Never trust a Trust (1993)

 

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The government has recently announced that thirty more district health authorities are to become self-governing in the fourth wave of trusts, and that the remainder will follow suit within two years.

The National Health Service enjoys considerable public support and attempts to return to private medicine have to be carried out cautiously whilst protesting vociferously that there is no such intention. But despite this cautious approach at least three-fifths of all self-governing trusts have run into financial difficulties. And in August, four London hospitals announced that they were going to cancel routine operations for the rest of this financial year. With seven months to go, from the date of these cancellations, to the next financial year, the waiting list for treatment will continue to grow, with pain and discomfort for patients.

The financial difficulties experienced by the health service trusts is only to be expected as an internal market does not put any more money into the system but costs considerably more to administer it. Whilst administrative costs have risen sharply to cope with the extra paperwork many newly-qualified nurses have been unable to obtain jobs and others have been given temporary contracts, only to find themselves unemployed three or six months later.

Despite the greater technological expertise required for modem nursing, the number of qualified nursing staff fell by 5.2 percent between September 1990 and September 1991 according to the Department of Health. But unqualified staff have increased by 17 percent. (Nursing Times. 1993, no.7)

The increase in total staff has been necessary to compensate for the removal of student nurses from the wards into colleges for the Project 2000 training courses. This change from traditional training methods has been introduced to improve academic standards and technical knowledge but also to pay students less by giving them grants instead of employing them as salaried workers.

Despite the dearth of jobs, financial hardship and the prospect of unemployment at the completion of training has led to a 5.5 percent wastage rate for Project 2000 students compared with 4.7 percent for students undertaking traditional training (Nursing Times). While the government juggles with the figures and nurses find out the hard way that professional status counts for little in the job market, the waiting list for treatment has increased by 60,000. A number of hospital trusts have changed nurses’ patterns of shift work, worsening their conditions of service and reversing some of the hard-won gains of the last thirty years. The Bradford Hospital Trust announced up to 300 redundancies shortly after it became a trust.

During recessions the bargaining power of workers is weakened and they are vulnerable to attacks upon their living standards. This will always be the case while capitalism lasts because trade unions tackle effects and not causes. Thus, any gains made during booms will be attacked by employers when there is a surplus of labour during a slump.

The government has repeatedly stated that it wishes to reduce public expenditure. Indeed, public health service employees have been held to a 1.5 percent pay increase this year (equivalent to a pay cut after allowing for inflation), and a proposed wage freeze for next year.

At first glance it seems curious and inconsistent to try to reduce expenditure on the one hand and to increase it on the other by opting for a system of management which is much more expensive. But a consideration of the ideological and political motives underlying the formation of the National Health Service and the reasons for the attempts to dismantle it show that both courses of action are consistent with capitalism’s priorities. When Henry Willink, Conservative Minister of Health in the wartime Churchill coalition government presented the 1944 White Paper setting out the proposals for a unified national health service, free at the point of use, centrally funded and administered by Local Authorities it was because it was recognized that after the sacrifices made by the working class in fighting a lengthy war to protect the capitalists’ interests they were not prepared to accept a return to the heartbreak conditions of the 1930s. It was also recognized that, with an acute shortage of labour, a reliable health service would be needed to conserve workers’ health in the critical postwar years of reconstructing industry. It was also necessary to provide concessions to blunt working-class militancy as strikes would have placed British capitalists at a disadvantage with their competitors.

A centrally-administered health service was more efficient and cost effective than the fragmented, piecemeal provision of health care which had hitherto been available in the 1930s. But by the 1980s, capitalism’s priorities had changed. A worldwide recession had reduced the capitalists’ profits making less money available for social programmes; a large pool of unemployed labour had weakened the power of the trade unions and made it no longer necessary to conserve the health of all the workers. The National Health Service now represents a cost against production that the capitalists would prefer to see drastically reduced if not abolished.

The NHS is an institution welcomed by the working class and its abolition, however desirable from capital’s point of view, is politically damaging, therefore, the moves towards replacing it with private services have been gradual. Laundering, catering and Portering services have been contracted out private companies in the last few years with reduction of staff, lower wages and poorer working conditions in the majority of cases.

Once all district health authorities become self-governing trusts it will be possible to break the power of the trade unions by dismantling the Whitley Council which negotiates health service employees’ pay. The trusts will be able to set their own pay and conditions which will lead to further downward pressure on wages. And with each trust being independent and no longer part of a nationally administered service then a national strike by health service employees over a dispute in an individual trust would be considered to be an illegal "sympathy" strike. Also with an internal market in place it will be possible for a hospital trust to break a strike by sending patients to other hospitals.

It has been claimed that the internal market, with buying and selling of health care on business lines, can make the most efficient use of resources and expertise by sending patients to other hospitals for services which may be in short supply in their own areas, but the 60,000 increase in the waiting list for treatment shows this not to be the case. There is a consultation process between health districts, regional health authorities and the public at each trust application but the public’s response is not disclosed by the Department of Health. We can be certain that if the public’s response to hospital trusts was enthusiastic then this would be widely publicised and trumpeted as a vindication of the government's policies. The secrecy surrounding this information is an attempt to conceal the lack of support for their plans. The announcement by the Government that it intends all health districts to become trusts within the next two years makes a mockery of the so-called consultation process and makes the public meetings little more than a declaration of intent.

In addition to the plans for NHS trusts, the 1989 White Paper Working for Patients (sic) provides for a range of optional extras such as single rooms, television and a choice of meals for those who wish to pay for them which will create a two-tier system with only basic amenities being provided for the poor and better services being provided for the not-so-poor.

A visit to any of the older district general hospitals will provide evidence of expensive refurbishment having been carried out on some of the surgical wards whilst, in many cases, even basic repairs are not carried out on the geriatric wards, reflecting capitalism's attitude to non-producers. Obviously, the majority of elderly patients will be unable to pay for "extras’' out of their pensions. A return to Victorian values, particularly the Victorian workhouse, is beginning to look an unpleasant reality for the poor and needy.

The government’s policies have caused problems for the mentally handicapped. Dr David Tod, President of the National Association of Fundholding Practitioners, told the Conservative Party conference in October that he cannot accept any more mentally handicapped patients in his practice without extra funding (Independent, 9 October).

The proportion of pay which general practitioners earn from the number of patients that they have on their books has been increased from 46 percent to at least 60 percent and this has, predictably, led to a reluctance to treat patients requiring a lot of medical care. There is no doubt that further attacks will be made on the NHS and that the present cumbersome structure is being set up with a view to selling it off to private speculators in due course. For the poor, only the most basic provision will be retained, and the mentally ill will continue to swell the ranks of the homeless as long-stay hospitals continue to be closed without adequate alternative care being allocated.

But the attacks on the NHS provide an object lesson to those who wish to reform capitalism. The reforms were gained only after years of struggle, implemented when it was no longer in capital’s interests to obstruct them, and are being reversed when it was no longer expedient for capital to accede to workers' demands and a recession makes it difficult for workers to resist the encroachment upon their living standards. Nothing less than the complete overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism can prevent this happening to reforms over and over again.

