Letter: The Pope and King Billy (1990)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pope and King Billy

Sirs,

The article The Lies That Kill' (Socialist Standard, July 1990) on the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland was topical. However, it did the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain no good to rehash historical error, even if it is convenient.

The comment on the third paragraph on the second page of the article which refers to the Treaty (or league) powers, of which the Pope was the head, that armed, provisioned and financed King Billy when he landed in Ireland has no historical fact. Even the way the historical myth is written is out of the normal context. It is normally associated with the landing in England in 1688 when the Pope Innocent XI was on the Papal Throne but this is erroneous too (see page 202, New Cambridge Modern History, Vol VI).

While it is a popular tale to abuse the Orange conception of the Battle of the Boyne the Pope did not have a Te Deum sung in St Peter's to mark William's victory. Indeed Pope Alexander was disturbed at the report that a Te Deum was sung in Austria where the Hapsburgs ruled—one of William's allies on the continent.

David Boyce 

Hamilton, Scotland.

Reply:

If the purpose of David Boyce's remonstrance is historical accuracy, then is argument is worthy of examination. If it is intended to refute the contention in the article that the fictions, lies and historical rubbish that the opposing sides in Northern Ireland use to deceive the working class, then it is less worthy.

It is less worthy because, however valid the two points he makes may be, they represent a small part of our indictment of the viciously anti-working class and anti-democratic Orange Order. This organisation has consistently promoted the lie that Unionism and Orangeism represent a shield for workers who are protestants. It has. by its fascist-like posturings and its triumphalism, promoted hatred and division within the working class. It was founded on the lie of class collaboration and its contemporary existence epitomises the hypocrisy and distortion that forms one side of the substance of the lies that in Northern Ireland today bring death and destruction.

Mr Boyce raises two objections to the article: (1) That there is no basis in fact for the contention that King Billy was armed, provisioned and financed by the Treaty or League powers: (2) That the story of a Te Deum being sung in Rome in celebration of William's victory is a popular myth.

For his second contention he offers no evidence beyond his personal claim. Even so, it can be accepted that definitive evidence is impossible to find. James Connolly made the claim in Labour. Nationality and Religion and The Reconquest of Ireland and cited as one of his authorities the protestant historian, the Reverend Robert Murray's Revolutionary Ireland and Its Settlement. Among other historians who have backed Connolly are Beresford Ellis in History of the Irish Working Class and Klopp in The Fall of the House of Stuart. The latter cites Avaux and Macpherson as his authorities for reporting that the Catholic Austrian Court had ordered public prayers for the success of King Billy's expedition in Ireland.

Mr Boyce supports his first contention by a reference to Volume VI of the New Cambridge Modern History. The substance of the particular article is the English Revolution in which there is a footnote quoting a Von Pastor:

It has been said that Innocent XI supported or had some knowledge of the expedition. but the documents generally adduced for this are forgeries. It was impossible for Innocent to associate himself in any way with a Protestant against a Catholic prince.

None of the more prominent Irish and Anglo-Irish historians, past and present, support Von Pastor's contention that it was impossible for a Pope to support “a Protestant against a Catholic prince". Most of these writers make generous use of continental European historians and some of the latter say that Innocent XI was referred to as "the Protestant Pope” because of his close identification with William of Orange. Murray quoted Koch and Schoell's Histoire abrégé des traités de paix as follows:

The Pope supported the Imperial Alliance, for he aimed at the humiliation of France and he cared little whether this was brought about by Roman Catholic or Protestant means. Instead of a religious crusade headed by the Pope and the Emperor, Louis is met with the Grand Alliance, signed at Vienna, between William as Stadholder of Holland and Leopold, on 12th May 1689 against the policy of France. William bound himself to secure Germany against future aggression by Louis and Leopold undertook to support William from attack in Holland. England and Spain were also to join this League.

Mr Boyce must accept the factual evidence for the Grand Alliance, whose existence effectively refutes Von Pastor's version of events.

Editors.

William Morris - socialist, artist, poet (1990)

The Front Page quote from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Well, I say all this is war, and the result of war, the war this time, not of competing nations, but of competing firms or capitalist units: and it is this war of the firms which hinders the peace between nations which you surely have agreed with me in thinking is so necessary; for you must know that war is the very breath of the nostrils of these fighting firms, and they have now, in our times, got into their hands nearly all the political power, and they band together in each country in order to make their respective governments fulfil just two functions: the first is at home to act as a strong police force, to keep the ring in which the strong are beating down the weak; the second is to act as a piratical body-guard abroad, a petard to explode the doors which lead to the markets of the world."

- From How We Live and How We Might Live by William Morris

Sting in the Tail: A Sordid Tale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Sordid Tale

The history of British Labour governments is littered with sordid episodes. One of these was told on ITV's "A Marriage of Inconvenience" on 15 August.

In 1949 Ruth Williams, a white Briton, married Seretse Khama, a tribal chief In the British "Protectorate" of Bechuanaland. The neighbouring South African government, which had just imposed Apartheid, was outraged and demanded that the Labour government refuse to recognise Khama as legitimate chief.

Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, was determined that Britain must have its own atom bomb but the American government wouldn't provide the necessary know-how.

But America was short of uranium which South Africa had in plenty, so the Labour government made a deal with South Africa to betray Khama in return for uranium which it would then swop for American atom secrets.

Khama was summoned to London to be subjected to threats, attempted bribery and finally banishment from Bechuanaland.

So the government that claimed to oppose Apartheid actually assisted it, while the cynicism and treachery they displayed would have shamed the hardest-hearted Tory.

The re-telling of this episode is a reminder that Labour governments will stop at nothing in their efforts on behalf of British capitalism.

Trotsky's "Marxism"

The 50th anniversary of Trotsky’s murder had his followers lavishing the usual praise on their hero.

In a letter to The Guardian (23 August), David Widgery of the Socialist Workers Party claimed, among other things, that Trotsky had applied Marxist analysis to 20th century events.

We deny this: What Trotsky applied was the bombastic crystal-gazing which had him writing in 1935, for example, that ". . . England is heading for a revolutionary explosion" only months before the Tories won their biggest ever majority.

According to Trotsky the sit-down strikes by French workers in 1936 "revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system", that capitalism in 1938 was in its "death agony", etc., etc.

History has proved Trotsky's analyses to be nonsense and his legacy to the working class has been to confuse thousands of them down the years.

Ryzhkov's "Marxism"

In the struggle for power inside the Communist Party of the USSR there appears to be a conflict between those who would immediately go over to a Western-style market economy and those who would have that change enacted more gradually.

Amongst the gradualists is the present Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. But to illustrate the hypocrisy and deceit of the ruling élite  in the USSR his more gradual approach does not apply to his own personal ownership.

In the youth daily Komsomolskaya Pravada, it has been reported that Ryzhkov has bought his state dacha with one-and-a-half hectares of forest for the ludicrous sum of 47,000 roubles (officially £47,000 but in reality about one tenth that amount judging by the foreign tourist rate.)

With the thought of yet another coal strike in the offing perhaps Mr. Ryzhkov plans to have a good supply of firewood on hand this winter. Another example of "socialist" planning?

