50 Years Ago: A Letter To An Irish Worker (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

I think you’ll agree that all the “heroic” national struggles that have been waged in Ireland have—so far as the Irish worker and his family is concerned—achieved absolutely nothing. Today, behind the brave talk of the politicians, behind the backs of the cultured gentlemen of the Gaelic League and the language revivalists, beneath the cloak of nationality and religion, lies the stark reality of the slum, of rampant disease, of poor wages, of high prices, of dole and emigration queues— poverty is the daily companion and bed-fellow of the majority of men and women in Ireland.

Yes—of course—there have been changes, that strategically-important seaports are no longer the legal property of the British Government, the British Governor-General is gone, the tricolour now flutters triumphantly in the breeze over Government House in Merrion Square . . . Changes? Well, of a sort; changes which certainly haven’t changed your wage-slave position in the least—and, surely, that’s the one thing worth changing?

No, nationalism has nothing to off you—except a change of masters. Whether the Eire Government of De Valera or the Northern Ireland Government of Basil Brooke rules the whole, or only part, of Ireland, whether the flag be the tricolour or the Union Jack, whether partition ends or continues, you, as a worker, will in no wise be any better off.

(From an article by Chris Walsh, Socialist Standard, October 1947)

The Last Word: No need for cops and robbers (1997)

The Last Word column from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Policing is a feature of a society at war with itself. The police, far from being the agents of stability, are the guardsmen of iniquity. The vast majority of their time is spent defending property and attacking those who dare to violate it. Just as the Law is principally the rule-book of property relationships, so the police are the relationship counsellors for an enforced marriage between the possessing, oppressing minority and the productive majority which must be kept in its place.

A society which needs police is immature: a playground culture in which the principles of adult cooperation are abandoned and people are encouraged to settle their conflicts by running crying to the prefects. The bullies and the cowards are content to be policed; the co-operative simply want the freedom to be allowed to enjoy their lives in peace.

There are those who say that without the police there would be no peace. Society would be a nightmarish world of predatory rapists on every other street corner, gangs of hooligans roaming the precincts looking for elderly victims to taunt and rob, and endless thievery. Only the police save us from such a fearsome scenario. But we have plenty of police and still these crimes occur. In fact, they occur precisely because we live within a social order of aggressive competition and possessive exclusion which requires police to uphold it. The police are not the solution to antisocial behaviour, they are guard dogs of the system which creates it.

Most violence or other forms of aggression which face the vast majority of people are of absolutely no concern to the police. For instance, try going into a police station to complain that you are being robbed on a daily basis (by your boss who exploits you by robbing the fruits of your labour) or that you are being threatened with murder (by the defence industry which has millions of weapons and uniformed thugs standing in readiness for international slaughter for the protection of profits) or that you are the victim of fraud (by politicians) or poisoning (by environmental pollution, in pursuit of profit) or defamation (by the commercial media which stops at no vicious insult in its attack upon workers who stand up for themselves). In any one of these cases the police would not only do nothing but may well arrest you for the crime of wasting their time.

So what about that anti-social behaviour which is against the law? Go into a police station and tell them that your house has been burgled and, in the vast majority of cases, they will simply refer you to your insurance company and tell you that they stand next to no chance of finding your possessions or the people who took them. (Their statistics bear this out.) The same goes for street robberies and other acts of petty theft. As far as the police are concerned, the measly possessions of wage slaves, usually stolen as acts of opportunism by other even more impoverished wage slaves, are of no practical consequence. The same is true for domestic violence or aggression, the police want to keep well away from the seedy conflicts bred in the impoverished environment of a class frustrated by lack of money, opportunity and self-respect.

The police are not to be blamed. They are just workers in uniform. They can no more eradicate the consequences of class deprivation than can teachers in schools.They are there to do their best to keep some order—or, at least, the appearance of order—in a society which causes the offensive behaviour which it then institutionalises as crime.

Crime is no more a part of the human condition (“human nature”) than poverty or the aggressive violence of militarism. Yet each is depicted by the apologists for the profit system as exactly that. Army generals, responsible for untold deeds of callous slaughter, defend “Defence” as a protection against precisely the behaviour which they engage in. Welfare providers defend their role as “providers” because otherwise the impoverished would starve. It does not occur to them, perhaps, that without socially-created poverty welfare would be redundant. And police chiefs award themselves glittering medals in self-praise for attending to problems which will exist for as long as an outdated system which needs to be policed is allowed to survive.

Steve Coleman

Dirty Tricks Department (1997)

Book Review from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Defence of the Party: The Secret State, the Conservative Party and Dirty Tricks by Colin Challen & Mike Hughes. Medium Publishing Co., I Main St, East Ardsley, Wakefield. £3.95.