Carl Pinel

Why nurses are angry (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September nurses from University College Hospital (UCII) in central London went back to work after a six-week strike. What made them angry enough to strike?

Why is it that approximately two months ago south London hospitals were crying out for extra nurses to care for patients on the wards, but there was not an agency nurse to be found?

A recent survey done by the Institute of Manpower Services found that one nurse in four would leave the NHS if they could. Why?

The creation of the internal market within the NHS has meant there is increasing pressure on trusts to keep within their budget. With the old system it did not matter if budgets weren’t kept to, the money was just replaced. In the new system if you don’t keep within your budget, then you don’t meet your contracts and eventually you go bankrupt like any other business.

In trusts most of the money goes on nurses’ wages (they are the majority of the workforce).

Constant pressure

There is constant pressure to cut this budget and this lias been addressed in a variety of ways.

First, freezing posts as nurses leave. Second, possible redundancies, though on the whole this has not been widespread as yet. However in the College of Health Studies where I work, there has been an amalgamation of two colleges of nursing which involved redundancies. The College is about to amalgamate with a further two colleges of nursing and more reductions are planned. It has been suggested that the 183 teaching posts in the three colleges will be cut to 52.

Third, alteration to nurses’ hours. Nurses have traditionally worked a shift system of earlies, middles, lates and nights. The hours are different from hospital to hospital but used to be roughly: Early: 7.30am to 3.30pm; Late: 1.30pm to 9.30pm; Night: 9pm to 7.45am.

Managers did not see why there should be an overlap of nurses on duty between 1.30pm and 3.30pm. This did not appear to be cost effective. What were the nurses doing during this time? On investigation it was found that education of students and professional updating of staff went on. As the extra nurses were not directly involved in patient care, managers felt it was a waste of time having them and altered the hours accordingly. Extra money was also being paid to the night shift for working "unsocial hours"; again managers fell this could be tampered with in some way.

At one particular hospital the nursing shift hours are now: Early: 7am to 3pm; Late: 2pm to 10pm; Night: 9.45pm to 7.15am. This hospital may have reduced the nursing budget on hours, but its sickness rate has soared and it is having to pay agency staff to work.

Finally, alteration in ward skill mix. There is a trend to employ more care assistants (unqualified nurses) instead of qualified staff, who are paid more. This leads to a decrease in the quality of nursing care given to patients.

Two research studies (Skill Mix and the Effectiveness of Nursing Care, Centre for Health Economics; York and Ward Nursing Quality and Grade-Mix, Report No. 504, York University’s Health Economics Consortium.) showed that where wards were staffed wholly by qualified nurses the standard of care given to patients was high, but where wards were staffed with combinations of unqualified and qualified nurses the standard of care delivered to patients was lower.

Fragmented care

This appears to be because unqualified staff cannot give the total nursing care to the patients. For example, they lack the knowledge to interpret signs and symptoms and cannot give out drugs. This means that patient care becomes fragmented and patients have to wait for qualified nurses to gel to them to give them the appropriate drugs or interpret symptoms.

All these points mean that there is an increase in pressure on nursing staff which results in frustration because they cannot give the nursing care they want to.

A Trust’s survival depends on getting contracts from Health Authorities and GP fundholders. Since the reforms there has been an increase in productivity within hospitals. This increase in throughput of patients has a tendency to mean early discharges, which puts extra pressure on nursing staff to ensure that discharge arrangements are ready and that there are enough beds for patients coming in. It may also mean patients go home too early — and have to be readmitted. The government says that wage increases will come from increased productivity. But if contracts are completed early. Health Authorities and GP fundholders have no more money to buy more treatment for their patients. So hospitals simply have to stop work. Eventually this will mean that hospitals cut the number if nurses so that, although the amount of work remains the same, there are fewer people to do it and it takes all year to complete. This situation is worse in London due to high overheads and London weighting etc. For example Camden and Islington Health Authority stopped all elective surgery at some central London hospitals in September because it had used up all its money with these expensive Trusts.

The planned reduction in junior doctors' hours means that some things previously done by doctors will become the remit of the already overburdened nurse. Again, nurses are cheaper to employ than increasing the number of doctors.

All these things mean that the nurses are increasingly having to alter the way they care for patients and are increasingly leaving the patient's bedside, for which they have been trained, to deal with administration issues such as discharge arrangements or managing bed vacancies.

No wonder the nurses at UCH said enough is enough.

If the Tories win another general election, the next step is obvious. Trust hospitals will simply become private hospitals, contracting with both private health insurance companies and Health Authorities for their income. And Health Authorities themselves will simply stop buying some treatments. A Labour government would be no better as they would still face the fundamental problem of how' to finance an NHS which will need more and more money for research, new drugs and so on.

Within capitalism it is impossible to deal effectively with disease and illness with the NHS or any other healthcare system as the emphasis is on profits rather than peoples' health and researching into causes of ill health. The only way in which to have a proper Health Service is to form a society which is based on peoples' needs: socialism. Finance and the fundamental problems it brings will disappear as it would be a society based on need rather than profit. Emphasis would be on prevention — at the moment this is too costly. The McKinleys’s river approach ( where individuals are falling into a river and drowning and Health care staff pull them out. patch them up and send them back to the top of the river, where they fall back in again) would stop and society will address the reasons why people fall into the river, such as bad housing, air pollution, etc. All individuals would be looked after in the appropriate place hospital or community. In hospital, there would not be the pressure on beds that there is now and people could spend as much time there as they need, and when discharged to the community there would be the proper resources available

Adele Atkinson

"Capitalism just cannot come to terms with the necessity of meeting human needs." (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who needs leaders? (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Major looks like he’s in deep trouble with his party. But what difference does a change of leadership make to the operation of Capitalism?

Who would you like to be Prime Minister of Great Britain? Or leader of the Labour Party? Of the Liberal Democrats? And when you have made your choice ask yourself why — not why you chose that particular person but why you bothered to make a choice. Ask yourself what persuaded you that whoever is nominally in charge of things makes any noticeable difference to what happens to us.

We ask these questions in response to the present void in both Conservative and Labour parties, in which they are wracked with doubt over whether their recent choice of leader was advisable. In both parties the doubts have triggered off the usual frenzied but surreptitious campaigning by aspirants to the leadership, while they all deny any such ambitions and profess undying loyalty to the leader.

This is especially noticeable in the Tory Party because, as the government, their mistakes, disputes and obvious impotence to control capitalism are so clearly exposed. This is not good for John Major, who came to be Prime Minister on the assumption — which he encouraged — that his government's style would be different from Thatcher's and that this would ensure it would be more successful in tackling current problems like unemployment, housing, shortage of medical services and so on. His lack of success makes it embarrassing for Tories to remember his promise in November 1990, to lead "a nation at ease with itself.

