Eastern Europe (1991)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

We asked a reader in New Zealand to review our new pamphlet on the collapse of the state-capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”. The opening words of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte could appropriately be applied to the abortive Soviet coup and its aftermath in relationship to the first coup d’etat by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

History seems to repeat itself as Hegel and Marx observed but both knew that there’s no going back. The momentous events in the Soviet Union are the final death knell for the myth of "communism" or “socialism" in the eastern bloc—the twentieth century’s greatest lie— and for those who promoted and perpetuated that lie.

The facts are that socialism has never existed in the eastern bloc—what does or did exist is a system of bureaucratic state capitalism. It is this system which is undergoing an economic and social convulsion as it inevitably intermeshes itself with the world market.

There is a school of thought prevalent in the West which maintains that the bureaucratic class which has run the Soviet Union, China and the others has been “authoritarian”, “repressive” even “corrupt" and "dishonest” and yet has believed unreservedly in these bureaucratic claims to have created socialism. Needless to say, such an ideology has been actively encouraged because it has uniquely suited the political interests of the ruling élites in both the private capitalist west and the state capitalist east.

The state ideology of the state capitalist world, so-called “Marxism-Leninism”, is principally based on Lenin's distortion of Marx, springing from the historically backward conditions Lenin and the Bolsheviks found themselves in at the collapse of Tsarist Russia. Ideologically Lenin's break with Marx centres on Lenin's contention that the socialist revolution could take place in a backward country and be led by a conspiratorial vanguard. It is clear from hindsight that this elitism was derived more from the French bourgeois revolution and the indigenous Russian Narodnik tradition than from the ideas of Marx or Engels.

Another less obvious but more insidious Leninist distortion of Marx was Lenin's invention of a distinction between "socialism" and “communism” whereas Marx, Engels and the other 19th century Social Democrats used the terms synonymously along with “social democracy” to describe the classless, moneyless, post-capitalist world society. Lenin used “socialism" to describe the state economic monopoly of the Soviet regime (and the political monopoly of the Bolshevik Party), while “communism" as the ultimate classless moneyless society was relegated to an ever-receding future—as Soviet theoreticians continued to do almost up to the present day.

Inside the Soviet Union until his death in 1923 the doctrine of Leninism was courageously opposed by the Bolsheviks' former Russian Social Democrat comrade Julius Martov from a rigorous classical Marxian position. In continental Europe this classical Marxian tradition was eventually overwhelmed by the new orthodoxy of “Marxism-Leninism” and by the great repression of fascism. But it has never been entirely extinguished and has persisted as an underground stream in Western thought, periodically surfacing in the writings of Martov, Rühle, Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Bordiga, Reich and Rubel.

In the vast English-speaking world this classical Marxian tradition has been kept alive by the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its like-thinking companion parties. In Australia and New Zealand classical Marxism was nurtured, not in the ivory towers and studies of the professional philosophers and intellectuals but rather in the ship’s forecastles and in the donkey-rooms of waterside workers.

The Socialist Party's state capitalist critique of the Soviet Union and China has been at times extremely unpopular (even physically dangerous) but it has been consistently held virtually from 1918. Time has proven it to be correct.

The publication of a booklet analysing events in the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern bloc is therefore appropriate and timely. Anyone wanting to work out what is going on in the former USSR, what is behind glasnost and perestroika, and to see the problems of the collapsing Soviet economy analysed from a Marxian standpoint should study this booklet.

The work’s academic value would be increased in my view with a reference section of source material and a list of authors at the back of the book. It would also have been useful to see a chapter devoted to the political differences and forces represented by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. And I would have liked to have seen a chapter on Julius Martov whose insistence that Russia would eventually have to go through a bourgeois-democratic revolution is finally being vindicated.

The last word then to Martov: “More than ever convinced that the genuine state power of the toilers must be founded on the principle of democracy, Martov moved a resolution which called for the reactivation of the Soviet constitution and its further democratisation, which he spelled out in some detail. When Sosnovsky interjected, ‘This, comrades. was last year’s declaration’. as if to suggest that Martov’s demands were already out of date, Martov replied, amidst general uproar: ‘Last year’s and for all time!’ (quoted in Martov by Israel Getzler, Melbourne. 1976)

Michael Lee

Reformism (1991)

Book Review from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Left Unraveled. Social Democracy and the New Left Challenge in Britain and West Germany. By Thomas A. Koelble. Duke University Press, 1991.

