Letters: Two leaflets (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a Libertarian Socialist I send you an “Open letter— Alliance & Solidarity for a New Left/European New Left”, that is a translation (bad I’m sure) into English of an idea that started in Portugal during the last European Elections. Let me know what you think:

“—MAY 68— PARIS/FRANCE —APRIL 74/75— LISBON/PORTUGAL —CUBA/NICARAGUA and after?

For some the Left is dead, for others, the Left is the ‘Third Way’. But the reality is that we don’t know what’s meant by being ‘Left’. What do we stand for? What sort of Left in Europe for the 2000s?

It’s time to re-invent, to re-think, the Left, and in ‘Alliance & Solidarity’ to rebuild a New Left/European New Left.

For us the New Left will be a project for a new society, more democratic and alternative, socialist, libertarian and Ecologist/Green .A more free and less consumerist society.

This project must come from local community experiences, and not from ready-made theories. It must be a project capable of changing relations between human beings; producers; consumers; development— environment; sex—religion; working relations—leisure; racism—culture; nation state, etc. A project with new experiences for new communal relations and relations between peoples and countries.

There are no ready-made answers, neither will the answers be for sure. But in ‘Alliance & Solidarity’ with the contributions of all interested, Socialists, Libertarians, workers’ co-operatives, ecologists, green activists, lesbian/gay movement activists, New Age groups; trade unions, etc. we can rebuild step-by-step a new project, the New Left/European New Left.”

Emmanuel, 

Bracknell, Berks

Reply: 

The Old Left with its project for state capitalism has certainly failed but we don’t think what you propose is the answer. Certainly, all the groups you mention have an interest in getting rid of capitalism—and so, if only they knew it, of establishing a socialist society of common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use—except the New Agers (though perhaps they too will find what they’re looking for in socialism). But before bringing together various disparate interest groups, some of whose demands can be accommodated within the context of capitalism, we would need to be clear on the goal aimed at. We would need to be clear what the more free, libertarian and democratic and less consumerist society respecting ecological principles that you rightly want can only be achieved on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s productive resources. This understood, it would follow that all our political efforts should be exclusively directed to achieving that goal.

Editors.

* * *

Dear Editors,

The enclosed “Election Leaflet” represents a fictitious attempt by a World Wide Free Access Party in support of an equally fictitious candidate for Parliament. I was inspired to write this because of the recent correspondence in the Socialist Standard regarding changing the name of the Party. This leaflet is a fallout from it:

“Many voters will be learning about Free Access for the first time as a political force although the practice of Free Access is as old as mankind itself, in fact it worked inside every family in the past and so it does today. Whenever did you hear of parents selling food to their children or making them buy it from them? Never. That’s Free Access at work.

This long history of Free Access has been further developed by small groups all over our planet and advocated by poets and philosophers down the ages. Indeed the use of money as a total exchange unit is a comparatively modern thing, societies getting along without it for thousands of

years and, if using it at all, only sparingly.

World Free Access! What does it mean? Will it work today?

1. No, it can’t work because firstly it must be mentally accepted, then it will work.
2. It requires no leaders. They tend to freeze the mind. Free Worlders have no leaders and don’t need them—we know what we want.
3. We just need to be able to produce abundance for all—we can, right now!
4. A moneyless, frontierless world society will release a mighty flood of hitherto unproductive labour. No armed forces or armaments, no banks, no insurance, no income tax, no ticket collectors or travel costs, no customs, etc.
5. The rape of the planet for profit leading to global warming and danger to all life will cease instantly.
6. Numerous wars, always raging somewhere, will cease.
7. The elimination of life on earth will no longer be a possibility.”

Sam Levitt, 

London NW3

Reply: 

Your leaflet is certainly better than the one from Portugal. We will let readers judge for themselves whether separating the concept of socialism from its history and the class struggle doesn’t make it sound a bit insipid.

Editors.

Voice From The Back: Blood money (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood money 

The international arms bazaar has always been a dirty if highly lucrative trade. And Britain, despite the hypocritical stance currently adopted by the Foreign Office, has never been slow to sell lethal hardware to warring foreigners if the price was right . . . To that end, the Ministry of Defence’s commercial offshoot, Defence Export Services Organisation, produced a global survey in 1998—the year after Labour came to power—identifying existing and potential customers and their future requirements. While paying lip-service to New Labour’s stated aim of “ethical arms exports”, the strategic survey rules out few of the world’s rogue states as possible clients. Libya, Syria and Iraq are still not welcome. For the moment at least. Chile, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, all of which have appalling human rights records, are well quoted . . . Malaysia is another client. It has cash aplenty and it serves as a counterbalance to Indonesia. The arms race allows the UK to quite literally make a killing and keep some kind of bloody order in its perceived spheres of influence. The Herald, 9 September.

A plague on both your houses 

The truth is, both superpowers have decided to embark on a biological weapons arms race with incalculable consequences. The Russians, accomplished cheats on biological warfare disarmament, have been pursuing offensive research on smallpox for years. The Americans, who know only too well of this Russian deception, feel obliged to pursue defensive measures. But compounding the mutual suspicions is one essential truth in the grim world of plague wars research—the line between defensive and offensive is invisible. Western Australian, 19 June.

A fair day’s cop-out 

This year, the Bunbury [Australia] RSL is proud to honour the men of the Merchant Marines who served their countries so well during the world wars. It is sadly true to say that they have not received the recognition and thanks that has accrued to the members of the military forces that relied so much on their efforts. The men of the British Merchant Navy (30,000 of whom fell victim to the U-boats between 1939 and 1945, the majority drowned or killed by exposure in the cruel northern oceans) were quite as certainly front-line warriors as the guardsmen and fighter pilots to whom they ferried the necessities of combat. Neither they nor their Australian, American, Dutch, Norwegian or Greek fellow mariners wore uniform and few have any memorial . . . under British law, when a ship was sunk, the obligation of the shipowner to pay the crew’s wages went with it. Bunbury Herald, 20 April 1998.

Counting our blessings 

In Britain, the richest 10 percent enjoy, on average, seven times the income of the poorest 10 percent; in Russia the difference is 40-fold, with devastating effects on people’s health. Guardian, 18 August.

Divide and rule 

One of communism’s greatest paradoxes was its attitude towards the workers. The official doctrine held them as the ruling class. However, in daily life they were treated with contempt and were the victims of numerous abuses. It took the events of August 1980 to shatter the false image of the workers and show their true nature as people willing to fight for the freedoms and rights of workers and of the whole of society. Following that experience, the bond of co-operation between the intelligentsia and the working class was born. It was exactly that bond that gave great power to the Solidarity movement . . . The death knell of this bond came in the form of the collapse of the communist system and more specifically the extremely liberal method of reforming the economy. Very quickly these reforms brought on great financial disparities. To some extent this stratification could not have been avoided in a market economy, but in Poland these changes became so extreme that they ruined the former social cohesion. Over 90 percent of society living quite modestly will continue to pay taxes at an unchanged level. Meanwhile, the tiny group of the most affluent will see their taxes fall by 4 percent from 40 to 36 percent. The effects of the decrease in budgetary intake will be felt by those earning the least . . . Solidarity’s great drama is that 10 years after its triumph it takes care of the wealthiest few and has truncheons and rubber bullets for those who demand bread and work. Wprost Weekly (Polish language paper), 4 July.