After nearly three years of his government whatever the nation is at case with it is not John Major, whose popularity is at the point where it causes friction in his and a campaign lo replace him much as Thatcher was replaced. One seasoned MP tells of the day when a senior Tory minister advised him never to forget that loyalty was the party's secret weapon. Of an enquiring mind, this MP soon realized that the opposite is the ease — that the Tories are as disloyal and ruthless when they decide their leader is likely to lose them seats in parliament. When it gets down to it that is why Thatcher had to go and why Major’s job is in jeopardy.

The relentless and fruitless search for the perfect leader is, like so many of the delusions which bolster the capitalist system, clearly influenced by prejudice. For example, nothing in a leader appeals to British people so much as an apparent firmness of purpose. But when that same characteristic is shown by an "enemy" leader — like Saddam Hussein, it is a very different matter. Saddam, says the prejudice was not firm and consistent in his policies; he was mad, just like all the other bogeymen of the Sun and similar papers.

In any case, how valid are the memories of Thatcher single-handedly beating off all those mad, grasping foreigners and doing something called "putting the great back in Great Britain"? The decline of British capitalism since the First World War has done much to fashion the political history of this country. In one way or another every government has had to accept, and work with, that reality. Some have done this more readily than others; some have skilfully practised deceit on the issue, so that the voters were convinced they were not doing what they were.

Part of this deceit has been in the speeches of leaders who have suggested that the decline in British power was avoidable and that they could reverse the trend. This posture has not been confined to the Tories; Harold Wilson, especially during his first spell in power, consistently talked about British power and the British economy forcing their way to the top in the world. At times he was so absorbed in this crazy notion that his voice lost its Yorkshire twang and took on a Churchillian growl when he spoke about it.

The idea is to conceal reality so that all those voters who are deluded into thinking that if Britain is a super power they will become super-workers will gratefully vote for a Wilson or a Thatcher. For her entire period in Number Ten Thatcher was one of the cleverest at hiding the reality and persuading British workers that it could be avoided. That was why so many of them voted for her. But the deception is self-perpetuating because it reinforces the notion that the decline — or the rise — of a capitalist power is not a matter of history but of political policy. The assumption is then that the collapse of the British Empire would not have happened had it not been for feeble egalitarians such as Clement Attlee is mistakenly supposed to have been. It is a delusion which does not help to understand the place and the function of leaders nor what happens under capitalism.

And that brings us to the crucial question of how useful are leaders. Do they really change the course of events? One field in which they are confident they have control is the economy. When things are going badly — when British capitalism is in recession or a financial crisis — the Chancellor of the Exchequer assures us that they have the remedy; trust them and all will be well. And when things are going well — when there is a boom — they claim the credit, saying it is due to their skill and intelligence.

About a year ago British capitalism went through a crisis which has come to be known as Black Wednesday. It was a day when a panic-stricken Chancellor (who, as one of those clever political leaders, is supposed never to gel in a panic) ended a succession of juggling with interest rates by withdrawing sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This was supposed to be yet another example of politicians’ skill but in fact it happened only a short while after the Chancellor — the hapless Norman Lamont — and John Major had lectured us on the theme that the only way to prosperity for us all was lo keep sterling in the ERM. They were in no doubt about this quite sure that sterling would not be taken out of the ERM. Now many Tory politicians are asserting that the withdrawal is an example of their cleverness and that things for British capitalism are better as a result. For example, Norman Lamont is now very clear on the issue, urging “the Prime Minister to stand up and say once and for all that Britain should never again have anything to do with a single currency. Then we could all sing in the bath" (Well he was writing in the Sun).

Parasitic minority

Different conclusions have been drawn from that muddle, as from all the other episodes of similar chaos which regularly burst on the scene, stimulating more speeches, lectures and promises from political leaders. But only one conclusion fits the facts. No matter how clever and learned leaders may be, they can have no significant effect on how capitalism works and how it affects us. This social system works to its own priorities, to the benefit of a small parasitic minority. It cannot be controlled or manipulated. The cleverer leaders may be able to conceal this for a time; the not so clever — like Lamont and Major — can’t conceal it and that is why they arouse such contempt. To choose one leader against another is to choose one style of futility before another. It would be better to abandon the whole sorry mess and opt instead for efficacy for our own ability to change society so that we operate it, trusting ourselves to run the world for ourselves.

Ivan

White supremacy is stupid (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a world that is becoming smaller and societies that are becoming multicultural, it may be time for Western culture to examine critically its view of other cultures. For how much of Western culture is made up of prejudice about other cultures? How much of Western identity is constructed upon the negative identity of others?

Decolonization in a political sense has occurred. What remains to be addressed, however, is cultural decolonization. The legacy of several hundred years of Western expansion and domination, manifested in racism, continues to be recycled in Western cultures in the form of stereotyped images of non Western cultures.

Social Construct

It has often been observed that "race" is not a reality but a social construct. In his study of the "Jewish question'', Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Don't ask what the Jews are, but what we have made the Jews”. This applies equally to images of Africa and blacks. The term "White on Black” refers to the whole spectrum of relations in which Western interests were dominant — the trans-Atlantic slave trade, master-slave relations on plantations in the Americas, colonialism, the post-colonial era. and majority minority relations in the Western world. In each of these situations Europeans constructed images of Africa and blacks on the basis of selective perception, expedience, second hand information mingled with reconstructed biblical notions and medieval folklore, along with popular and "scientific” ideas that were current at the time.

Stereotypes of Africa and of blacks are still in circulation but old images have faded away or acquired new meaning and new images have arisen. In the second half of the 20th century, "race” is no longer invoked as the primary key to differences; it has been succeeded by systems of differences founded not on biology but on culture.

"Race" discrimination has increasingly yielded to discrimination along cultural lines, bringing with it different sets of images. Hence "racism" in the literal sense is no longer a satisfactory term to understand the changing realities. Culture as a new basis for differentiation is much more diffuse in its ideological claims than race theory, but in some ways equally effective in establishing boundaries and demarcations. While science marched forward, popular thinking in Europe still followed Christian modes of thought. Genesis (9:18-27) relates that "Noah drank wine and fell into slumber while naked”. Ham, his youngest son, saw him but did not cover his shame, whereas his brothers Japheth and Shem covered their father with cloth. Awakened, Noah praised Shem and blessed Japheth. but cursed Ham.

Curse of Ham

In the early Church the curse of Ham or Canaan was regarded as an explanation of slavery, but not simply of blacks because slavery at the time was "colour-less". The association of the curse of Ham with blackness arose only much later in medieval Talmudic texts. In the 16th century it became a Christian theme and by the 17th century it was widely accepted as an explanation of black skin colour. From here it was just a step to the interpretation of the curse of Ham as an explanation of and justification for the slavery of black Africans.

The view of Africa as a continent condemned to eternal servitude was well suited to a theological assessment of slavery. According to the theological explanation, the Continents were peopled by descendants of Japheth (Europe), Shem (Asia) and Ham (Africa), ranked in a master-servant relationship. Until well into the 19th century, even after the development of the theory of race, this remained the most popular explanation of slavery.

