of being reduced.

It is significant that the larger acute hospitals should be encouraged to opt for self-governing status as these have the greatest potential for making a profit in private medical schemes. Long-stay hospitals for the elderly, which have a relatively poor profit potential, have not been included at this stage.

Hospital trusts, formed by the hospitals opting for self-government, will remain within the NHS but will be easier to privatise in the future, in much the same way as shares were introduced into the Trustees Savings Bank. Fifty such hospitals have been chosen to receive computers to monitor patient care systems, making it easier to calculate the costs of individual patient care.

Although Kenneth Clarke has stated that the self-governing hospitals will need consultants' co-operation to be involved in management, and that the applications seeking self-governing status are voluntary, he has pledged tough action against consultants who oppose his “reforms". It would seem that the only freedom of choice on offer is the freedom to accept the government's changes.

Two-tier System

Some of the changes in Working for Patients are unobjectionable. It is proposed that appointment times be reliable and that out-patient clinics have quiet and pleasant waiting areas. But these improvements are due to the fact that the present chaotic conditions in most out-patient clinics cause 3.5 million working days to be lost by people waiting for appointments in NHS hospitals and, therefore, it makes good economic sense to improve the system. Patients are to be given rapid notification of the results of diagnostic tests, clear information and sensitive explanations of what is happening to them. These changes are long overdue improvements in current practice, but there is nothing in the White Paper to solve the staffing shortage in pathology laboratories which causes delays, or the long hours and stressful conditions endured by junior doctors which can sometimes lead to a lack of sensitivity in dealing with patients. These reforms may be no more than platitudes to make the White Paper more acceptable to the general public.

The development of a range of optional extras such as single rooms, television and a choice of meals for those who wish to pay for them will create a two-tier system with basic amenities being provided for the poor and better services being provided for the wealthy. In addition, the improvements to hospital facilities will make future privatisation a more attractive proposition for investors.

All of this is in keeping with capitalism's aim of keeping state provision to a minimum because a centrally-funded health service represents a cost against production. The wealthy are able to avoid the hardship caused by the lack of an adequate health service by purchasing private care. The burden of ill-health and caring for dependent relatives falls upon the working class, who are unable to accumulate enough from their wages to afford expensive hospital treatment.

The provision of 100 new consultants' posts in acute specialities will help to reduce waiting lists for hospital treatment but has been added to the White Paper as an afterthought and is clearly designed to "buy off” the junior doctors, who will have a slightly better chance of gaining promotion. Doctors have become increasingly militant over the hours that they work. The average weekly hours worked by junior doctors in the UK is 83 compared with 72 hours in Austria and West Germany and 48 hours in Portugal and Italy, according to the British Medical Association. It is estimated that 140 deaths a year are related to doctor fatigue in surgery alone (Which? Way to Health, April, 1988.)

The exploitation of junior doctors has been increased as a result of the 1987 circular issued by the Department of Health which required health authorities to cut the amount of money spent on locum cover to replace doctors who were sick or on holiday. It is claimed that the new posts will reduce the hours worked by junior doctors but consultants tend to create work for their staff not lessen it.

But it is not just junior doctors who are threatened: some managers have been told that their future is at stake if they do not express an interest in self-government, claims Jimmy Johnson, a consultant surgeon at Halton hospital, Cheshire [The Independent, 16 June, 1989).

Internal Market

The White Paper will raise the proportion of pay which general practitioners earn from the number of patients that they have on their lists from 46 per cent to at least 60 per cent. This will force doctors to have larger practices if they do not wish to see their incomes decline. It will also make them less willing to take elderly patients who require a lot of attention, preferring larger numbers of younger patients who are less likely to be ill. There will also be reserve powers to allow the Department of Health to control the number of doctors in contract with the NHS, which could force some doctors to take up private practice or become unemployed.

From April 1991 large general practices of at least 11,000 patients will be able to hold their own budgets with which they can acquire hospital treatment for their patients. They will be able to improve their practices with the money they save on treatments, a temptation to avoid referring patients for more expensive forms of medical or surgical intervention.

Prescription costs will be reduced by the imposition of financial penalties for doctors who over-prescribe. While it may be beneficial to reduce the amount of drugs used, there is a risk that this heavy-handed approach will encourage doctors to prescribe cheaper alternatives rather than the best medicines available.

The most controversial change is the setting up of an internal market which will allow health authorities to buy care from each other. It will permit hospitals with expertise in particular fields, such as hip replacements or heart transplants, to sell their services to both NHS and private hospitals to earn revenue. Despite the government’s protestations to the contrary, this is a backdoor method of introducing privatisation. There is also the risk that hospitals will concentrate on the services that can earn them money to the detriment of less profitable branches of medicine like the care of the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped and the elderly. High-cost treatments, except for private patients able to pay large fees, will become unviable and this will accelerate the creation of a two-tier system of care.

As expected, the White Paper contributes nothing towards preventative medicine, but this is only to be expected as the state functions to protect and facilitate capitalism, which makes profits by selling goods and services to those who can afford them; there is no profit if they are not needed in the first place. The deprivation of the wage and salary working class which is inherent in capitalism is the main cause of ill-health. While capitalism lasts health care, whether state-funded or private, reformed or otherwise, cannot cure society’s ills.

Carl Pinel

Caught in the Act: Cutting Up (1989)

The Caught in the Act Column from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cutting Up
A left-winger's medical nightmare might be to look up, drowsing into anaesthesia on the operating table, to recognise that the gowned and masked figure wielding the scalpel above them was none other than Dr David Owen.

Nightmares of the political kind have been induced in many of those treated by Owen since the days when, surprisingly elevated to the job of Foreign Secretary, he was spoken of by adoring hacks as the Anthony Eden of the 1970s. After that, who knew? With his good looks he could have been Labour's next Prime Minister. But it all went wrong when the voters decided they didn't want another Labour Prime Minister. Owen decided that this mortal blow to his ambition was the fault of all those left-wingers and their delusion that a Labour government is supposed to be something other than an imitation of a Tory one. Since then Owen has been in and out of the operating theatre, amputating one political member after another until now only three lonely MPs represent his drive to change the face of British politics forever.

How you regard this must depend on your overall attitude to politics. If you are aware that all the parties which want to reform some aspects of the present social system, rather than do away with it, must put winning votes before sticking to principles you will have the basis of an understanding of what motivates David Owen and the other reformists. You will also be aware that what they offer as new and radical policies are really a re-arrangement and a dressing-up of old ones which have been tried and have failed.

For example, Owen's latest ruse is to tout around the prospect of an alliance. It does not especially matter which party or parties join the alliance—Labour and the SLD would be most welcome—as long as the end result is seen as a presentable opposition to the Thatcher government. According to Owen, when he made his outdoor speech to the SDP delegates after the bomb scare at their Conference (which was widely praised as a brilliant example of extempore oratory but which—if we may say so—was not a patch on the style and delivery always practised by Socialist Party speakers) the worst possible fate confronting us is another spell of Thatcher at Number Ten. So we must all unite to kick her out.

Stitching Up
The first thing to be said about this is that it is by no means a new policy. Formal political alliances are not common in Britain as in some other countries but the informal kind often operate. For example, Denis Healey when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer always worked closely and amicably with his Tory shadow Geoffrey Howe, even if he did once say that being attacked by Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep. The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929 were kept in office through Liberal support and although these experiences caused what was left of the Labour Party in 1931 to swear that never again would they form an alliance with the Liberals that was just what the Callaghan government did. Between 1931 and 1935 Britain was governed by a ‘National” government of Labour. Tory and Liberal politicians and in 1940 there was the wartime coalition under Churchill, who had swapped sides often enough to be an alliance all by himself. All these alliances were justified on the grounds that the priority was to defeat or frustrate a common enemy; the Lib/Lab pacts were aimed against the Tories, the “National" government was supposed to organise the chaos of British capitalism during the slump of the 1930s. and the 1940-45 Coalition was formed when the enormity of the effort needed to defeat Germany became not just apparent but inescapable.