Food: why we don’t get the best (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food matters to everyone. People have been led to revolt if unable to obtain enough. But quality, rather than quantity, is just as important. Politicians, their profit-chasing overlords and the marketplace that unites them, are attracting unfavourable scrutiny after successive well-publicised poisonings, adulterations, scams and animal abuse cases. 

Following salmonella, E. coli, BSE and a spate of more recent food scandals, people are unsurprisingly alarmed over just what they are eating and just what can be done to ensure meals are safe. Here are just four disturbing news reports of late which emerged in less than one week: 

The [Pesticide Safety Directorate] working party on pesticide residues found that some of the largest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Safeway, sold produce that had levels of pesticides above the maximum residues limit, including illegal growth regulators and known carcinogens (Guardian, 17 September). 

Food hygiene inspectors from the European Commission are to start an urgent investigation into standards in French rendering plants following allegations that untreated water, blood and discharges from animal carcasses, and sewage have been used in making poultry and pig feed. The Commission and the French government have been anxious to play down the accusation for fear of sparking a new European food crisis . . . The common factor in this summer’s crises has been manufacturers’ failure to maintain hygiene standards in the highly competitive food industry (Guardian, 18 August) 

Children who eat fishfingers are being fed ‘undesirable’ levels of two of the world’s most feared poisons, reveals an official report. Dioxins and PCBs—believed to cause cancer and have ‘gender bending’ effects—were found by Government researchers in all the samples of fishfingers bought in different supermarkets. Higher levels were found in the fresh fish on sale, particularly in oily fish such as herring which the Government has been urging people to eat for health reasons . . . Despite the fears, the Government has decided against issuing any warnings when the research—the first of its kind by the Agriculture Ministry—was published quietly in August on an official website (Daily Mail, 20 September). 

Belgium yesterday warned the EU that tests carried out on meat for export . . . show that livestock reared on farms near industrial plants carries higher levels of dioxin contamination . . . Belgium’s food crisis in May caused consumer panic after the revelation that animal feed had been contaminated by potentially cancer-causing dioxins at a food plant in Flanders which allegedly mixed motor oil with fats to bind the feed . . . the Belgian crisis of confidence in food safety worsened yesterday after revelations that sewerage sludge had been mixed into fodder, as in France . . . sludge from toilets and showers, water from slaughterhouses and cleaning products had got into the food chain (Guardian, 22 September). 

The September 18 “highly competitive food industry” reference says it all, and should enlighten concerned shoppers to the total incompatibility between access to continuously high-quality comestibles and competitive production for financial gain, due to market forces always tending to value profits ahead of excellence. 

There will never be a time when most people become wealthy enough to buy only the very best, since while competitive production exists so, too, will competitive employment. And with competing employers, driven by those same market forces to hold down wages and salaries (and taxes that provide welfare benefits) so as to favour profits and stay in businesses, there will always exist a great many working and non-working people with limited incomes who nevertheless must purchase sustenance. This section will vary in size according to the needs of capital. 

Official DSS figures released in February showed that, after deducting housing costs, no fewer than 14.1 million people had below half the average income. While food producers are going to be keen to obtain this poorly-paid group’s money, competition to grab a greater market share by supplying the least expensive food means there will be an ever-present pressure to minimise quality, because superior ingredients, more thorough procedures, better trained employees, etc all cost more. Include today’s international intensification of competitiveness through deregulation and the steady removal of tariffs, trade barriers and subsidies in pursuit of a correctly functioning global market, and the seemingly endless appalling procession of scandalous headlines becomes perfectly clear. 

Uncompetitive regulations 

The Blair Government knows that inferior and dangerous food means antagonistic voters; a situation to be earnestly avoided. Labour certainly doesn’t want to end up like the former Belgium government of Jean-Luc Dehaene—booted out of office largely due to carcinogenic dioxin at up to 700 times permitted “acceptable limits” being found in eggs, chickens and then pigs, just weeks before a general election. So what’s their approach? A proposed “independent” Food Standards Agency. 

The FSA proposal emerged not long after Blair came to power. Large retail firms and manufacturing interests were soon applying pressure, insisting the agency be made less regulatory. Then businesses caused the agency to remain on the drawing board longer by complaining that the FSA should not be funded through levies on their food outlets. And despite the BSE catastrophe under Tory rule, the Ministry of Agriculture—which former minister Edwina Currie said “had long ago set itself up as a trade union for producers”-was once again siding with the food industry. Yum, yum: prole food Yum, yum: prole food. 

There is to be publication of an annual report from the Working Party on Pesticide Residues, who will have a small number of food samples tested, and name retailers selling produce with residues above the “maximum residue limit”, and identify the goods concerned. However, this can be nothing more than a show to dispel the public crisis of confidence in food. 

Can consumers turn to organic foods? Perhaps some will be able to keep paying higher prices to reduce their contamination levels (except from equally dangerous airborne chemicals). But the majority can never have high quality organic food and freedom from various other sources of pollution, because of the international competition that is an integral feature of capitalism. Britain cannot go “green” alone. The additional financial burden on capital to establish and maintain a far safer and healthier environment would result in an economic crisis in no time. Britain simply cannot impose rigorous standards on producers without increasing their costs, and in a global market, that would spell disaster for UK firms. 

Everyone concerned about avoiding dangerous and inferior produce has to ask themselves this question: “What did I vote for at election time?” Since, whenever the electorate empower yet another bunch of politicians to—unavoidably—cater to the needs of business as the priority, the very conditions that give rise to food scandals will remain in place. If different competing groups retain ownership of productive resources, they must continue exploiting those assets in the most profitable manner in order to sell and prosper from what is produced. One result? BSE and 43 people dead (that we know of), and a renewed chilling warning this September from Professor Liam Donaldson, the government’s own chief medical officer: “What is absolutely certain is that the present relatively low number of cases [of nv-CJD] should not lead anyone to conclude that the worst is over. Levels of human exposure at the height of the BSE epidemic would have been high.” 

Misuse of GM technology; pesticide-induced cancers; animal maltreatment; cover-ups; no or inadequate labelling; abysmal hygiene standards. None of these need happen. We do not have to futilely hope profit-biased governments will impose uncompetitive regulations and strict enforcement. There is another option to capitalism’s inability to deliver continuously high-quality food for all. If we all own the means of producing food, then we all own the produce, which means never buying it or having any financial restraints on its quality.

Max Hess

A Land Fit for Heroes - 1999 (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty-five percent of homeless men sleeping on the streets of London are ex-servicemen (Times, 3 August). The smelly, aggressive drunk on Hungerford Bridge was once a hero! A survey carried out in 1993 concluded that the main cause of homelessness and its consequences is the breakdown of relationships and alcoholism, and these develop during military service. So there it is—the even more important question is: “Are these heroes fit for the land?”, and the worrying answer is “apparently not”. It is not just the so-called positive side of the Armed Forces, teaching discipline and how to feel you’re doing a great job killing fellow workers you’ve never seen before and who’ve done you no harm, but the side-effects of living in these conditions. Only recently has there been an admission that life in the Forces can easily make you unfit for life outside.

