Voice From The Back: Same old story (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same old story

The announcement that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, the makers of Camel cigarettes, is to cut 2,600 jobs – close to half its workforce – has come as a great shock to the town of Winston-Salem in North Carolina. Between 1,600 and 1,700 of the jobs are in the town. Bad news for the shareholders? Well, no, not really. “The company shocked Wall Street yesterday morning as it unveiled the plan to cut 40 percent of its workforce, although traders welcomed the prospect of cost-cutting and marked the shares 12 per cent higher to $38.24 by midday” (Times 18 September).

The rich get richer

One of the myths expounded by apologists for capitalism is that there are no longer classes in society and that poverty is gradually disappearing. According to the BBC News Online (25 September) the exact opposite seems to be occurring in the USA. “The gap between rich and poor in America is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The research, based on newly released figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that the top one percent of Americans – who earn an average of $862,000 each after tax (or $1.3 m before tax) – receive more money than the 110m Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, whose income averages $21,350 each year. The income going to the richest one percent has gone up threefold in real terms in the past twenty years, while the income of the poorest 40 percent went up by a more modest 11 percent.”

Spare parts for sale

Everything inside capitalism takes the form of a commodity, so it should come as no surprise to learn that there is a brisk trade in desperately poor people selling their kidneys. The going price paid to young people in eastern Europe for one kidney is $2,500 to $3,000 and patients receiving the kidneys have paid between $100,000 and $200,000 for a transplant. “John Dark, a transplant surgeon at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, said it was difficult to draw a moral difference between the physical harm inflicted on someone paid for a kidney or paid to work in a Third World sweat shop . . . An impoverished man trying to support his family by selling his kidney is no different to putting in shifts down a diamond mine. Society has moved on from where paying for harm was unthinkable. We do it every day when we buy a pair of trainers” (Independent, 30 September).

Compassionate Tories

The Conservative Party at present are going through a crisis as they try to cobble together a series of reforms that might prove popular at the next election. They are making noises about being a caring, compassionate party, so it is interesting to see what one of the delegates to last month’s Tory conference had to say. “Mr Metcalfe, who has ambitions of becoming a Tory MP at the next election, received a rousing ovation when he insisted the way to combat crime was to make it not worth the price. He told the conference: “make prison a genuine punishment. Bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges.” And there was more, “Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging” (Herald, 8 October). Phew, some caring – some compassion.

War aims

Mr Bush was very clear what the US war aims were in Iraq – topple the wicked dictator – build a prosperous democracy – and 100 percent foreign ownership of many of the state’s resources. Wait a minute, you don’t remember the third aim? Neither do we, but it seems that third aim is going to be realised long before the second one. “Controversial plans to privatise all of Iraq’s non-oil assets have been attacked by Nobel-prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz . . . The laws approved by the Coalition Provisional chief Paul Bremer, allow 100 percent foreign ownership of all state assets apart from natural resources. Trade tariffs and taxes have also been slashed, and the Central Bank of Iraq has been made operationally independent. `This is an extreme version of Republican ideology,` said Stiglitz. ‘Of course it is nothing we would do at home (US), because we’re actually quite protectionist`” (Observer, 12 October).

Another World (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have always known that another world is possible. The world doesn’t have to be capitalist. If, on the other hand, capitalism remains, then a world other than we’ve got now – with global problems of inequality, wars and environmental destruction – is not possible. The only other world possible today is a socialist world, in the original sense of the word of course, as a system of common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, not the travesties that passed for socialism in the 20th century.

Many in the alternative-world movement are prepared to call themselves “anti-capitalists”, but only a few are prepared to argue for a world society of common ownership and democratic control with production directly to meet human needs without passing through money and the market. Most are literally what they say they are – anti-capitalists, i.e. opposed to the actions of capitalist corporations, and the governments that protect them and promote their interests, rather than against capitalism as a total, global system.

They are engaged in a never-ending, uphill struggle to try to contain and restrain capitalist corporations and governments from pursuing profits without regard for the consequences. Some of their less radical colleagues – those running the Non-Governmental Organisations – have made a virtue of necessity and see this as their institutionalised role within capitalism, warning those responsible for running it of the long-term dangers for the system of allowing policies to be dictated by short-term profit considerations. They are not really anti-capitalist at all, just advocates of a “regulated” capitalism. It’s a message capitalist governments are prepared to listen to and even welcome (which is why they subsidize some NGOs, which are therefore not as “non-governmental” as all that). The administrators of capitalism are not as stupid as some of its “free-market” ideologues.

These are the same people who see the solution to the world’s problems as “fair trade” and who danced in the hall at the failure of the recent WTO talks in Cancun. If further proof was required that they stand for an “alternative capitalism” rather than an “alternative to capitalism” this is it. Trade – as the exchange of goods for money (an exchange of ownership title as opposed to the physical transfer of products from one part of the world to another that will of course continue in socialism) – is a key feature of capitalism which is in fact a system of universal buying and selling, i.e. trading, on a world scale. “Fair” trade is a capitalist concept according to which producers, or rather producer-countries, would get the full value of what they sell instead of less than this due to more powerful countries distorting the market in their own favour.

Disputes such as took place in Cancun are essentially an argument amongst capitalist countries, with the less powerful trying to regulate the world market so that it does not operate to the undue – in capitalist terms – benefit of the big boys. In this internal squabble amongst capitalist states, the NGOs take the side of the underdogs and offer this as “another world”.

The unequal distribution of the benefits of production is indeed, to continue with their language for a moment, “unfair” and “unjust”. In a sense, socialists start from the same premise as them that every human being, just because they are human beings, should be able to enjoy a life free from material deprivation and insecurity no matter where they live in the world. But we don’t agree that this can be achieved by a regulated capitalism which would put all capitalist states on an equal footing so far as realising the surplus value created by their workers is concerned. This might benefit – enrich – the capitalists of India, Brazil, China and Indonesia and put more money into the pockets of the rulers of African states, but it would not eliminate inequality between humans in the distribution of material goods.

Even in countries such as the United States and those of Western Europe which benefit from current world trading arrangements, there is still inequality: there is still a wealthy property-owning class whose income as rent, interest and profit gives them a privileged consumption and the rest of us, while nowhere near as worse off as those in the shanty towns and villages of Africa, India and Latin America, still suffer from problems of material insecurity. In any event, the division in the world is not between all the people living in North America and Western Europe and those living in the rest of the world. There are plenty of rich people – some of them filthy rich – living in the so-called Third World.

The only way to ensure that every single human being on the planet has an equal chance to enjoy a life free from material deprivation is a world where all the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, these can be used to provide enough for all, without conflict (between ruling classes) over access to key raw materials and without plundering the Earth’s resources or polluting the biosphere. We are not claiming that this would be an easy task – there will be problems of co-ordination and co-operation to solve, not to speak of having to clear up the mess left by the profit system – but it is technologically possible as well as socially desirable.