The second thing to be said about Owen's desperate fishing for friends is that it is out of step with what he once offered as a political principle. One of the more emphatic reasons given for the founding of the SDP was the urgency of getting away from “Two Party" politics, in which power bounced to and fro between Labour and the Tories. A third political force, it was argued, was essential to counteract the extremism (for that was how some of the Labour and Tory policies for running British capitalism were described by the SDP) of the two big parties. Of course, with the SLD and the SDP we now have four political forces but let that pass. The point is that if the SDP succeed in forming an anti-Thatcher alliance we shall be back with the “Two Party" politics which the Gang of Four once said was so damaging and frustrating.

Waking Up
But could the other parties' reluctance to rush into Owen's embrace have anything to do with his infamous personality? When he was Foreign Secretary he was not at all bashful in letting everyone know how lucky we were to have so brilliant a man in charge of British capitalism's diplomacy. Not only enemies are uneasy about his vanity over that handsome face. His former ally David Steel has given an insider's story in his book Against Goliath (geddit?) that Owen was not only arrogant, overbearing and difficult but also inconsistent: “What Owenites think on Monday may be different from what they think on Thursday".

This would be more convincing were it not that when Steel and Owen were in partnership during the last General Election Steel was doing his best to persuade us to vote for this arrogant and inconsistent man and was always being photographed or televised in a state of exultant celebration with him. As things have turned out, Steel has retired from the SLD leadership in good standing, an inconvenient shadow behind Ashdown, while Owen and his party are in tatters. So which of these two Davids wields the scalpel more artfully? Which can cover his inconsistency more cleverly—which the smoother operator? And when will the patient come out of the anaesthetic and wake up to what is being done to them?

Ivan

Unions advance again (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since coming to power in 1979 the Conservative government has passed some of the most class-biased laws in the history of capitalism. Five acts of Parliament have been passed with a view to weakening working class organisation in trade unions. One of them, the 1982 Employment Act, made unions liable to damages and fines and unions have already had to pay in excess of £1.5 million in court actions alone, with more than 100 separate legal actions having been brought against them (Labour Research, May 1989).

Such damages arise out of “unlawful" action but, as recent events have shown, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold lawful strikes. Several strikes have been termed illegal after court action or been subject to legal proceedings, even after ballots had shown large majorities in favour of strike action. These class laws have also made most secondary action illegal, limited picketing to the place of work, outlawed industrial action in support of a closed shop and prevented unions from disciplining members who refuse to abide by majority strike votes.

Part of the Conservatives' appeal in 1979 was their pledge to control the unions which had become unpopular owing mostly to the way the events of the so-called winter of discontent had been portrayed in the media and which the Tories claimed had acquired the power to bring down governments and hold the country to ransom. However, if the unions were tamed by the policies of the Conservatives in the early 1980s, the question must be asked as to why is union “power" re- emerging when the same government still committed to curbing that power remains in office?

Importance of Economic Conditions
While it would be wrong to argue that the legal framework has no effect on the effectiveness of trade unions, it needs to be pointed out that the impact this can have is constrained by economic conditions. The anti-union legislation proposed by the Labour government in 1969 (In Place of Strife) and that of the Heath Conservative administration in the early 1970s (the Industrial Relations Act) both failed because the unions were in a fairly strong position as unemployment was at a low level. In the period 1969-79 the proportion of the working population organised in trade unions rose by over 10 per cent and actual membership increased from around 10.5 million to over 13 million.

There are other periods which provide evidence that the strength of trade unionism is very much influenced by the economic conditions of capitalism. In the period 1910-20 unemployment never rose above 5 per cent and prices were rising faster than wages, another factor likely to spur union organisation. Union membership increased from just over 2.5 million to well over 8 million. In the period that followed, unions suffered drastic setbacks. Between 1920-22 unemployment rose from 2 to over 14 per cent and both prices and wages slumped dramatically. Union membership declined by almost 3 million. In the period 1920-33, as a whole one of severe economic depression, union membership declined from 8,348,000 to 4,392,000.

When the Thatcher administration first came to power in 1979 unemployment had already started to rise and continued to climb even more steeply in the early 1980s while at the same time many of those in employment saw a rise in their living standards. Under these conditions union membership slumped by just over 2 million between 1979-84. It was this that was the major reason for the defeats and setbacks the unions faced in this period.

In the last year or so unemployment has begun to fall and there are even labour shortages in some industries. Under these changed circumstances workers are more ready to take industrial action. The level of industrial discontent has not yet reached the scale it did in 1979 but the causes are the same—economic. In 1979 the cause was not a militancy that arose out of thin air but the continuation (by a Labour government) of a highly unpopular incomes policy at a time of rising prices. The recent disputes are the result of various groups of workers, many in the public sector, being offered rises below the rate of inflation so that living standards are once again threatened. Also involved are attempts by employers to dismantle national bargaining structures which at least offer all the workers concerned a minimum standard of wages and conditions. Dismantle this and weaker areas can be picked off and solidarity is threatened.

Not a Spent Force
There are still those who argue that trade unions are in the process of a long-term decline. This theory is supported by reference to the defeats in recent years for groups of workers such as printers, miners and dockers who were previously thought of as the backbone of the union movement. However, such defeats resulted rather from economic and technological changes in the industries concerned. The miners suffered from a falling demand for coal whilst the strength of the printers and dockers had been undermined by technological changes which resulted in a vast reduction in the numbers employed, so weakening their economic position.

There is evidence outside the recent wave of disputes to suggest that the trade union movement is far from being a spent force. The 1987 Annual report of ACAS showed that in that year 90 per cent of all ballots went in favour of the union position with high turnouts and votes of 75 per cent quite common (Labour Research, May 1989). In the year 1987-88 40 per cent of TUC-affiliated unions reported a rise in membership. More recently, returns from USDAW and COHSE have confirmed this trend. Public opinion is also much more favourable to trade unions. A Gallup poll in September 1988 showed 69 per cent of people sampled thought unions were a good thing and a Mori poll found that 88 per cent of union members regarded unions as essential for protecting their interests (Labour Research, June 1989).

The idea that ballots would result in a vast reduction in strikes has been proved wrong. It is economic conditions that determine the level of strike activity and its effectiveness. The government, however, still believes it can prevent strikes by legal enactments and is now planning fresh legislation. New proposals on ballots for strike action are outlined in a draft code of practice. If these proposals become law unions would face further obstacles in carrying out lawful industrial action. Firstly, in the run-up to the ballot they would have to provide an account of the employer's side of the dispute. Secondly, to call a strike they would have to obtain what is termed as a substantial majority in a turnout of at least 70 per cent. Thirdly, organising a legal ballot would be an extremely lengthy and cumbersome process as so many conditions are laid down. Since the outbreak of the recent industrial unrest further restraints have been announced. These include making unions responsible for their members who take part in unofficial strikes and the outlawing of all secondary action. The complete outlawing of strikes in what are termed essential services has also been under consideration.

Such new anti-union laws, however, will not suppress industrial conflict any more than those already on the statute book have done. Conflict is inherent in the system as it is in the interests of those who own and control the means of producing and distributing goods and services to extract as much surplus from workers as possible so as to increase their profits, whilst workers need to gain as high a price for the sale of their labour power as is possible since it is their only means of existence. So, as long as capitalism exists there will be conflict and the need for trade unions.