Off the Rails

During the enquiry into the Clapham rail disaster, which led to 35 deaths, the Westminster coroner Paul Knapman made a telling point about the cause of the disaster, when questioning the technician who carried out the faulty signalling work.

During questioning of Mr. Hemingway, Mr. Knapman said that he believed that there were four "core reasons" for the disaster — a lack of instruction; a lack of supervision; a lack of testing along the guidelines set out in circular SL-53; and "the general reckless haste, pressure, pressure, pressure" of the re-signalling work

The Independent 11 September

That the pressure was indeed intense is backed up by the information that Hemingway had had only one day off in 13 weeks, that he had no formal training and that the acting testing officer who had to check Hemingway's work had no formal training either.

The "core reason" for the Clapham disaster is of course capitalism. In a sane society based on production for use there would be no need to scrimp on safety measures.

Reformist "Progress"

The Gulf crisis has meant a big set-back for environmentalists in the USA.

Until now their pressure (aided by the low cost of imported oil) has enabled them to block further oil exploration, notably in Alaska and off the Californian coast.

Now the strategists who consider the long-term interests of US capitalism insist that America has become too dependent on imported oil and that more domestic oil production is in "the national interest".

The oil companies are using this situation to turn the tables on their enemy. One of their chief spokesmen stated:

The national security aspects in oil have been completely subordinated in recent years to the environmental concerns. Now the emphasis is coming back to the national security aspect. If there is a conflict between the two, it may no longer be resolved in favour of the environmentalists.

The Guardian 25 August

And the environmentalists' other bogey, the nuclear industry, has seized the opportunity to strenghten its case by pointing out that nuclear plants greatly reduce US dependence on oil imports.

On top of this come allegations that environmentalists are a threat to national security! Congressman Dannemeyer of California says:

The environmentalists party . . . is a greater security threat than Saddam Hussein could ever be.

Now that the "communist" menace has gone, maybe the environmentalists will be the next victims to be labelled "un-American". Stranger things have happened.

Down on the Farm

Riot police lobbing tear gas grenades at angry crowds — lorries hi-jacked — roads blocked by burning debris — a scene from Lebanon, South Africa or Palestine?

No. This is rural France as farmers protest at the import of meat and lamb.

Many of them face ruin as the price of lamb has fallen by 17 per cent, calves by 10 per cent and cows by 7 per cent.

Some "experts" blame the French government for cutting subsidies, some the import of cheap produce from Britain, others blame cheap imports from Eastern Europe. None of them apparently blame the real cause — capitalism with its production for profit. 

The spectacle of children starving — while farmers riot about the ruin that faces them as the meat mountain grows — is just another example of how essential it is that we scrap the out-dated system of society that produces everything for sale despite the desperate needs of the world's hungry.

Workers leave the running of society in the hands of "experts" at their peril.

Editorial: Why we need socialism (1990)

Editorial from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The case for socialism — a society of common ownership, democratic control, production for use and distribution according to need — rests on the fact that capitalism does not work, and cannot be made to work, in the interests of the majority in society who have to go out to work for a wage or salary.

Capitalism is a class-divided society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by a minority of extremely rich individuals. Goods and services, useful things, are produced not with the intention of satisfying our needs, but with the intention of making a profit for this minority. Production is subject to the profit motive. The economic law of "no profit, no production" rules.

Basically, capitalism can only work as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off profits. It is because priority must be given to making profits that the needs of the wage and salary working majority are neglected. Profits come first. People's needs come second.

This is why the majority face problems even when it comes to meeting our basic needs. This is why there are problems over the quality of the food we eat. Why there are millions of people living in substandard housing, and why some are completely homeless. Why the health service is run on the cheap. Why there are problems over schools, transport, the environment — in fact why there are all the problems which the politicians promise to solve but never do.

Capitalism is not just a national phenomenon. It exists in all countries including, obviously now, in Russia. It is in fact a world system, and the problems of world poverty, ignorance and disease are to be laid at its door too. The productive forces exist to provide every man, woman and child on this planet with adequate food, clothing and shelter. Yet millions die each year of starvation or starvation-related diseases, while farmers in Europe and North America are paid not to grow food. These people die because they have no money and so don't constitute a market. Which means they don't count for the operation of the capitalist system.

Because capitalism involves a built-in competitive struggle for profits there is also a struggle that from time to time breaks out into actual warfare for sources of raw materials, for markets, for investment outlets and for strategic points and routes to protect these. To be prepared for this, and as a "deterrent" to other states to keep their distance, all of the states into which the world is divided have to maintain the most destructive weapons of war they can afford. So the world spends more on armaments than on dealing with problems like starvation and disease. So, also, the major powers have stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity many times over.

As if the threat of nuclear annihilation was not enough, there is also the threat of ecological disaster — either from global warming or from the hole in the ozone layer, take your pick — caused by industrial processes firms are forced to adopt to remain competitive and stay in the race for profits. So this is capitalism. And this is why we must get rid of it.

We must replace capitalism with socialism. A complete change in the basis of society, from class ownership and production for profit to common ownership and production just for use, must be brought about by conscious democratic political action before anything lasting or constructive can be done to solve existing problems. With common ownership and democratic control we will be freed from the tyranny of the economic laws of capitalism which restrict and distort what is produced to what is profitable. The barrier to us using the means of production to meet our needs will have gone.

Letter: Democratic rights (1990)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democratic rights

Dear Editors.

In the Socialist Standard (September 1989) you wrote that the Socialist Party of Great Britain “wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression”.

I fail to see how democratic rights can be achieved within the framework of world capitalism. The capitalist system, state or private, East or West, is not democratic. It is a form of class dictatorship, with a minority capitalist class in power and control over the exploitable working class majority.

The capitalist class cannot be in the business of handing out democratic rights and risk losing control, but they do when necessary and under pressure make concessions and legislate reforms. Governments which are the executive committees of the capitalist class call these overtures and reforms "democratic rights". Which is a lie, because they are civil rights dressed up to make capitalism look better and they can easily be rescinded.

Socialists should not ignore civil rights. Some can be appreciated and be useful and all are part of social understanding. They do not however lead to democratic rights. Only a socialist society can produce democratic rights.

A sane system of society or real democracy. real communism or real socialism, all have the same meaning and intent which could materialise about the same time.

The only democratic right achievable under capitalism could take place when the working class through a workable majority captures the political apparatus of the capitalist class to gain political control, so that the working class is able to replace capitalism with socialism.

From this premise a democratic right can only be established by a majority, in the interests of a majority.

John F. Ahrens 

Vancouver, Canada

Reply:

Our correspondent is confusing political democracy and a democratic society.

Capitalism is not and can never be a democratic society because, as he says, it is based on class power and privilege, social inequality, and exploitation. A real democracy, where everybody would have an equal say in decision-making about all aspects of social life, including and in fact particularly the production and distribution of wealth, is only possible in a classless society of common ownership.

Capitalism can, however, accommodate a limited degree of political democracy in the sense of allowing every adult equal voting rights to decide who shall occupy various political posts at national and local level. Political democracy is by definition confined to a very limited sphere of decision-making and even here can never be complete as it is distorted by the social inequality that is at the basis of capitalism: those with money can and do pay to get more publicity for their views and views that favour them. As in Animal Farm, under capitalist political democracy "all are equal but some are more equal than others".

