Inconsistencies of anarchism (1996)

Book Review from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Re-inventing Anarchy, Again Edited by Howard Ehrlich (AK Press £13.95.)

This is an updated reprint of an anthology of modern anarchist writings, mostly from North America, that first appeared in 1979. The aim is to show what anarchists today think rather than what the classic anarchist texts said. It succeeds in this, but at the price of bringing out the two main inconsistencies of anarchism as a political theory: its claims that people don't have to abide by majority decisions unless they want to and that big is bad.

It was anarchist insistence on denouncing "the tyranny of the majority" and on upholding the right of individuals to do whatever they liked that led William Morris to declare that he was not an anarchist because no society could exist on that basis, certainly not one based on common ownership and common decision-making. Some, though by no means all, of the writers in this anthology do seem to stand for such a society but appear not to realise how inconsistent they are in at the same time challenging the legitimacy of majority voting.

One of the consequences of believing that big is bad is that certain key aspects of capitalism—such as markets, money, and buying and selling—can come to be seen as acceptable provided they only exist on a small-scale; then they become beautiful. This has happened to the four editors of the previous edition of the book who put their names to the incredible statement that "it is hard to conceive of a serious alternative to the market economy". As “market anarchists" what they envisage as the alternative to existing society is one where there might be no profits, exploitation or a centralised state but there would be local cooperatives and small businesses producing for local markets, local currencies, and small-scale trading between local communities.

In other words, a small-scale, decentralised market economy where goods and services would be bought and sold for use not profit. We can't go back to this which Marx called "petty commodity production" and. if we did, it would develop again into the large-scale commodity production that is capitalism.

What is needed is not a completely decentralised society without any central institutions. but a proper balance (which can be left to the people of socialist society to work out) between centralisation and decentralisation and the replacement of the market economy by production and distribution directly to satisfy human needs and wants.

Market towns, each with their own currency and where anyone is free to ignore commonly-reached decisions, is not our cup of tea. This said, there are some interesting articles in this book, in particular the ones on work by David DeLeon and Bob Black.

Adam Buick

No desire for the Middle Ages (1996)

Book Review from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris on History Edited by Nicholas Salmon (Sheffield Academic Press. £6.95.)

This is yet another book published to take advantage of the fact that this year is the centenary of William Morris’s death. Not that we are complaining. Far from it. The cause of socialism can only gain from the wider diffusion of Morris’s political writings.

Morris didn't claim to be a historian. He was. in this context, just a socialist writer and speaker who from time to time wrote and spoke on historical (as on other) subjects. All the pieces included in this book were composed after he had become a socialist. They cover such subjects as English society before and after the Norman conquest, the Middle Ages, the medieval guilds, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the rise of capitalism.

After reading them nobody will be able to claim, as some still do. that Morris proposed "a return to the Middle Ages". He did think that skilled craftsmen had enjoyed somewhat of a golden age for part of the Middle Ages, and did want to revive this but in a socialist society. not by going back to feudalism where he was well aware most producers were not guild craftsmen but serfs exploited by a class of feudal lords.

Morris became a socialist when he was nearly fifty, so it was only normal that he already had set views on certain subjects. One of these, for instance, was that the moral attitudes of the "Teutonic” peoples of Northern Europe—what he called their “manly” virtues— were superior to those of the Roman Empire.

Despite such personal views (and despite one bad talk in which he gives out good and bad points to the various English kings of the feudal period after the fashion of conventional history textbooks) Morris’s general approach is that of the materialist conception of history.

In other words, he starts from the premise that it is the way humans in any society are related to each other, with regard to the production and distribution of the material means by which society and its individual members survive, that in the end determines the ideas and political structure of that society; and that social change occurs when advances in technology change these basic social relations of production and give rise to a new economic class which struggles against the established ruling class to consolidate the new mode of production economically, politically and ideologically.

Adam Buick

Papering over the cracks (1996)

Theatre Review from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wallpaper by Sophia Kingshill (Bridewell Theatre)

In 1913 Lenin, James Joyce and the founder of the Dadaist school of art all chanced to be in Zurich at the same time. And in Travesties Tom Stoppard imagines them becoming unavoidably involved in a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which is managed by staff at the British Embassy. The result is an irresistible verbal pyrotechnic in which revolutionary politics, avant-garde art and literature, and the day-to-day lunacies of so-called diplomacy are hilariously admixed courtesy of Wilde's play.