What Strikes Reveal
Strikes reveal several things about the society we live in. While employers and politicians engage in rhetoric about democracy, their only concern is in running an authoritarian industrial system. Proof of this fact was provided in the dispute on the docks. In a ballot the workers voted by a majority of 3:1 for a strike. The port employers’ reaction to this was not to accept the vote and enter into negotiations at a national level. Instead they used the law courts to get the strike declared illegal. The union eventually got that decision reversed but by that time the ballot was no longer valid and the Docks Labour Scheme at the centre of the dispute had been repealed by Parliament. Another vote was taken which resulted in the same majority for an indefinite strike. With the highest court having declared that the strike was legal, the employers turned instead to economic coercion. Port by port new contracts involving a deterioration of employment conditions were issued and workers were given an ultimatum to accept them or be sacked with the loss of their right to fairly substantial redundancy payments. The threat worked and the strike crumbled. Capitalism has nothing to do with democracy. Employers will use unelected judges, economic coercion and even the violent apparatus of the state where necessary.

Secondly, if strikes do cause disruption, which they do, this indicates who the useful members of society are. As we have seen in recent months when those who actually do the real work on the railways stop work, the whole rail system grinds to a halt. The same happened on the London underground and London buses. The working class—all those who have to sell their ability to work, manual or mental—produce all the goods, provide all the services and administer society from top to bottom.

What would have happened if Sir Robert Reid and the British Rail Board had gone on strike? The answer is quite simply that it would not have affected a single train. If Thatcher, Kinnock, all their followers in Parliament, the whole of the capitalist class and all the royal family went on strike, they would have to go round the whole country telling everybody they had stopped "work” for us to be any the wiser. These people make no useful contribution to society. The employers and their representatives need the working class as without us the whole system would grind to a halt. But we don't need them.

The message socialists have is quite simple. The producers and providers of services form an overwhelming majority of the world's population, so why do we put up with employers and politicians controlling our lives and telling us what we can and cannot have? Why do we accept the fact that the world is owned and controlled by a tiny minority of private and state capitalists?

Workers all over the world have considerable power if we unite and it is about time we organised not just in a defensive struggle over wages and conditions, necessary though this is while capitalism exists, but to take control of the Earth's resources. That end is worth organising and struggling for and we should not settle for anything less.

Ray Carr

50 Years Ago: The Communists and the small nations (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Popular Front was to include "progressives" of all parties, that is, all those who agreed with the Communist Party and their methods of "standing up to the aggressors". They roundly abused Chamberlain for even negotiating with the untouchable Hitler . . .

And now it has all ended, suddenly and without warning. Even the wily political variety artists at Communist headquarters have been caught napping. The Russian Government changed its mind and deserted the Allied group of capitalist Powers in favour of Germany. The Nazi and Soviet gentlemen have arranged a truce in the war of loathing and abuse which they hurled at each other for years, and ingenuous Communists have now had the pleasure of gazing in rapture at the Press pictures of Stalin and Ribbentrop smiling sweetly into each others eyes. Whereas the old policy expressed itself in demands for self-determination for small nations. e g.. Czecho-Slovakia. Spam. Austria, and so on. the new one has to approve the agreement to carve up Poland and to square the "self-determination" propaganda with Russia's efforts to acquire dominance over small nations like Latvia. Estonia and Finland, an effort which she pursued with the familiar Nazi technique of placing an army on the borders of those countries. Military force, the last word in capitalist argument, will decide the issue when Russia seeks to "protect" little nations, not conferences which will discuss democratically the "rights" of "self-determination"

[From the Socialist Standard, November 1939]

Between the Lines: Viewing the policy reviewers (1989)

The Between the Lines column from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Viewing the policy reviewers

Everyone at the Labour Party conference this year was on valium. Or some other, sense-dulling tranquillizer. Or maybe they were just faking it for the TV cameras. The reasoning is, presumably, that a party of people who look half asleep—like a conference hall full of stunned circus lions—will not look like a threat to anything, least of all the capitalist system. Watching the annual Labour conference ritual on the box, it was clear that the Tory reserve team is not only anxious to show the world that it has abandoned any principles it once claimed to hold, but that it has de-odourised the once lively atmosphere of the Labour conference so that all voter-unfriendly pongs of dissent are hidden. If you are going to try to beat the Tories at their own game, then it's best to run your conference just like the Tories do.

For most of the conference sessions it looked as if TV viewers had stumbled upon live—or maybe just semi-live—coverage of a small-time bankers' convention. The conference hall was dominated by a huge white platform, resembling a third-world watch-tower, on which sat the biggest bankers in the Broad Church; periodically one of them would pop up from behind the white blocks to defend odd bits of the infamous Policy Review. Old policies abandoned, back into the leadership tomb descended the men in grey suits. Roy Hattersley, who tended to look pretty tranquillized long before it became mandatory, clapped Neil Kinnock's speech in the sort of way that David Owen used to clap David Steel.

Kinnock droned on for sixty-seven minutes of undiluted reformist garbage. Like last year, he was still eager to get his hands on the market system and let it ravage him. Hattersley looked eager to go home to a hot water bottle, and Jim Callaghan smiled the smile of a bad father watching his son fall into his old ways. Interviewed after Kinnock's verbal equivalent of running the London Marathon wearing flippers. Lord Jim told the BBC nonentity who is doing Robin Day's old job that he was satisfied to see the Labour Party return to common sense after these past few years of silly talk about banning nuclear weapons and all that. One suspected that Jim was not the only satisfied Lord to have observed Kinnocks performance.

I have always tried to watch at least some of the Labour Party's conference on the TV. It used to have a bit of vitality about it, if nothing else. That was before Labour's new publicity boss, Peter Mandelson, who realises that what Wapping thinks matters a lot more than what the workers need to say, decided to clean up the environment by weeding out any signs of open discussion before the cameras. I shall not bother to watch them next year. If I want stage-managed displays of bad taste there is always the Miss World show this month; the audience there is automatically tranquillized by the wit and wisdom of the contestants: "I'm Miss Zaire and I hope to see the world and open my own dance studio". Has she ever thought of taking up speech-writing for Neil Kinnock if victory eludes her?

Labour v Labour

Sorry to dwell on the Labour Party, but Question Time (BBC1, 5 October. 10.45pm) did have two of them on the panel. One was John Smith, a fully reconstructed, Mandelson-moulded, slimline, camera-friendly Kinnockite, and the other was Arthur Scargill who still believes that the jury is out on the question of whether Labour intends to abolish capitalism. He said that he would like to see Labour take on the real problem which is the need to get rid of the capitalist system. Of course, what he means is that he wants to see more state capitalism (nationalisation). Also on the panel was Baroness Seear, who is the Deputy Leader of the SLD in the House of Lords. (Wow! That must have been a job she wanted since she was a little girl.) She accused Smith of not being a socialist. Scargill was an old-fashioned socialist, she said, but Smith was no kind of socialist at all. Scargill found this all very amusing—just as well for him there was no Socialist Party speaker on the panel to blow his credentials. Smith insisted that he was a socialist. Seear was not satisfied; if Smith was a socialist, she said, let him define what socialism means. Smith looked awkward. Lucky for him that Peter Sissons was there to move the discussion on to something more "relevant" Good grief, define socialism! Whatever next? They might even insist that Seear of the "Democrats" define what a democrat is and how it is such beings have "leaders" sitting in the unelected House of Lords. In fact, every time a Labour faker appears on the TV they should be asked to define what socialism is. The silence would be deafening.

Praise the buck

Meanwhile, over in the good old U.S. of A., where they have no Labour Party to pretend to be different from the Tories (there the parties have long ago abandoned such time-wasting pretences), other tricksters perpetuate other forms of fraud. When your reviewer (TV reviewer, not policy reviewer, you understand) was in the USA one of the big televangelists was a creep labelled Jim Bakker. He ran a TV show which told workers to love Jesus and send in money (plastic dosh readily accepted, God Bless You) to his Praise the Lord Ministry. Bakker was caught using the money for his own purposes: mansions, fast cars and an air-conditioned dog kennel for his pet. At the time of writing he was awaiting sentence which could be as much as 120 years in prison. Let's hope they leave a Bible in his cell. Now that his TV trickery is off the air there are plenty more fast-buck TV preachers telling the gullible God Squad to part with their dollars. Cable TV is expanding in Britain soon. Now, if the Pope and the Archbishop of Cant can get their act together, these guys could make a killing on their own Christmas show.