Minorities often a find place in society in certain specialized occupations. No matter how unreal and how dependent on circumstances its position in the labour market is. it is often extremely difficult for a minority to overcome the stereotyping that goes with that position.

The occupational roles allocated to blacks in Western society are an example a minority specialization which has been in existence so long that it seems to reflect the "natural" order: entertainment and sport.

The first role blacks were permitted to perform in White society, after that of slave or servant, was that of entertainer. Indeed entertainment was itself one of the functions of slaves. Entertainers do not threaten the status quo but embellish it. Emotive expression by blacks is accepted and conforms to the rhythm myth, the stereotype of musicality. Thus over the past century, blacks have become the musicians, dancers and buffoons of Atlantic culture.

Sporting challenge

Another terrain on which blacks have been permitted to manifest themselves is in sport. Several sports had travelled along with Africans to the New World and. according to a study by the tennis champion Arthur Ashe who died recently, by the mid-19th century several sports were integrated. The achievements of black athletes challenged "white supremacy" and breached the myth of "racial" inferiority. The integration of sport is part of overall black integration. But it is also a limited kind of success. Their success seems to confirm one of the stereotypes of the black as bestial brute, the all brawn-and-no-brains kind of athlete. At first the story was that blacks were inferior to whites in every respect, physically as well, and therefore unfit to compete with whites led to other stories about blacks having "abnormal muscular qualities, different from those of white men”.

Recently a Tory councillor in Derby was quoted as claiming that "black people do not use swimming pools because they cannot float":

"Retired teacher Colin Brown, 59, said: 'Black people are very heavily boned and they sink. It’s a physiological fact that was taught when I was studying physical education. You never see any black Africans in Olympic swimming finals, do you?’” (Sun, 9 September).

Racism never comes alone. It forms part of a hierarchical mental set which also targets other groups. The features attributed to groups define by “race" are not peculiar to racism, but are also attributed to entirely different categories defined according to social status, gender, age, nationality and so forth.

What racism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination all have in common is social inequality. The common denominator is power — the power that arises from a hierarchical situation and the power required to maintain that situation and, also the anxiety that comes with power and privilege.

Michael Ghebre

Go For A Million (1993)

Party News from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do you want to support us in our biggest campaign yet?

Our plans for the June 1994 Euro-election are now well underway. We will be putting up genuine Socialist candidates in four seats: Birmingham East, Glasgow, London Central and Lothians. These constituencies are nearly ten times the size of the Westminster ones, so in our campaign we will effectively be contesting the equivalent of 37 parliamentary seats.

This will mean that over two million electors will have a first time ever chance to vote for the case for Socialism.

In return for the £4,000 deposit which we will pay, the Post Office will distribute our Socialist Manifesto to one million households. This will be the widest single circulation of socialist ideas in our history. 

So if ever there was a good time to make a donation it is now. Please send your contributions to Election Fund, The Socialist Party, (52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN) and please make cheques payable to The Socialist Party of Great Britain. To contribute through a standing order, write to us for a form.

Between the Lines: After Warrington (1993)

The Between the Lines Column from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Warrington

Colin and Wendy Parry lost their son, Tim, aged twelve, to an IRA bomb. Their response was to try to find out why he was killed. Panorama (BBC 1, 9.30 pm, 6 September) followed them as they visited the rival factions in search of their tribal motives. It was moving and compelling viewing, but, above all, it was frustrating. The Parrys are the kind of reasonable people socialists like to meet; their minds were genuinely exercised by the question "Why?". But the responses of those they met on their quest for knowledge ranged from the entrenchedly bigoted to the enthusiastically stupid.

This TV viewer has grown bored of watching ghetto catholics and protestants pleading a defence for their blinkered outlooks. The self-pitying nationalists who want us to imagine that the Great Famine is still going on and that it constitutes some kind of an excuse for blowing up children should dry their eyes and stop whining; nobody beyond the drunken barroom rebels of Boston cares less about their persistent self-indulging in a patriotism which puts kids in graves. And as for the protestant bigots, always shown to us on our screens from their siege headquarters in the Shankhill Road, they should be informed in no uncertain terms that their vociferous paranoia in defence of a Union which confines them to slums and slogans is a form of nationalist arrogance, made worse by the fact that they too are wage-slaves and have nothing but their illusion of ascendancy to defend. Who cares about these people with their shallow, offensive ethical defences for the prejudices which keep the undertakers busy.

But worse than these home-grown fools, whose only hope now lies in the recognition that instead of fighting to protect their poverty they have a world and not a nation to win, there were the fellow-travelling republicans in Boston — the Noraid brigade who want to see bodybags for their bucks. Who could but admire the patience of Colin Parry, a man whose son was murdered with the support of these remote-control warriors, when one of them (no doubt the son of a nephew of a man who claimed once to spend his boyhood in Kerry) told him that his position of opposing all violence was too easy? No doubt they would prefer it it he came to the war in Ireland by their lofty route: by sitting in a bar in Boston drinking imported stout, singing rebel songs which they do not understand and which decent people have long ago forgotten the words of, and putting dollars in collections so that more Tim Parrys can leave home one morning and arrive at the mortuary before it is dark.

Pretty Woman meets Reality

Not being much of a cinema-goer, ITV’s showing of Pretty Woman (9 m, 5 September), starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, was this writer’s first opportunity to see this tale of Cinderella encountering the delights of the free market. The romance is quite simple: Gere, a millionaire whose description of his uselessness as a property speculator was good stuff, picks up Roberts, a hooker who looks like a Hollywood movie star. He pays her huge amounts of money; she gives him sex and then falls in love with him. According to the Beatles, money can’t buy you love, but times have changed and if you want to spend the rest of your life with Julia Roberts, open a deposit account now. Then on Wednesday, 8 September BBC 1’s Inside Story ran the sequel to the film. It was not intended to be a follow-up; it was a documentary about prostitutes and their lives. None of them looked much like Julia Roberts did, but a few of them might have done had they not suffered years of being beaten up by ruthless pimps who wanted their money’s worth out of their investments. It was a story of the daily struggle which our opponents celebrate as the free marker. It’s a strange medium, TV: you watch a romance about buying sex and smile at the happy ending; if the documentary would have been shown immediately before the film its offensive message might just have been a little clearer.

Steve Coleman

Letter: Do you get the picture? (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do you get the picture?

Dear Editors.

You know what happens to the sheep that follows the goat down the path of no return? They end up in the freezer. It doesn’t pay to follow leaders!