In Wallpaper Sophia Kingshill  attempts something similar and largely succeeds. She imagines that William Morris and Bernard Shaw "encounter one of Shaw's creations, Liza Doolittle the upwardly mobile flower seller (of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady) and try to turn her into a socialist". Wallpaper is described as "a Shavian melodrama portraying the adventures of Mr William Morris, Miss Eleanor Marx and Miss Eliza Doolittle". The title suggests that it is Morris and his popular image as a designer of wallpaper who is the focus of the play, but this is not the case. It is Shaw rather than Morris who stands at the play's centre.

Kingshill is clearly anxious to put the record straight and to acknowledge Morris’s activities as a revolutionary socialist, but in this she is only partially successful. The play fails to give the audience more than an inkling of Morris's political thinking and it avoids, almost completely, an examination of the way in which Morris's position as a social revolutionary stands opposed to Shaw's attachment to reformism And she is not helped in the latter enterprise by articles in the programme by Stan Newens MEP, Denis McShane MP and other Labour Party luminaries, which claim Morris as a key figure in their movement. It's rather like members of the Flat Earth Society enrolling Copernicus as an honorary member.

Kingshill is at her best when dealing with her characters as people rather than when dealing with their political views. There is a convincing truthfulness about the bluff, avuncular Morris, the mordant, ironic Shaw, and the selfless, benevolent Eleanor Marx, which allows us better to understand their behaviour. And Eleanor’s travails at the hands of fellow socialist(ic) Edward Aveling, should give us cause to ponder. How can those whose own behaviour is based on the selfish pursuit of their own inclinations act as credible advocates of a society founded on fraternity, cooperation and mutual self-interest?

If it seems odd to involve Eliza Doolittle in the seemingly real-life activities of Morris, Shaw, Aveling and Eleanor Marx, Kingshill uses Shaw's authorship of Pygmalion to good effect. Aveling seems a model for the fictional Henry Higgins, and Alfred Liddle (a friend of Morris) re-emerges as Freddie, Eliza’s rejected swain. Moreover, Kingshill parodies several of the songs and set pieces of My Fair Lady to stunning effect. Higgins's song in celebration of Eliza’s mastery of upper-class pronunciation "By gosh, she’s doneit", becomes “You've done it. You've really gone and done it", sung by three policemen before a chilling parody of the Ascot racing scene now transformed into the infamous Trafalgar Square siege of 1887. And who would have thought to hear "Get me to the church on time" turned into a celebration of the revolutionary potential of the international working class?

On the night I saw the play a small and inept audience seemed to miss most of the humour and sat silent and passive. Those on stage deserved better; perhaps especially Julia Stubbs who played Eleanor Marx with illuminating sensitivity. and Russell Churney whose reptilian Aveling was splendidly convincing.

People expecting a political polemic will be disappointed — but then perhaps the theatre is not the place for such an enterprise? This said, Wallpaper seems to me to be a considerable achievement. Given more attention to the ideas which inform the revolutionary and reformist positions of the major players, and a more sophisticated realisation of the text, what is already a drama of considerable merit might become a truly significant piece of theatre.

Michael Gill

Hedgehogs for Blair (1996)

From the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Labour continues to be attacked by Old Labour. So what's new? Not much. If you run a tight ship, as Blair does, then you must expect some of the crew to harbour thoughts of mutiny. Austin Mitchell, MP for Grimsby, recently got publicity by comparing Blair's leadership with that of Kim II Sung. In an article “The hedgehog’s view" (New Statesman, 30 August) he dismissed his party’s The Road to the Manifesto in the following perceptive, if not very flattering, terms:

  "The new document isn‘t intended for you as party members. Your role is to endorse it, preferably with acclamation. This isn't the Labour Party as we know it. Our leaders are playing a different game from us. It’s a power game in which different rules apply. They can't tell us all this. So I'll break it to you now, because a squashed hedgehog on the road to the manifesto sees what's going on."

So far, so good. A Labour Party member sees what’s going on. likens himself to a squashed hedgehog—and hints at taking action against the juggernaut that did the foul deed. No. wait a minute, that can’t be right. The juggernaut pictured in the article has a large message on its side “Vote Blair". Does this mean that Mitchell and all the other Labour hedgehogs who are worried about being flattened by the roadhog Blair will refuse to vote for him? No. of course it doesn’t.

For a hedgehog, Mitchell is quite junglewise. in a puerile kind of way. He refers to members, trade unions, branches, councillors and the rest as bit-part players in Tony’s power game, and goes on:

"So the new deal, in an age of media campaigning, is that we pretend our work is important. Tony pretends to listen. Then he gets on with his real job of putting forward what he wants, in our name."