Despite these limitations and distortions the existence of political democracy under capitalism—and the various “democratic rights” that accompany it such as freedom of speech, publication, organisation, and assembly—is an advantage for the working class as it provides the best framework under capitalism for the socialist movement to organise and grow. This is why the Socialist Party supports the struggles of workers living under political dictatorships to obtain "democratic rights" as before the war in fascist countries and recently in East Europe.

Editors.

Caught In The Act: Oil and carrots (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oil and carrots

Some time ago Ken Livingstone said that anyone who enjoyed being in Parliament was in need of psychiatric care. But he was in a minority; almost every other MP is convinced that parliament is an essential contributor to our safety and welfare and that without its debates the nation would be like a ship without a rudder. So it was that as the crisis in the Gulf developed there were many people who thought that in so grave a situation nothing less would do than the immediate recall of parliament.

The government agreed (Margaret Thatcher takes only brief holidays in any case, and then grudgingly) and the Members selflessly left the grouse moors and the sun-soaked beaches to hurry to London. After a couple of days of well-publicised talking they resumed their holidays, leaving us with the question what was it all about? Was it worth it?

Tyrant

At the end of the debate the Commons voted, more or less, in favour of Britain going to war with Iraq — to go to war, in other words, over a border dispute between two other states — something which, when it suits them, government will decline to do. Of course tho Members were excited by the sudden discovery that Saddam is a brutal tyrant, after all those years when he had been our friend for whom we could overlook one or two minor aberrations such as his ordering the use of chemical weapons to slaughter thousands of helpless Kurdish villagers.

In fact so dose a friend was Saddam that his tyranny was sustained by armaments sold to him by Western powers (in the debate Denis Healey referred to "stuffing arms down tho throats" of powers like Iraq, although he was a member of a government which did not demur at doing just that) Any British, American or French soldiers who have to do the fighting will not be consoled by the fact that their governments supplied many of the weapons being used against them. Margaret Thatcher, who is contemptuous of history, summed up the debate when she told the house that "History has many examples of perfidy and deceit" — an unconscious warning that the Honourable Members were providing another example.

But parliament is nothing if not adaptable about these things How else could it have coped in the past with the changes in its assessment of Stalin, Ceausescu, the unity of Germany, the resurrection of Japanese power?

In tune with the times Thatcher was belligerent, Kinnock statesmanlike, Ashdown cautious in tho soldierly way befitting someone trained to kill with their bare hands. Except for a handful of MPs who put their confidence in the shaky delusions of the United Nations the House was united — Tory, Labour, SLD, SDP all jostled into tho lobby to vote for a war in which they have every reason to believe they would not be killed nor even fight.

At times the perfidy and deceit in the Commons became so intense that reality was lost sight of. Thatcher spoke as if Britain was a major factor in the crisis. She harped on the ‘legality’ of the action against Iraq as if the British and American ruling classes (or any other, for that matter) only indulge in "legal" military enterprises which meant that she had forgotten what had happened in Grenada and Panama and what the Israeli forces have been up to recently. She warned that the Iraqi take-over of Kuwait affected " . . . world security, world oil supplies and world stability" — which is either untrue or extravagant with the truth.

War fever

The real purpose of the debate, the reason which brought those MPs back from their holidays, was to gird up tho British workers for war. We have been subjected to a stream of vicious propaganda about Saddam, who is the latest bogeyman after the likes of Hitler, Nasser and Gadaffi, to provide lurid headlines in the gutter press. All these leaders, we are told, were mad along with their other personality problems — which ignores the fact that someone like Saddam needs a kind of sanity to survive in the volatile politics of Iraq

One Tory MP blustered that he wanted Saddam "politically humiliated and militarily castrated" which hints kinkily that Westminster has its personality problems as well. Once more the world is divided into goodies and baddies. Foreign Office Minister William Waldegrave drooled that "Democracies are slow to anger, but once angered they will go right to the end of the road". Again there is a general unity among tho capitalist parties that "our" interests demand that "we" go to war to remove some evil force from the world so that we can live in peace, at least until the next war

What cements that unity is the interests which are actually at stake in the Gulf. These do not include tho welfare of the people in Kuwait or Britain who, as members of the working class, are readily expendable and so not fit subjects for emergency debates in parliament. A former American Assistant Defence Secretary pointed out, as the crisis began, that if Kuwait grew carrots nobody — by which he meant no member of the ruling class — would give a damn if the place was invaded.

The crisis revolves around the fact that Kuwait is oil-rich and that Iraqi ambitions threatened to upset tho pricing structure of the world oil industry The former Labour Cabinet Minister was not talking about the world supply of carrots when he said ". . . it is a world necessity that we have access . . . at a reasonable price".

Short-term

In these kinds of situation — like Suez in 1956 — there is very little scope for capitalist powers to take other than a short term view. In 1956 a long-term assessment saw how wasteful and unproductive for the capitalist class was the assault on Egypt by the French and British forces The same view now sees that, again from the standpoint of the capitalists, there is an enormous amount to lose by going to war with Iraq, among it lasting damage to the oilfields and the replacement of Saddam by a government more hostile to Western interests. That is the logic of the situation; but even by its own standards capitalism does not always work logically

So what the emergency debate demonstrated was that at present parliament does not operate to deal with the interests of the majority who elect it. Its role is to pass the laws which are needed to ensure the most effective exploitation of the working class and the most powerful defence of the profits of the exploiting class. Occasional showpiece debates encourage us to believe that parliament is concerned for our welfare and this perfidy and deceit is called democracy

A saner way of running human affairs would not be profit-motivated and productive of social schisms. It would have neither wars nor smug politicians to urge us to die in them. It may even, if it made sense from the point of view of human welfare, shut down the oilfields in the Middle East and grow carrots there instead — which would be a neat and conclusive way of proclaiming that somebody at least gives a damn.

Ivan

Capitalism pollutes the planet (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is generally accepted that a greenhouse effect has been and is being created and that the ozone layer above the Earth is being dangerous depleted, both representing enormous potential disasters looming up for the not-so-future generations. Socialists argue that the fault lies with the capitalist system and its blinkered, all-consuming quest for the maximisation of profit from its industrial and commercial output.

The threat of global warming is the result of perhaps a century of the pouring of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by capitalist industry while the ozone situation is attributable to the massive use of CFCs since the 1950s as a cheap and easy-to-produce chemical serving many industrial and domestic purposes.

We do not ask you to take the Socialist's word for it that it is capitalism's motivation with profit and therefore with cost that is the fundamental cause of present environmental problems. W. Fay, administrator of the influential US industrial lobby grouping, says “congressional environmental bills must pass the affordability test’’ (Time, 16 April). In plain language this means if it costs a lot, pare it down, compromise, cut corners, think about it again, fight a rearguard action, anything in fact except putting human concern first. For in capitalism the bottom-line of profit is the all-important factor. If you have any doubts on this turn to the financial pages of the “quality’’ press and just glance at the long list of companies all parading the latest gains and losses in their stocks. Then turn to the accompanying pages and peruse the analysts' comments and considerations of the various companies to invest in. These will have nothing whatsoever to do with the usefulness of the products being produced or even whether these are vital to human life. Profit and profit alone is the god, and this hysteria pervades the whole of the global financial world and is now a 24- hour frenetic international affair.