It reminds me of an old saying I heard in the Socialist ranks. "Where there are leaders there are led, where there are led there are bled". When you act like sheep you are begging to dc sheared. Do you ever wonder why millions are spent during a campaign to get someone into office? Obviously there is a great deal at stake. Candidates are identified by their ideology. If a Socialist candidate entered the race, his only monetary support would be supplied by the Socialist Party and they would have to rely on donations from the members and sympathizers and they are unlikely to have any rich "Perots" to help them. Since we are the only Party that represents working-class interests it follows that the Government is owned by those who can spend millions on campaigns. They pass all the laws in their favour. They have at their disposal all the most able professors of economics, all the captains of industry. Nevertheless, even with all their power, they cannot make capitalism do their bidding. It is like trying to steer a boat without a rudder. No-one can fix something that cannot be fixed! We must replace capitalism with socialism. "Once a Socialist always a Socialist" is a familiar saying among socialists. When you have become convinced that reforming capitalism doesn’t work (for the have-nots) there is no other alternative.

We all pay taxes, right? Consider this; in the last 50 years that I know of, taxes have increased year after year and we have been able to pay them. Where do we get the money? In your pay envelope. When you negotiate with your boss for a raise, the "cost of living" is the main topic of discussion, and that includes taxes. Do you get the picture?

William Hewitson, 

Santa Maria, California

If Maria Victoria, of Collyhurst, Manchester, will supply us with an address we will be able to reply to her recent letter.

The Penguin Dictionary of Politics (1993)

Book Review from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Penguin Dictionary of Politics by David Robertson. £6.99.

This new edition is alright on subjects like referendums and the party system in Scandinavia but hopelessly inadequate on anything to do with Socialism or Marx — though the idea of the former USSR as "state capitalism" does get a mention.

50 Years Ago: The coal crisis (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Between 1920 and 1939 a serious situation existed for the miners; poverty, unemployment, ill-health and fatalities were constant and recurring features of their lives. They marched to London, their leaders addressed meetings of protest demanding that something be done. Nothing was done by the Government except in 1931 when the meagre dole was cut on the grounds of “economy” and “equality of sacrifice” (with the sanction of the majority of the Labour Government) : a marked difference from the feverish activity now shown by the Government and its spokesmen, when faced with a serious coal shortage. There were no newspaper appeals then nor any broadcasts calling men to volunteer for this “honourable and vital work.” There existed no need to entreat or flatter workers—in fact, when miners sought to improve their working conditions or prevent a lowering of these conditions, abuse was the weapon used against them by the mineowners or their apologists. The miners’ leaders have been referred to as “Arrogant, bellicose, stubborn to the verge of stupidity” (page 96. “The Coal Problem,” 1936, by J, Dickie, formerly Liberal National M.P. for Consett).

[From an article by L. J., in the Socialist Standard, November 1943.]

SPGB Meetings (1993)

Party News from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sting in the Tail: Too many kids? (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column rom the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too many kids?

The Socialist Party has always insisted that capitalism and not overpopulation is what causes poverty.

Our view is supported from time to time by TV programmes and items in the press etc. The latest example is a remarkable article in the Guardian on 25 September by Dan Atkinson and Sarah Whitebloom titled ’Don't blame birth rates'.

The article rebuts the myth spread by the Prince of Wales and other ignoramuses that there is "an iron link between high population/birth rate and poverty".

The writers point out that parts of Britain which have low population density have "the lowest living standards in the UK" while;

  "Thinly populated Canada boasts one of the world's seven largest economies. Singapore — which accommodates three million people within a few acres — is similarly one of the richest economies in the world."

Thus the writers show that "poverty and population are not linked in any way whatsoever" and conclude that "Capitalism, not people, causes poverty". Right on, Dan and Sarah, but do you have something to put in capitalism's place? We do.

We still like kids

Anti-abortionists in the USA are turning more and more to violence in order to get their way.

One doctor who performed abortions was shot dead in March by a man who yelled "Don’t kill any more babies". After another doctor was shot and wounded the founder of Rescue America, an anti-abortion group, said "this shooting, while unfortunate, will result in babies lives being saved", while a Roman Catholic priest urged the killing of doctors who performed abortions, calling it "justified homicide" (Independent, 21 August).

All this concern for unborn children and yet we wonder if these anti-abortionists expressed anything like the same concern over the killing of living children in Vietnam and Iraq by the US government or its stooges in Nicaragua, Angola and elsewhere.

Come on you reds

"Red tide sweeps across eastern Europe" was one of the headlines which greeted last month's electoral success by Poland’s ex-communists.

Ex-communists have also won an election victory in Lithuania last year, enjoy growing support in Hungary and eastern Germany as well as uninterrupted rule in large pans of what were Yugoslavia and the USSR. There is a big difference, however. They now have to embrace the market economy and political democracy, both of which they had spent decades denouncing.

No-one should be surprised by this conversion. The norm in all one-party dictatorships, left and right, is for everyone who wants to "get on" to join the party, no matter what their own ideas may be. Thus all those CPs were full of careerists, crooks, egotists and other self-seekers, so it has been easy for them to make the change.

A touch of class

For years now the Spectator has churned out its nonsense about what a lovely society capitalism is and what interesting and worthwhile people make up the capitalist class.

Imagine Scorpion’s amazement then, when some kindly reader (readers of this column read everything) sent in a spoofy Spectator article by one Charles Moore entitled "It’s time for the bourgeoisie to rise against the Capitalist oppressors". It was in a heavy-handed way supposed to be humorous and satirical. Like most things in the Spectator it was as light as a lead balloon. But surprise, surprise it did contain one gem of truth amidst the usual "All forms of socialism are useless" nonsense:

  "The thinking should start with a redefinition of the working class . . . But why shouldn't the working class mean 90 per cent of those who work or are available for work — the great mass of people who have to live by selling their labour. " (4 September)

Spot on, Charlie. For more information write to Clapham High Street and ask for a copy of "The Socialist Party, Principles and Policy". It is clear, precise and honest. Something that should prove a novelty to all writers in the Spectator.

Doffin the tammy

From time to time socialists run across members of the Scottish Nationalist Party who claim that they are "a bit of a socialist myself", or even more outrageously "the only way to get socialism in Scotland is by voting SNP".

An item in the Daily Record shows how stupid such claims are:

 "A bid to turn the SNP into a republican party failed miserably. The motion which was taken in private session, followed a full scale debate at the Party's National Council in June, then, it was remitted back, and the call to get rid of the royals failed by 216 votes to 131. Later John Swinney, the party's publicity vice convenor, said: We felt it was a dangerous course!'" (25 September)

No dangerous course for these lickspittle tammy doffers. God save the Quine!

Bedtime reading

In the quiet of his hotel bedroom the worker who is in transit selling something useless, attending a seminar about how to con people or just being brainwashed in some staff training course can console themself with a Gideon bible.

Ever wondered how that bible got there? It is all due to as association of businessmen who formed the Gideon International in 1899. We are talking big bucks here:

  "The association distributes 1 million bibles every 10 days at an annual cost of $53m (£35m). Worldwide there are 600 million Gideons. 'We are still battling with other competitors like the Koran', said Brian Hickford, manager of Gideons in the UK." (Independent, 3 September)

You think that is competition, Mr Hickford? What about the day when there is a Socialist Standard in every hotel bedroom? Put there by men and women of the working class not businessmen.