This is a study by an American academic of what happened to the “social democrats” in the British Labour Party and the German SPD in the 1980's. Koelble describes how in Britain some of them eventually left to form the SDP while in Germany they retained control of the party machine at the price of a few policy concessions.

But what is ’’social democracy"? According to Koelble it is the view which

  accepts capitalism as a desirable economic system, aims to gradually improve the economic position of workers by providing welfare policies (health, education, social security, old age pensions, unemployment benefits), and by so doing alleviating the inequalities and unevenesses of unbridled capitalism.

On this definition, the British SDP may have disappeared without trace, but Social Democracy is alive and well and in complete control of the Labour Party. And, if it comes to power again, it will fail to deliver the promised goods as miserably as it did the last time in the 1970s—which led to the reaction Koelble analyses in this book.

Adam Buick

Sting in the Tail: Same Old Story (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same Old Story

Ever since Eastern Europe ditched state capitalism those western "think-tanks", such as the Adam Smith Institute, have rushed to advise the politicians and the emerging capitalist class of each country on how to set up free-market economies.

But the emerging trade unions in these countries need advice too, and officials of one of Estonia's unions have been in Scotland to learn from the TGWU how to negotiate with the employers.

This is very necessary because Estonia's workers never had any negotiating rights with the old "communist" bosses, and according to the union's chairman there is still no legislation in Estonia for collective bargaining:

  Problems were solved often as a form of gentleman's agreement with the managers of the various Industries.

Glasgow Herald (8 October) 

Of course these "problems" are capitalism's inevitable disputes over wages and conditions, and once Estonia's employers get themselves organised and western businesses move in then the workers will learn that although a "gentleman's agreement" is very nice their own unity and resolve is much more reliable.


A Bargain is Struck

David Murray is boss of Murray International Metals and chairman of Glasgow Rangers Football Club.

As well as owning homes in Edinburgh and Jersey and a 143 acre "weekend" estate in the Borders, he has bought a mansion in an exclusive part of Auckland, New Zealand, for "a bargain £1.5 million" (Scottish Sunday Mail 8 September)

Alas, Murray's plan to use the place as a conference centre has been rejected because of opposition from his well-heeled neighbours. Murray's response to this Is "Some people don't seem to want job creation".

This view is typical of all capitalists. Their profit-making schemes, no matter how anti-social, are always justified on the grounds that some workers get a job.

And Murray's view is shared by most workers. When they hear of plans to build a military base, nuclear power station or airport on their doorstep, instead of condemning these as health hazards or eyesores which will lessen their quality of life, they welcome them because "they bring jobs".

So capitalists and most workers are agreed that the former should get the wealth and the latter the chance to produce it.


There is a Santa

Remember when we were kids how we would tell Santa what we wanted him to bring us for Xmas? And remember how seldom Santa delivered?

Kids' stuff, yes, but millions of “grown-ups" still have the childish belief that another Santa in the form of a political party will, once elected, bring them security, well-paid jobs and better housing with good health and education thrown in.

Fellow workers, It should be obvious by now that it is not in the power of political parties to gift you these things. Belief in Santa Is for kids — or even for our masters since you generously make them a present of everything they have.


Pop Shop (1)

Many young workers imagine that pop music is about having fun. They can identify with a pop idol who seems to represent the opposite of their dull work-a-day life.

Alas, it is just another illusion of capitalism. In the Education Guardian (22 October) Robert Leedham quotes one expert on how a pop idol is manufactured.

  "I'd go for a solo girl singer", says Adele Nazedar of Rhythm King records. "They're the easiest to promote. All the pop comics like to have girls on the cover because they sell more copies. You've got to understand that pop is a commodity; people want a decent return on their Investment".

Ashes to Ashes

California's Forest Lawn Cemetery is a very famous bone yard indeed. A million tourists a year tramp round the grounds to rubber neck at the graves of film stars like Clark Gable and Bette Davis. It was the subject of Evelyn Waugh's novel "The Loved One." It is very famous but It seems it may also be very crooked.