Business as usual

President Bush heads the biggest capitalist state in the world and in his election campaign liked to term himself the “environmental president". Once in office he has found governing more difficult. Now he is pursuing “a balance" between sharply competing interests on environmental issues. Urged on by John Sununu, White House Chief of Staff, and Richard Darman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, “who have viewed environmental protection with scepticism if it impugned on economic growth", Bush told an international conference in Washington on global warming "that more study was needed to help resolve ‘uncertainties’ about the effect of global warming and the costs of pollution control" (International Herald-Tribune, 21 March). Translated, this means ‘take it easy, not too fast, don’t lets go round spending a lot of money’.

The same paper had earlier reported (6 March) that each year US manufacturers belch thousands of tons of ozone-depleting chemicals into the stratosphere. Until last year IBM's circuit-board plant, one of the largest users of these chemicals in the US. released more than two million pounds annually. Even though these emissions have been reduced as a result of regulations:

According to the National Resources Defense Council two chemicals that are as yet unregulated—methyl chloroform and tetrochloride—together account for 33 percent of man-made ozone-destroying chlorine in the stratosphere . . . As long as these are used the ozone will be unable to recover even if CFCs are phased out entirely', said a spokeswoman for the group and she continued that although 200 companies reported less methyl chloroform emissions in 1988 almost as many others increased emissions’.

Methyl chloroform, the report went on, is still used by IBM because no substitute has yet been found. Just imagine finding out you were being fed on a slow poison but then being told this would have to continue till a substitute was found!

D. A. Hayes, an organiser of Earth Day that took place on 25 April, spoke of the last ten years as “a decade of greed, sleaze and mendacity". Yes, indeed they were, but you would need to be motivated by unbounded optimism to think that the problems of the environment can be terminated whilst leaving the capitalist profit motive firmly in place:

Although environmental issues are now firmly on the political agenda in many countries action to clean up the earth is rare . . . because it is costly. A pledge by the seven wealthiest industrial nations last summer to undertake concerted and determined action to help the environment has so far achieved nothing. This week the EPA released figures indicating that US plants spewed 4.57 billion pounds of poisonous chemicals into the air, land and water in 1988. (International Herald-Tribune, 21 March).

This is not the complete picture because the Environmental Protection Agency requires reports only from industries discharging more than 50,000 pounds of the chemicals that are considered most harmful to humans or the environment. Los Angeles, for example, is being overwhelmed by foul air, trash, and water shortages. The EPA has also reported 112 million people—nearly half the US population-living in areas still exceeding the smog standards (Time, 16 April).

Same the whole world over

The problem of “balancing”, as Bush called weighting up cost versus environment, affects the whole world, in Australia only one of Sydney's 35 beaches is free of pollution. Many of the others, including Bondi and Manly, are frequently fouled by household sewage and industrial waste. The sewage contains significant amounts of toxic chemicals and heavy metals such as mercury and lead but "the government authorities in Sydney have been reluctant to risk unpopularity by putting up taxes and being tough on industrial waste discharges" (International Herald-Tribune, 1 April). This is pretty much the tale round the globe.

There is an obverse side: 'where there's muck there's brass'. Capital will seek investment high or low and recruit every laudable human sentiment to justify its activity. That's why we re all green now:

Spinning gold from garbage is the alchemy of the 1990s. That's the message to entice investors into targeting environment-control companies. Cleaning up our polluted planet will be the growth industry of the 90s says D. McKercher of the Oppenheimer Global Environment Fund. Government spending on environmental programs could soar providing a bonanza for well-positioned companies. (International Herald-Tribune, 9 April).

It is just as though the capitalist monster had spawned a parasite to feed on its maggoty and putrefying flesh.

So one suggestion we could put to capitalist investors is to split their money between the polluting industries and the cleaning-up ones. That way would provide a never-ending round-about of profit-taking. Facetious? Perhaps, but that's certainly the face that capitalism presents. Socialists have a much more logical suggestion. Why not dispose of the society which is self-evidently responsible for the appalling pollution of the world environment? Stop the terrible mess being made in the first place and then there'll be no clearing up to do. That saves resources twice over.

To the millions expressing their support for Earth Days and joining in parades, planting trees, recycling waste, and taking part in nature walks and demonstrations. we say consider whether a profit motivation of production can be reconciled with a clean planet. Taking the evidence put forward in this article as being just a tiny corner of the general picture of the rapacity of the capitalist system, ask yourself whether the answer can truly be an affirmative one.

Max Judd

50 Years Ago: What They Say About Socialism (1990)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might have been expected that the war would have helped to disabuse peoples minds of some of the grossest forms of ignorance concerning the nature of Socialism and its utter incompatibility with forms of dictatorship-capitalism such as those in Germany and Italy. Yet we still see writers who claim to be well-informed perpetrating the old falsehoods.

Miss Margaret Cole, writing in the Tribune (August 30th. 1940), about the modernising of Turkey under the late Kemal Ataturk. credits him with seeing the need "to establish the amount of totalitarianism" or "Socialism"—call it what you will—which is imperative to the twentieth century.

"This necessity," she says, "has been demonstrated in Italy, Germany and Russia; under stress of war it is being demonstrated in this country and in France . . ."

Miss Cole claims to be a Socialist and the Tribune claims to be a Socialist Journal, yet they can tell their readers that “totalitarianism" and "Socialism" are much alike, merely a matter of names!

Then in the Sunday Express (August 18th, 1940), an article on the Nazi Leader. Dr. Ley, says that if Germany won the war "Ley would go down in history as the greatest Socialist of the new and greater Germany."

But let us say once more that Socialism does not mean that wages are paid by the State instead of by the employer. It means a system of society in which there is no wages system at all.

It is people like the Labour Party who have fostered these erroneous notions of Socialism. What they really mean is "State Capitalism”.

(From the Socialist Standard, October 1940.)

Does religion matter? (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Saturday morning. The English Summer manifests itself one day of the year. Today is the day. Location: an inner city Victorian church. Style: Gothic ugly. Opposite the soot engrained building is a shopping complex. God versus Mammon. Mammon is winning hands down. Inside the church is a pervasive stygian atmosphere despite the soaring seventies outside. Everyone talks in whispers. There is a preponderance of dark wood, which only adds to the sombre mood. The back of the pew directly in front of me has several initials carved into it. One set of initials is the same as mine. My mind wanders in lazy thoughts of the penknife owner. At last! Thank god. at least its not Mendelssohn's Wedding March or Bach's Toccata and Fugue. As the organ plays Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, the bride walks down the aisle.

Surely I’m not going to castigate and harangue these people for taking part in a harmless, traditional ritual? After all, don't most people only go to church three times in their life? Christenings, weddings and funerals? Of course, when filling in official forms that request their religion they'll generally put C of E. But it's only to save the bother of being different. It's not worth arguing about is it?

Capitalist society

We live in a capitalist society where most wealth is owned by a minority. This has the legal ownership of the factories, the land, the shops, the offices, the banks, transport facilities; in other words the means of production and distribution. You and I belong to the propertyless majority. Not having sufficient money in the bank to live off the interest: not owning sufficient stocks and shares to live off the dividends; not owning sufficient houses to live off the rent; not being able to exploit sufficient numbers of the working class to live off the wealth they create, we are forced to sell our labour power — our physical and mental ability to work — to the minority property owning class, who in return pay us a wage or salary.