Yes, another world is possible but it has to be a non-capitalist – a socialist – world.

Adam Buick

Turning Left – or going round in circles? (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

We in the World Socialist Movement are very much a different breed from all those others who like to use the term “Socialist”. We have a highly original proposition among the political organisations world-wide seeking to bring sensible arrangements to human society, and, when we say we want to “change the world”, we really mean just that. We are not in any way attached to any in the huge array of lefty groups which together can produce a recipe book to remedy all society’s ills the size of which would put Culpeper’s Herbal in the shade. In reality, though, many of these are as suspiciously comparable to each other in content as Tesco and Sainsbury products and as BBC and ITN news bulletins. Moreover, all have a success rate as to make the practitioners of mountebankery honest and respectable professors.

It is unfortunately a fact that among the opinions of the various bourgeois media there too is confusion in the area of social studies and of the true identity of the particular players engaged in their respective activities. This confusion extends to including us in with groups such as Anti-Nazi League, the Anti-Capitalists or Anti-Globalisation movements, etc. The Anti-Globalisation groups may know what they are against, but regrettably they know not why nor what to replace world capitalism with and still call for modifications in existing society, reforms. In addition, they cannot yet distinguish between globalisation and capitalism. Many thus end up either supporting the deadbeats who only want to tinker with the capitalist economy, reformers, and who have all in the past failed miserably even with their limited demands – Benn, Scargill, Gorbachev, Fidel Castro, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao, to name just a few. While others, quite remarkably, take on a Luddite mentality and start smashing up the world.

However the latest publications from some Anti-Globalisation members look encouraging as the analysis of society worked out by Karl Marx is beginning to creep into the discussion within this movement and hopefully will bring some grounding to this confusing diversity of protesters. The conscious recognition in this movement of the international nature of the adversary; the awareness of the necessity of a global action against it; the extensive and intense use of the new means of global communication and the Internet developed by capitalist globalisation but in a spirit of digital counter-culture is itself a very significant development.

Now we have another lefty following the path of Benn etc who must now be regarded as a clown among clowns – Tommy Sheridan. This, not only because in the light of the failures of others he still presses on, but because of the laugh he raised among all political persuasions during the recent election when he raised the possibility that, in his little Scottish republic his government (and I mean “his”) could take over one Motorola plant and compete with Motorola and others world-wide to sell phones or components for phones. What a howler!

The left, despite referring to themselves as “socialists” have no confidence in Socialism, no confidence in the workers to win through. They tell us, your Socialism will come eventually someday – presumably, when we are all dead and gone. By this, they mean the job falls not to them but to others sometime in the future. There is no logic to this whatsoever. For the world is ready now and painfully waiting – how is Socialism to ever come in the future when we are never to explain it to people here now, for it takes a while? What will happen that might cause this future embrace of Socialism, we are not told. The truth for Benn and co is “do what you want after my career, my shot at being the leader, my time in the limelight is over”. The left like to act themselves as though they are Jesus or Moses, and lay down the commandments in stone for ignorant followers to obey. Some of us however, are not so easily taken in.

How sum up the differences between us and the lefty heroes above?

Where these leftwingers call for more wages, we socialists call for no wages; where they call for the right to work, we call for the right not to work; where they call for the Rights of Nations, we say Nations should have no Rights to exist; where they call for Leadership, we call for no Leadership. And though we both agree that money is a problem, they call for a more “fair” distribution of it; we say if it’s a problem let’s live our lives without it; they call for the exchange in the means of life with other exactly or at least comparably valued means of life; we say no to exchange, except for in the free exchange of ideas and the exchange of raw Nature into the means of life.

William Dunn

Obituary: Cyril May (2003)

Obituary from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cyril May, who was the Party's Central Organiser for many years, died last month. He joined Paddington branch in 1940 after listening to Party speakers in Hyde Park where he was later to himself become a regular speaker. Refusing to be conscripted to kill fellow workers in the war then going on, he was sent to work on the land.

He was one of the best Central Organisers that the Party has had, travelling the country to speak at meetings and encourage members to form groups and branches, organising meetings and rallies, arranging for leaflets and socialist literature to be available for demonstrations such as the CND marches of the 1960s, acting as election agent, rushing bundles of Socialist Standards to Euston station for dispatch to provincial branches; you name it, he did it — except for serving on the executive committee since he preferred to concentrate on the Party's front-line activity of putting over the case for socialism.

He was an impressive indoor and outdoor speaker, putting over the case in a persuasive, non-aggressive way, addressing the audience as "Men and Women" (which raised a few eyebrows since the traditional form was "Fellow Workers:! For many years he also acted as secretary of the Paddington branch, but in the 1970s set out to organise another new branch, in Hampstead.

Later, he transferred to North West London branch. Unfortunately, this was one of two branches that came into conflict with the rest of the Party for deliberately and repeatedly refusing to apply a Conference resolution that was later confirmed by a poll of the whole membership. In the end, in 1991. after two further Party polls, most of the members of the two branches were expelled, a majority of members considering that internal Parry democracy was a cardinal socialist principle that overrode ail other considerations including past service to the cause of Socialism. Sadly, the last ten or so years of his political life were spent, as part of a group of individuals who, rather ludicrously, claimed to be us trying to undermine the party for which he had done so much work.

Blogger's Notes:

The May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard has a picture of Cyril May addressing a SPGB meeting. Also of interest is an issue of The Western Socialist dating from 1970 which carries the transcript of an interview with Cyril May that was conducted by Arlene Francis of WOR-AM, a local New York radio station. 

Justice (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us have a sense of “justice”. We can all be outraged if we personally suffer from what we consider to be an injustice. Socialists are often surprised by just how shocked people can be when the inherent injustice of the capitalist system impacts on them as individuals. For many, politics is felt to be remote from their personal lives. It is only when an individual tragedy is suffered that some become politically aware and “active”. An obvious example is when innocent bystanders are injured or killed in a “terrorist outrage” of some kind. The irony is, of course, that such acts are invariably motivated by someone else’s sense of injustice. This might just include the desire for social justice and it is this we will seek to define.

Children are often heard declaring the unfairness of this or that. Amongst siblings any perceived parental preference for one over the other is felt as an intense injustice. In nature this battle for parental attention is a matter of life and death. In humans it is more often a matter of emotional validation for the child. A childhood without the expression of love from the parents is a lonely and terrible place. Any reasonable person would expect a parent to maintain some kind of equality in their response to all of their children. And here is the basis of any concept of justice – social equality. We expect to be treated by others the way we attempt to treat them. The fact that our insecurities and ignorance sometimes make this impossible only increases its importance as a social necessity.