A former employee's charges about the business procedures of the cemetery are being investigated by state officials. These charges include — human remains routinely discarded in garbage bags and unburned remains flushed down drains. That there well may be substance to these charges is given credence with the recent discovery of one corpse's ashes being found in a battered cardboard box on a Los Angeles freeway.

In order to make a profit capitalist concerns are always cutting corners and cheapening production, so is it really so surprising that Forest Lawn Cemetery is cutting the cost of destruction to make a few more bucks?


It’s Not Decent

"Decency" is what any politician must have today and John Major has got it.

The Guardian recently told us:

  Mr Major's greatest asset is his visible decency . . . he is a genuine human being. 

Why? Because Major intends "restoring the public services" when that awful Thatcher woman had "ran them into the ground".

Possibly The Guardian has forgotten how during the Thatcher years Major's "decency" always allowed him to support legislation which heaped misery on many people — the "social fund", for example.

Then there's Major's 100% backing for the mass murder committed by the American and British armed forces in Iraq. Where was "decency" there?

Yes, John Mayor is a softly-spoken man who loves cricket and who may well restore public services (especially if there are votes in doing It), but he is also a man who totally supports capitalism with all its inhuman consequences and is happy to preside over it. That's not our idea of "decency". Is it yours?


Forgive Them, Mother

In these days of civil war in Yugoslavia, world hunger, homelessness and all those other unimportant issues it is heartening to see that Tory MPs can identify the burning issues of the day.

In the House of Commons, Ian Taylor (Esher) protested about the use of certain phrases by Church of England parsons.

  He added: "These prayers refer to God as 'Our Mother and Father'. Curates who are themselves confused about bi-sexuallty should not try to confuse the congregations as to whether Jesus was a hermaphrodite."

The Guardian (22 October) 

He urged that offending vicars should be fined £1 each time they used such a phrase. His colleague Michael Allan (Selby) thinks this isn't going far enough. He wants to bring criminal charges!

 "The liturgy of the Church of England is approved by parliament. It would be unlawful to make any unauthorised liturgical change of gender.
  In this respect, I think the restraint of the law Is even more potent than pay restraint"

Pop Shop (2)

In a recent case in the High Court David Levine, who is suing the Dally Mirror for syndication money due him for a story he provided about Boy George and alleged heroin use, claimed that the pop star "threatened to kill him"

Mr Levine's lawyer claimed that his client had given the story to the Dally Mirror because "he had seen what heroin had done to some of his friends and hoped Boy George, whom he knew, would be pulled up sharply if his alleged heroin abuse was exposed In the popular press."

This selfless social behaviour would be a little easier to credit if It had not been revealed that he had Initially asked for £40,000 but claimed he agreed on £15,00 plus £6,000 syndication fees.

50 Years Ago: Have we seen the last Millionaire? (1991)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a broadcast talk on September 7th. 1941. Professor T. Jones spoke of the high rate of taxation now imposed on large incomes and prophesied that “we are almost in sight of the last millionaire". The professor is being unduly optimistic and perhaps he has not very clear ideas of the way in which millionaires are made. The big fish devour the little ones and each other, and always there is fresh accumulation from the exploitation of the workers. Even if under war conditions large incomes are heavily reduced, war, and the post-war ups and downs of industry lay the foundations for new fortunes and for the increase of old ones. While during the war the prices of shares on the Stock Exchange have generally fallen this has been accompanied by a big rise in the wealth of landowners (. . .).

As soon as investors believe that the end of the war is in sight with a defeat of Germany the prices of shares on the Stock Exchange will leap ahead and new millionaires will be in the process of creation. Already it only needs reports of moderate Russian successes to send up prices. Marshal Budenny's succcsful withdrawal of his armies from Kiev was sufficient to send prices “sharply ahead". (Daily Express, September 24th.) 

[From “Notes By The Way”, Socialist Standard. November 1941.]

Socialist Definitions (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

CAPITALISM is the sort of society you live in now. It is a system of wage-slavery in which a small minority owns most of the world and (sometimes) employ the rest of us. In capitalism, most things are sold for a price — production is for profit rather than for use. The world is divided by frontiers into warring factions known as "nations". Symptoms of capitalism include war, hunger, boom-slump cycles, strikes, widespread loneliness and despair. Countries like Russia or China, whose governments claim to be "socialist" are, of course, capitalist like their western rivals.