Capitalism prides itself on the choice which it says free market competition offers to the consumer. Actually the choice for most of us as to where we live, what we eat, what we wear, what car we drive is restricted by the amount of money we have. Our means of living are dependent upon being able to sell our labour power to the capitalist class. The wage or salary we get in return is only sufficient for us to maintain ourselves in a condition to be able to fulfil capitalism's demands for wealth creating workers. But capitalism gives us the choice of whether we, the majority, want to continue to support a system of society that benefits the few whose concern is with production for profit, not need. However, capitalism is not about to hand over the economic and political power which its ruling class enjoys until a majority of the working class understand and want the only alternative to capitalism — socialism. Obviously, the political consciousness of the majority is insufficiently developed at the present time, and they do not comprehend the differences that living in a socialist society would make to their lives. Marx wrote that the prevailing ideas in society are those of the ruling class. Capitalism is prepared to use any method it can to persuade workers that under capitalism all things are for the best in the best possible world.

Inventing God

Voltaire wrote,"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”. Religion existed before capitalism became the dominant world-wide system it is today, thus saving capitalism the trouble of having to invent yet another means of confusing and controlling the propertyless class. Believing as most do, that capitalism is now, always was and always will be, most have no difficulty in swallowing the lie that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven.

The compulsory religious "education” that children are subjected to as soon as they enter infants school has them singing hymns in morning assembly. One of the most popular hymns for infants is All things bright and beautiful. The lyrics of this piece of propaganda would have them believe that, all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the lord god made them all. This nonsense is followed by a verse designed to make them aware of their subservient class position. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, god made them high or lowly and ordered their estate. No doubt in Israel, or Iran, or India, or Tibet, children are being brainwashed with a similar message.

The religion forced upon workers is to a large extent dictated by the part of the world in which they are born. But, it has to be said, capitalism offers a wide choice of omnipotent deities, gods, goddesses, devils, angels, archangels, cherubs, seraphs, nymphs, dryads, hamadryads, naiads, oreads, sylphs and gurus. For the emotionally disturbed, those seeking an emotional crutch, the inadequate, and those unable to cope with the harsh economic realities of capitalism,the opiate of the people runs the gamut from A to Z, from adventists to zen buddhism.

In Anti-Duhring Engels wrote:

All religion is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history it was the forces of nature which were so reflected, and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among the various people.

Humans themselves, within their own ‘thinking processes, have been the creators and inventors of their own gods, and ascribed to them supernatural endowments and capabilities, which have included the creation of the earth, human kind, and the all-encompassing universe itself. The genesis of god and religion was not supernatural.

The differences between socialism and religion go deeper than saying that there are a hundred different religions, none of which a socialist believes in. Irrespective of race, sex or position in society, the path to socialism requires knowledge and understanding of how capitalism operates as a world-wide social system. Under capitalism society is divided into two classes: the propertyless working class, and the minority ruling class who legally own the means of production and distribution. Commodities are produced by the working class, who are paid less than the values they produce, and when the commodities are exchanged in the commercial market, the capitalist appropriates the surplus value produced by the workers. Capitalism, like religion, not only makes men and women servile, it has the supreme art of teaching them to love their chains.

Mrs Thatcher, a doughty class warrior for capitalism, well understands the important part that religion plays in diverting the working class away from any thoughts of a wageless, moneyless, stateless, classless. leaderless society. In a speech in Edinburgh on 21 May 1988, quoting the bible, she said:

We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. If a man will not work he shall not eat', wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. How could we respond to the many calls for help or invest for the future unless we had first worked hard and used our talents to create the necessary wealth? But intervention by the state must never become so great that it effectively removes personal responsibility. The same applies to taxation. for while you and I would work extremely hard whatever the circumstances, there are undoubtedly some who would not unless the incentive was there. The Christian religion is a fundamental part of our national heritage. For centuries it has been our very lifeblood.

Her argument is, of course, not a new one. God and right have been used as justification for massacre, murder and oppression throughout history. However, careful analysis of holy wars and crusades generally reveal economic reasons as their raison d’etre rather than spiritual indignation. In the 1960s Bob Dylan wrote a song called ‘With God on Our Side’ which mocked the historical claim of imperialism to have a supernatural force legitimising its actions.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote:

The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. It is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of a natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological—forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

If, with the transition from an insane society, capitalism, to a sane one. socialism, some people still wish to maintain a belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden, then they will be free to do so. But religion will no longer exist as a tool with which capitalism brainwashes, and frightens, those who it exploits.

Dave Coggan

Between the Lines: Land of Dopes and Tories (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Land of Dopes and Tories

Three cheers for Mark Elder, the conductor who refused to include Rule Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory in The Last Night of the Proms (shown on BBC1 and BBC2 on 15 September) Elder was of the view that:

"the words of those songs come from an age that was able and happy to celebrate Britain's irresistible march across the world. Now if we are actually engaged in combat I would not be happy to proceed. It would seem callous in the extreme. "

The Guardian 8 September

The BBC's response to Elder's sensitivity was in the best tradition of imperial callousness. They sacked him.

Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory, the words of which express English imperial arrogance in all of its declining folly, was first promoted by the British ruling class as workers were being slaughtered during tho First World War. At the time Elgar had issued a Manifesto of National Service which called for an:

"organised effort to carry on the war. Every fit man must be made available . . . for the fighting line or . . . for National Service at home."

Elgar himself spent tho war living in his mansion in Hampstoad, while at the same time German and Austrian musicians were being persecuted by the British state.

The Last Night at the Proms is a ridiculous, anachronistic celebration of a Great Britain, which was a land of no hope and little glory for the vast majority in its finest hour, and is now an appendage of American imperial foreign policy.

'The horror . . . the horror.'

Speaking of Dopes . . .

What is the most popular TV programme in Britain today? The twice daily Neighbours (BBC1. 1.35 pm and 5.35pm) which is brought to us by one Reg Watson, the man who 'created' Crossroads. It is staggeringly bad: awful acting, incredible plots, cliched scripts, a disgusting view of what human beings are all about. Millions of workers love to watch it. The BBC celebrated its one thousandth episode last month (BBC1 13 September).

It has been argued that Neighbours represents a poor man's wish for what it would be like to live in a real community, rather than the alienated heaps in which most of us find ourselves; a sort of late capitalist News From Nowhere. Others argue that the programme's success is the fresh good looks of its actors. Or maybe its success is thanks to its popularity with the under-twelves who regard it as truly great drama. Who knows?

But has anyone thought that a period of cultural history which will be remembered for the acting of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan is not one in which songs celebrating hope and glory are appropriate?

Speaking of Tories . . . 

By far the funniest TV moment of the last month was watching Enoch Powell (Talking to Myself, BBC2, 10.20pm. 7.9.90). This new series allows famous people to both ask and answer the questions in a ten-minute interview. Powell sounded like a dishwasher on the blink having a pompous talk with an air-raid siren Of course, he is not to be blamed for his strangely whining voice, even if it is hideously full of affectations.