Steve Coleman

Freud and Marxism (2) (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first part of this article appeared in our September issue

For Freud, there was an inevitable and necessary conflict between the individual and society. Inevitable because the id instincts could never be fulfilled; the id was insatiable and social reality set limits on what could be provided. Necessary because the development of civilization required the repression and sublimation of the instincts to provide the energy needed for the production of culture.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Freud was at most a liberal reformer. He never questioned the socio-economic foundations of capitalism, nor criticised its specific ideologies. His criticisms were limited to the level of sexuality, in favour of a loosening of restraints on sexual expression.

Freud did not hold out much hope for any radical social change. Indeed, he wrote off most radical hopes as a search for “consolation”:

  “For at bottom that is what they are all demanding—the wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the most virtuous believers.” (Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930).

Psychoanalysis, therefore, does not seem a likely candidate for a psychology compatible with Marxian social and political theory. Nevertheless, there have been a number of attempts over the last sixty years to adapt Freud’s views so that they can form the foundation for a Marxian psychology.

Freudo-Marxism

The first concerted attempt at an integration of Marx and Freud occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time this was considered a bold and unconventional step. The Bolshevik regime had outlawed psychoanalysis, preferring the physiological reductionism of Ivan Pavlov as the orthodoxy. Although Trotsky had been sympathetic to psychoanalysis, his voice no longer counted after 1923. Instead, Lenin’s prudish accusation that Freud was poking about in sexual matters was to be the orthodox Bolshevik view.

Within the psychoanalytic movement the integration of Freud and Marx was suggested by a few, but with little success. The most vociferous proponent was Wilhem Reich. However, by the mid 1930s, he had been expelled from the psychoanalytic movement as well as from the Communist Party. It was not until the resurgence of radical politics in the 1960s that Reich’s views on sexual politics were re-examined.

It was around the intellectuals based at the recently formed Institute for Social Research in Germany (more commonly known as the Frankfurt School) that the main Freudo-Marxist debate took place. The attempt to introduce psychoanalysis into this school’s own particular brand of Marxism was part of its desire to free itself of what it saw as the straightjacket of orthodox Marxism. The director of the Institute, Max Horkheimer, had had an interest in Freud from the 1920s. What attracted him to Freud was a desire to find a psychology different from the instrumental utilitarianism that he felt dominated Marxism.

However, the main work of forging links between Marx and Freud was carried out by two other members of the Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. It was through Fromm, himself a psychoanalyst, that the Institute first attempted to reconcile Marx and Freud, in a series of articles that he wrote for their journal, beginning in 1932. But even before joining the Institute Fromm had written The Development of the Dogma of Christ in 1931, his first major statement of the problem.

It was only in the 1940s and 1950s that Marcuse acquired a serious interest in Freud, unveiling his views in 1955 with the publication of Eros and Civilization. Along with Reich’s works, this formed the core of material that fuelled the debates in the 1960s and 1970s before the introduction of feminist theory into the Freud-Marx arena.

Although these three intellectuals shared a common interest in integrating Marx and Freud, their views on how this should be achieved were very different. The movement could not agree on even the basic requirements for integration. Fromm attacked Reich; Fromm attacked Marcuse; Marcuse attacked Fromm and Reich. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the debate attracted only a few adherents of either Freud or Marx.

In Western Europe the end of the First World War sparked off a number of working class uprisings that seemed to some to herald the imminent overthrow of capitalism. But, with varying degrees of difficulty, these uprisings were put down. In the wake of these failures there followed the rise of Stalinism and of Fascism, both finding a significant level of support from the working class. To many Marxists such events were incomprehensible. The means of production were sufficiently developed to provide the objective conditions for socialism, yet the subjective side, working class consciousness, seemed to be moving in the opposite direction with socialist ideas becoming less and less attractive.

This divergence of objective and subjective was seen as suggesting a major deficiency in Marxist theory: an inadequate understanding of the individual and of how irrational ideology could be accepted, when it was clearly not in the interest of the working class. Socialist consciousness did not follow automatically with the growth of the means of production. Somehow working class consciousness could be manipulated to ensure that workers willingly accepted capitalist ideology and submission to authoritarian control. In the search for an answer to this most crucial of questions, Freud seemed appropriate with his emphasis on the role of the irrational and unconscious in human affairs, suggesting that capitalist ideology penetrated deep into the unconscious and repressed instincts that might otherwise challenge the social order.

Reich and Sexual Revolution

Reich was aware of the central role of ideology, or false consciousness, in social oppression. The task of psychoanalysis was to account for the mechanisms whereby the economic base of society could be internalized to comprise a set of unconscious beliefs that would provide an obstacle to revolutionary consciousness. For Reich, the desire to change the social conditions of capitalism is a natural response of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis, therefore, was seen as a process of undoing the repression of patriarchal capitalism and releasing the individual to act in accordance with his or her individual desires.

Reich based his views on Freud’s notion of the libido and its repression, leading to neurosis. Poverty and bad housing gave rise to sexual repression and the damming up of sexual energy that would otherwise be released. Sexuality, for Reich, was expressed as heterosexual orgasm based on the genitals. Sexual repression did not exist in primitive cultures, argued Reich, and only emerged with class interests, being one of the main ways the ruling class maintained its domination. Within the personality this repression is achieved by the build up of a character armour (the ego), as a result of the conflict between the sexual instincts of the id and the requirements of a repressive society.

The character structure is formed in childhood and embodies the ideology of an earlier era. It is this force of tradition that accounts for the lack of correspondence between objective and subjective factors. Reich saw the family as the main vehicle for the reproduction of sexual repression. This led to a respect for authority, which was functional for the child’s future role of worker and servile citizen. In the family, authority was in the father and was cased on the subordination of women. It was the ruthless sexual repression to which the “lower middle class” was exposed that, said Reich, created the authoritarian fixation on which Nazism fed.

Any political revolution, he concluded, must also be a sexual revolution, otherwise all the old authoritarian ideology embedded in the character armour would return. Thus, Reichian therapy aimed at breaking through this armour and allowing the instinctual sexual energies to be fully released and satisfied.

Such a viewpoint is one of the views that uses a concept of human nature as a justification for social change. Reich’s main and radical modification of Freud was in the historicisation of repression, of its restriction to class society. Socialist society, concluded Reich, would have no repression; the free expression of sexual energy would result in enjoyment, comradeship and mutuality.

Marcuse and Surplus Repression

It was on the issue of repression that Herbert Marcuse attacked Reich; for, like Freud, Marcuse held that repression of the libido was a necessary condition for civilisation. Bui Marcuse, too, introduced a historical dimension to repression. This he did by the distinction between basic and surplus repression.

Basic repression was necessary for the continuation of the human race in civilization, whereas surplus repression was necessary only for social domination. The necessity of repression varies with the level of technology and productiveness. Given a constant amount of repression, more of it will be surplus in a society of plenty than in one of scarcity.

Marcuse also introduced a historical element into the reality principle as the law of the ego. He argued that in different historical periods it took different forms. Under capitalism it took the form of the performance principle, ensuring that the libido was repressed during alienated labour. The only period during which the libido was released was during the workers’ brief recreation time.

Since the performance principle was based on the need to overcome material scarcity, the technological advance it resulted in reduced the problem of scarcity and therefore weakened the basis for its continued existence. With the growth in the possibility of pleasure as scarcity became less and less of a problem, more of the repression became surplus. More and more effort was put into warding off the possibility of rebellion by increasing the extent to which the productive capacities were turned against the individual; there was thus an increase in state repression and the manipulation of consciousness.