COMMUNES (kibbutzim, and similar communities) are attempts by a few to get some shelter from the capitalist rat race. Whilst they may benefit their members, from the standpoint of abolishing capitalism they are a waste of time. Socialism in one country is not possible, let alone socialism in one farm. Socialism could, however, be described as a world-wide commune.

HUMAN NATURE is a most frequent objection to the idea of a socialist society. It is supposed that human beings have some fixed patterns of social behaviour which are especially conducive to capitalism. In fact, what is normally termed "human nature" is the result of social conditioning. Private property, leadership, aggressiveness and monogamy are no more congenial to human beings than alternative forms. A knowledge of different societies, historically and geographically, is sufficient to knock the human nature myth on the head.

LABOUR PARTY is often called "socialist" (less now than in the past, it's true) but in fact never has been. The Labour Party was formed to improve the conditions of workers by reforms within capitalism. It sought gradually to change capitalism; instead capitalism has gradually changed it. The Labour Party is now no more than an alternative team for the management of British capitalism.

PATRIOTISM is irrational from the point of view of humanity as a whole and runs counter to the interests of the working people. It is therefore opposed by socialists, who do not offer "policies for Britain" or for any other of the artificial political entities into which the world is now divided but demand a world community without frontiers.

POPULATION EXPLOSION is certainly a reality, but it is a myth that it is responsible for hunger, pollution or overcrowded living. The world can easily support many times its present population in comfort and plenty of room. Hysterical Malthusianism diverts attention from the real problem: production is geared to the market, rather than to the satisfaction of human needs.

REFORMS are basically attempts to solve problems within capitalism rather than by doing away with it. Capitalism never runs out of reforms. Socialists are not opposed to all reforms, but we don't think it is our job to propose them or campaign for them. Reforms are usually of negligible value to the working class, and often create new problems which require further reforms. Fundamental social problems are always untouched because these are rooted in capitalism.

RELIGION is opposed by all rational people, but especially by socialists who see it as compensation for social misery, and a diversion from the urgent problems of the real world. Happily, religion is steadily ebbing away in the most advanced areas of capitalism.

REVOLUTION is the process of changing from one social system to another. It is not necessarily a matter of barricades and bloodbaths, and not at all in the case of the socialist revolution, which requires mainly mass understanding and democratic organisation. It is part of the job of socialists to hasten this revolution by spreading socialist understanding.

SOCIALISM is the next stage in human social evolution — unless capitalism destroys us first by means of nuclear/chemical/ biological war, or ecological collapse. Socialism will mean the abolition of private property, money and the wages system; the introduction of voluntary work and free access to necessary goods and services. Socialism is a world-wide society of voluntary co-operation. It will put an end to wars, poverty and unemployment, enabling our species to concentrate on the less serious problems of everyday living.

*    *    *    *

If you have any other questions about socialism you are welcome to write to us at:

The Socialist Party 

52 Clapham High Street 

London 

SW4 7UN 

We will be delighted to hear from you and can assure you of a prompt reply.

*    *    *    *

Redundancy strikes again (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Where are you going, daddy?" asks my daughter.

“Daddy’s off to be exploited. sweetheart". I reply.

I make my au revoirs and set off on the daily return to wage slavery. Return to wage slavery? When were the working class ever away from it?

The day begins badly. As do most days in a society where work is an economic necessity and not a function carried out for the benefit of society as a whole. When things are bad they can only get worse. Trade union officials tend to smirk when they say that their members are revolting. If our class consciousness was sufficiently developed, we certainly would be. Let’s be honest about it The working class worldwide puts up with a lot from capitalism But begin to present said members with the facts of their economic exploitation by a minority ruling class and you rapidly come to a deep and meaningful understanding of the term banging your head against a brick wall.

For the moment, even the mildest of my fellow band of wage-slaves has transformed into a militant. I can’t take any credit for this outbreak of class solidarity and outrage at their capitalist masters. If a fraction of the fervour generated on this occasion were channelled into understanding and fighting politically for the socialist alternative, we would all be casting off the fetters of capitalism today.