Of course these sentiments have not always been, and in some parts of the world are still not, accepted. For instance it is only in relatively recent times that a female child is considered the equal of a male child. Furthermore, the whole concept of social equality is considered an anathema in hierarchical societies while in Western Europe it is morally acceptable but considered impractical as a political reality.

To an impartial observer, perhaps a tourist from another planet, there is a glaring contradiction between the values expressed by those in power and the social reality. Nowhere is this more exemplified than in capitalism’s legal system. The power of the state is justified by the claim that the law is applied equally to every citizen. Theft in all its forms, with one glaring exception, is condemned and its practitioners pursued. But profit is the ‘raison d’être’ of the whole system and what is this if not lalised theft? The exploitation of labour may be legal but isn’t the taking of wealth from someone without exchanging something of equal value the definition of theft?

A similar hypocrisy exists concerning the crime of murder. The intentional killing of one person by another is illegal and immoral unless committed during a war when the offender is quite likely to receive a medal. Even if we concede the illogicality of the system can it be said that it is applied equally to all? Only the most naïve of us can maintain this when a “good lawyer” can cost a fortune in contrast to one appointed via legal aid.

When the capitalist class began its conquest of political power during the English Revolutions of the 17th century they converted not only the mode of production but also the theory of justice that rationalised its ubiquity. The enclosure of the common land already begun by the old regime was accelerated until wage slavery became the only option for the majority to sustain itself. So like all the subsequent bourgeois revolutions, the capitalist system was created through acts of theft and murder. This new reality was continually defended by theories of justice, which sought only to legitimise the new rulers, and their source of wealth and power – the exploitation of labour for the extraction of profit. Although many were aware of this hypocrisy and sought to redress the injustice of the realities of their lives via trade unions etc., historically there was no alternative to the capitalist mode of production – until much later.

Someone once said that a child has no understanding of justice because it will readily condemn the weather, when it prevents some activity or other, as unfair. It is the same with socialists, that person said, the system is like the weather and we have no power over it – it is the only reality and when socialists complain of its injustice we are like children shaking our fists at the elements. But events are undermining that identification of capitalism with nature as the only reality. Humanity now has the power to feed the world several times over and it is only the law of production for profit that prevents it. Capitalism has evolved the mode of production to a point where it has become an anachronism as an economic and political system. It has indeed created the nails for its own coffin

Theories of “justice” evolve and change in response to the economic realities of human life, and that history might represent the redemption of humanity from its invention of private property is a seductive idea. What the writer knows for sure in his humble role as a socialist propagandist is that capitalism and its defenders are now dealing with a remorseless tide of discontent fuelled, amongst many other things, by the tension between its promises and its reality.

Wez.

. . . rough justice (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is a system based on competition, and the criminal justice system, like all other institutions and activities, is dominated by this drive. Thus, trials of those accused of crimes are battles between the prosecution and defence teams. Being able to afford a good defence lawyer affords a greater chance of being acquitted than if a defendant is poor and has to rely on legal aid. Winning a case rather than obtaining justice for the accused is the goal. This has led to police forces presenting selective evidence in some cases and ignoring facts that could prove an accused person’s innocence. But, like other organisations, they have to produce results and investigating cases which do not result in a conviction does not help their “clear-up” rate when compared with other police forces. Innocent people have been imprisoned because the defendant’s defence team has not had access to all the information in the case.

The recent trial of Trupti Patel, charged with murdering her three children, has highlighted some of the ways the justice system works. It seems that if an infant dies suddenly there is a presumption that one of the parents – usually the mother – must have injured the baby in some way. The presumption of guilt leads to the parents being treated unsympathetically at a time when they are grieving and adds considerably to their distress.

An estimated 90 per cent of sudden infant deaths are from natural causes (Independent on Sunday 29 June) but, because the cases occur irregularly and infrequently, it is difficult to pinpoint precisely what the causes are. It is also clear, though, that social factors are involved too. The 1996 Confidential Enquiry into Stillbirths and Deaths in Infancy showed that there was a link between poverty and cot deaths. Low income, poor – and especially damp – housing were major risk factors. There is also a link between using second hand mattresses and cot deaths. And poor mothers are more likely to use them.

The 1996 Enquiry, and its link with poverty, was poorly publicised. Smoking is implicated in causing cot deaths and mothers are blamed for this behaviour. However, for a single mother or a mother in poor and stressful circumstances, smoking may be the only relief from a dreary existence and may help them to cope with their lives. Poverty, and its elimination would require a political change which the capitalist class is not prepared to contemplate. And to highlight the continuing effects of poverty and the way that it blights workers’ health as well as all other aspects of their lives would underline the failure of reformism to change the world for the better.

Governments hold enquiries when tragedies occur or when there is an outcry from the public over serious miscarriages of justice. Capitalists concede a few reforms, but it is the system which is at fault. Until the working class democratically decide that capitalism is a society which does not operate in the interests of the majority then they will choose socialism.

Carl Pinel

Don’t try to reform capitalism – work for socialism (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here we aim to bring together the various elements in the case for reformism (implying rejection of revolution) and in the case for revolution (implying rejection of reformism). The taking of a revolutionary position does not necessarily mean opposing all proposed and actual reforms of capitalism, but it does mean not advocating them and opposing reformism as a policy alternative to revolution.

On the left-hand side the case for reformism is presented critically, expressed as a number of more or less related points. In the right-hand column the case for revolution is spelled out.