Major Colin Crawford of Combat Stress, which provides counselling to 5,000 ex-service personnel (of whom five percent are women) says that military culture and rituals act as a support for members who’ve had traumatic experiences. When they return to civilian life that support is missing and relationships fall apart under the strain. The Forces concentrate on bonding among personnel and life is lived to a strict pattern of parades, drills and uniforms, but they receive no training or advice on how to cope with a return to civilian life. Officers are not taught that the Forces’ way is not acceptable in “Civvy Street” and that, for example, an order to an office junior to get them a cup of tea will receive a dusty answer, or even simple things like the meaning of “cash-back” in a supermarket. In the Forces you are taught to hide and discipline your feelings and traumas and stresses of what they may have seen or suffered cannot be discussed leading to further isolation or heavy drinking. The latter, the major leisure occupation in the Forces is, at worst, encouraged and at best ignored.

The problem is not confined to this country. In the USA twice as many ex-servicemen committed suicide after the Vietnam war than were killed during it. At last the problem has been recognised and self-help groups are being formed to assist in the transition back to civilian life. However, Soldiers to be (Part 1, BBC1, 10 August) showing the training and discipline expected before men and women are even accepted into the Forces, depressingly illustrates how much work needs to be done (and undone) to give ex-members a chance of successfully returning to civilian life. After “serving their country” they may have escaped death or physical mutilation but their experience has left them scarred for life. What made them part of an effective fighting machine has made them incapable of maintaining normal relationships within the family and friends or coping with the different stresses of working under capitalism.

Eva Goodman

Chechen war (Part II) (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

For too long now, the Chechen people have held that second-class status was often afforded South Africa’s black population. Indeed, in Moscow they are disparagingly referred to as “blacks” and the prejudice can be traced back over 150 years to the time when Tsarists conquered the area.

Stalin’s hate for them was such that he had the entire population deported to Central Asia in 1944, citing charges of Nazi collaboration—a venture that would wipe out some 60 percent of the Chechen population.

In recent years they have been blamed for every social ill facing Russia, from drug trafficking and kidnapping to black-marketeering. It was therefore not really surprising that the latest Moscow bomb attacks got blamed on Chechenya’s aspiring islamist secessionists—in spite of no evidence existing to suggest this—while providing the Russian rulers with another opportunity to send troops into the tiny republic.

Ostensibly, the present Chechen conflict was sparked by the seizing of border villages by islamic militants—the fundamentalist Wahhabi muslims, intent on creating an independent islamic republic made up of Daghestan and Chechenya. In the Chechen republic Wahhabi support has increased recently, chiefly because of high unemployment, despair at a corrupt local elite, frustration with the slow pace of market reforms and at the little effort Russia has made to rebuild the republic after the bungled Chechen war of 1994-6.

The Russian rulers, however, didn’t need much of an excuse to send troops into Chechenya at the end of September. They still feel the humiliation of Russia’s venture into Chechenya in the mid-90s, when 6,500 Russian troops lost their lives fighting Chechen guerrillas and the consequent pull-out sparked by public outcry at home. Moreover, here was a former superpower being whipped by a tiny band of poorly-trained fighters.

In the wake of that particular conflict, though still claiming Chechenya was breaching laws laid down in the Russian Federation constitution, Moscow was embarrassingly forced to accept the republic’s de-facto independence, but not formally.

More importantly, the Russian rulers are all too aware of Chechenya’s real significance. In spite of its size (7,350 square miles compared with the 8.64 million of the former Soviet Union) Chechenya is a veritable goldmine, and all the more important considering that previous successful secessionists—Georgia and Azerbaijan—took with them a wealth of mineral resources.

Chechenya, landlocked on three sides by Russia, includes fertile farmland that straddles the wheat fields of southern Russia. It has key transport assets—rail/road routes that link the Black and Caspian seas and trade routes to other trans-Caucasus republics. Most importantly, Chechenya controls vital oil pipelines that connect the Black and Caspian seas, as well as vital oilfields and refineries. We can add to this Chechenya’s chemical and engineering industries as well as its supply of building materials. All said, Chechenya equals roubles equals profits.

But one wonders why Russia, in recent weeks, has concentrated air strikes on oil terminals, bridges and dams. The strategy seems to be one of destroying Chechenya’s infrastructure and raw material supplies and to seal it off from the outside world. Sounds familiar? By all accounts Moscow has modelled the attack on the NATO strategy in Kosovo, hoping to bring Chechenya to its knees in as short a space of time as possible and with minimum loss of Russian life.

Nine years after the Chechen nationalists first informed Moscow of its secessionist ambitions, and with hundreds of thousands of Chechens now living the meagre life of the refugee in neighbouring republics, stability looks a long way off, and with President Aslan Maskhadov now enlisting the help of the region’s most prominent warlords—such as Shamil Basayev, a veteran commander of the first Chechen war that Maskhadov initially disowned—the conflict looks set to be long and protracted.

With so much mineral wealth at stake, wealth they are afforded no real share in, the Chechens should at least realise that whichever elite—Russian or Chechen, Russian Orthodox or Muslim—calls the shots, they will always come a poor second to the lure of the rouble and the profits that await the real victors. The 80-100,00 who lost their lives in the first Chechen war is a poignant reminder of this fact.

John Bissett

Greasy Pole: Tories In Trouble (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was once a young Conservative MP who, when he arrived to take his seat, was taken aside by an elder statesman and advised never to forget that the party had a secret weapon, which was loyalty. For a very long time the Tories have traded on that impression—that they are a party which prizes loyalty and unity above all else. There is very little evidence to support this. Even when that new Member was being given that advice the Tory record on the issue was anything but unblemished. In fact their history is studded with examples of splits, intrigues, back-stabbing and manoeuvring to unseat the leader.

For example the 1922 Committee got its name from a rebellious meeting in that year at the Carlton Club which was responsible for toppling Austen Chamberlain from the leadership and thereby bringing down the coalition government under Lloyd George. In 1958 a huge rift opened up in the Macmillan government when all the Treasury Ministers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, resigned—an event which Macmillan famously brushed aside as “a little local difficulty”. A few years later Macmillan showed what he thought about loyalty and unity when, in a panic about a little local difficulty at some by-elections he sacked a chunk of his Cabinet including his ever loyal, never complaining Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd who had always made it clear that he was ready and willing to any job, no matter how distasteful, required of him by the government of British capitalism. In more recent times there was the ruthless business of Michael Heseltine and the men in grey suits toppling Margaret Thatcher.

This fractious tradition is still going strong. It is arguable that the Conservative Party has never experienced such disunity and disarray as it does today. What is more it has had no compunction about revealing its splits to the voters at large.

Memoirs

Consider the matter of the ex-ministers’ memoirs. These are very often a welcome source of income and consolation for those who are no longer in the seats of power and who pine for their chauffeur-driven cars, the media attention and the other trappings of office. One difficulty is that the higher sales usually go to the more revealing—the more bitter, scurrilous and bilious—memoirs. If there was ever such a thing as a united government it would be unlikely that its ministers could write their account of life in the Cabinet with the desirable degree of titillation. Of course this is not a problem for the people who so gruesomely ran the government when Thatcher and Major were in Number Ten.