My colleagues' revolt is a short-lived-one. In the face of the overwhelming economic power of the bosses, it is decided that there is no choice but to accept the imposition of cashless pay.

Sacked

“In the sixteenth century Nostradamus looked into a bowl of water to forecast events with some stunning successes. In 1990 economists using all the latest techniques in economic modelling did not forecast the recession at all”. (Share tip sheet).

Perhaps someone, somewhere, is already engaged in producing an academic dissertation upon the use and effect of the euphemism in late capitalist society. In the status-conscious times in which we live, where millions prefer to call themselves middle class (a sociological definition) rather than admit to the reality of belonging to the majority, propertyless working class, it is thought preferable to be “unwaged” rather than unemployed. Whether made redundant, let go, or sacked, the effect upon human lives in a society based upon production for profit, not need, is a devastating one. As I and my fellow wage-slaves were about to discover.

Considerable time, effort and money is expended by the capitalist class in persuading the rest of us that the present system of society is now, was then, and always will be. The effectiveness of this strategy is self-evident. Despite creating society’s wealth, and running society from top to bottom, the working class continue to allow economic and political power to remain in the hands of a minority class. Not even capitalism’s slumps and recessions, which occur with an unavoidable regularity, appear to dent the continuing support for a social system responsible for most of the worlds ills. Without an understanding of the economic exploitative nature of capitalism and, as importantly, an understanding of the socialist alternative, workers continue to view life from a distorted perspective.

Low esteem

Faced with the prospect of losing our jobs altogether, the issue of not being paid the price of our labour power in cash, assumes insignificant proportions. The prospect now is of finding ourselves having no money at all with which to pay the mortgage, pay for food, heat, light and shelter. The previous assent to the notion that businesses close because of “greedy" and “lazy” workers no longer applies. The prospect of being on the dole horrifies my colleagues. They themselves still hold to the myth that thousands enjoy a life of luxury and ease on unemployment benefit. This is, of course, perfectly true. But those enjoying the fruits of others' labour belong to the minority capitalist class whose unemployment benefit is known as profit.

In a capitalist society self-esteem, and the respect of others is determined by the amount of money you have. When, as a member of the working class, your only sellable asset, your labour power, is no longer required, your self-respect is one of the least things you stand to lose. “You lift sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Brother don’t you call me I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store” (Folk song). You work sixteen years and what do you get? Redundancy.

The capitalist class knows where its interest lies. When “boom” times reappear they will still be the only individuals to really benefit from it. How long will it be; how many slumps will the working class have to endure before it decides to make capitalism redundant?

“The nationality of the toilers is neither French nor English nor German; it is toil, free slavery, sale of self. His government is neither French nor English nor German; it is Capital. His native air is neither French nor English nor German; it is the air of the factory. The land which belongs to him is neither French nor English nor German; it is a few feet under the ground” (Karl Marx).

Dave Coggan

We are not inferior (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent death of William Shockley, the American physicist and Nobel prize-winner, has removed from the scene a particularly unpleasant racist. Together with Arthur Jensen, Richard Hernstein, Hans Eysenck and others he argued that working class people and black people were innately intellectually inferior. At one time, and until fairly recently, this was the dominant view but is now largely discredited. But this has not prevented its protagonists from fighting a rearguard battle and denouncing their opponents as "dogmatic egalitarians” and even as "socialist utopians".

According to Jensen social scientists and educators have been indoctrinated to ignore genetics while Hernstein begins his argument for the biological basis of class society by a denunciation of Marxist theory and the socialist alternative. The theorists of the French and American Revolutions are not spared either, with Eysenck taking issue with the egalitarianism of Rousseau and Jefferson, and Hernstein attacking the American Declaration of Independence as well as the Communist Manifesto.

Trying to measure so-called innate intelligence goes back to Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who wrote a book in 1869 called Hereditary Genius. Galton misapplied Darwin's theory of biological evolution to the evolution of human society and its division into higher and lower classes (as well as to what he considered to be superior and inferior races) and went on record as stating that the eminent families of Great Britain had been selected in the struggle for the survival of the fittest in society because of their biologically superior traits.