Stan Parker

Reformism	Revolution
Reforms of the present system have the seeming advantage of being based firmly in the realm of the possible, capable of being achieved quicker and easier than the bigger and more fundamental set of changes that will constitute the socialist revolution.	The socialist revolution requires a majority of people to understand and want socialism. While the material conditions are ripe for production for use (not profit), common ownership and free access, the dominant ideas are those of capitalism.
Most reforms are single-issue proposals specific to a particular area of society. Large-scale change is not necessarily opposed, lip service may even be paid to it, but it is to be achieved, Fabian-fashion, bit by bit.	Revolutionaries object to reformist attempts to tame capitalism because it is like attacking a tiger one claw at a time. Capitalism is a coherent and, with all its faults, a well-integrated system. It will yield only to a campaign of fundamental and comprehensive change.
Reformism, being pragmatic, faces a problem or a situation ready to accept less, often far less, than is really needed to deal with the situation or solve the problem. The medical term for reforms is band-aids; in terms of bread it is crumbs or at best half a loaf.	Revolutionaries point out how little of value is achieved by piecemeal reformist efforts. The time and energy spent on collecting crumbs from the capitalists’ table would be better directed to organising capture of the bakery.
Reformers implicitly or explicitly deride revolutionaries for wanting the impossible, for ‘not living in the real world’. They believe that capitalism can be made to operate in the interest of workers.	Revolutionaries say that while some reforms can be achieved under capitalism, the capitalist system operates, and can only operate, in the interests of capital. In trying to make the capitalist leopard change its spots reformers are the real ‘impossibilists’.
Reformers present their proposed changes as ‘Yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than what we’ve got.’ This philosophy is often expressed by the injunction to ‘choose the lesser of two evils’.	Revolutionaries don’t accept that there is no alternative to capitalism or that it is ‘the only game in town’. When non-socialists face them with the choice between two evils they choose neither.
Reformers want to use the electoral process as a means of gathering as many votes as possible. Reform manifestos display the small changes advocated as attractively as possible, with little concern for educating the voters. Priority is given to winning elections and electing leaders.	Revolutionaries, too, are prepared to use the electoral process, but with a view to challenging capitalist control of political power. The first task is to educate people and make socialists. The success of socialist candidates will measure the extent to which this activity achieves its aim.
The extremes of wealth and poverty in the world today, and their dire consequences such as starvation and preventable disease, are recognised by reformers, who respond by advocating various measures (usually unsuccessful or only partly successful) to redistribute wealth and reduce poverty.	For revolutionaries wealth is not to be redistributed but held in common. Poverty, starvation and suchlike are not to be minimised, they are to be abolished.
The success of the appeal to reform capitalism depends to a great extent on dissuading people from the alternative of abolishing it. So socialism is wrongly described as nationalisation or the wages system under state management.	Revolutionaries describe socialism as a world society of common ownership, democratic control, production for use, and free access on the basis of self-determined need – no nation states, no classes, no money.
Reformers who have some sympathy with the idea of socialism commonly seek to do a deal with revolutionaries: ‘It is important to get unity of the left. Join us today to achieve – (particular reform) and tomorrow we’ll join the revolution’.	For revolutionaries the deal offered by some reformers to get unity of the left is always a poisoned chalice. Reforms are to be pursued today, tomorrow the revolution – and tomorrow never comes.
Reformers believe that leaders are necessary to inspire and organise followers to work for the particular change(s) advocated. Active support for leaders in the form of volunteering is usually welcome, but minimal support at the ballot box is acceptable.	Socialism requires that there be neither leaders nor followers. It does, however, require organisation and sometimes people will be elected or appointed as delegates or representatives of others in the process of making decisions at various levels of responsibility.
Some reformers believe that free market capitalism is better than state capitalism. Assuming (wrongly) that the only choice is between two forms of the profit system, then there is something to be said for the ‘free’ market, which is never completely free but always subject to some control to protect the system.	Revolutionaries do not enter into the debate about whether free market capitalism is better or worse than state capitalism. They oppose the profit system in all its forms and work only for its replacement by socialism.
Other reformers believe that state capitalism, which they may call socialism or communism, is better than free market capitalism. This view suffered a severe setback with the collapse of the Soviet and allied regimes in the late 1980s, but there is still some support around the world for more state control of markets.	As just said, revolutionaries have no stake in how capitalism is run. Socialists are opposed to capitalism however it is organised. The alternative is not ‘free market’ capitalism or state capitalism, but capitalism or socialism.
Time and energy spent on reforms is said by some reformers to be a necessary part of the class struggle. It is claimed that this is all we can do: fight for the best deal we can get from capitalism.	Class struggle is an inherent and inevitable feature of capitalism. The historical task of workers is not to accept their subordinate class position – it is to replace class society with classless society.

Greasy Pole: The Disappearing Leader (2003)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever has happened to Tony Blair? This question does not refer to his recent visit to hospital, apparently to have treatment for an irregular heart beat, thus setting off a storm of speculation about whether this was another of those conditions which conveniently enable faltering politicians to slip out of office accompanied by waves of sympathy instead of squirts of venom. Of course we might have been referring to that incident, if only because of the light it threw on medical services. Blair has a problem with his heart and on the same day he is in hospital getting it fixed. No waiting about in Accident and Emergency to be seen by an exhausted junior doctor. Thousands of other people – the kind, who vote for Blair and his reforms of what are called public services, including the NHS – would be lucky to get treatment for the same condition in a matter of months. (A letter from someone who had suffered from the same problem three years ago, published in the Guardian on 21 October, recalled waiting ten weeks between diagnosis and treatment). No, the Tony Blair we are asking about is that youthful ex-barrister with the engaging smile, the elegant high flying wife and the adorable children. The kind of man you would be glad to have your daughter bring home to Sunday tea because he was so open and trustworthy. What happened to him?

Well he got to be Prime Minister, that’s what happened to him, which made it a bit difficult for him to keep up all that stuff about being honest and trustworthy. From the beginning, events began to jolt his image out of shape. There was the matter of the million pound donation from Bernie Ecclestone, in return for being allowed to advertise fags on racing cars. Then there was the matter of Peter Mandelson and the generous loan from a fellow minister – and then, after Honest Tony had let Mandelson back into the fold, having to kick him out again over the Hinduja passport scandal. One such incident followed another and still the people who have to wait for treatment under the NHS carried on believing in him, voting for his party. But things began to change when Honest Tony used his image too often, to persuade the people, in face of all the evidence, that there were massively destructive weapons in Iraq. Perhaps he assumed that his reputation would justify starting a war in which thousands of people would be killed and an unhappy country would be made chaotically unhappy.

Reverse gear

As a result the “Trust me, I’m Tony” routine doesn’t work any more. For example in his evidence to the Hutton enquiry Blair tried what he may have thought was a clinching denial of misleading the Commons over the weapons in Iraq. He made it sound quite simple; if he had deceived the Commons, he said, it would have been a resigning matter. But he didn’t resign – so therefore, by implication, he did not deceive the Commons. That kind of argument may have convinced those who were eager to be impressed but in fact it was no more than a circular fallacy which can be used to justify almost any action. Many a criminal (the kind who operates outside Parliament) must have admired the technique and promised themselves to use it, the next time they are helping the police with their enquiries.

There have recently been signs that, faced with an unpleasant reality and fighting to stay above the wave of disillusionment, Blair has resorted to the established technique of denying that it is all happening. Like Hitler in the Berlin bunker in the Spring of 1945, refusing to believe that the Reich was at an end. Like Margaret Thatcher when her leadership was on the point of collapse, with the men in grey suits getting ready to pay her a call, persisting with policies which she was advised were catastrophic vote losers and blanketing off the facts with declarations that she would fight on and win because there was no alternative.