What is Love? (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A young man and woman have a good relationship. They are both kind, thoughtful people. They both go out to work — she earns less than he does, but they share their income. He does his share of the housework. They both feel free to go out when they choose and they enjoy each other’s company. Their sexual relationship is good unpressured and imaginative — and like the rest of their relationship, based on equality.

Naturally, they have arguments from time to time, but they are quickly resolved. Untouched by life’s bitterness, they cannot imagine anything much ever going wrong. Why should it?

Then something happens which changes their lives for ever. She becomes pregnant and he does not. Raised by TV and magazine images of cute babies and blissful parenthood, they still cannot imagine anything but greater happiness. Things start to change. Affected by massive hormonal changes acting upon her like a strong drug and discomfited by the realization of what is happening to her body, the woman becomes moody, alternately bad-tempered and clingy.

He is irritated by her moodiness, feels pressured by her unusual clinginess and put off by her sickness and tiredness. They go to a party one night and he becomes flirtatious with another woman. She feels betrayed, and disturbed by her own insecurity and jealousy. He is enjoying the light relief from his unease and resents what he sees as her interference.

The boat has started to rock. Differences have set in. At this stage they sit and talk things over and they feel better for it.

When she has the baby, it is an intense experience for both of them. She is overwhelmed by the levels of physical pain and he suffers with her. The birth, however, is straightforward and the arrival of the baby is a joyous moment for both of them.

Now the fun begins. She breastfeeds the baby — for good reasons — it keeps mother and baby close and the milk is biologically the correct food for the baby, protecting from illness. He feels left out.

He cannot share the childcare at this stage. She cannot go back to work straight away so they become reliant on his income — a subtle shift in power occurs. They are living off "his" income. She becomes worn out with being awake at night. She knows she is on duty 24 hours a day, every day and is desperate for decent sleep. He believes he should not have to get up in the night with baby as he is going to do the work.

They can neither of them really understand the rift developing between them — and hardly believe it.

This story has a number of possible endings. They might somehow muddle through, and with the help of kind friends and relatives come to understand each other — or it might end in a nasty divorce, the child having been badly affected by years of hostility followed by the loss of someone loved.

In the years BC (before children) equality between men and women can seem a fairly straight forward affair. Differences between men and women are far fewer than similarities. Even at this stage, it is likely that awareness of parenthood is closer to the surface for women than for men. Having, whether by instinct or socialization, spent much of her childhood playing with babies, real or plastic, a woman is more likely to have potential parenthood in her consciousness. A man is likely to have spent much of his childhood climbing, running, jumping, exploring, competing, "scoring" and involved in physical, playful tussle with his mates. Sexuality is approached from this angle — babies hardly come into it.

Until the 1950s, the expectations placed upon a man in capitalism were that he should sell his time and energy to an employer in order to provide food and shelter for himself and "his” family whilst "his" wife should do all the housework and all the childcare (and if necessary another poorly paid job). However unsatisfied or miserable they might be they should remain monogamous "till death us do part". "Equality" did not come into it — the man must be (or at least appear to be) "in control of " his wife.

What is extraordinary, and a great tribute to "human nature" is that some of these marriages worked at a human level. There could be a mutual respect, an understanding that both parties were doing what needed to be done. There was not always excessive jealousy or deceit — both parties could co-operate. Not surprisingly, it was equally likely that the arrangement would falter. There was little divorce, but often a lot of misery contained, hidden and denied within the home.

Times have changed, expectations have shifted. We no longer feel morally obliged to stay in miserable monogamy for years on end. Neither have we found a much happier alternative. If people do manage to remain happy as a couple or end a marriage in a civil and respectful way, it seems a matter of chance, something that happens in spite of prevailing conditions and social pressures.

Attempts are made at alternative arrangements; communal living for instance, open marriage, voluntary childlessness, lesbian and gay relationships . . . The most common is that of the single parent, living as the only adult in the household, overburdened, isolated and usually poor — hardly a happy alternative to a rotten marriage, though often a more peaceful one.

From the sixties and before there has been an ongoing struggle to escape institutionalized monogamous marriage with its associated double standards for men and women.

However, within the framework of our economic system making sexual relationships and procreation a happy affair has remained well-nigh impossible.

The majority of people meet their basic needs through work done for capitalists, and the work of pregnancy, childbirth and 24-hour care of small, needy and demanding human beings is not materially rewarded; it does not serve the capitalists any immediate financial purpose. This throws the parents with care of their children on to the mercy of partners who, already resentful at having to sell their lives and souls, can have very ambiguous feelings about having to meet demands at home. Otherwise they are minimally and reluctantly supported by the state.

In truth, the person (usually a woman) raising the next generation of human beings is undertaking an enormously important task in terms of the wider society but because the profit system makes no immediate gains from the work she is doing, she is left with many of her needs largely unmet — some of them very basic, adequate sleep and rest for instance.

Other needs are less clearly defined — autonomy, freedom of movement, free time, respect, appreciation, adequate adult company — to name but a few. And because the carers’ needs are unmet, she can not meet those of the children, the future women and men of the world. Hence the deep sense of parental guilt experienced by many, if not most, mothers.

Our present society has a property basis. This has historically included the idea of women as being the property of men an idea profoundly affecting the self-image of men and women alike — man as controlling and woman as controlled. Such an idea overlays any "natural" similarities and differences between women and men. It also sabotages the possibility of respectful, loving relationships between the sexes.

Many women are trapped in abusive relationships because they do not have free access to alternative living quarters or the basic necessities for themselves and their children. A lot of misery is caused by anxiety and arguments about money management, especially amongst those at the lower end of the income scale.

Women and men alike fall prey to neurotic and addictive illnesses because they cannot cope with expectations placed on them to relate to and support others in a callous, blaming, unsupportive world. Such people have often begun adult life vulnerable because their own parents were themselves deprived and hence unable to provide physically, emotionally or both.

The list of present-day miseries is endless, especially if we also look beyond the sphere covered by this particular piece of writing.

How much happiness, pleasure and satisfaction might we find in a society geared simply to meeting everyone’s needs?

Men and women are similar in most respects but different when it comes to having babies. In this respect, men’s and women’s needs differ. In a world which is geared to meeting everyone’s needs, and not to making profit for a minority, there is hope for really meeting the different needs of women, men and children. Such a world is surely the best breeding ground for reliably good human relationships.

Nicky Snell

Editorial: Why Capitalism must go (1993)

Editorial from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things are not produced today to meet people’s needs. They are produced to make a profit. And that’s the cause of the problems we face.

Under the profit system profits always come first, before providing basic services like health care and transport, before improving conditions at work, and before protecting the environment. At the same time it encourages a get-rich-quick climate where competition to make money takes over from cooperation and community values. Everything is reduced to its cash value and people are judged, not for what they are but by how much money they have.