Galton's intellectual descendants today have some equally bizarre views. Jensen concentrates on the differences between the average IQ Test scores for Blacks and Whites. Hernstein stresses the different scores obtained by upper and "middle class" children on the one hand and "working class” children on the other. Both attempt to explain these differences in IQ scores on biological, instead of sociological or environmental, grounds.

These theories of the innate inferiority of some group are all based on the view that "intelligence" is innate and fixed. Each of us is supposed to be born with a given amount of intelligence which stays the same throughout our lives; our minds can develop but only up to a certain point, and that point is fixed at birth, or rather at conception. Each person is seen as possessing a given level of intellectual ability and it is this that prevents some from going as far as others.

These theories had practical consequences since until comparatively recently they predominated. The selection of children at 11 under the 1944 Education Act in Britain for one of three kinds of education, for instance, was largely based on the faked IQ findings of Sir Cyril Burt. To this day Eysenck, Hernstein and the others argue that the level of intelligence that pupils will or will not reach has already been basically determined once and for all by their genes, and that schools should therefore be adjusted to sorting out and selecting the "bright" from the "dull" as determined by nature.

This totally ignores the fact that thinking can be taught. In the past thinking, in the sense of formal reasoning, was taught by a more or less spontaneously developed and unconscious method; which led to the belief that thinking either happened or it didn't. Today, however, it is clear that intellectual development is not a fatal process in which the basic learning faculties become more or less fixed by the age of six or seven. It is possible to facilitate the development of intellectual skills in everyone.

IQ Tests don't measure "innate intelligence"; they merely measure the ability of individuals to answer the questions and solve the problems set in IQ Tests. If individuals from some groups do better on average from those in other groups, this is merely a measure either of the different groups’ opportunity to learn to do the tests or of their different attitudes to the sort of things that are being tested.

Michael Ghebre

When Labour ruled (1) (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 3 September, the Rt Hon Baroness Castle of Blackburn appeared on the Channel Four "Opinions" programme to urge us not to let that marvellous achievement, The Welfare State, be taken away from us. She reminisced for half-an-hour upon the setting up of the National Health Service and how the post-war Labour governments engaged experts to explain to them what poverty was, so that they could devise schemes like Family Allowances in an attempt to combat it.

While fondly remembering her own part as plain Barbara Castle in all the this, she seemed to forget her part in Labour's other record on poverty: its consistent and often vicious efforts to hold down wages—at the same time as inflating the currency to make them worth less.

The Welfare State was only ever a collection of schemes for regulating poverty. Full-scale war had brought out clearly again, as in 1914, what a sorry state the British working class was in. Armed forces medical staff found that a large proportion of the conscripts were undernourished and unhealthy—not the stuff of which efficient, ruthless fighting machines are made. The Liberal, Sir William (later Lord) Beveridge was commissioned by the wartime coalition government to produce a report suggesting practical means by which British capitalism could ensure that it had a healthy and efficient workforce for the economic war that would follow the bombing war.

The war was a crisis for British capitalism. No-one knew how it would end. Like the economist Keynes, some years before, many of the British capitalist class feared that a social system which could produce a slump like that of the 1930s and then a war like that of the 1940s might well be overthrown, particularly as Russia (which they thought of as socialist) was one of the main allies against Germany, Italy and Japan. Many politicians, particularly Labour and Liberal, felt that the state must intervene to ameliorate the worst effects of unemployment, dire poverty and the poor health that resulted from them. Keynes had assured them that it was possible for governments to prevent slumps and unemployment through applying appropriate fiscal controls.

Discussion about post-war society and what it should be like began quite early on in the war. Propaganda films and radio broadcasts for civilians as well as the armed forces placed considerable emphasis upon "what we were fighting for" as well as what the war was supposed to be against.

The wartime conditions in which this discussion took place was those of extensive state control. Political parties had been been largely submerged in the coalition government and almost every aspect of civilian life was controlled, as it was for soldiers, sailors and airmen. By the time the war ended, state control of the economy and of a great part of people's lives had come to seem normal and inevitable to the British working class.