John Major has had his say about Margaret Thatcher, writing her off as a bossy, overbearing and stubborn obstacle to proper government. This is not an example of what is meant by Tory loyalty because Major was Thatcher’s favourite son—the man she wanted to succeed her in 1990. The same might be said about his criticisms of Norman Lamont, who managed Major’s 1990 campaign to succeed Thatcher as Tory leader. Lamont’s reward for this was the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer but unluckily for him this coincided with the kind of financial crisis which Chancellors are supposed to be able to cure but which are beyond them. The so-called Black Wednesday in September 1992 when the Bank Rate went soaring and Sterling was removed from the Exchange Rate Mechanism illuminated how powerless are the experts and the politicians in the face of capitalism’s crises. The decision to take sterling out of the ERM was in stark contrast to Major’s assurance that this would not happen because the solution to British capitalism’s problems was to be a member of it. So Lamont had good cause to be aggrieved, and even more after Major sacked him and now that Major is largely putting the blame for the crisis on his shoulders.

Black Wednesday

Lamont clearly thought that his efforts to get Major into the premiership deserved a more grateful response. Of course had he been practising that Tory loyalty he should have held his tongue, accepted his downfall and given his all in supporting the government, even if that did mean rewriting history a bit. In fact he has been busily engaged ever since in attacks on Major, of varying degrees of subtlety. The version of Black Wednesday in his memoirs differs from that of Major and, as might be expected, does not take the blame for it on himself. Cynical and bitter, Lamont is now a pathetic figure—exiled to the Lords, penning the odd newspaper article, trying to persuade us that Pinochet saved Chile for civilisation and that all those people who disappeared there at the time have gone missing of their own accord.

A lot of this disunity came bubbling sulphurously to the surface at this year’s Tory conference. Naturally they gave William Hague the customary standing ovation but this did not obscure the fact that his grasp on the party leadership is as precarious as ever. Almost as soon as he got the job Hague was under fire, as if the MPs who had voted for him suddenly woke up to the fact that they had made a terrible mistake. Hague has done all kinds of things to win a few friends—married a pretty blonde who smiles nicely for the cameras, eaten spicy Caribbean food in the street at the Notting Hill Carnival, been seen in public wearing a baseball cap, had a skinhead hair cut. No man could do more. But none of this has done him any good.

While attention has been diverted by these distasteful antics Hague has silkily got rid of most of the leading Tories from the days of Thatcher and Major. Clarke and Heseltine more or less deselected themselves and are now standing critics on the issue of Europe. Lilley was sacked after a typically clumsy attempt to discard his past reputation as the scourge of single mothers and benefit claimants. Michael Howard was persuaded that he should spend more time with his prejudices. The only remnants of those former days of power are Redwood and Widdecombe, neither of them completely in touch with the reality of vote winning.

Shadows

No doubt there are some fascinating reminiscences now burgeoning in the embryo memoirs of the likes of Lilley and Howard. Meanwhile Hague has a Shadow Cabinet whose public presence is—well, shadowy. They are unrecognised, almost anonymous. Hague will have a hard job to convince the working class that these are the leaders who should be trusted to run British capitalism, swamp world markets with British made goods, progressively enrich the British capitalist class while bludgeoning the workers into a docile acceptance of their role as the exploited wealth-producers. In this he will endure for as long as he may be seen as a vote winner. If that changes he will be ruthlessly discarded by this party which likes to boast of its unity and loyalty. If—or perhaps when—that happens it will be his turn to write his memoirs, to complain about an ungrateful party and of how he was, in effect, hoisted with his own petard.

Ivan

There’s no such thing as an ethical foreign policy (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ethical foreign policy? What a joke! How, in a capitalist world where each state is competing against every other state for a share of profits, can a government base its foreign policy on anything except economic self-interest—the economic self-interest, that is, of its capitalists?

“Obtain profits or die”, that is the economic law governing the conduct of states under global capitalism. And it cannot be otherwise for as long as global capitalism lasts.

Everybody knows that the reason for the Gulf War nearly ten years ago can be summed up in three letters O-I-L. Iraq, a virtually land-locked country wanted secure access to the sea for its exports and imports, so it invaded Kuwait. This represented a threat to the oil supplies of the capitalist West, so they went to war—and are still bombing and killing and starving ordinary people in Iraq to remove this threat. This has nothing to do with the fact that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who couldn’t care a damn about human rights. There are plenty of other dictators in the area—beginning with the King of Saudi Arabia and the other hereditary Gulf despots—who are left alone because they are on the side of the capitalist West.

It was the same earlier this year in Kosovo. Serbia wasn’t attacked because it was a dictatorship under Slobodan Milosevic but because it was a state with a powerful army that had been causing problems for Western capitalist interests in the area and had overstepped the mark. Neighbouring dictator and fellow ethnic-cleanser, Tunjman of Croatia, was left alone because he was “our bastard”.

East Timor? Who had heard of East Timor before last month? When Indonesian troops marched into this former Portuguese colony in 1975 the UN passed a resolution saying Indonesia had broken international law and left it at that. In the following years the Western capitalist powers competed amongst themselves for lucrative contracts from the Indonesian military. The ruling generals were invited to arms shows to buy guns, tanks, warplanes, ships, any military hardware they needed to maintain their grip on the country they were exploiting for their own ends.

“Please don’t use these weapons against your own people,” requested an ethically-minded diplomat. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” replied the generals. “That’s all right then,” replied the diplomat. When confronted with evidence that the generals were using British weapons for internal repression, a British Minister replied, “if we didn’t sell them arms, then the French would.” Questioned in the Assemblée Nationale on the same point, a French Minister replied, “if we didn’t sell them arms then the British would.”

When oil was discovered in the sea between East Timor and Australia, the Australian government decided that the Indonesian invasion of East Timor was not so contrary to international law after all. In order to get a share of the oil they signed an agreement recognising East Timor as part of Indonesia. Now they are leading the forces sent in to take East Timor from Indonesia. No wonder their erstwhile friends, the Indonesian rulers, regard them as two-faced double-dealers.

And of course a place like East Timor can never survive on its own. It’s obviously going to end up as an Australian dependency, no doubt giving Australia an even better oil deal.

That’s the way of the world—the capitalist world. And it’s no good just protesting about this and appealing to governments to base their foreign policy on ethical considerations. They can’t (except in words) even if they wanted to, since this would hamper them in the struggle for profits—and the trade routes, and investment outlets, and raw material sources, and strategic areas, to secure them.