You would think, from all this, that Mitchell would be wanting out from a party that is so obviously a democratic sham. Not a bit of it. A hedgehog has remarkably low expectations, especially after it’s been squashed. Mitchell writes of "a Faustian compact with Tony Blair, on a back me or sack me basis.” and concludes "It’s a pretty good bargain for a party that blew it a decade ago."

Squashed hedgehogs are remarkably masochistic. They are not clever enough to know the difference between capitalism and socialism but they do know that "Most people’s votes are up for grabs, and they are choosing as consumers: what’s the best buy? What will this product do for me? New Labour is a product. The Road to the Manifesto . . .  is our glossy sales brochure."

The last section of Mitchell’s article shows clearly his Fabian reformism. His waffle includes the historically disproved delusion that "Labour in office can move the levers of power to the people." And “Influencing the holders of power is more useful work than futile dream-building in opposition." Nowhere does Mitchell say what the Labour power holders are to be influenced to do— certainly nothing as radical as to change the basis of society from production for profit to production solely to meet needs.

Labour Party members and supporters can choose between Blair who will administer capitalism more or less as the previous five Labour governments have done or people like Mitchell who will (however reluctantly) support Blair who will ditto. But they are not forced to make that choice. If they think that it’s time to replace the system, not its administrators, they will realise they are in the wrong party, leave it and join us in the Socialist Party

Stan Parker

Editorial: Labour, socialism and the unions (1996)

Editorial from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The media never asked us, but we are all in favour of the Labour Party dropping any reference to being socialist and all in favour of the link between Labour and the unions being broken.

Unions were formed by groups of workers to defend their interests at work against the pressures exerted by employers. At the turn of the last century they began to realise that such defensive action was not enough and that workers ought to take political action too.

Unfortunately, they mistakenly saw this, not as class-conscious action to win political control with a view to establishing socialism, but only as action to get trade unionists and pro-trade union politicians elected to parliament. They created the Labour Party, not a socialist party.

In their eyes. Labour’s role was to try to make things better for workers within capitalism, not to abolish it. Some favourable measures can sometimes be obtained, but the capitalist system as a whole can never be made to work in the interests of the majority. It is based on exploitation and on profits taking priority over everything else.

This is what all governments have to accept—and apply. So when Labour converted itself after the first world war from a trade union pressure group in parliament into a party of government, it set itself on a collision course with the unions as defenders of the immediate economic interests of workers.

When Labour did come to form the government— from the first in 1924 to the last, under Callaghan, in 1979—it found itself having to oppose strikes and wage demands. In fact it found itself banning strikes, prosecuting strikers, imposing wage freezes and passing anti-union laws. At the same time it was able to exploit its links with the unions to get them to swallow these anti-worker measures.

In other words, the link between Labour and the unions has been more advantageous to Labour than to the unions. If, for whatever reason, Labour now wants to end it the unions should jump at the offer. This will restore an independence they should never have given up.

It will also give them a free hand to treat a Blair government as an enemy. They will need to. The Labour Party has made it quite clear that the next Labour government will set out to be the most anti-worker and pro-business Labour government to date.

Especially the male of the species (1996)

Book Review from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (AK Press £3.50)

Valerie Solanas, the rebellious radical feminist who attempted to shoot Andy Warhol dead in 1968, wrote the SCUM Manifesto as a declaration of war on the male sex and all she claimed it stands for. According to Solanas, war, authority, government, the market economy, sexual abuse of children and mental illness were all created by - and perpetuated by - the male of the human species. Solanas contended that:

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civi-minded, responsible thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex".

It is, of course, gratifying that someone else should have independently come to some of the same conclusions as us about the necessity of destroying capitalism and its poisonous relationships, but Solanas other ideas - indeed her central contentions - about the male sex only serve to discredit her opposition to the market economy and money.

Her grotesque anti-male sexism - she called men a "walking abortion" who would "wade nostril-deep through a pile of vomit at a chance of achieving sexual gratification" was almost certainly more a product of her own abusive childhood and early sexual relationships than a rounded and considered comment on the intricate nature of bourgeois society and the human attitudes it engenders.

The SCUM Manifesto, in fact, is a nicely strung-together sequence of provocative phrases and slogans, containing wild assertions which are at no time backed up by augmentation or evidence. As such, it has probably brought little but derision to advocates of the moneyless society, and for that reason it's republication cannot be entirely welcomed.

DAP