The authors of this 60-page booklet are largely sympathetic to the Labour Party which they consider to be socialist or social democratic and is concerned with "dirty tricks" by the Conservative Party and its "front" organisations against the Labour Party.

It contains much useful information on generally little- known aspects, and activities, of the Tories, not just against the Labour Party but against whom the Conservatives consider to be subversive to the Nation and the State. The authors also comment upon the traditionally close connections of the Conservative Party with the British state, secret and open.

Hughes traces the career of Admiral "Blinker" Hall, former Director of Naval Intelligence, who leaked the infamous Zimmermann Telegram and Roger Casement's diaries to the press, assisted in the founding of the Economic League, became a Tory MP. and was involved in the publishing of the forged Zinoviev Letter. And much more besides.

Colin Challen writes of the large number of top Tories (and mentions that there were also a few Labourites) involved during, and after, the Second World War with MI5. the SAS. MI6 and other agencies of the British State; and how they, and members of these agencies, were used against their opponents, again not just in the Labour Party, but against other groups and individuals. The infamous Charles Elwell. former head of MI5's F Branch, Brian Crozier, and onetime pet of Mrs Thatcher. David Hart, who campaigned against the National Union of Mine Workers during the 1980s, are mentioned for their various "Dirty Tricks" on behalf of the Tories and, of course, British capitalism.

There is a particularly interesting, but too brief, account of how the Tories secretly and, therefore, undemocratically, raised millions of pounds through various fronts such as the "River” companies. British United Industrialists and other organisations, although, surprisingly, no mention is made of the millions of pounds donated to the Conservative Party by rich, and sometimes crooked, capitalists in Hong Kong. Northern Cyprus and elsewhere.

The Conservative Party is the traditional party of British capitalism. Nevertheless, every so often, despite the "Dirty Tricks", the British Labour Party (now called New Labour) wins power to attempt to run capitalism. Maybe it will become the "natural" party of government in Britain; and then we shall get books by Tory journalists listing all Labour's "Dirty Tricks". Who knows?

Peter E. Newell

Letter: Gradualism or Revolution? (1997)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gradualism or Revolution?

Dear Editors,

While the commitment to socialism underlying your beliefs is entirely admirable you must see that the revolutionary action you advocate would end in inevitable failure. A socialist system can be put into place only by popular consent, and consent necessitates gradual change because people live within the current system and cannot be forced to accept something that is wholly alien to them. In the present climate there is, unfortunately, a general indifference to socialism even among the poorer elements of society: and as you point out little can be achieved without the support of the working classes.

Socialism can therefore be achieved by education and by gradual—though ever-increasing—social change. The 1997 general election broke the hold of Conservatism on the population, but it will take much longer to break the hold of (small c) conservatism so that real and lasting change can be brought about. The violent—or at least revolutionary—uprising predicted by Marxism will therefore be self-defeating as well as unjust because it will collapse from lack of popular support. This is where Marxists and more realistic socialists part company.

As for a socialist state being a contradiction in terms, how do you suggest that the growth in public ownership and worker control be organised? Current government apparatus is over-centralised, but that can be remedied by a generous return of power to local government and the creation of a new tier of regional administration. Without some central institutions such as parliament, the banks and the legal system society would descend into chaos. Liberty is not only the right to be free but the responsibility to live in a way that respects the freedom of others, and a society without organisation is no society at all.

We sympathise with your disillusionment and your concern at the state of society, but your magazine seems to be full of nothing but criticism. Until you have something constructive to say we suggest you stop preaching to others whose commitment to socialism is just as strong as yours, but who have a great deal more sense.

Alex Ismail & Shehnoor Ahmed.

London

Reply:

We agree that socialism can only come by popular consent. It cannot be imposed on people who don't want or don't understand it. and any uprising to try to do this would fail (fail to achieve socialism that is, though it might succeed in installing the uprising’s leaders as the new rulers).

This is why we have always said that socialism can only come about democratically, when a majority want it and organise democratically, using existing institutions such as Parliament and local councils, to get it.

It is not this that is the point at issue between you and us. The disagreement is about whether or not socialism could come about gradually as a result of an accumulation of social reforms. You say it could, despite all the evidence to the contrary that has accumulated this century.

Some of the early members of the Labour Party understood more or less what socialism was (a society of common ownership and democratic control, with production for use and distribution according to need) but rejected the view we put forward (we were founded in 1904, about the same time as Labour) that you needed to have a majority that wanted socialism before socialism could be established.

They argued that all you needed was to elect a majority of Labour MPs to Parliament, not on a straight socialist programme but on a programme of social reforms. Once in power. Labour would begin the process of transition to socialism "by education and by gradual— though ever increasing—social change", as you advocate again today.