The only way out is to get rid of global capitalism and replace it by a world socialist system in which all that is in and on the Earth becomes the common heritage of all humanity so that it can be used for the benefit of every man, woman and child on the planet irrespective of where they live, a small island or the industrialised heartlands.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: The Devaluation of the Labour Party (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The devaluation of the pound after repeated denials by Cripps that it would be devalued, is a symptom of the mental bankruptcy of the Labour Party. Gone is the easy optimism of 1945, when they were confident they could control and plan the capitalist system. Now all can see that capitalist forces are in control, driving them from one panicky expedient to another, all of the methods resorted to by Liberal and Tory Governments in past crises. (. . . ) “Fact”, the Labour Party Bulletin, for August, 1949, was even more unlucky. It came out against devaluation only a few weeks before Cripps introduced it. This is what it said:- “Thus if devaluation succeeded in closing the gap (which is doubtful) it would do so by lowering our standard of living. The pound would buy less in Tooting and Bradford, as well as in New York and Winnipeg. Devaluation is therefore an alternative to wage-slashing as a device for cutting our prices at the expense of the mass of the people” This was a boomerang indeed. Capitalism offers to those who administer it just such choices of evils as the one mentioned. Having to choose between devaluation (with higher prices and frozen wages) and wage-slashing, the Labour Government chose devaluation in order to avoid a headlong clash with the workers. The clash is not avoided, only deferred. 

[From Socialist Standard, November 1949]

It’s bitter out (1999)

John Major with Edwina Currie.

TV Review from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old politicians never die, they’ve just been off for a bit writing their memoirs. So it has been with John Major, whose book BBC1 has been kindly promoting in its three-part series The Major Years.

Looking back on Major’s premiership, it’s amazing how such an apparently grey and placid man could have been at the centre of such sustained political turbulence. In many ways it was surprising that he became Prime Minister at all—he certainly didn’t fit the mode of the typical Tory politician. Humble beginnings, a Brixton childhood, state education with three ‘O’ levels, and a father who spent most of his time as an odd-jobbing circus performer do not exactly point the way towards a future Tory premier.

Indeed, one of the most fascinating and noticeable features of the series is what it left out—which is why, in the first place, Major became a Tory at all. Why is it that that he was attracted towards a political party based on an unabashed defence of privilege and Establishment interests?

Other aspects of Major’s life were revealed superbly, like so many layers taken off an onion. And yes, Major revealed some tears too, for the way people sneered at his upbringing when he knew that his parents were decent people with far more guts and application than the chinless wonders in the Tory Party who looked down on them.

The political parties people choose to join can be highly revealing, the more so when there are no easily identifiable social or class explanations on hand to explain their choice. It is then that a deeper, more psychological approach is needed, and this is clearly the case with Major. Just what on earth drives any teenager with Major’s social and class background to get up on a soapbox every weekend in Brixton to defend the Tory Party?

Greasers

Clearly, Major thought that joining the Young Conservatives would give him some social and career advantages, and he was not alone in that. But as was revealed in this series, there was more to it than this. It was as if he wished to prove himself amongst those who looked down on him most and treated him like a spec of dust. A more natural inclination might be to fight this sneering attitude and the people responsible for it from without, such as in the Labour Party or the political left. Major chose to fight it from within and then triumph among his natural enemies.

What was unfortunate for both his peace of mind and his political career was that despite rising to the very top of the Conservative tree, Major was never actually able to defeat the snobs and sneerers in his own Party. Socially brittle, he never truly felt accepted and was their prisoner whatever he did and wherever he went. Indeed, as Premier he saw them everywhere, trying to belittle him and bring him down, both in Parliament and in the Tory press.

John Major as PM was distinctive for two things which were in themselves intimately related—his working class origins and the thinness of his political skin. In terms of his background, Major probably fits closer to an academic sociologist’s definition of “the working class” than any other British Prime Minister. And, not without coincidence, he was the most politically sensitive and fragile PM in modern history, with only Harold Wilson having run him close.

In striving to understand Major it is not necessary to suggest that we should feel sorry for him. Major was a man who did an immense amount of damage to the working class, both in Britain and of course abroad, including in countries like Iraq. And in a Party full of greasers and back-stabbers, John Major could more than hold his own. He was not, as his political aide Judith Chaplin revealed, an entirely pleasant man.

What is most illustrative of all about him though—and this series brought it out as well as could be expected—are the inherent dangers involved in clambering up the greasy pole of capitalism. In this sense Major is not unique as there are tens of thousands of John Majors throughout Britain in almost every walk of life—fundamentally decent people with “something to prove” and who set out to prove it by squirming their way to the top, whether it be in politics, industry, finance or education. That process involves them taking up actions, adopting prejudices and engaging in relationships with people which are fundamentally unhealthy and based on nothing more than power, preferment and the settling of scores. As John Major proved, that is rarely if ever a route to sustained happiness and a fulfilled life. It is virtually guaranteed, instead, to lead to a whole lifetime of spite, resentments and bitterness. And if Major himself needs further proof of that he should take an even longer, harder look than he already has done at his immediate predecessor, with whom he has far more in common than he has ever realised.

Dave Perrin

“Everybody did what they could” (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Tuesday October 5th, at 8.11am, a Great Western express and Thames Trains commuter service smashed head on at a combined speed of 120mph just outside Paddington station. 31 people were killed.

Preliminary reports after the Ladbroke Grove train crash suggest that the Thames Trains driver passed a signal at danger, resulting in both trains being on the same track. The relevant signal—number 109—is the same one thought to have been involved in a near-miss incident in February 1998 when another Great Western express managed to brake in time to avoid a stationary London-bound Heathrow Express train. Rail sources have also reportedly acknowledged that “seven trains run by Thames Trains have, over the last 12 months, passed through signal 109 while on red” (Guardian, October 6). Such overshoots, known as SPADs (signals passed at danger) rose from 593 in 1997 to 643 in 1998. This does not automatically mean it is drivers at fault. Drivers have made a series of complaints about signal 109, pointing out it is badly situated and obscured by overhead cables and a pylon. Furthermore, train drivers are under pressure not to be late, to avoid their firms being fined by the train companies franchise director. And drivers work long hours while having to carry out repetitive button-pressing hundreds of times a day, and are therefore more prone to dangerous tiredness and boredom.

On the very same stretch of line two years ago, the Southall crash killed seven after a Great Western express jumped a red light and smashed into a goods train crossing its path. The firm was fined £1.5 million for breaking safety regulations after a court was told that one of the train’s key safety devices, the Advance Warning System which should have sounded a Klaxon before reaching each danger signal, was not working. In the court case, the judge remarked “There appears to be a conflict between profit and safety”.

Cost-per-file calculations

In 1989, the year after the Clapham crash in which 35 people died, its inquiry chairman Anthony Hidden recommended a failsafe system called Automatic Train Protection (ATP). It regulates train speeds, ruling out red signal overruns. However, capitalist “cost per life” calculations came up with a figure of £14 million to prevent each future death with ATP, and a total expenditure of around £1 billion to fit it throughout the network. Both the previous and present governments saw this cost as prohibitive, and in August this year, John Prescott opted for a much cheaper (£150 million) Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), which gave a more “acceptable” £2.5 million cost-per-life calculation.

Immediately after the Ladbroke Grove crash, John Prescott said that his decision to implement TPWS had “nothing to do with cost”. And speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on October 7, when asked who would pay for installing the far better system (which the deputy PM had suddenly become very keen on), Prescott simply replied “finance isn’t a problem”. Pressed a second time, he said “It could be industry. I don’t think it necessarily has to be a charge on government . . . It is not a problem”. This is not so. If the 25 train operating companies are made to pay around £2 billion at today’s prices for ATP (or any other more advanced system), this charge would have to be passed on passengers through raised prices. Additionally, huge state subsidies (£1.8 billion in 1997-98) paid to the train operating companies are due to be reduced to £0.9 billion by 2002-03. The combined extra financial burden could make rail transport far less competitive in comparison with private cars, coach and bus journeys, and deter many from using trains. That loss of competitiveness would mean a significant loss of profits, and since profits are capitalism’s priority, the fact is ensuring maximum safety on the railways would turn into a commercial disaster.