For Marcuse, the spiral of surplus repression is broken by the power of imagination and fantasy within the unconscious and by the pursuit of sex for pleasure rather than procreation. Revolutionary change would occur not with the development of socialist consciousness in the working class, but through the development of art and play. It was these aspects of Marcuse that were irresistible to the pleasure-seeking radicals of the 1960s.

Erich Fromm’s Social Psychology

For Erich Fromm, the main task was to use psychoanalysis to provide the link between ideological superstructure and socio-economic base. Marx, he argued, had the beginnings of a psychology, seeing humans as having certain basic drives (hunger, love, and so on) which seek gratification. But other psychological insights were needed. Marxists such as Kautsky and Bernstein had proposed inborn moral instincts that would account for the demand for socialism. Fromm viewed such notions as idealistic whereas psychoanalysis was a materialist, historical and social science.

Freudian drive theory was compatible with Marxism. Also, Fromm added, both Marx and Freud agreed in regarding consciousness not as the ultimate motor of history, but as the reflection of other, hidden forces. To Marx, these forces were human’s instincts, needs and capacities which had become hidden because of the alienation in capitalist society.

Each society, Fromm argued, had its own libidinal structure, a combination of basic human drives and of social factors. The task of analytical social psychology was to understand the effects of the socio-economic substructure on the basic psychic drives, and especially sexuality due to its ability of being displaced, sublimated and satisfied in fantasies. Childhood experiences in particular were important as the family was the agent of society.

A valid social psychology, said Fromm, must recognise that when the socio-economic base of society changed so did the social function of the libido. Thus, for Fromm the Oedipus complex was not a universal aspect of human development but was restricted to patriarchal societies. In general, the instinctual apparatus was given but highly modifiable; the role of primary formative factors went to the economic conditions.

Feminism and Freud

The resurgence of the women’s liberation movement and the corresponding development of feminist theory since the late 1960s produced a second movement for the development of Freudo-Marxism.

At first the varieties of feminist thought found much to criticise in Freud. For example, Freud’s account of female psychology rests heavily on the concept of “penis envy” (the awareness of lack in comparison with the male), with the implication that the woman wants sex not for pleasure but for the restitution of her lost penis via male penetration. For Freud, only the male is really a full human being; the woman is a crippled, castrated man.

However, a turning point in the evaluation of Freud by feminism occurred in 1974 with the publication of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Consciousness-raising techniques, which had been a prominent feature of the feminist movement, had failed to free women of their patriarchal feminine ideology and desires. This suggested that these were more deeply rooted in the mind and were not capable of being rejected solely at the conscious level. Psychoanalysis seemed to provide the concepts which would enable feminists to understand how patriarchal ideology functioned by being internalized into the unconscious layers of the personality. The earlier explanation of social conditioning into sexual roles was rejected as inadequate for concentrating on surface appearances and being unable to deal with the depth of penetration of feminine ideology Psychoanalysis was seen as offering an explanation of the formation of sexual identity and gender formation. But the appropriation of Freud had to be a critical one; his biological reductionism and sexism had to be seen not as the essence of his views but merely the result of his own unconscious acceptance of patriarchal ideology.

Mitchell’s work encouraged feminists to pursue this dialogue with Freud and post-Freudian theory. For Freud, the resolution of the Oedipal conflict with the father was the most significant period in development. But in recent years feminists have focussed on the pre-Oedipal period and on the role of the relationship between infant and mother. It is during this period, according to Object Relations Theory, that the differences between masculine and feminine personality characteristics are formed.

From this perspective, change from “patriarchal society” is seen as coming about through men and women sharing child care to provide both sons and daughters with the conditions for their relational capacities to be fully developed. But it is difficult to see how such changes in child care can lead to changes in the basis of society. As a political programme this can only lead to failure. If social change is to come then socio-economic foundations themselves must be attacked. Ideological struggle and change in individual relations are important, but political power is the only way to change basic social relations.

While feminists are justified in analysing the role of the family in the construction of the individual, other influences are also important. There are other, more significant sites where individuality is forged—those connected with capital and the state. The personal may be political, but the political is not personal. It is in the failure to reveal the interconnectedness between the personal, ideological, political and economic that Freudo-feminism is at its weakest. What is needed is not just a castrating of Freud, but a more radical critique.

Ed Blewitt

Editorial: How Shall We Vote? (1989)

Editorial from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the parties, except the Tories, discussed electoral reform at their autumn Conferences. Labour rejected it, but the minor parties—the Liberals, the SDP and the Greens—came out in favour as the only way of getting more of their members into the House of Commons. They also floated the idea of a pact with Labour to oust Thatcher in return for the introduction of proportional representation. Electoral arithmetic is on the side of the anti-Tory parties since at the last election, as indeed in the two previous ones, Thatcher and the Tories were returned even though four out of every seven voters rejected them. So is there a need for electoral reform?

We might as well give our answer straightaway: No, there isn’t. A majority seeking to replace capitalism by socialism only requires one thing of an electoral system under capitalism—that it should allow a majority opinion to reflect itself as a majority of seats in parliament. We are not interested in whether the system ensures a strong and stable government of capitalism nor in whether it ensures a fair representation of capitalist political parties. As the existing electoral system in Britain does allow a majority viewpoint to be translated into a majority of seats, we see no point in diverting our energies from our task of working towards the emergence of a socialist majority towards working for electoral reform within capitalism.

However, since socialism will be a fully democratic society we do have an interest in what is and what is not a fair electoral system since such a system will be an essential part of the democratic decision-making and administrative structure of socialist society.

From the point of view of democratic theory, an electoral system should ensure that the persons elected really are representative. The case against the first-past-the-post system that applies in Britain is that it does not necessarily do this when there are more than two candidates. This is because it allows a candidate to be elected with less than 50 per cent of the votes (that is to say, against the will of a majority of the voters), as were 45 per cent of MPs, of all parties, at the last general election.

There are various ways of avoiding this. Organising a run-off between the top two candidates in a second ballot (as in France) or, what amounts to the same thing, allowing voters to place the candidates in order of preference (as in Australia) and, if no candidate gets 50 per cent, to eliminate the bottom candidates and redistribute their votes amongst the others until one of them does reach this figure. This system, known as the alternative vote, is widely used in trade unions for the election of their officials and is favoured for parliamentary elections by some in Labour Party and even by some Tories. A variant of it, known as the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is applied in Ireland, both North (except for Westminster MPs) and South. Under it voters again place the candidates in order of preference but in a multi-member rather than a single-member constituency. A candidate is not elected unless, and until, after successive redistributions of the votes of the bottom candidates, they obtain a certain quota of votes. This is the system favoured by the Liberals, the SDP and some in the Labour Party. It is frequently described as a system of proportional representation even by its partisans but in fact it is not. It is essentially a system, like the second ballot and the Australian alternative vote, for ensuring that those elected attain a minimum level of representativity. It is only incidentally that, in a context of competing political parties, it ensures the representation of minority parties enjoying a certain minimum, but not necessarily low, level of support amongst voters.

As all these systems are compatible with democratic theory, no doubt they will continue into socialist society for the various delegate bodies that will form part of its democratic decision-making structure. Proportional representation, properly so-called, is a different matter as it presupposes the existence of competing political parties and was in fact devised precisely for such parties. It requires multi-member constituencies (which can be the whole country, as in Holland and Israel) and party lists rather than individual candidates. A great variety of PR systems exist in the various countries which practise it but these are all based on the principle that the seats should be allocated to the party lists in more or less strict proportion to the number of votes obtained.

The essence of democracy is popular participation not competing parties. In Socialism elections will not be about deciding which particular party is to come to “power” and form the government. Politics in socialism will not be about coercive power and its exercise and so won’t really be politics at all in its present-day sense of the “art and practice of government” or “the conduct of state affairs”. Being a classless society of free and equal men and women, socialism will not have a coercive state machine nor a government to control it. The conduct of public affairs in socialism will be about people participating in the running of their lives in a non-antagonistic context of co-operation to further the common good.