Blair’s version of this technique was encapsulated in his speech at this year’s Labour conference, when he declared that he couldn’t go back on his policies because he doesn’t have a reverse gear. In some ways this was an unwise choice by his speech writers because the best known example of the absence of a reverse gear is a cramped, low slung, fragile, elongated egg shell of a car which is as erratic in its handling as you would expect from a three-wheeler, and is uncomfortable and terrifying for its passengers. Famously, it is the preferred mode of transport for Del Boy of Only Fools and Horses – and Del Boy is a pathetic fantasist whose feeble scams persistently come to grief but who never sees any need to change his attitude. In any case it is not true that Blair has never gone back on his policies. He used a reverse gear over the Bernie Ecclestone money and over Peter Mandelson; he probably wishes he had a reverse gear over the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. And then there are the many examples of his government going into reverse over their fine promises to alleviate poverty, solve the problems in health care, make education better and more accessible, run a more open style of government . . .

Brent East

So the ever-youthful, honest Tony Blair who made it into Number Ten has disappeared and in his place is a man presiding over a government which grows more unpopular by the day. He has imposed polices which have enraged Labour Party supporters, sometimes because they are indistinguishable from those of the Tories. Outside his party there is a sense of cynicism, not just about Blair but about the processes of democracy itself. The Brent East by-election was a staggering blow for Labour, as well as for the Tories but it would have been more significant if there had not been such a low turnout of voters. Behind the rejection of the Labour Party there was apathy with the whole process. That may be Blair’s biggest achievement; it has yet to be seen how enduring and how dangerous it will be.

The speculation about the nature and consequences of Blair’s heart condition was evidence of the unrest about him. Any more results like Brent East and it will be time for nervous Labour MPs, especially those holding onto marginal seats, to send him off into the sunset in his wobbling, reverse-lacking three wheeler. Then it will be time for them to elect a new leader, who will promise much and please many with a fresh approach and new promises to unlock the way to prosperity and security for us all. There will be new slogans and sound bites. That will be before the real experience sets in, when the new leader is exposed as a tawdry fraud. At some stage it might occur to the people who vote for leaders and for the social system in which leadership has so prominent a role, that there is a better way. Among the despair and anger at leaders like Blair it is sometimes apparent that there is some human concern for the welfare of the world’s people. All that is lacking is the knowledge and the confidence that we must do better – and, vitally, that we can do better.

Ivan

Letter: Anton Pannekoek and the SPGB (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anton Pannekoek and the SPGB

Dear Editors,

I have been reading the Socialist Standard for several years and was surprised to find the following statement in the October 2003 issue of your journal: 

“He [Anton Pannekoek] was optimistic that progress would lead to a great working class movement and political action to create a classless society in which all means of production and resources will be held in common by all people and used solely for needs.”

Despite the fact that Pannekoek was a council communist, there is no mention of any criticisms of his ideas. You will be aware of his statement that: “The so-called political democracy under capitalism was a mock democracy . . . Council organisation is a real democracy, the democracy of labor, making the working people master of their work” (Workers Councils, Part I, Chapter 7).

Anton Pannekoek rejected the use of political parties, and argued that the working class should organise into workers councils for the purpose of capturing power. This is in direct contradiction to the position of Karl Marx and the Socialist Party of Great Britain that the dispossession of the capitalist class can “arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat – organized in a distinct political party” (Marx, Programme of the French Workers Party, 1879).

Dr Pannekoek argued that the parliamentary action favoured by the SPGB was erroneous, and that through the formation of workers councils and a general political strike, Socialism could be obtained. Through the absence of any criticism of this viewpoint, I can gather that the Socialist Party does not oppose such a viewpoint.

That the SPGB is opposed to council-communism is shown in the following. In Questions of the Day, the SPGB showed 

“how secure is the grip Parliament has upon the armed forces” and how it is “necessary . . . for the workers to obtain control of Parliament before attempting to uproot the existing foundations of society . . . the only way to obtain control is through the legal one of sending delegates to Parliament”. This pamphlet argued against the views held by left-communists and council-communists that “the workers can set up their own machinery of government in opposition to the capitalist state . . . because in practices the capitalist class, controlling the armed forces through the parliamentary majority, will see to it that no hostile armed force comes into being to challenge their supremacy” (Questions Of The Day, SPGB, 1942 edition, pp76-8). 

The view of the SPGB is that if the working class were to set up councils and were to challenge the rule of the employers through these councils, our masters would have no hesitation in sending their armed forces to destroy such a movement.

It is not enough to agree upon the Object, but it is necessary to agree with the method of obtaining this Object. Thus we cannot hold a sympathetic view towards those whom adhere to the Socialist objective, but argue that this object cannot be obtained through political action in Parliament. If this is untrue, then the question is posed as to why Socialists do not unite with left-communists and council-communists.

Whilst I am quite sure you will agree to some extent as to what I have written, I still find it indispensable that we do not view certain opponents of the SPGB favourably, because of their opposition to Leninism in the case of Pannekoek.

R. Cumming, 

Glasgow

Reply: 

Your letter suffers from two glaring logical fallacies. First, because someone endorses something someone else says does not mean that they therefore endorse everything they say. Second, because someone doesn’t mention any disagreement they have with someone’s views does not mean that therefore agree with those views. Nor does it follow that to recognise that there are people outside the SPGB who agree with socialism mean that we should therefore unite with them.

So, no, you can’t gather from the fact that we did not mention (in an introduction to a pamphlet on Darwinism) that we disagree with the author’s advocacy of workers councils as the way to socialism that we therefore advocate this ourselves.

It so happens that an article by Pannekoek published in the same year as the SPGB pamphlet you quote gave us a chance to underline that, although we advocate sending delegates to parliaments as the way for the working class to gain control of political power, we are not a “parliamentary” party in the conventional sense.

As an article that appeared in the May 1942 Socialist Standard summarised Pannekoek’s position at that time (when he wrote the pamphlet on Darwin he held a different view, being a member of the German Social Democratic Party; later he was a member of the Dutch Communist Party until he realised that what was being established in Russia was state capitalism not socialism):

“Anton Pannekoek, the Dutch writer on Marxism, states his position in the bluntest of terms. Writing in an American magazine, Modern Socialism, he says: ‘The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working-class . . . Because a party is an organisation that aims to lead and control the workers’. Further on, however, he qualifies this statement: ‘If . . . persons with the same fundamental conceptions (regarding Socialism) unite for the discussion of practical steps and seek clarification through discussion and propagandise their conclusions, such groups might be called parties, but they would be parties in an entirely different sense from those of to-day’. Here Pannekoek himself is not the model of clarity, but he points to a distinction which does exist.”

The article went on to say that it was not parties as such that had failed, but the form all parties (save the SPGB) had taken “as groups of persons seeking power above the worker” and continued:

“Only Socialism can guarantee the conditions of a life worth living for all. Because its establishment depends upon an understanding of the necessary social changes by a majority of the population, these changes cannot be left to parties acting apart from or above the workers. The workers cannot vote for Socialism as they do for reformist parties and then go home or go to work and carry on as usual. To put the matter in this way is to show its absurdity . . . The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its fellow parties therefore reject all comparison with other political parties. We do not ask for power; we help to educate the working-class itself into taking it”.