What capitalist solution to over-expensive or under-safe rail travel can we expect now the old British Rail network has been broken into 100 component parts by privatisation in the dog days of John Major’s government? Car drivers having to pay yet higher prices for petrol and diesel to force them to use trains? There has to be a limit to what millions of motoring will tolerate before voting against those imposing the charges. Asking Gordon Brown to pay up? Surely not after all Blair’s meritocratic free-market praise and rejection of “old” Labour. Raised wages and salaries to cover more costly fares? Most unwelcome for firms in an increasingly competitive global market. Could William Hague offer us a way out? Hardly. His willingness to take unemployment benefits away from anyone refusing to accept a lousy job shows considerable admiration for market forces. Liberal Democrats? Just another bunch of lookalike politicians. So what’s the answer? Let us take another look at what happened in the Ladbroke Grove crash, for not only was this a result of capitalism’s profits-before-people unavoidability, but a far better diametrically opposite way of living and working was suddenly revealed amidst the chaos.

Unforced co-operation

At Ladbroke Grove, socialists saw for a brief period capitalism’s habitual grip on people’s lives shaken off by a shared disaster, and humankind’s suppressed helpful co-operative nature suddenly came to the fore. Despite jagged mangled wreckage, fire and fumes that survivors had to escape from immediately after the impact, commuters who had been reticent strangers just moments earlier, disjointed by a competitive and individualistic marketplace, unselfishly acted to save and assist others. From getting ready to hurry off the express train and compete in a rush for the tube, taxis and buses to reach places of employment, instead, authoritative suits were removed to helpfully beat out burning clothing of others. Working women wearing heels teetered back and forth to support those more seriously hurt. Residents living nearby rushed over with ladders to reach down to the track to provide assistance. Workers at a Sainsbury’s store commandeered first aid supplies for lacerations, and bags of frozen food for burns. Staff at a school helped emergency services turn their premises into a makeshift field hospital. As one person said, “everybody did what they could”. Such abundant unforced co-operation for the benefit of all in need is how it should be; how it would be, but how it won’t be while profit-takers, their politicians, money mechanism, bureaucrats, rules and law enforcers act together to maintain capitalism’s divisive and exploitative system.

It is somewhat encouraging that every time a horrific rail, ship or air crash occurs, many people will now complain angrily to radio programmes and the press, that profit has yet again been put before people. This will almost always be true, but regrettably, come election time, this awareness and sanity about the danger of living in a profit-driven economy has usually been driven from voters minds by endless media coverage of wholly irrelevant policies on income tax, unemployment, minimum wage rates etc. And off a majority will go to mark their crosses beside some candidate who wants to govern capitalism. Such voting then guarantees yet another five years of business profit-making and cost savings having pre-eminence, thereby keeping going the conditions that will give rise to further money-related disasters.

However, with so many people now aware how much harm and misery profits can cause, the socialist alternative of the safest possible travel systems with no financial restraints whatsoever, and no over-worked stressed-out workers, appears more clearly as the way out. If people come to see that profits themselves only exist because a minority have unjust possession of what the majority need, and this dominant class exploit both with damaging anti-social consequences, then all that unfocused anger would linger, politicians’ gibberish and worthless promises would be ignored, and there would be ever-increasing support for common ownership of vital industries and other productive assets, along with politician-free democratic control over how these are used. This is genuine socialism. It has never existed anywhere. It would make restrictive and dangerous money completely obsolete. Take a little time to find out more about this people-first system before your next trip to the polling stations (or some other serious trip).

Max Hess

The great GM food scare (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Popular opinion is running high against food from genetically engineered plants, but is the enemy really GM science and technology or capitalism which misuses it in the service of profit?

Only a fruitarian or a nutarian can logically object to the genetic modification of plants as such. This is because humans have been genetically modifying crops ever since we took up agriculture in place of hunting and gathering. Agriculture when it started involved planting wild crops instead of simply gathering them. Over thousands of years, by selecting for planting the following year the seeds of the plants that had exhibited more of the desired characteristics, humans have considerably modified the genetic make-up of virtually all the cereals, vegetables and fruits that we eat. Until the end of the last century—when the gene was discovered—humans did not know exactly what it was they were doing when they improved plants for human consumption through such "artificial selection". But what they were doing was favouring certain genes at the expense of others and so in effect "genetically modifying" the plants in question.

Since the advent of scientific genetics in the last part of the 19th century plant breeders have known what they were trying to do—to change a plant's genotype—but were still largely restricted to the traditional techniques of artificial selection and cross-breeding. It was not until further advances in scientific understanding of genetics in the 50s and 60s allowed specific genes governing specific features to be identified that the prospect of a new technique for genetic modification was opened up: inserting a particular gene directly into a plant's DNA.

This technique which has come to be known as "transgenetics" or "GM technology" is in this sense an alternative to traditional plant breeding techniques, a short-cut to the same end of modifying the genetic make-up of the plants, fruits and vegetables we eat. GM technology was first applied experimentally to plants in the 80s and commercially only in the past decade. Today it is estimated that already perhaps 50 percent of all plantings in the US are of transgenetic seeds, though this is not yet allowed in Europe. At the moment transgenetic procedures in agriculture have been used mainly to make crops resistant to weed-killers and insects, but in the future it should be possible to directly modify plants' DNA so that they can grow in colder or warmer or wetter or drier or salty or less salty conditions; which would allow food production to be increased.

However, we are living in a capitalist world and it is in such a world that these techniques are being developed and applied, a world where the priority both of seed producers and farmers is profit. This has meant that GM techniques have not necessarily been used in the way they would have been in a socialist world where the priority would be satisfying people's needs not profits.

To blame the use to which these techniques have been put under capitalism on the techniques themselves rather than on capitalism is a mistake; a mistake, it has to be said, that is frequently made by many Greens and environmentalists and which leads to the more extreme of them adopting anti-technology and anti-science views.

Capitalist context

Various objections have been made to GM technology and crops. On examination most turn out to be objections to the use to which GM technology is currently being put or to the context—capitalism—in which it is being applied.

In May a Working Party set up by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics reported on Genetically Modified Crops: the Ethical and Social Issues. They examined both sides of the argument, summarising the case put by those against GM crops as follows:

  . . . that GM food technology is a threat to human health and/or the environment and that its introduction will raise the profits of private suppliers whilst at the same time depriving poor producers of primary commodities access to markets and to the new varieties of seed (1.3).

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether or not GM food is a threat to human health or the environment, it is clear that the third objection is not to the technique itself but to the possible effects of its application within the present economic system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit.