Socialist democracy will be a participatory democracy rather than the choice every four or five years, with or without proportional representation, between rival gangs of professional politicians that passes for democracy today.

Sting in the Tail: The Birthday Girl (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Birthday Party

   

"If you've got it, flaunt it, baby” seems to be th motto of Mr. Malcolm Forbes, the American financial magazine magnate. According to the Daily Telegraph (21 August) his 70th. birthday party in Tangiers was quite an affair.

  The party, with 800 guests flown in in his private charter of Concorde and Jumbo jets, and corks popped from 250 magnums of champagne had cost 2 million dollars and was greeted as a business bonanza. . . .  Mr. Forbes was In no mood to apologise for his party. "You couldn't call It modest but how can you apologise for extravagance?" he asked. If you have money Just be grateful and have fun."

The obscenity of a millionaire spending 2 million dollars on a birthday party should be noted by all workers when they hear the apologists for capitalism prattling on about people becoming millionaires through hard work and thrift

It's an Ill Wind

The news that British Petroleum is to shed 1700 jobs in Scotland was met with howls of disapproval from opposition politicians, Trade Union leaders and clergymen.

Universal condemnation in fact. Well, not quite, because the news was welcomed by the City of London. Disgraceful? Not really, It’s just that the City is above all concerned about profit and BP’s smaller wages bill means more profit for investors.

So It's daft to blame BP or the City for putting their own interests first, but what's even dafter is the working class refusing to look after its interests and get rid of capitalism.

Tomorrow's Enemies

The thaw in the cold war means that the CIA is shifting its attention from possible military conflict with Russia to new priorities.

CIA director, William Webster, warned that:

  Our political and military allies are also our economic competitors. The national security implications of a competitor's ability to create, capture or control markets of the future are very significant. Intelligence on economic developments . . .  has never been more important.

The Guardian 21 September.

So while US politicians are pledging undying friendship to Japan, West Germany, Britain, etc., the CIA will be stepping up Its spying activities on them and any other countries which threaten US capitalism's economic Interests.

Catch 'em Young

At an early age every human being has to be taught the awful truth about how capitalism operates. This was recently illustrated in the correspondence page of The Guardian.

Betty Robbins of The Vicarage In Newbury wrote:

   In the course of a Sunday school lesson recently I asked my group of nine-year olds if they knew what a prophet was.
  To my astonishment, since this is generally unknown territory, their little faces glowed with understanding - "money, money, money" they told me delightedly.

In view of the recent revelations about certain American evangelic prophets being caught with their hands in the cash register, it seems that "a little child shall lead them" has a certain validity.

Pity The Poor Capitalists

Pity the poor capitalists. One of their biggest headaches is, should they spread the risk by Involving their enterprises in several different Industries (become "conglomerates") or should they concentrate on one industry only?

The trouble with conglomerates is that they may be taken over by some asset stripper like Lord Hanson who buy them up, sells off the various parts and pockets the profit

But capitalists who put all their eggs in one basket will be in big trouble when the industry they have invested in hits a bad patch as have, for example, package holidays, house building and DIY.

So what are the poor capitalists to do? They have an army of economists, bankers and city editors offering them advice but this is so contradictory that they might just as well toss a coin.

Our solution is for the workers to save the capitalists from any such headaches by relieving them of their ownership and converting it into common property.

A Glimpse of Truth

Professor Robert Petersen of the University of Texas claims that only about a third of the American population can give a remotely accurate definition of the word "capitalism". He says:

  Our study shows that when people are asked to define the word, they are as likely to give a definition of socialism, communism, bureaucracy or virtually any other conceivable philosophy as they are to give a correct definition.

Hmm, mildly interesting, but just about what we would have expected although we would like to know what the profs "correct" definition would be. After all we've heard some funny ones from academics before. However, he also reveals that:

  Most of the 1200 people who responded to the survey associated capitalism with its negative excesses and with . . . the idea that large companies are indifferent to individuals.

Now that is interesting because it shows that even the constant barrage of propaganda glorifying capitalism couldn't hide from all those people at least part of the true nature of the beast.

Not So Greene

Graham Greene, the novelist, now describes himself as a "Catholic agnostic" in the Catholic weekly, The Tablet, 23 September.

He doesn't believe in an afterlife, Heaven and Hell, the Devil or even almighty God himself, and only takes communion to please a friendly priest.

He supports contraception, rejects Papal Infallibility and says his only mystical experience was listening to a two hour sermon which seemed to last only half an hour. He’s lucky, for us it was always the other way round.

These heresies will not please 85 year old Mr. Greene's church, but socialists can be pleased he has finally junked so much mythology and shown that it is never too late to learn.

Why water is a commodity (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It's outrageous", Sara Parkin, the Green Party spokeswoman was quoted as saying, "that water should become a capitalist commodity".

Commodity production is a hall-mark of capitalism and if Sara Parkin could be persuaded to dip into Volume I of Marx's Capital the first words to meet her eye would be:

  The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities; our investigation therefore must begin with the analysis of a commodity.

And what does this investigation show? That what makes a good (a use value) into a commodity (an exchange value) is its production for sale, with a view to profit. However, how can it be that water through our taps costs us £s a week whereas falling in a storm it is free? The answer lies in the analysis of a commodity.

This brings us back to capitalist society, where water is a commodity possessing value (exchange value). All commodities must have two kinds of value: use value and exchange value. To be a commodity a good must have use value, otherwise it wouldn't sell and so have no exchange value. Water down our necks in a storm is useless but we need water to do the washing or make a cup of tea.

So what is it that converts water from a useless nuisance into a valuable commodity? There is no shortage of water in the world. It is only unequally distributed in nature. The water is available but has to be brought to where it is needed, as to meet the demands of modern conurbations. As was well said by a World Health Organisation expert, "there is no shortage of water, only pipes", and therein lies our answer.

Reservoirs, tanks, pumps, filtration plants and drains can only be produced by human labour, and it is only human labour which, in capitalist society, imparts exchange value. If value depended upon usefulness, water would be the second most expensive item (after air) on Earth. Rain irrigating crops is indispensable but contains no human labour and so is valueless (free), like the air we breathe. Installations to store, purify and supply water necessitate human labour and water thereby becomes a value-bearing commodity depending on the amount of socially necessary labour required.

Therefore, Sara Parkin's idea that water could be somehow exempted from capitalist commodity production is a non-starter. Like so much of the Green Party outlook, it is the same old story of capitalism without commodity production, which Pierre Proudhon was advocating 140 years ago.

Under capitalism every useful thing containing human labour produced as a non-use value to its owner becomes a commodity, with a price. This is so whether the means for producing it are nationalised or privatised. Trying to except the water supply (or electricity or gas or transport) from commodity production under capitalism is like trying to run the Boat Race outside the river.

It is capitalism (commodity production) not privatisation which is the cause of water being a commodity. Only its complete abolition will end the situation which so outrages Sara Parkin.

Horatio.

Letters to the Editors: Destructive Savagery (1989)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Destructive Savagery

Dear Comrades,

I daresay quite a few readers were puzzled by the figure of 15 million dead in the Second World War in the article The Economic Roots in the September Socialist Standard.

This figure was based on one of the estimates for the military casualties on all sides. An estimate of the total number killed by the war, in one way or another, would be at least four times as much; some go as high as 200 million.

I am sorry if I misled anyone into thinking that we underestimate capitalism’s destructive savagery.

Ivan.

Ideas and Struggle

Dear Comrades,

I found an old copy of your magazine Socialist Standard at a friend's place. I was very interested to read it and there were several thought-provoking articles.