An article on “left communists”, including Pannekoek, is being prepared for the January 2004 [issue] on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the death of Lenin.—Editors.

Letter: Socialists and War (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists and War

Dear Editors,

The anti-war stance of the Socialist Party is well-known, also its long-term view of how to remove the causes of war, but what would be its short-term strategy in a situation of international aggression? To put it, bluntly, what should socialists do if their country is invaded.

The vast majority of people in the world think that faced with the threat of invasion there are only two alternatives, to resist by military means or simply give in. There is, however, a third alternative, non-violent resistance, but while billions of pounds are spent annually on military methods, not even one penny is spent on research into the theory and practice of this third way.

Non-violent resistance could not prevent an invasion. It would operate from the beginning of the occupation and would include the following tactics: complete non-collaboration, the setting-up of parallel government (this would have been planned before the invasion, making use of the network of existing local structures such as trade unions, sports clubs, professional and cultural associations, etc), underground newspapers, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins and civil disobedience. All this would be accompanied by constant appeals to individual members of the occupying forces to question why they are there and why it would not be better for all concerned if they went home.

Those of us who were affected by the period of conscription had to think hard about tough questions. What do you “youngsters” think?

Bryan Fair, 

Dorchester, Dorset.

Reply: 

We are not quite sure why you think we’re all youngsters as some of our members are old enough to have known the period of conscription, which didn’t end till 1960. They, too, had to face the same tough questions as you. Those who were Socialist Party members opted not to be trained as killers for British capitalism and so were conscientious objectors (those who, for personal reasons, were unable to take this option resigned from the party). Having said this, members of the armed forces, being overwhelmingly recruited from the wage and salary working class, are also open to socialist ideas, and in fact a few of our younger members are former (volunteer) members of the armed forces.

While we are not absolute pacifists (we would be prepared to countenance counter-violence as a last resort to deal with any pro-capitalist minority that might have recourse to violence to try to prevent the implementation of the democratically-expressed will of a majority for socialism), some of the non-violent tactics you mention might be useful in the other hypothetical event of the last capitalist government trying to abolish political democracy when faced with a growing or majority movement for socialism. But we do have a serious problem with your particular proposal for “non-violent resistance”: it is put forward as an alternative to military action to deal with an invasion of “the country”. But “the country” is just another name for the established ruling class there; the workers have no country and it is not up to socialists to advise the ruling class how to defend itself in the face of an attempt by the ruling class of some other “country” to dislodge or replace them.—Editors.

Letter: BBC independence? (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In dealing with the ongoing spat between the government and the BBC, Pik Smeet (Socialist Standard, September) is of course, absolutely correct in stating that the elite control the media through structural predispositions than an automatic chain of command.

Nevertheless, government does directly invoke its powers of veto over BBC programmes when it thinks fit: for instance its suppression of programme material on Northern Ireland in the shape of the omission of the speech track on TV coverage of legally elected members of a legitimate party – Sinn Fein – in 1988.

These powers of government control over programme content, originally spelled out in the 1927 BBC Charter, appear also in the latest Charter renewal of 1996. and as before, BBC is not even required to publicise the fact when government so instructs it.

In any case, it would be difficult to envisage an institution, set up and operating under government licence, and being government funded, which could escape some level of complicity, however subliminal, with government, however vacillating and unclear the government line may be. For as Lord Annan pointed out in that section of his 1974 Committee on Broadcasting Report, headed “External Pressures”, which dealt with the compromising dependence of journalists on political sources for information, “the constitutional authority of radio and TV to function at all stems from an organ that political parties control”.

What seems to be overlooked is the glaringly obvious doublethink involved in appeals to government to preserve BBC independence. If government action can affect its alleged independence, then BBC is clearly not independent.

W. Robertson, 

Brighton

Letter: "Money dominates every facet of our existence . . . " (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Money dominates every facet of our existence . . . "

Dear Editors,

In the Socialist Standard of September last year John Bissett kindly reviewed my free booklet Question Everything in which I speak of the benefits that would accrue from living in a world without money. He pointed out that it required more emphasis on how the free and class conscious decisions of the majority would be attained. He was right, for the narrow pragmatisms, the wastes, inefficiencies and limitations of a capitalism that defeats itself by making people too poor to buy its goods, seems to have become entrenched, making it impossible that we could ever get back to those heady days after the second world war when socialism gave us hope for a better world. Even the higher standards of living that it brought, only increased the number of those who became better off and in turn became seduced by the temptations of the system. Socialism, like capitalism, tends to become a self-defeating process.

The money system that is the source of power and the root cause of all our problems, has ceased to have a purpose or any excuse for being retained now that science and technology enable us to produce anything – and in any quantity – that we want. There is enough food in the world already to feed the entire population, yet millions die of starvation, and manufacturers do not complain that they cannot increase production, only that people do not buy – mainly because they cannot afford to. It is the money system based upon the concept of scarcity that limits growth, because money has to be limited in order to maintain its value – which is why politicians fear inflation!

We spend our lives deciding what to spend, what to deny ourselves, what to save or borrow. Money dominates every facet of our existence, so that it is little wonder that, however poor we are, we imagine that a moneyless system would deprive us of the little we have.

My problem has been that I have been unable to think of any argument against a moneyless society other than that, since only a minority of us actually produce or distribute anything useful, everybody else being employed in manipulating money in one way or another, in sales promotion, in estimating cost and profit, in taxation and investment – and in making and selling arms! – that there would be so much freedom that for those accustomed to having to work to live, once they had tired of perpetual holidays and entertainment they would not know what to do with themselves. Since no healthy person could be idle for long, they would become desperate to make and do things, indeed anything, that would keep their minds and bodies active.

There would be nothing to be gained by theft or dishonesty, no advantage in pushing drugs, no more worries about which firm was reliable or about insuring against loss, so that there would be little need for police or lawyers. There would be little to quarrel or fight over, no advantage in limiting the effect of new ideas by taking out patents. Science and technology would be free to pursue imaginative ideas without having to concern themselves with their commercial significance. With few office workers commuting and public transport free and plentiful, there would be no traffic congestion.

In fact there would be plenty for idle hands and brains to do, in converting all the millions of redundant offices into homes, in bringing the third world up to civilised standards, in conjuring up and carrying out imaginative projects to enhance our lives, and in seeking activities, such as learning, research or woodwork, that they found satisfying.

Above all, no longer would we be treated as units, disposable in our millions in wars to satisfy the egos or ambitions of a few leaders.