One Powell is a slightly barmy fanatic in the cause of capitalism. Two Powells are totally round the bend. Powell told Powell that the greatest moment in his life had been when he had been asked to join the British army and give unqualified and unquestioning loyalty to the British Empire. We know what Powell will have been doing on The Last Night of the Proms — singing Rule Britannia! as a duet.

Speaking of Dopey Tories . . .

There are times when video machines come in very handy. A politician says something and you can't quite believe that anyone can be that stupid. And then you play it back and the wonder of technology allows you to see that you were wrong to doubt.

Such a moment came in The Walden Interview (ITV. 1pm. 9 September) when Walden asked William Waldergrave. the British Foreign Office Minister, when the government would consider that Iraq had been defeated.

The first requirement, said Waldergrave. is that "liberty must be restored in Kuwait". It was the "restored" that led my finger to the play-back button. Since when has there been "liberty" in Kuwait?

It is a country ruled by unelected, semi-feudal dictators, put in power by the British. It is a country where only 60,000 people out of a population of 2 million have the vote. It is a country where women have no political rights, including voting. Is that the "liberty" which Waldergrave seeks to restore? Is that why British and American workers in uniform will die? Land of hope and glory? Hang your heads in shame, those who have been foolish enough to fall for the absurdities of nationalism.

Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings (1990)

Party News from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leninists Oppose Democracy (1990)

Book Review from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Case for Socialism by Paul Foot (Socialist Workers Party, London, July 1990) 

Now that the idea of a vanguard leading a revolution and then ruling "on behalf of the working class" has become so thoroughly discredited might not seem the best time to issue a manifesto re-affirming this Leninist dogma. This, however, is precisely what the SWP have just done. They have commissioned their best writer, the Daily Mirror journalist Paul Foot who normally specialises in exposing capitalism for not living up to its own standards of "justice", to write a short book called The Case for Socialism.

Socialism is in fact only mentioned in the vaguest of terms—as the rule of the working class "from below" (even this is mistaken since socialism will mean the disappearance of the working class together with all other classes)—and it is the case for anti-socialist Leninism that is presented.

Bolshevik coup model
The seizure of power in Russia in November 1917 by Lenin's Bolshevik Party is described in absurdly glowing terms:

The October revolution in Russia, in which the soviets, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, asserted their power over the parliament, sacked the government and established what Lenin called 'the socialist order', is the greatest event in all human history.

This ridiculous claim is advanced on behalf of a coup which installed in power a group of anti-democrats who eventually evolved into a fully-fledged ruling class that ruthlessly exploited and oppressed the workers and peasants of Russia and Eastern Europe. Foot tries to argue that this outcome was all a terrible mistake: if only Trotsky had succeeded Lenin as dictator of Russia in 1924 things would have turned out differently.

This won't do. It's too easy to blame everything on Stalin while exonerating Lenin. The historical record shows that it was Lenin who paved the way for Stalin. It was Lenin who, bowing to the economic facts, stated that state capitalism was the only way forward for Russia. All Stalin did was to continue this but to lyingly call it "socialism". It was under Lenin that Russia became a one-party state and that factions (that is, opposition to the leadership) were banned within the only party allowed to exist. Stalin merely extended and perfected these dictatorial practices, and Trotsky only protested when he found himself on the receiving end.

Whatever Lenin may have written about democracy from below in State and Revolution before the Bolshevik coup, after it he adopted a different tone time and again defending the dictatorship of a revolutionary minority as a political principle. In a pamphlet written in May 1918 called The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, he defined dictatorship as “iron rule, government that is revolutionarily bold, swift and ruthless in suppressing exploiters as well as hooligans" (Foreign Languages Publishing House. Moscow. 1951. p. 50). By "hooligans" he meant those who did not obey the edicts of the Bolshevik government. Such "hooligans" were treated “ruthlessly" enough, being "swiftly" rounded up and sent to populate the first gulags.

Lenin went on:

There is absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals, (p. 55. Lenin's emphasis)

and to advocate:

. . . iron discipline . . .  unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work.(p. 61. Lenin's emphasis)

Stalin was thus, quite justifiably, able to claim to be as good a Leninist as Trotsky.

Minority action
Lenin scoffed at the idea of there needing to be a majority in favour of socialism before attempting to overthrow capitalism. John Reed recorded him as telling a meeting in Moscow on 27 November 1917 that:

The socialist political party—this is the vanguard of the working class . . . must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average. (Ten Days That Shook the World. Modern Library edition. 1960. p.15).

The SWP display a similar contempt for the “mass average" and for the possibility of us coming to understand the need for socialism. After denouncing the Labour Party for believing that socialism could be introduced on behalf of the working class from above by “an educated élite in Parliament”. Foot goes on to advocate not majority action but a different kind of élite action:

  Socialists . . . should organise themselves, their activity and their propaganda to sharpen the weapons against the old society and to build the confidence and strength of the minority who are prepared to fight.
  Minority. There is the word which causes the most heated opposition. Surely, it is argued, socialism is about majorities being in charge of society. Surely the exploited billions are the majority in society—by far. How then can socialists argue that they should concern themselves with a minority rather than seek to get the support of majorities?
  The answer is that the minority among whom socialists should organise is active, while the majority whose votes are canvassed at election times is passive. The passive majority is prey all the time to the machinations of class society, especially to its mass media. The active minority, because it is active, is capable of resisting those pressures, of responding to new ideas and creating their own. The passive majority accept most of the time what they are told, what they read in the papers and see on television.

So, the SWP criticism of the Labour Party is not that socialism could not be introduced by an "enlightened few". It is that this “educated élite" should employ different methods from those advocated by Labour. Instead of seeking to attract the votes of the “mass average" of non-socialist workers to get into parliament and then to legislate socialism into being (indeed a futile tactic), the few should set themselves up as a vanguard party to try to lead the mass of non-socialist workers in an assault on the capitalist state (a suicidal as well as a futile tactic).

Both these alternative forms of minority action have failed. The Labour Party's tactic has led not to capitalism being gradually transformed into socialism but to the Labour Party being gradually transformed into an open party of capitalist government. The Leninist tactic favoured by the SWP has not led to socialism either but to the self-appointed élite in the vanguard party emerging as a new privileged class ruling on the basis of state capitalism. The SWP not only resolutely refuses to learn this lesson of the outcome of the Russian revolution but wants to put the working class in Britain through the same terrible experience.

The socialist alternative
Socialism, by its very nature as a classless society of common ownership and democratic control, can only be established democratically, in both sense of the term: with majority support and participation, and by democratic means.

It is not a question of a choice of two ways for getting to socialism: the democratic action of a conscious socialist majority or the action of some enlightened minority. It is a question of the end determining the means. Minority action cannot lead to socialism, even if it were to be that of a "fighting minority" of workers who really wanted socialism. Only majority action can.

Minority action leads at best to a few minor reforms of capitalism, but at worst to the sort of state capitalist dictatorships that have just collapsed in Eastern Europe. Socialism can only be established by majority action, not indeed that of a passive majority of voters but of an active majority of workers who have come to reject capitalism and are determined to establish socialism.