Have you got anything on Trotskyism? Several of my friends have very nearly joined such parties as the SWP. Militant and the RCP. A few years ago, I was on the periphery of the RCP, but their ruthless party building (and total rejection of real working class issues) turned me off . . . fortunately. I find that the Trotskyists have a very patronising attitude to the working class that I presume results from Lenin's theory that, on their own, workers can only reach a trade union consciousness and thus, hey presto, the need for the guiding light of a revolutionary party—it does not seem to have done that much guiding so far! And what do you think of anarchism? I have occasionally read anarchist papers—some of them are nothing more than liberal rubbish (such as Freedom), but others do have more sense (e.g. Direct Action) in that they emphasise the class rather than the culture!

I must say that I do have my differences with the SPGB analysis, particularly over how socialism will be achieved. I completely agree with you that a majority of the working class needs to be fighting for socialism, but. as Marx said, "ideas change in struggle". To me this means that at any time there is a possibility of real change because in mass struggle the ideas of the working class do change. For example, if the miners strike had spread to other sectors (as it had to in order to avoid defeat), then we might have seen a possible revolution. I think that it is very Leninist to underestimate the abilities and potential of the working class. You say "the democratic conquest of political power”— what about the real power in this society, the economic structure? Thatcher is merely a puppet of the bosses' interests. To talk of revolution in such mild terms makes me think of naivety such as what would you do if there was a military uprising against the new socialist government?

I also think that you emphasise educational activities far too much. I would never deny the importance of propaganda, but getting back to that original quote from Marx: “ideas change in struggle” . . . not through passive book reading. So I would argue that socialists should be fighting back against this rotten system in their own lives in the here and now (for example, agitating for a strike in their workplace, leafletting their community about the Poll Tax and helping to set up Anti-Poll Tax Unions) and supporting all other working class people in their struggles against class society. I think that it is only through such a movement as this that society will be changed—but I am very interested to hear what you have to say

Norman Davis

London, N16

REPLY
1. Yes, as Marx said, ideas change in struggle. But this does not mean to say that ideas change suddenly. In fact, the process of overcoming the overwhelming conditioning of capitalism is itself a long hard struggle. We do not underestimate the potential of the working class, as the Leninists do, when we say that the majority of workers are at present imbued with support for capitalism. There is a great potential for workers to make the transition to understand and want socialism instead, but we would be kidding ourselves and others if we accepted, for example, that if the miners' strike had spread "then we might have seen a possible revolution". The key precondition for a socialist revolution is that a majority should be socialists, fully conscious of their class position and their interests as workers in ending capitalism. If the miners' strike had benefited from greater solidarity amongst other workers, it would have improved the miners' position, and would have been a sign that class consciousness was growing. But that simple condition, of a majority of genuine socialists, still stands as an indispensable precondition for the revolutionary change we seek, and we continue to work with great determination to build up such a majority.

2. Yes, Thatcher is a puppet of the bosses' interests. But political power within capitalism cannot be overestimated—the bosses spend millions through their parties securing and organising political power. In Britain today, the state forces including the military are, as a matter of concrete fact, under the control of a parliamentary government which is given electoral support by the very workers whose interests it opposes. Many on the Left find it hard to face up to the harsh fact that capitalism, in all of its forms, does depend on the acquiescence and/or apathy of a majority of workers themselves. With the growth of a socialist majority, determined to end capitalism, the notion of a military uprising to prevent this is nonsensical. How would such a military force even exist or survive against the solid and hostile opposition of a socialist majority throughout society? The greater degree of class consciousness which that would entail on the part of the majority would make it more than likely that such a military sect would be starved of food, of power and electricity supplies, of uniforms, of weapons and of credibility.

3. You say that "passive book reading” and educational work are not enough on their own, but must be combined with active campaigning, e.g. against the poll tax, or for strikes at work, as, going back once again to Marx, "ideas change in struggle”. It is false to make such a rigid division between passive reading and active action. Reading and learning is itself an activity. Furthermore, the substance and subject matter of what socialists write and read about is, of course, the subject matter of the class struggle itself. And, on the other hand, a lot of so-called radical actions are actually nothing more than feeble attempts to reform and modify capitalism, to dress up oppression in a new guise. But, as far as trade union and strike action are concerned, or democratic efforts by workers to combine and improve (or just maintain) their wages and conditions of work, the Socialist Party fully supports such action. As active members of a whole range of trade unions, many of our members have worked very long and hard at such active struggle. But as a political party standing unequivocally for socialist revolution our role, which we carry out to the best of our abilities, is to put to our fellow workers the most urgent choice facing the entire human race now in 1989: are we. the deprived majority, going to allow the world's resources to remain harmfully in the hands of about 1-5 per cent of the population, or are we at last going to act on our true interests. and organise politically, consciously and democratically for the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of world socialism?

Editors.

The nationalist curriculum (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember school history lessons? Long streams of dates and names. Dates of battles; names of great leaders; “our” army against them, the enemy; stories of Popes and Princes and other collections of pimps and ponces. History tests consisted of learning all of this seemingly meaningless stuff. Glorious Revolution 1688; the two Jacobite rebellions. 1715 and 1745; Great Reform Act 1832; Indian Mutiny—when the hell was the Indian Mutiny? Refer to the textbook and commit the date to memory. As long as you know that it happened and when it happened, let's not get ourselves bogged down in why it happened. For most of us, school history did not concern itself much with the question Why—the question which is at the root of all historical understanding.

History is a vital aspect of knowledge for those who want to comprehend and change the world. If we know where we have been (not just ourselves, but countless generations before us), then we can determine where we want to go. History is the key to the future. Once we become conscious of the fact that humans have not always lived as we live now, that history is a long story of contending classes oppressing and fighting oppression, and that our class is the class that will end all oppression, we can have confidence to play an intelligent part in the making of our own history. History is pointless if it is simply the study of dead men. When Thomas Carlyle asserted that "the History of the World is but the biography of great men” he could not have been more wrong. Great men do not make history; what happens in society is not the product of Bad King Johns and Good Queen Elizabeths, but is a reflection of the interaction of material forces of which individuals are only ever a part, not independent controllers. The only useful history is that which, however indirectly, can help us become conscious of what we can do to change the history of which we are now a part.

As Orwell warned, those who control the past can control the present. In Nineteen Eighty Four he depicted a fearful society in which the state manipulates the collective memory. If an event in the past is no longer regarded as useful to the authorities all reference to it is destroyed. A people who cannot remember where they used to be are in no position to challenge where they are now. Historically controlled, the present is something that workers come to accept as an unquestionable normality. Orwell was not merely inventing nightmares. In Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia the deletion from the record of history of disruptive facts was a carefully organised campaign.

Now that the crimes of the Stalinist historians are beginning to be rectified by modern East European historians, who are trying to recover at least some of the truth of the state-distorted past, here in Britain the government has embarked on a campaign to control the teaching of history which would have brought a sparkle to Stalin’s eye. The Tories, with their new national curriculum by which they want the state to determine what children in schools shall be taught, are seeking to reform the history syllabus. In recent years history teaching has improved. There have tended to be less dates, less big names, less propaganda on behalf of national pride and our masters' morals, the traditional emphases of history in schools.

In its documents relating to history in the new national curriculum, the state has called for a return to greater emphasis upon the teaching of hard facts. They have also called for much more concentration on the importance of Britain in history. One of the main sins of the more recent, enlightened history teachers has been to stress the significance of history as a global investigation. We are citizens of the world and this makes it of limited value to learn only, or mainly, about the story of one little island where we happen to have been born. The flag-waving nationalists who control education are not happy about this. A return to more nationally-centred history teaching is being required from now on. Or else.

Telling Lies Last Century

Like most of their authoritarian attempts to pull the workers into line by curtailing freedom, there is nothing new about the ideas of modern Tories. What they are now calling for was the educational norm in schools during the last century. In her lucid and comprehensive study of school history textbooks between 1800 and 1914 History For Their Masters (New York. 1970). Valerie Chancellor cites numerous illustrations of how history teaching was used as a means of pro-capitalist indoctrination. History textbooks were used in those times (as they are still, but less blatantly) to demonstrate three ideas: that England was the greatest nation on earth; that all other countries were inferior or racially unsound; that working-class movements and revolutionary movements are by definition harmful and to be avoided.