But it would require that we learn to adapt, to free ourselves from the pragmatisms, complexities and temptations, the economic and political straightjackets of economic and party political systems, to limit ourselves to simple principles of justice, to policies that are irrefutable and incontrovertible; that we reject opinion, controversy and argument that was not supported by fact or reason, seeing ourselves as both learners and teachers instead of competitors, and recognising the overriding importance of the individual.

Because we all are conditioned by our genes and environments, to criticise or blame others for conforming to the world in which they have been conditioned and so take for granted, or to try to deprive them of that which in consequence they assume to be theirs by right, can only invite indignation, hatred, violence and cruelty – and make them cling ever closer to their possessions and beliefs.

Societies have changed little in 3000 years, but if we allow the limitations and confrontations of money and party politics, the ambitions of our leaders and governments, to play upon our defensive cowardice so that they can develop ever more sophisticated nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, we will surely extinguish ourselves.

We are not free just because we live in a so-called democracy that allows us one vote among 40 million or so every five years, enabling dictatorial leaders and governments to do virtually what they like. If we are to be free and to maximise our influence as individuals in those affairs that affect us without infringing the freedom of others, we need a system in which we can get together with our neighbours to decide what we want in our localities, a system in which those neighbourhood units in turn can commune with each other and so on in an ascending tier of decision-making that eventually develops global consensus.

A free and egalitarian society can evolve only by using reason and logic, by thinking independently of the terms and narrow pragmatisms to which we have been conditioned, and by recognising that people can be changed only if we can convince them that our criticisms are directed at the system, not the person.

To rescue humanity from its primitive pragmatisms, its intellectual stagnation its inherited greed, selfishness and aggression, seems impossible in a society in which even the most obvious and modest proposals for reform become derided, but to sit back and do nothing is to invite species extinction.

Melvin Chapman, 

Bath

50 Years Ago: The Margate Labour Party Conference (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Natíonalisation was the issue at Margate. It is the issue at all Labour conferences. It’s difficult to see how it can be otherwise; for Nationalisation apart what else is there left to discuss within the Labour Party? Housing! Education! The Health Services! These are not the things which separate the Labour Party from the Tories and oft times the Labour Party from itself. Only Nationalisation can do that.

True the Tories have nationalised in the past and might conceivably do so again if circumstances warranted. But for them Nationalisation measures have been a means to an end. The Labour Party for political purposes have made it an end in itself, although the Margate conference saw a full scale strategical withdrawal from that position.

Mr. Woodburn, M.P., made a clumsy attempt to cover the withdrawal by telling the conference that Natíonalisation was not Socialism. Mr. Woodburn may know that but the history of his party is writ large in the monumental confusion created by it in failing to make any real distinction between them. The speeches and writings of Labour leaders over the years bear damning testimony to this confusion. He also added, Nationalisation is merely a means to an end and not necessarily the best means. Whatever implications one likes to draw from that remark the fact is that the Labour Party in the past has viewed Nationalisation as an end; a social goal, a political ideal. Its 1918 Manifesto, Labour and the New Social Order, proclaimed as its aim the continued extension of nationalisation acts to ever widening spheres of industry. And until recent years the Labour Party never substantially departed from it. Hitherto the Labour Party regarded its policy of Nationalisation as one of principle not expediency.

The militant convictions of the Webbs and old Fabians who contributed considerably to the Nationalisation policy of the Labour Party are lacking among present day Labour leaders. Two terms of Labour administration have dispelled from the minds of the administrators any notion of the talismanic powers of Nationalisation. The Webbs are dead in more senses than one.

[From article by E.W., Socialist Standard, November 1953.]

A Non-starter (2003)

Book Review from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

War No More: Eliminating Conflict in the Nuclear Age by Robert Hinde and Joseph Rotblat: Pluto Press £10.99.

World military expenditure for the year was estimated in 1999 at $850 billion, the kind of figure that just boggles the mind. Hardly anyone will disagree with what this book says about the evils and waste of war and the need to get rid of it. Unfortunately, while the authors’ hearts are in the right place, not much of their thinking is.

Any movement to do away with war must begin by examining the causes of war, so Hinde and Rotblat ask what makes wars happen. It is not human nature, they say: people are not naturally aggressive, and rather than aggressiveness causing war, it is warfare that makes people behave aggressively. Instead, they argue, there is no single cause of war, for wars occur when multiple factors come together. They accept that competition over resources is one possible contributing factor, and they discuss oil and other raw materials. Water, in particular, is likely to be an increasing cause of contention, e.g. in Southern Africa, though there has been no ‘Water War’ as yet.

It is argued that capitalism does not need war, but the emphasis on multiple causes of war is really a cop-out. This is because it downplays the ways that capitalist states need—not war itself exactly—but control over resources and the denial of such control to their rivals, and will be prepared to go to war if other avenues to achieve their aims fail. The part played by capitalist rivalry in causing war is not given sufficient attention. Instead it is suggested that “the maintenance of stability over the whole world is in the interests of businesses everywhere”. This is at best a half-truth, though, as the stability found in the status quo may be very much against the interests of some groups of capitalists.

Hinde and Rotblat then look at how to eliminate war, proposing a number of ideas. For instance, nationalist ideas (i.e. denigrating other countries and cultures) should not be tolerated, while patriotism (pride in one’s own culture) is fine. More interestingly, they advocate “a loyalty to humanity”, but have little beyond pious notions to offer as to how it can be brought about. They conclude by emphasising the need for “an equitable global community, to which we all belong as world citizens”. This might not be a bad way of describing Socialism, but that clearly isn’t what they have in mind. What they want instead is a nicer kind of capitalism, with the worst poverty removed, the role of the United Nations enhanced, and no national military forces, which is just a utopian vision. As a way of eliminating conflict, this is a non-starter.

Paul Bennett

Hiding your politics under a bushel (2003)

Pamphlet Review from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ideas of Karl Marx: A beginner’s guide. By Aindrias O’Cathasaigh. Irish Socialist Network. €2.

This is the text of a talk given by the author to a meeting of an Irish reformist organisation who has published it as a short pamphlet. Naturally, in 16 pages Marx’s views can only be expressed in very succinct form. The parts concerning history and economics are basically OK,.

But it is the part on Marx’s political position that is confused. Marx argued that, to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers needed to win control of political power and that to do this they needed to organise into a political party; and that what socialists should be doing is everything they could to encourage the emergence of such a class political party.

In an understandable reaction against vanguardism—not that Marx had a vanguardist conception of the socialist party (he saw it rather as a mass democratic political movement)—O’Cathasaigh and the Irish Socialist Network recoil from the idea of a “party” and even from advocating socialism directly. This they see as socialists trying to impose their views on the working class; they favour going along with the day-to-day struggles of non-socialist-minded workers in the hope that these will somehow spontaneously evolve into a struggle for socialism.