This is made even more explicit when the Report sets out in detail this part of the case against GM crops:

  The question of whether we should be concerned about the distribution of the potential benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops arises on two counts. The first count is that commercial considerations will lead agrochemical and seed businesses to concentrate research and development (R&D) predominantly on markets in developed rather than developing countries. This is unlikely to encourage the prospect of using genetic modification for a significant improvement in food security for the world's poor . . . The second count is the fear that the commercial exploitation of GM crop R&D will only promote the profitability of a small group of large companies rather than the wider public interests of consumers, farmers and researchers (3.1).
  The limitation of access to materials and processes by restriction of licensing is a major concern for organisations outside the main group of agrichemical multinational companies. We have already noted that most of the basic technologies of genetic modification are patented and that these patents are owned by the larger companies . . . (3.46).
  Another concern is whether GM crops would radically change land-use patterns. If the modification of a crop were to make it much more profitable than many other crops, farmers might switch to it on a large scale (6.33).

All these things are indeed likely to happen within the context of capitalism. Existing GM crops have been developed and patented by multinational corporations such as Monsanto in order to increase their profits; the main market for present GM seeds will be large-scale agribusiness and it is on this market that Monsanto and the others will concentrate; if farmers can make more profits by growing GM crops they will do so and land use will change accordingly with any effects this might have on the previously existing ecological balance; peasants and small-scale farmers in the rest of the world will continue to be outcompeted and left to rot.

But this is not the fault of GM technology itself but of the type of agriculture that has developed under capitalism. Existing types of GM crops have been developed as a response to the ever-present pressures under capitalism on firms, including agribusinesses, to reduce their costs of production so as to be able to outcompete rivals in the race for profits. If GM crops were not cheaper to grow they would not have been marketed or planted commercially.

However, even if GM crops were banned (which won't happen—sooner or later Europe will be forced by competitive pressures to follow North America's example as the only way of avoiding being outsold on home and world markets) these pressures would still operate but would then have to operate—as they have done up to now—through the development of cheaper ways of growing non-GM crops that would still be to the detriment of "poor producers of primary commodities".

One of the objections to GM technology is to the "terminator" gene which at present has only been only been patented but which is a gene that would render sterile the seed of a crop modified by inserting it, thereby forcing farmers to buy seeds for the next season from the multinational agrochemical corporations instead of saving some of the season's crop as "seed corn" as they have done for generations. It is only under capitalism, where the aim is not to improve human welfare but to make a profit for capitalist investors, that such a mad idea could have been thought up. This is such a blatant misuse of GM technology that there is no use labouring the point that it is capitalism not the technology that is to be blamed.

A threat to health and the environment? 

What about the other claims against GM foods? Do they harm the environment? Are they dangerous for humans?

Socialists can't claim any specialist scientific experience on these questions, only what the interested person can learn by studying the scientific literature. On this basis, while—after what happened over BSE—people are understandably sceptical about assurances of government officials or scientists employed by profit-seeking companies, it nevertheless seems to be the case that GM food need be no more dangerous to eat than non-GM food. Which is not to say that eating either is risk-free. Some current GM food may well contain antibiotic and chemical residues but then so does much non-GM food and this is no more an inherent feature of GM food than it is of non-GM food.

As to the effect on the environment, here again a confusion is often made between GM techniques and the context in which they are applied:

  Critics argue that the development of GM crops is perpetuating chemical use, when the goal should be to move away from it (6.23).

This is indeed a likely effect of most of the GM crops commercialised up till now, but chemical use cannot be blamed on GM technology. Chemical agriculture is encouraged and perpetuated by the fact that being cheaper, in the relatively short-term perspective that capitalism is only capable of taking, it enables those who practise it to outcompete in terms of price and sales those who practise other forms of agriculture. Here again, the banning of GM crops would make no difference. Chemical use would continue.

Organically-produced food is undoubtedly better but it has to recognised that these days most organic farmers are in it for profit (having switched from non-organic farming to try to make more profits by catering to a specialist niche market) and that some of them oppose GM technology because they feel it would give their non-organic rivals a competitive edge. However, GM technology could allow the development of plant varieties suitable to organic farming and there is no reason why GM crops too couldn't be grown organically. The opposition organic/non-organic does not have to be the same as the opposition GM/non-GM.

Throw out the bathwater 

People are right to be concerned about the food capitalism serves up to us but to blame GM technology for the effects of its application within the context of capitalism is to throw out the baby with the bathwater. As an extension of the genetic modification of crops that humans have been practising for thousands of years there can be no objection in principle to GM technology. Properly applied to enhance human welfare, as for instance by developing varieties of crops that grow better in conditions that are currently unfavourable, it is a baby that has a future in a socialist world free of profits, patents and markets. But by all means let us throw out the dirty bathwater that is capitalism. The sooner the better.

Adam Buick

Votes for Ladies (1999)

Book Review from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sylvia Pankhurst. A Life in Radical Politics. By Mary Davis, Pluto Press.

Sylvia Pankhurst, one of the daughters of the famous suffragette leader Mrs (Emily) Pankhurst, will have done at least one thing for modern feminists: drawn their attention to the complexity of the votes issue before 1914.

Most people will probably think that the suffragettes who chained themselves to railings, knocked off policemen's hats, etc were demanding universal suffrage, i.e. votes for all adult men and women. Actually—and this was a conscious policy decision by the Women's Social and Political Union to which they belonged—they were campaigning for "Votes for Women on the Same Terms as then obtained for Men". But before 1914 not all men had the vote; owing to a property qualification, admittedly fairly low, only about 70 percent of them did. To have extended the vote to women on these terms would (according to one figure quoted by Mary Davis) have enfranchised less than 8 percent of women. Nearly all married women would have remained voteless as their family's "property" was in the name of their husbands.

The WSPU was aware of this and was prepared to go along with it. This meant that what their militant tactics aimed at was, in the contemporary phrase, "Votes for Ladies", votes for rich women. In other words, they were not democrats who were campaigning for votes for all women but, whether intentionally or not, people whose policy would have strengthened the political power of the propertied class by increasing the proportion of capitalist voters at the expense of working class voters. No wonder the Socialists of the time opposed them, as did many ordinary democrats.

However, not all suffragettes were in the WSPU and not all of those in the WSPU favoured this policy aim, Sylvia Pankhurst among them. In fact she fell out with her mother and elder sister over the issue and was expelled from the WSPU in 1914. Her branch became the independent East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) which pursued a different strategy, of including working class women and demanding universal suffrage.

When the war broke out, the WSPU went super-patriotic. The name of their paper was changed from The Suffragette to Britannia and they began, as Sylvia Pankhurst put it, to hand "the white feather to every young man they encountered wearing civilian dress". She moved in the opposite direction, opposing the war. In 1916 the ELFS changed its name to Workers Suffrage Federation and in 1917 its paper Woman's Dreadnought became Workers' Dreadnought; in 1918 the WSF became the Workers Socialist Federation. The WSF was one of the organisations involved in the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921. Pankhurst, however, was by this time an anti-parliamentarian (so much for votes, for men as well as women) and was opposed to the new party seeking to be affiliated to Labour. For this she was denounced by Lenin as an "ultra-leftist". She lasted only six months in the CPGB before being expelled.