To end capitalism and achieve socialism such an active majority must first win political control, and in a country like Britain the obvious means are to hand in elections and parliament. Going into parliament, not to run capitalism but to end it. is not a betrayal of socialist principles. It is merely taking advantage of the easiest way for a majority to gain control of political power.

The SWP objection to using parliament (except to elect Labour MPs) is not that there is some more appropriate method for a active majority to democratically express and carry out its desire for socialism. It is that they don't think that their vanguard party could win an electoral majority. As Leninists they believe that a majority of workers are too thick to understand anything beyond the need to form trade unions and voting Labour ("The working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness”—Lenin, What Is To Be Done?). Only they, the "educated élite”, "the enlightened few", “the fighting minority" are capable of understanding the need for socialism.

Actually, the SWP are probably right about the inherent inability of a Leninist vanguard party like them to win an electoral majority. After all, why would we. why should we, vote for a party that tells us we are their intellectual inferiors?

Adam Buick

Obituary: Walter Kobus (1990)

Obituary from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to report the death earlier this year of our Comrade Walter J. Kobus of the World Socialist Party of the United States. He lived in Detroit, the centre of the American car industry, and until his retirement had been an active member of the United Autoworkers Union. For a short while the headquarters of the WSPUS, before it was moved to Boston, was in Detroit and comrade Kobus was active in the party local there. Some members will recall his visit to Britain a fair number of years ago. His generous bequests to us and the other Companion Parties will be used as he would wish: the furtherance of our common aim to foster knowledge of and the desire for the establishment of world socialism.

Is the Left finished? (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A decade ago, after the utter failure of the last Labour government, its capitulation to the IMF and its attacks on the social services, and with the mass unemployment and high inflation years of the first Thatcher administration, the position of the Labour Left was probably as strong as it had ever been. Organisations such as the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the Rank and File Mobilising Committee—not to mention Militant—were able to steer the Labour Party leftwards, opening the way for the desertion of some of the rightwing with the formation of the SDP in 1981 and then, in 1983, for the presentation of Labour's most leftwing election manifesto since 1945.

By 1990 the strength and significance of the Labour Left has changed dramatically. Labour leader Neil Kinnock, the man who said that he "would keep the party unilateralist", has embraced multilateralism and taken most of the party with him. Nationalisation is seen as a relic from the party's dinosaur days, with the Policy Review document tentatively suggesting that the state's holding in British Telecom might possibly be increased from 49 per cent to 51 per cent. Tony Benn, the guru of the Left, now seems to be the forgotten man of British politics while his side-kick Dennis Skinner contents himself with the position of unofficial Court Jester to the Palace of Westminster. Gone are the heady days of those bewildering Conference resolutions calling for massive extensions of state ownership and a "fundamental shift in power and wealth towards working people and their families".

It was only a matter of time before a party as wedded to reformism as Labour would decide that all the composite resolutions in the world would not be of any use unless they were in line with what both the capitalist class and the electorate at large think and expect. The modern Conservative Party is at pains to deny that it had anything to do with the economic difficulties and industrial strife of the pre-Thatcher period. Indeed, much of its success has depended on people associating the 1960s and 70s with the Labour Party, Ted Heath, state intervention and borrowing. That Labour never really implemented a full-blooded programme for state capitalism along the Benn lines is neither here nor there—it is the association which counts.

This, combined with the general shift away from direct state ownership in the economy and from the strained East-West relations of the pre-Gorbachev period, ensured that after its initial successes the Left became isolated and ineffectual. Nationalisation was increasingly out of step with the further internationalisation of capitalist ownership and investment, while unilateral nuclear disarmament was the last thing the other NATO bloc states were looking to Britain for.

So instead of the Labour Party changing society it has been the developments in society which have served to change the Labour Party. Past Labour governments are testimony to the fact that there is nothing really new in this except for one thing—it is the first time the Labour Party has shifted its stance while in opposition. The Left are, of course, aware of this. Former MP Reg Race told a conference in May of "Labour Party Socialists" in Sheffield that the Party's new policy document:

is the most right-wing document ever published by the Labour Party in opposition. Instead of shedding its socialist policies in power, Labour has performed its policy U-turn before the election.

The prospect for state capitalism and its supporters looks fairly grim. The tide of history would appear to have done the Left a disservice. However, the Left have never been slow to cash in on the failings of other reformers and there is no reason why they shouldn't do so again. Now that Neil Kinnock and the Shadow Cabinet have openly fallen in love with the market, their election to office may well give the Left the fillip it needs. Labour's inevitable failure to solve the major problems facing the working class would provide the Left with the chance to re-establish themselves as serious contenders within the realm of capitalist politics. After all, nothing breeds discontent like failure—especially repeated failure. Indeed, one delegate at the Sheffield conference is reported to have stated that:

They want to do nothing about the economy. We will not win the vote at the [Labour Party] Conference, but the failure of that policy after the election will provide us with the opportunity. (Guardian, 21 May).

State intervention and capitalism

There is something else which may also serve to benefit the Left in the longer term. Even though nationalisation and other traditional forms of state intervention have been on the retreat in much of the developed world, there is no reason to assume that they will be of no use to the capitalist class for ever more.

Politicians such as Tony Benn have long argued that the financial scandals to which the City and private enterprise are prone would be remedied by a good dose of nationalisation and "workers' control" and that selective nationalisation would introduce a degree of planning into an otherwise anarchic system. Even though the Left attacks Kinnock for saying that Labour's task should be to make capitalism work better than it has under the Tories, they are in effect saying the same thing—only they have different ideas about how it can be done.

The problems of the environment are another crucial area in which the interventionism favoured by the Left may have something to offer capitalism. Even Prince Charles seems to have come to the conclusion that capitalism cannot go on as it has been doing for much longer, such is the conflict between the life-sustaining systems of the Earth and the profit motive.

Of course countries which have had state capitalism such as East Germany have long had very serious pollution, but it is difficult to see how something could be done within capitalism about environmental problems without a move towards state intervention and regulation of the operation of enterprises. The state will have to take responsibility for investment that the private sector is unwilling to provide, but which may be necessary for the interests of the capitalist class in the long run. The Green Party, which has taken on a number of the viewpoints and perspectives of the Left, pledged itself at the last General Election to "support socially useful products and services, not just commercially viable ones".

The Labour Left and the Greens start out from the same premise that the free market and uncontrolled growth are the cause of the world environmental crisis and they both say that selective state intervention and a changed system of taxation are necessary as a response. Some of these ideas may look increasingly attractive to capitalist governments in the not too distant future as a way of eliminating some of the worst effects of pollution.

Capitalism is an anarchic and unplannable system which goes its own way ignoring the requirements of billions of people. It is not therefore surprising that many set out to bring the system to heel. The Greens may have been a product of the environmental crisis, but the Labour left spring from a different tradition, one which has concerned itself with the many ways in which capitalism has shown itself to be out of control—crises and depressions, unemployment amidst poverty and need, and so on. As these features of capitalism persist, as they will, so will political groupings which have ideas to get rid of them by "planning" capitalism.

The Thatcher victory in 1979 was partly a result of the failure of the Left to plan capitalism smoothly in the 1960s and 70s. Come the next slump, Thatcher, Kinnock and the other worshippers of the market may have nowhere to run. The Labour Left may find that state intervention is on the capitalist political agenda again.