Look at the results. The health service is crumbling. The transport system is in chaos. Schools have become swot shops. Pollution is rife and the environment under attack. The poor have got poorer. Begging and homelessness have spread. Crime is rising. Racism is reviving. Business culture reigns supreme, with "market forces", "competition" and "profit" as the buzzwords. Life is becoming more and more commercialized and empty. People are becoming isolated from each other, with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. The standard of living may be going up, but the standard of life is going down.

Under the profit system production is in the hands of profit-seeking business enterprises — some state- owned, but mostly private — all competing to maximize the rate of return on the money invested in them. Decisions as to what to produce and how much, and how and where to produce it, are made not in response to people’s needs but in response to market forces.

For a business its profits are the difference between its sales receipts and its production costs. Market forces act on both. Through competition between different firms, they force each firm to seek to maximize its sales and to minimize its costs.

Both these have serious consequences for the way we live.

Maximizing sales turns society into one huge marketplace. Advertising, the hard sell and swindles to trap the unwary have all grown over the years, and are getting worse. At one time television was free from commercial ads. Not any longer. Then came commercial radio. Now the pressure is on to allow Sunday selling, so that soon buying and selling will be able to go on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All this represents a commercialization and a degradation of our lives.

Minimizing costs so as to maximize profits has equally harmful consequences. When a firm has a choice between two materials or two methods of production, one cheaper and the other safer or less damaging to the environment, it has to chose the first. Otherwise its production costs would be higher and it would lose out in the battle of competition. Its profits would be less and it would eventually risk being driven out of business altogether.

The health and welfare of the workforce and the effects on the environment take second place. That’s what minimizing costs means. This is why at work we suffer speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, overwork and accidents. This is why we have to work long hours, shiftwork and nightwork. This is why the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe are all polluted. This is why the Earth’s non-renewable mineral and energy resources are plundered. This is why natural balances are upset and the environment destroyed.

This profit system can’t help doing this. It’s the only way it can work. Which is why it must go.

Anyone for the vanguard? (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month the SWP holds its Conference but it won't be like the Conference of a working- class organization, with delegates, resolutions and contested elections. The SWP is not that kind of organization. As a Leninist vanguard it is a top-down organization controlled by its leaders, not its members.

Power in the SWP is in the hands of a small Central Committee whose members are all full time officials of the organization. Nominally the Central Committee is elected by the Conference but in practice it is a self- perpetuating body whose membership is renewed by co-optation.

What happens is that the outgoing Central Committee proposes its own slate of candidates for the incoming committee. This allows them to continue in office as long as they like, while being able to exclude any of their number who may have become awkward and to include any promising leadership material they have spotted and consider worthy of elevation to their ranks.

The rulebook does allow Conference delegates to vote against, but this never happens. One disillusioned SWPer has complained:

   "Have you ever had a vote on who should be the leader of the SWP or on the Central Committee? The way this is decided on at SWP conference is very dubious. You 're given a list of the new proposed CC and asked whether you agree or disagree. I’ve never heard of anyone not agreeing"! (Republican Marxist Bulletin, Nov-Dec 1992).

So the official list is always rubber-stamped. Just like in Russia under Brezhnev and in the late unlamented Communist Party. This is how Bob Darke, who was a CP borough councillor in Hackney in Stalin's day, writing in 1952 described the way the local borough Secretariat was chosen:

   "Each year the existing Secretariat draws up its own panel of names for the new Secretarial. It does this after it has consulted with the London District Committee (which is the coordinating authority of all branches in the London area). The Secretariat is often so satisfied with its work during the past year that it suggests that it should be re-elected en bloc. Of course, the London District may not agreed, in which case changes will be made in the list.
   "The panel is then placed before the aggregate meeting and comrades are invited to vote on it. They have absolute freedom of choice. They may vote Yes or No. Of course No would be a wasted vote, for there is no alternative to the panel. They are entitled to reject the suggested panel out of hand and suggest an entirely new one. I say they are at liberty to do this — but I have never known of it being done." (The Communist Technique in Britain, p. 23).

The likeness is not accidental and explodes the SWP's claim that Lenin did not lead to Stalin. The fact is that the emergence of a self-perpetuating leadership is an inevitable consequence — indeed, is one of the aims — of Leninist organizational principles.

The SWP Conference is completely dominated by the Central Committee which, quite literally, sets the agenda. Once again, on paper branches have the right to put down resolutions but are strongly discouraged from doing so:

   "Branches can submit resolutions if they wish, and these may be voted on. But in recent years the practice of sending resolutions to conference has virtually ceased" (Socialist Review, September 1983).

What the delegates discuss are not resolutions coming from the membership organized in branches, but a report submitted by the Central Committee on the political "perspectives". This is a document of pamphlet length and is the main item on the agenda. It is discussed section by section; at the end of each discussion a committee is elected to draw up a report which the delegates then vote on. This is said to make resolutions unnecessary:

  "The advantage of this procedure is that conference does not have to proceed by resolution like a trade union conference. “

This is not the only trade union procedure that the SWP rejects:

  "Delegates should not be mandated . . . Mandating is a trade union practice, with no place in a revolutionary party."

The idea of deciding some important issue by holding a ballot of the whole membership is equally obnoxious to the SWP. In the first volume of his hagiography of Lenin, SWP leader Tony Cliff wrote:

   "In January 1907, Lenin went so far as to argue for the institution of a referendum of all party members on the issues facing the party — certainly a suggestion which ran counter to the whole idea of democratic centralism" (T. Cliff, Lenin, Volume I. Building the Party, p. 280).

It certainly did, but Lenin only proposed this because at that time he didn’t control the Central Committee.

Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership ballots are not just trade union practices; they are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organization control that organization and as such key procedures in any organization genuinely seeking socialism. Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organized democratically — without leaders, but with mandated delegates — to achieve it.

In rejecting these procedures what the SWP is saying is that the working class should not organize itself democratically, but should instead follow a self-appointed, undemocratically organized elite. This is pure Lenin. According to him, left to themselves workers were only capable of developing what he contemptuously called a "trade union consciousness"; to go beyond this they had to be led by professional revolutionaries taking orders from an all-powerful centre. This is the model the SWP is following.

So, if you have a low assessment, like Lenin, of the intellectual and organizational abilities of your class, join the SWP! If you want to be in an organization where you’ll never mandate a delegate, put forward a resolution for conference or vote in a ballot of members, join the SWP! If you are prepared to be a follower in a leadership-run organization, join the SWP! On the other hand, if you want to organize democratically to get socialism, look no further . . . 

Adam Buick

The Illusion of Choice (1993)

Book Review from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Illusion of Choice by A. Schmookler, State University of New York, Albany. 1993.

Subtitled "How the market economy shapes our destiny", this book mounts a devastating attack on capitalism. Schmookler shows how the market is deaf to the voices of those without money with which to express their needs. Capitalist "justice" does not require that anyone in the marketplace invest capital or labour to cure the ills of people in the Third World who have nothing to give in exchange.