Textbook nationalism in the last century knew no bounds. Writing of the importance of using history for patriotic purposes, one reviewer wrote that ‘‘it is no light matter to animate the rising youth of England with a spirit of dignified pride in the great traditions of a glorious past and a noble future which is ours”. Explaining the rise of the British Empire, one textbook writer explains that:

We have seen England and Great Britain growing larger and larger, stronger and stronger, more and more free, more and more intelligent, until our Empire has grown to be the greatest, most powerful and most respected on the face of the globe . . .

It is odd to think that some of the children forced to read such nonsense would not have even had a pair of boots to wear as they did so. As with the Empire, so with the history of the British constitution, children were taught to celebrate this undemocratic system:

This is the best of all forms of government and it continues in England to this day. By this form of government, the good of all ranks is consulted, and, if either the king or the lords or the people attempt to exceed the limits of the power assigned to them, the others are ready to see that all things are properly balanced.

How handy it is for the people—the majority—to be kept in check by lords and kings, an unelected minority! In war. the victory of the British—it is mainly the victories that were talked about, then as now—was regarded as an act of god and a reflection of the wickedness of any national group that dared to take on our rulers. For example, one textbook, writing about Henry V's gang winning at Agin- court. pointed out that

The French people had at that period of their history arrived at a dreadful pitch of wickedness and nothing . . . appears more clear than that Henry was an especial instrument of Providence to humiliate and chastise them.

If the British were always right, foreigners were usually in the wrong, often due to no fault of their own—it was the high price paid for being mere foreigners. Writing rather petulantly about the Chinese resistence against British opium trading in the 1840s, one textbook writer noted that "the Chinese are a very cold kind of people and do not like strangers to go among them". Other groups of people did not escape from such crude racist stereotyping. One history book, co-written by Kipling, explains that freed West Indian slaves were

lazy, vicious and incapable of serious improvement or of work except under compulsion. In such a climate a few bananas will sustain the life of a negro quite sufficiently; why should he work to get more than this? He is quite happy and quite useless and spends any extra wages which he may earn upon finery.

Another textbook describes how under the “able guidance" of a strong British Viceroy in India "the natives soon learned to recognise the justice and sound sense of their conquerors and gradually settled down to peaceful work in the rice-fields". As for the Irish, one textbook described them of “incapable of ruling themselves and impatient of rule by others”. In a quite obscene historical comment on the Irish famine, published in a textbook of 1848. children were told that

The hand of charity was willingly stretched forth in England for their relief: government and the nation united in aiding that unhappy people; and but for the timely aid afforded, the whole country would have been one vast scene of death and destruction. Would that the pen of the historian could record that this aid was followed by a nation's gratitude! But this was not so.

Textbook descriptions of working-class movements were carefully put in such a way as to depict the majority as a mindless mob. The Chartists, who were simply asking for the right to vote, were described in one textbook as "mechanics, labourers, and others of the lower classes who were led by demagogues to desire a People's Charter"’. Another textbook, written by one Lady Calcott, stated that the Chartists

thought this would be a good time to try and frighten the Queen and government into granting their foolish and dangerous wishes . . . But the people of England loved the Queen too well, and were too well satisfied with the government of their country to let the Chartists do any mischief.

History writers for children tended to take the same approach to all workers' efforts to change their social position. In Kipling's textbook Peterloo is dismissed in one sentence; “At one riot in Manchester in 1819 the soldiers had to be called and several people were shot”. Apart from the factual error—the workers murdered at Peterloo were not shot—this description turns history on its head; the truth is that the middle-class militia rioted against the workers, fearing that the right to free speech might lead on to more dangerous changes in society. The Peasants' Revolt (against the poll tax, let the present government note) of 1381 was dismissed as another dangerous move by people who should play no part in history: "When the common people have got arms in their hands, and feel themselves masters, they are apt to run into the most dangerous excesses”.

As one textbook writer noted, in the course of a description of the English revolution (by the capitalists against the aristocracy) in the 17th century.

It is ever so with revolutions. A few violent men take the lead; their voice and their activity seem to multiply their numbers; the great body of the people either indolent or pusillanimous are led in triumph at the chariot wheels of paltry faction.

It is interesting to note that Mrs Thatcher wishes to see a return to Victorian values. We can only assume, from the authoritarian nature of her government's new efforts towards statist centralisation in history teaching, that it is her aim to see school history returning to the absurdities and crass indoctrination of that age.

In Stalin’s Footsteps

As we have shown, Thatcher is trying to go down the path previously travelled by Stalin. In the name of uniting the Russian Empire, the most atrocious distortions of political and cultural history were imposed on the republics of the USSR. Also, in order to defend his dictatorship over the Communist Party, Stalin had to destroy all recollection in the public consciousness of earlier Bolshevik traditions. Bukharin is just now being rehabilitated by Russian historians. It will be interesting to see whether they start to discuss his ABC of Communism, in which Bukharin and Preobrazhensky argued that communism entailed the abolition of money. Trotsky (the butcher of Krondstadt. who deserves no kindly memories from socialists) is still a virtual non-person in Russian history books.

In Zimbabwe, which calls itself a "socialist state", textbook writers are now doing their best to distort what socialism really means. This is very useful for the Mugabe government: if children learn from history that “socialism" has always been the kind of state-capitalist scenario presided over by Mugabe, then they will be less likely to resist against such rule. Consider this description of Stalin’s rule in Russia, as published in a contemporary Zimbabwean history book for schoolchildren called People Making History:

Stalin called for greater sacrifices from the workers. He also introduced a system of higher pay for skilled workers. In spite of hardships, the USSR was able to develop its own heavy industries. Slowly the government also started building other factories to produce consumer goods. By the end of the second Five-Year Plan the Soviet Union's industrial production was the third highest in the world. Life slowly began to improve for the workers . . . Stalin's economic revolution was a great achievement.

That several million workers and peasants were killed for the sake of this development of Russian state capitalism is passed over in one sentence.

Whose History?

The past does not belong to the state. It is not the property of a class. In a quite awful pamphlet put out by the quite awful Centre for Policy Studies History in Peril—May Parents Preserve It (1987), Alan Beattie proposes the effective privatisation of history. In his view history should be put into the marketplace and that which buyers want to learn about should be promoted. Presumably, unprofitable history, like that concerning the lives and struggles of the poor and the weak, would ended up like disused coalmines—rich with resources, but untouched.

To some extent history is already privatised: if you want to publish a book about a theme which is not considered by the publishing elite to be "historically relevant” (relevance is a concept usually determined by book sales managers), then the book will not see publication or major distribution. Privatised history is bad. but nationalised history is no better. The state is making sure that it has a tight control over what subjects scholars are given to research in British universities. These controls are inevitably political, often quite transparently so. University history lecturers are having to watch their backs these days. In a period of harsh job-cutting it only takes a few rumours that you are putting unacceptable interpretations to students to make employment difficult. Students are also under threat: they need to fight hard for the better jobs, and that requires them to conform to what their paymasters want them to think. If it is true that ten or twenty years ago universities, polytechnics and sixth-form colleges were places where young workers could take time to open their minds to new ideas, these days they do so at their economic peril, and tend to feel unable to do so at all. Thee tyranny of the market strikes again.

As workers we can have no greater weapon in our struggle against the bosses than knowledge. Understanding history is to us as powerful as all the filthy weapons that our class enemies can muster to defend their minority power. Once we see that history is about people—people who are just like us—making changes to their material environment, we can make the most conscious change of all: that of bringing society under social control. That is the greatest and noblest task which history places before us. and no amount of distortion or persecution by our class enemies will stop socialists from pursuing that task, inspired by the history of class-conscious workers who have struggled before we were born.

Steve Coleman