The Workers' Dreadnought continued to appear until 1924 and was a valuable source of information and documentation on the opposition groups in Russia, including those who argued—as indeed did Pankhurst herself—that Russia was heading for state capitalism not socialism. Mary Davis records that in 1923 Pankhurst set up a rival unemployed organisation to that of the CPGB, "the Unemployed Workers' Organisation (UWO), whose slogan, 'Abolition of the Wages System', was supposed to expose the 'reformist' nature of the demand of its rival—'Work or Full Maintenance'". This could only have been a gesture, but one Socialists can appreciate.

By 1924 Pankhurst had tired of the working class and radical working class politics and reverted to being essentially a single-issue reformist. She remained a feminist (deliberately choosing to become "an unmarried mother") advocating such reforms as the introduction of maternity benefit. In 1948 she joined the Labour Party. But from the 1930s on her main centre of interest became Ethiopia. She championed its cause against fascist Italy and came to be a friend of Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1956 she went to live in Ethiopia where she died four years later at the age of 78 and is buried there.

It has been reported (Times, 18 August) that Gordon Brown is supporting the idea that the vacant plinth at Trafalgar Square should be filled by a statue of Sylvia Pankhurst. Evidently, he is unaware that she once advocated the abolition of the wages system and money. Still, come to think of it, better a statue to someone who held this view however briefly than to some warmonger.

Adam Buick

Overlords and underlings (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

What an extraordinary notion it is that so many members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on?

When journalists write on "the great issues of the day" for the capitalist newspapers, they often seem to have turned their brains off. A lot of noise has been made recently about "foreigners" arriving in Britain, for example on the Kent coast. They aren't really genuine refugees, the cry goes up, only "bogus ones", who have the nerve to try to cross the capitalist-ordained boundaries to make themselves a little better off. The press, radio, and television are full of the protests. Yet all those making such a noise are living here in Britain, the country where industrial capitalism first came to prominence, and which therefore grabbed a vast Empire in all parts of the world—amounting at its height to a quarter of the entire surface of the globe, and to a quarter of the globe's population.

In every continent the British were found, running this enormous Empire for the benefit of the British ruling class-in Asia, in Africa, in America, in Australasia, and even here in Europe. Yet without turning a hair, British politicians and journalists are now trumpeting the idea that everyone should stay at home. Isn't it a bit late in the day for the champions of British capitalism to attack what they have been supporting for the last three hundred years?

It's worth mentioning, too, that when British capitalism sent its soldiers and settlers abroad, they went as conquerors, subduing and ruling over the native populations which had the misfortune to be living in the countries which Britain subjugated. Sometimes, indeed, they not only subdued the original inhabitants, they literally exterminated them. For example, the people who lived in Tasmania when the British arrived to settle there were all wiped out, the last ones in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In contrast, the immigrants who now try to settle in Britain come at the bottom of the social scale, taking the worst houses, accepting the worst conditions. Yet many publicists cannot contain their indignation that they should try to come here at all. It is strange that these propagandists can accept the British ruling class sending its emissaries to annex and govern dozens of foreign countries, yet cannot accept these deferential incomers, coming here merely in the hope of securing the worst-paid jobs.

Conflicts within the ruling class

Like all the other great political questions of which the papers and the airwaves are full, this one is being debated within the ruling class. For no ruling class is ever completely unanimous. It is painfully obvious that the ruling class of each particular state has interests which conflict with those of every other state's ruling class, and that every so often these conflicts ripen into open warfare, in which the rest of us are kindly allowed—indeed forced if we are reluctant—to rush forward loyally and kill the workers (and their families) who support some other state's ruling class. But capitalism also creates conflicts within each ruling class; no two capitalists have interests which are exactly the same.

The question of immigration, for example, causes disputes within the British ruling class. Some property owners want to establish the principle that when a particular industry or trade is short of workers, its owners have the right to bring in workers from any other country, and thus help to counteract the danger of having to raise wages and salaries. Other capitalists apparently feel that the native British working class should not be diluted. After all, our rulers pay for an education system, and a vast media industry, both of which work their socks off to produce a population fiercely loyal to the British ruling class, and which will therefore support its masters to the hilt whether in peace or war. So some members of the capitalist class feel it would be a mistake to let in too many workers from other countries, who have not been conditioned for years by British patriotic propaganda, and which therefore—perish the thought—might not be one hundred percent devoted to the British ruling class.

As a result journalists and publicists charge into the fray to support whatever view is held by the capitalists who pay them—some to attack immigration, some to defend it. Like all other issues, this one will be decided by whichever opinion finally wins the greatest support among the members of the ruling class.

This is not to say that the way these big "issues of the day" are resolved will have no effect on any member of the working class. Capitalism inevitably involves continuous tinkering with the system, as this or that group of capitalists force through changes which they think will benefit them. And some of these changes do affect the position of the working class, or of some sections of it. If a more liberal view is taken of immigration, it could be that some of the immigrants will be prepared to work for lower wages, and thus exert a depressing influence on wage levels. In the nineteenth century, capitalists in Britain welcomed many thousands of Irish immigrants, in the belief that they would keep wages down.

So some English or Scottish workers may have felt that their pay was less than it might have been, without the competition from these Irish newcomers. From this point of view, then, immigration might be a minus for British workers. On the other hand, the arrival of people from other countries, who have not been brainwashed from birth with notions that the British are clearly superior to all other peoples, may make it harder for chauvinists to whip up anti-foreign feeling in wartime. So from this point of view, immigration might count as a plus for the British working class.

Nationalist feeling

Some members of the capitalist class take advantage of any "foreign" immigration to whip up nationalist feeling, which is always valuable to the ruling class in its struggles (in peace or war) with the ruling class of other countries. Without the constant propaganda against "foreigners", where would "nationalist" feeling come from? Such feelings are not inborn. Small children are not hostile to other children with different-coloured skin, any more than they are to those with different-coloured hair, or different-coloured shoes. Why should they be? No two human beings are identical. If each individual member of the human race could not get on with other people despite their differences, then there would be no human society at all. Nationalist feelings arise because of the incessant propaganda of the ruling class in each country to persuade the working majority that they are in some way essentially different from and superior to everyone from other countries. Without this propaganda, each country's government would find it very difficult to get its people to join up and fight in its unavoidable wars with foreign states.

What an extraordinary notion it is that so many members of the human race should be forced to remain on that small section of the earth's surface in which they happened to be born. Who gave the world's rulers the right to tell us which bit of land we should live on? These restrictions apply chiefly, of course, to members of the working class. Members of the capitalist class don't stay put. They travel freely round the world, from London to Paris, from grouse moor to ski slope, from Caribbean island to Mediterranean cruise, from the chateau in Switzerland to the ranch in Arizona. And no-one dreams of telling them that they can't. Like many laws enacted by the ruling class, restrictions on the crossing of borders really only hit at members of the working class. The apologists for capitalism who try to foment ill-feeling towards "foreigners" landing here, whether they come to escape persecution, or to obtain slightly higher wages, never attack those many members of the upper class, including many newspaper proprietors, who swan about the world as if there were no such thing as state boundaries. But then, in a capitalist society, you can't really expect the rulers and the ruled to be judged by the same yardstick, can you?

Alwyn Edgar