Labour takes charge

The Second World War gave the Labour Party its greatest opportunity. But it also exposed its fundamental impotence as a party to represent the British working class. The editorial in the March 1943 Socialist Standard put it like this:

The latest tragi-comedy is the complete outmanoeuvring of the Labour Party on the Beveridge Report. They have demanded for years (as a stepping stone to something or other) a much improved system of unemployment and sickness benefits and old-age pensions. One familiar demand put forward at Labour Party (e.g., in 1923) was that unemployment pay should be at trade union rates. Along comes the capitalist politician Beveridge with a much less favourable scheme, and the Labour Party, fearful lest this second-best scheme should be endangered, gives it their qualified approval. Now the Government announces that it too approves of the scheme, but with modifications and postponements. The Labour Party, now fearful of "diehard" opposition, finds itself hesitant about endangering the modified scheme, which is, in itself, two steps backward from its own. But how can it deny its own doctrine that "anything is better than nothing"?

The Family Allowances  Act, as a first stage in a comprehensive social security scheme, was introduced by the coalition government in 1945. The Labour government, elected with an overwhelming majority in July of that year, seized upon the whole Beveridge scheme as its own and introduced the National Insurance Act in 1946.  

Austerity

A great deal of rationing and many wartime controls were continued under the post-war Labour government. Like a good, capitalist government, they were concerned in case workers should force up wages under conditions of expanding production and full employment, so reducing profits, and they imposed a wage freeze.

The level of optimism in the country was high and the Labour Party was able to plead for tolerance from the workers towards the austerity regime the government was maintaining, on the grounds that it would only be a temporary state of affairs until expanding industrial output brought full prosperity. The absolutely vital thing, they insisted, was for workers to work harder and produce more for export. However, in spite of assurances by the Deputy Prime Minister, Herbert Morrison, to a meeting of cotton workers in Manchester in April 1948, the British textile industry was already meeting intense competition and protectionism from the USA and Japan. The confident assurances of full employment  upon which the whole plan rested were already beginning to look unrealistic in the competitive post-war world.

In 1949, the Labour government suffered its first financial crisis and the pound fell sharply in value. The government devalued it by 30 percent, after denying that it would do so. In October, the government passed the National Health Service (Amendment) Act, taking the power to impose a charge on prescriptions, although they did not impose one. In 1951, a further Act did impose charges for false teeth and glasses. After two elections in that year a sufficient number of the British working class voted Conservative to throw Labour out.

It was not simply the long succession of increases in health charges that followed which eroded British workers' faith in the Welfare State: the state itself had repeatedly even under Labour revealed its true colours as the agent of the employing class. It used laws and the courts to hold down wages, and it used troops to break strikes. Above all, however, the lie that governments could control the economy was exposed so often that hardly anyone could go on believing it.

For socialists, the trouble has been that this hotch-potch of poor relief and incomes control, together with the nationalisation of major industries, was called "socialism" by the Labour Party themselves as well by other politicians such as Margaret Thatcher. The result has been that, as well as becoming rightly sceptical about politicians' promises, many of our fellow workers gave become completely cynical about all political action. We have a lot of work to do.

Ron Cook

Next month we look at the anti-working-class record of the Wilson government which managed the affairs of British capitalism between 1964 and 1970.

Editorial: Missed opportunities, shattered dreams (1991)

Editorial from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The turn of the Twentieth Century was a time of high political hopes. There was a sense that great progress was possible. The sciences were expanding and the machine age had brought increased powers of production. In the industrialised countries workers were winning the vote. In combination these means of creating abundant wealth and the entry of more people into the democratic process held out the prospect of a new age of enlightenment, peace and material security.

The working class debate about how its best interests could be served had been going on for over fifty years and by 1900 there was a clear choice between Revolution and Reform.

The arguments in favour of reform were fatally seductive; they appeared to present an easy way forward. In this view, all that was required was the election of a "working class government". Then, through a programme of reforms, such measures as nationalisation and "taxing the rich out of existence", the problems of poverty and unemployment would be solved, social privilege would be abolished and a new world of equality would be here to stay.

Socialists said "no", by that route a new society was impossible. Such a "working class government" would be compelled to run the capitalist system and would have to yield to the vile priorities of profits before needs. Such a government would be trapped by economic forces which it could not control. Being in this position it would e forced to do things in opposition to its stated aims. It would not be able to solve social problems or alter the class-ridden nature of capitalist society. Socialists said that reformism would be a waste of time and would lead to disastrous consequences. Tragically, the socialist arguments were ignored.