Whether or not some form of state regulation of the market economy will get its chance again will depend on the attitude of the working class—and it is up to the working class to see that one form of failure isn't replaced with a resurrected old one.

Dave Perrin

What about the workers? (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

With his Goodbye to the Working Class André Gorz achieved a shock effect which probably owed more to the arresting title than to the content of the book. Not that it was without merit, for example his ruthless analysis of the relations of production in capitalism—that lines of control are from the top down, military style, which makes the idea of taking them over and converting them to production for use, with voluntary labour, completely ludicrous.

He went on to fall into traps he had dug himself. There will always be jobs needing some element of compulsion, he argued (old class-warriors will recognise this as the Who Will Do The Dirty Work question); these jobs will be shared out so that everybody gets some free time, while technological developments have made it possible for it to happen without a fall in production. But as we have pointed out (see "New Economics, Old Errors", World Socialist No 6), it is difficult to imagine compelling anybody to work if they access to everything they need for free. So that Gorz's proposal for extra monetary rewards as encouragement adds another bizarre contradiction.

But his main theme, which gave the title to the book, was that changes in the character of the market economy due to automation had rendered traditional Marxist thinking and practice totally irrelevant. The masses of workers who had trooped into the steelworks, the shipyards, the mines and the factories, were a vanishing race. Strikes had been broken, men sacked and a select few re-engaged and put to work with labour-saving equipment to do the jobs that had previously taken many. The remainder of the workforce, generally speaking the less skilled and qualified, had been hived off to do menial or casual or part-time work, and had been rendered marginal in their work and their social life.

Thus working class solidarity had been destroyed, loyalties replaced with a new ethos of competition to get on the gravy train of well-paid guaranteed jobs, and consumerism was providing the spectacle to keep those so privileged in a zombie-like trance of soap-opera following and gadget-buying.

Changing patterns of work

Gorz returns to this theme in a new book, Metamorphoses du travail (Paris, 1988), a translation of which is about to be made available over here. It is unfortunate that he spends a certain amount of time disposing of the Soviet system. The final collapse of state capitalism has rendered this excursion totally superfluous. This comes of keeping bad company. He had been in the group of Stalinist fellow-travellers around Sartre and Les Temps Modernes which had taken an unreasonably long time to discover the irrelevance of Russia after 1917 to libertarian socialist thinking. Eventually for him however:

The Soviet system represented a gross caricature of capitalism pursuing accumulation and growth as main objects.

Once that matter is out of the way, his dissection of contemporary society is thorough and frequently illuminating. He draws freely on those 20th century thinkers who have attempted to bring Marxist analysis up to date—Max Weber, Karl Polanyi, Hannah Arendt, the Frankfurt School, Habermas, Baudrillard, etc. There are many provocative images:

Social disintegration extends to politicians, who increasingly resemble salesmen.

And:

The Welfare State replaces services which people provided for themselves . . . this leads to a continual extension of public administration and state power while parliament becomes a shadow theatre presided over by a charismatic leader. This is the end but arrived at by different means, predicted in the nightmare of Orwell and the "führer mit maschine" of Weber. 

Gorz identifies stages in the evolution of production beginning with the simple division of labour as in Adam Smith, which he argues was introduced to facilitate control rather than production. He claims that the difficulty experienced by early factory owners in getting former peasants to work all day and every day led to the search for child labour, usually obtained in plentiful supply from the orphanages. The new proletariat had, virtually, to be bred.

Then at the turn of the century came Fordism and the assembly line. This was followed in the 1950s by what the French call Taylorism, i.e. time and motion study. But this created new problems: the extra compensation demanded by workers, accompanied by bad quality, bad timekeeping, absenteeism, even arson.

The new tack is to restore some independence, with small groups completing each process and determining the rhythm of their work. Work is "subbed out", a privileged 25 percent are kept on. Line workers are replaced by robots supervised by a highly adaptable elite. The subcontractors absorb the business cycle. There is flexibility of function for the elite, and flexibility of numbers for the subcontracting workers.

This, says Gorz, has broken up the working class, who can no longer be looked to for liberation from capitalism. A new coalition is needed, based not on sectional interests but on ethical considerations. People are increasingly turning to alternative, marginal groupings as an answer to the disintegration of society and the spiritual emptiness of work. Increasing numbers are choosing quality of life before money and success at work: "The autonomy being born, unsure of itself, hesitant, menaced by industrial culture and the merchants of leisure, is where we must turn to survive".

The answer, he argues, is the reduction of the working day, week, year. With increased leisure, people can and are replacing bought-in items with home-produced ones. There is a turning away from consumerism among a significant minority. People are turning from "more is better" to "enough is enough".

As in Goodbye To The Working Class Gorz repeats his argument that replacing control-by-others (heteroregulation) by voluntary co-operation is impossible with all industrial activity; some compulsion will always be necessary, and for this, monetary rewards will have to remain. Clearly, money notions stick to these former Stalinists (and Keynesians) like shit to a blanket. Gorz gives no explanation why compulsion should be necessary.

If unpleasant and dangerous jobs were always avoided by the voluntary sector, then the argument might be plausible, but there never seems to be any lack of volunteers for the lifeboats, or cave and mountain rescue. And of the argument is that only spectacular activities call up such responses, how about the nurses who volunteer to care for AIDS victims, Legionnaires' Disease, and similar horror? Are they all crazy, Jesus Christ characters, or Superwoman? Or are they just in it for the money?

Shift to money-shuffling

While there has been an acceleration of the shift from heavy industry and agriculture in particular, and from wealth-producing activities in general toward functions peculiar to a market economy-banking, insurance and money shuffling, the sales effort, advertising, public relations, security, defence of markets—the drift is not entirely new.

It was noted as far back as the 17th century by Sir William Petty ("Political Arithmetic"). In 18th century France, Quesnay in his "Tableau Economique" calculated that the burden of the non-producing aristocracy on the peasants could reach unsustainable levels. And, in England again, in the 19th century, the redoubtable William Cobbett carried on a campaign for decades against the reduction in the numbers of the wealth-producers and the multiplication of "stockjobbers", bureaucrats, and the Civil List.

There is little evidence that those moving from productive work into "service" activities always move down the social or economic scale as Gorz argues. Some do, of course, but that is nothing new. He quotes Marx to the effect that in the middle of the 19th century, 14 percent of the labour force in England were skivvies of one kind or another. There is little evidence that the new servant class has reached that proportion.

But there has been a significant increase in banking and insurance activities. There appears to be 150,000 accountants in Britain—more than in all the other developed nations outside the US. It would be difficult to believe that these workers and bureaucrats are financially or otherwise worse off than those retained in industry, yet they outnumber and are increasing faster than the unemployed and part-time workers who are the object of Gorz's concern.

Neither are they lacking in willingness to organise themselves for the defence of salaries and conditions. There have been bank strikes; one in Ireland in the 1960s lasted six months, and there was a strike of half a million local government workers in Britain in 1989. Professional associations like the Law Society and the British Medical Association are increasingly beginning to resemble and behave like trade unions. They are not affiliated to the TUC but who knows? The announcement of the death of the working class is, to borrow an expression of Mark Twain, an exaggeration.

Ken Smith