The market is sensitive to the needs we have as "social atoms" but it disregards the needs we have as a social community. Despite all the goods and services individuals can buy if they have the money, "there is no place you and I can go to buy a clean environment, a coherent landscape, an intact social community".

Those who run capitalism — ironically, unless they own considerable wealth, they are workers — do not actually seek to discover what consumers need. They offer consumers what they can be persuaded to want from among commercially viable choices. A good illustration of this is Nestle’s campaign to persuade Third World mothers to buy infant food. Breastfeeding was a better choice for women and their infants. "But this superior and naturally available option involves no sale and makes no companies rich. The market system is adept at blunting all threats to its continued dominion. Schmookler recalls seeing, in the midst of the youth rebellion of the early 1970s, an advertisement in San Francisco for a new style of clothing which was recommended for "the revolutionary look". The author is oddly split-minded about the possibility of abolishing capitalism. In one mode "I more or less accept the world as it is and feel comfortable in it. In the other, I feel an acute awareness of how out of joint the world is". Like so many radical critics of capitalism he pushes the needed revolutionary change into the future:

  "Ultimately, it is probably necessary to change our entire concept of property and the rights that adhere to property where the resources of the earth are concerned . . . The market system . . . is not the end of history. The systems failure to align with the forces of life makes its eventual transformation inevitable, for those forces will continue to seek fulfilment."

Why not be really revolutionary and join those forces now?

Stan Parker

The Soul of Man (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few years ago I bought the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, which included an essay entitled "The Soul of Man under socialism". I was surprised to find that Wilde had political opinions as I was only familiar with Wilde the aesthete but this essay and his poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" showed his concern for the poor.

"The Soul of Man" was my first acquaintance with socialism and it was sometime before I became aware of the Socialist Party. At first I thought socialism meant the Labour Party (especially Tony Benn) but obviously now I realize how wrong this view is. Re-reading Wilde's essay shows that he equated socialism as a world without private property: "It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property". He doesn’t state that socialism is a world without money, but as he so rightly criticizes charily we can assume he meant that the capitalist system should not be reformed only abolished: "Their remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease".

Although written just over one hundred years ago it is remarkably apt for contemporary Britain as he says: "For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin. is the parent of modem crime". This is far removed from the Victorian values which we still hear about, as is "sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less".

Anticipating criticism of this view, he says that "no Authoritarian Socialism will do", meaning it can’t be forced on people and can only be achieved when the majority want it:

"Socialism, Communism, or whatever, one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the material well-being of each member of the community."

This is as good a definition of socialism as we will find.

It is not just material well-being that socialism can bring but what Wilde calls individualism.

He waffles on about this a bit and about art but basically what he means is that each individual will be able to live fully meaningful and interesting lives. Under capitalism, this is only possible for a minority, in socialism everyone can fulfil their potential:

"One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all".

By "Soul of Man", I think Wilde meant the personality or "spirit” of humans which can be developed fully without the constraints of capitalist society. With the ending of war, hunger, poverty etc we can take for granted the material things of this world and concentrate on "not in what man has but in what man is".

Wilde sees machinery as vitally important for this type of society as it can do most, if not all, of the work, "At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man”. Wilde predicts that as machines will do the work this will leave man to enjoy:

“cultivated leisure - which, and not labour, is the aim of man - or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight."

Whilst a socialist world may still require plenty of useful work to be done, it is true that machinery can help humanity. Instead of studying new ways for us to kill each other, scientists can concentrate on developing things which would improve the quality of life for everyone. He sums up this view' with: "The state is to make what is useful. The individual is to make w hat is beautiful”.

Defining the State

He defines the state as "an association that will organize labour and be the voluntary manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities”. To use the word state was a mistake as he didn't mean state as in government: "the state is not to govern”; therefore his "state" means humanity cooperating to provide what we need.

Despite certain reservations, this is still as a good an introduction to socialism, and is obviously still relevant today:

"They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not the solution; it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."

Nigel Green

Double Jeopardy (1993)

Book Review from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Double Jeopardy. The Retrial of the Guildford Four by Ronan Bennett. (Penguin Books £4.95)

On 5 October 1974, history, prodded by events in Northern Ireland and served by an IRA gang, visited Guildford. Bombs were left in two public houses and seven people were murdered and ten times that number injured.

The anger of the bombers was reciprocated in the subsequent thuggery of the police, in the frame-up of three innocent men and one innocent woman all signally undistinguished in any ability to defend themselves, in a remarkably incurious judge and a jury of people who knew that British justice does not make mistakes.

But British justice had made yet another mistake and, after that, the mistakes kept happening and they were generally facilitated by the Labour Party's anti-Irish Prevention of Terrorism Act. But the police had been too undiscriminating, too anxious for convictions and their choice of victims were so lacking in any vestige of reality that questions were bound to arise.

Anyone familiar with IRA organization knows that "hoods" (IRA-speak for ordinary criminals) are not, for obvious reasons, welcome in the organization. One of the Guildford Four, Conlon, in his book, Proved Innocent, admits that he and Paul Hill were involved in petty crime, heavy drinking and drugs. Judith Ward lived in a world of drug-induced make-believe and Armstrong, whose confession started the ball rolling, is described by Bennett thus:

"By his own admission he was at the time a habitual drug-user, taking anything and everything he could lay his hands on. He lived with motley crews in squats and abandoned houses in the Kilburn-Cricklewood area, he signed on, he shoplifted from supermarkets and fantasized with his friends about 'big scores'."

If the police and the judiciary were prepared to see these unlikely characters as IRA bombers many others were sceptical and a number of people who knew their way around started looking at the police case. The upshot was that after nearly fifteen years in prison, the Guildford Four, like the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six, were exonerated. They had won a famous victory over British Injustice!

The be-wigged fraternity who administer the rules of British capitalism were not amused. Bennett argues that senior figures in the judiciary relayed comment about the guilt of the Four on a lobby basis. Some, like the Recorder of London, Sir James Meskim, voiced his bitterness, inferring that the Four were really guilty, but, after a newspaper article claimed that some of the Four were going to sue, he retracted his statement.

Lord Denning, paragon of the British legal system, revealed the arrogance and bitterness that lay under his wig when he told the Spectator that it would have been better of the Birmingham Six had been hanged so as to avoid damaging campaigns on behalf of plainly guilty men. It was the attempt by British justice to retrieve the situation through indirectly re-indicting the Guildford Four that is the substance of this book. Bennett, with skill and insight, reveals a squalid conspiracy of legal eagles, journalistic liars and the police to tailor the finding of a subsequent trial of three of the many police officers who were instrumental in kitting out the Guildford Four so as to make it appear that the Four were guilty.

Socialists have no illusions whatsoever about the justice enshrined in the code of rules needed to run a system based on theft and exploitation. But Bennett's exposition of this particular legal scam is an interesting read and one that shows that, in court, scoundrels are not confined to the dock.

Richard Montague