A hundred years have passed since the choice between socialism and reformism was clarified. Soon, we will enter a new century, yet still reformist politicians appear like ghosts of their predecessors, mouthing slogans and empty promises, desperate to forget their past failures. They generate a phoney optimism which echoes back across a century in which more people have been killed in wars and more have starved to death than at any other time.

Land has been taken out of production, food has been destroyed, machinery has been left idle and the ravages of economic crises have meant countless billions of work-days lost through unemployment (under the last Labour government unemployment doubled). In a socialist society these productive resources would have been used to provide for needs. Instead, they have been squandered to protect class privilege and profit.

The human cost of the reformist choice has been high, with governments steering capitalism crisis to crisis whilst under the illusion that somehow they could make the profit system serve the needs of the whole community. As socialists said, and as bitter experience has shown, the reformists were always the impossibilists.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that if the socialist choice had been taken up at the beginning of the century by a majority of workers, since that time we would have created a society and a world fit for people to live in. Without doubt, a world of common ownership and cooperation organised solely for needs would have provided enough quality food, housing, clothing, clean water, sanitation, energy for heating, lighting cooking, health and education services, entertainment, communications, means of travel and recreation, for the entire human family. Freed from the economic constraints of capitalism, socialism would have provided these, and without destruction of the environment, through relationships of shared common goals.

For those who might still think that the building of world socialism is too big a job, and who therefore might still be attracted to what appears to be the "easier" reformist option, we say, look at the tragic consequences of the same decision made in the past. For those who want a better world the so-called reformist option is no option at all—it is a guarantee of continued disaster.

1492 and all that (1991)

Book Review from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the Myth. By Hans Koning. Latin American Bureau, 1991.

The romance of Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, and the inevitable celebrations to mark the anniversary in 1992, are the subjects of this study which attempts to reassess Columbus and put the record straight on his character and place in history. It also confronts the issue of "civilisation" versus "savagery" and the ideology which sees the West as culturally superior and as the ideal to which all people should aspire.

For Koning 1492, the year in which Columbus supposedly "discovered" a new world already widely inhabited, "opened an era of genocide, cruelty, and slavery". The motivation for exploration lay not so much in discovery but in the extension and consolidation of the trading rights of rival European powers and in the desire to finance expansionism and acquire spheres of economic influence and political domination.

That the world was round was commonly acknowledged. Columbus's belief that Asia could be reached by a westerly route was based upon a lamentable and stubborn ignorance as to the size of the world. In his public statements Columbus claimed to be motivated by a desire to convert the "heathen", although this seems to have quickly given way to a policy of genocide or enslavement. In fact, the peaceful, generous and friendly innocence displayed by the original inhabitants of the "new" world, and recorded by contemporary observers, was to place them in a perilous position. Decisions as to their fate were being made elsewhere. The desire for gold at whatever cost, and the necessity of economic domination, led to a global arbitration by Pope Alexander VI, who divided the new world between Spain and Portugal, although somewhat to the chagrin of France and Holland.

Unaware of this decision, the inhabitants of the so-called new world were not long in feeling the consequences. The later activites of Pizarro and Cortes have been widely documented yet the systematic brutality of the original conquerors should not be underestimated. The rapid annihilation of the Arawaks, for instance, would necessitate the importation of black slaves from Africa to replace them by 1550. As Koning argues, the brutality of the Spanish and, for that matter the Portuguese on the Guinea coast of Africa, persisted until chattel slavery became uneconomic: "men became humane at the very moment inhumanity lost its business advantage".

As to Columbus, in contrast to his ambitions, the rewards he received were small and mostly honorific, for at this point in the conquest the anticipated gold was not sufficiently forthcoming. In a sense Columbus was as much a product of his time as we are of ours. What we should not do, however, is to hide reality beneath a mythology of the heroic discoverer and the coming of civilisation. But neither should we become complacent in our reading of history. The economic momentum that motivated and legitimized the Spanish conquest of America 500 years ago is the same to which we are victims today.

Philip Bentley