Marx, who never hid his socialist light under a bushel, would have been appalled. Such timidity and drifting with the current will not advance the cause of socialism. It leads straight into the bog of reformism.

Adam Buick

New edition of News from Nowhere (2003)

Book Notice from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oxford University Press have just republished in their “World Classics” series a new edition of Morris’s News from Nowhere, with an introduction and notes by David Leopold (both of which are accurate and useful). Selling at £6.99, it is the cheapest edition currently available of this socialist classic. The ISBN is 0-19-280177-5.

Editorial: Total recall and true lies (2003)

Editorial from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

So second-rate film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected Governor of California. A sad reflection of the abysmally low level of political understanding of that section of the California electorate who voted for someone, apparently on the basis of his screen image as an “action man”, in the belief that he would be able to solve the problems generated by capitalism in the same way that he always triumphs in his films. It might be thought that they would have learned their lesson after the failure of Hollywood screen cowboy, Ronald Reagan, to live up to his movie image. Apparently not.

But it is not so much this that we want to comment on as the right of recall. This – where voters have the right to recall from office someone they have elected, for not carrying out their wishes – is a key democratic principle. We don’t suppose there will be State Governors in Socialism but there will certainly be elected assemblies and perhaps some elected officials; in the socialist conception of democracy, such elected people should be subject to recall if, in the opinion of a majority of those who elected them, they have failed to carry out the mandate conferred on them. For, in socialism, all elected persons will be delegates chosen by the community to carry out some task on their behalf. It is therefore only normal that, if they fail to carry out this task properly, the people who elected them should have the power to revoke their mandate, i. e. to recall them and mandate someone else in their place.

Such a conception of democracy is alien to what has come to pass as “democracy” under capitalism. The right of recall exists in the constitution of the State of California and of a number of other US States only because at one time bourgeois democrats in America were more radical than they are today. But capitalism corrupts everything it touches and has been able to distort this basic democratic principle to fit into its conception of politics, where democracy is not a question of the community mandating delegates to carry out some task on its behalf – if only because as a class-divided society there is no community under capitalism – but that of choosing between two or more rival elites, a competition between rival gangs of professional politicians.

This reduces politics to choosing every few years which leader or leadership team is going to administer the political side of capitalism. Voters are not citizens participating in the self-administration of their common affairs, but are essentially only an audience whose role is limited – like that of the crowds in the Coliseum in Ancient Rome – to giving the thumbs up or the thumbs down to some outgoing leadership team seeking re-election.

This is not democracy, and it doesn’t work either in that the leaders never live up to their promises. Not necessarily because they are liars or tricksters or self-seekers (though many of them are of course) but because capitalism, despite their promises, just cannot be made to run without causing insoluble problems for the great majority of people, i.e for those who, with their dependants, rely to live on the wage or salary they are paid for the sale of their mental and physical energies.

They – we – make up the vast majority of the electorate but have not yet learned to use the vote in an intelligent way – not to elect capitalist politicians to govern capitalism in the only way it can be, as a system that has to put profits before people, but to send delegates into all elected assemblies mandated to put an end to capitalism. Of course, in keeping with the socialist conception of democracy as a participatory democracy, this assumes that people outside the elected bodies have also mobilised themselves and are ready to play their part in establishing socialism.

Last month’s recall election in California was not really an exercise in democracy, but rather a variation on the futile exercise of kicking out one leader and replacing them with another. But leaders can’t do anything for us. Changing leaders changes nothing. Only we can change things, by taking matters into our own hands and, as just stated, organising to send mandated socialist delegates to elected bodies instead of falling for the empty promises of capitalist politicians.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will fail to solve the problems wage and salary workers in California face just as much as the less charismatic ex-Governor Gray Davis did and all other politicians everywhere always do and always will. What is required is not a change of leaders but a change of society. Let’s terminate capitalism.

Socialism Now (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today, in the first years of this 21st century, we can look back on the climactic events of the 20th, and see that indeed, that was the defining century of capitalism. Capitalism as an economic system has existed in tiny segments throughout history, but it was not until the 19th and especially the 20th that it became the truly global system it is today.

With the triumph of capitalism over feudalism, many thinkers analysed the new system and saw how it could be converted from the system of continued class tyranny and exploitation into an instrument of global prosperity and progress for all. While Marx was frustrated in his yearning for communism, it was probably not a practical possibility during his time. He died with Europe firmly enthralled in capitalism, and the rest of the world soon to follow.

Now however, in the 21st century, after many years of capitalism as the definitive world system, we have seen at first hand how despicable and outdated the system is. Two massive world wars, with workers butchering each other for the interests of global capital, have caused millions upon millions of deaths. Since then it has been near endless war in some part of the world or another, all perpetuated by the endless demands of capital to accumulate more and more. Untold amounts of resources have been squandered by the rival capitalist states in new and more powerful means of suppression and destruction in order to protect their interests. It has come to the point where they possess the weaponry to destroy all life on the planet.

The Earth's atmosphere itself is becoming less and less hospitable to human life, as pollutants are released because rival capitalists desperately compete with each other to cut costs and gain greater profits. Millions of people are starving amid plenty even as food is destroyed to drive up prices on the markets to yield continued profits. People across the world endure terrible and alienating working conditions, with claims of a “classless society” spouted by the reformists a laughable and unrealisable utopia within the present system. Poverty has not been eradicated in the “developed world” and poverty in the “third world” is not a product of some unassailable trait of human nature, but a matter of the productive system that is capitalism. All this and more assaults the human race as a vast unsolvable problem, a nightmare with no end, and apathy soon sets in. In fact there is a solution; never in history has socialism been so relevant as it is now.

No matter how much it has been lied about, ridiculed and twisted from its original form, scientific socialism is now, more then ever, needed to solve the crisis humanity finds itself in.

Socialism is common ownership. Socialism is production for need. Socialism is real democracy.

Socialism is for the global working class, who can use the vast productive powers for the free development of all. We, in the 21st century, now have that potential. It is possible to house everyone. It is possible to feed everyone. It is possible for everyone to live a decent and fulfilling life as real people, and not just as objects on the labour market. The only thing stopping this is the outdated profit system that constrains production to the will of private property and privilege.

The productive powers have been increased to a vast degree, yet people are still idle, starving, poverty stricken, and homeless, while the machinery of production is misused or neglected. This must change. This will change. This, the 21st century, can be the true century of revolution, of true socialist revolution. We must abandon the faith misplaced in the leaders and apologists of capitalism and move on, ourselves, to our new global society, where the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all. These words have never been more relevant than they are now, and we have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win. Workers of all countries unite!

Dan Read