What happened? Including the present one, there have been six Labour governments, but who will dare claim that we are any nearer to socialism? All previous Labour governments failed to make any progress towards socialism (and the present one doesn’t even aspire to). All of them left office—or rather were booted out by a dissatisfied electorate—with unemployment higher than when they entered it. Some of them brought in some social reforms but many of these have since been whittled away by successive governments. Labour as well as Tory (free prescription charges, free higher education, for instance).

Instead of Labour gradually transforming capitalism, it has been the other way round. Labour’s experience of governing capitalism gradually reconciled it more and more openly to capitalism, its market system and its profit motive.The end product of this process has been Blair and New Labour.

Labour governments did not fail because Labour Ministers were self-serving or traitors or weak or incompetent (even though some were) but because capitalism cannot be gradually reformed into socialism.

Capitalism is a system, not a chance collection of good and bad features whose bad ones can be lopped off piecemeal. It is an economic system of production for profit which runs, and can only run, as a system whose economic laws dictate that priority be given to profits and profit-making over all other considerations. including improving people’s lot by social reform measures.

Further, where social reforms and profits come into conflict it is the reforms that have to give way. This is what has been happening since the post-war boom came to an end in the early 1970s. Since then there haven’t been any social reforms. Just the opposite in fact: there has been a whittling away of those that existed at the time.

This is why we advocate a policy of "revolution" rather than gradual reform. By revolution we mean a rapid and complete change in the basis of society—from class ownership to common ownership and democratic control—and not street-fighting and civil war with an armed minority trying to seize control of political power. We are for a democratic, majority revolution which makes a once-for-all clean break with capitalism.

Capitalism cannot be abolished gradually. It has to be abolished in one go. What is gradual, though hopefully at an ever-increasing pace, is the emergence of a socialist majority. This does indeed build up over time, as more and more people come to realise that capitalism can never be made to work in their interests. We are trying to accelerate this process so, sorry, we are not going to stop criticising reformists who mistakenly preach that capitalism can be gradually reformed into a socialist society.

As to the term "socialist state", our objection is based on the definition of the state as a institution having a monopoly in the use of force within a given area which serves to maintain the rule of one class over the rest of society. As a classless society, socialism has no need of such an instrument of coercion. This does not mean that there will be no administration or organisation in socialism. Of course there will be (as you point out. without this there would be no society), but this will be democratic and unarmed and so not a state in the above sense of the term.

-Editors.

Greasy Pole: Now where were we? (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Say what you like about Tony Blair but nobody can accuse him of missing a trick when it comes to persuading the voting public that he is the most competent and caring Prime Minister in the history of this country. Despite all his other worries—like the devolution campaigns and the sleaze in the Scottish Labour Party—Blair was quick to seize the opportunity offered by the astonishing hysteria and grief over the death of Princess Diana. On issues like the royal family the working class seem to have locked themselves up in a prison of self-delusion: Blair saw there was a lot to be gained by talking to them through the cell door, telling them he understood how they felt and would do something about it. So he pushed for a funeral the size of which enabled millions of people to participate—there in person or watching it on TV. So successful was this for Blair that William Hague, whose position as leader of the Conservative Party is almost as peculiar as all that emotion over the dead princess, protested that this was making political capital over a royal event.

Of course Hague had a point, even if it was not the one he thought he was making, because the big parties agreed to suspend all political activities until after the funeral—as if to carry on as usual would be unseemly when the nation was absorbed in leaving flowers in public places, signing books of condolence and so on. But there are some questions to be asked about that truce, one of them being why politicians should regard their profession of getting people to vote for empty promises to control capitalism to everyone’s benefit as being so disreputable that it should not be allowed to intrude on public grief. This brings us to another question about the nature of politics, its uses and its effect and whether the death of a princess can be separated from it.

Distress 

Princess Diana stood out from the rest of the human race because she was so caring, so compassionate. We know this is true because so many people told us so, among them the princess herself. "Nothing gives me greater happiness." she told Le Monde a few days before she died, "than helping the most vulnerable members of society. If anyone in distress calls me I will run to help no matter what." Nobody knows whether she ran to Dodi Al Fayed because she thought he was vulnerable or whether that was why. on the evening of the fatal accident, she helped him through the distress of dinner at the Paris Ritz.

But wasn’t she the princess who warned about the suffering of the homeless? Who took Prince William to see the vagrants who spend their days hanging around Kings Cross station—to show him that there is another life outside Buckingham Palace, Sandringham, Balmoral, Eton? The victims of this kind of patronising did not seem to mind. Among the first of the overnight campers to get a good view of the funeral was a 49-year-old hostel resident from Whitechapel who told the Guardian, “Princess Diana helped the homeless, and I'm homeless myself. She put herself out for so many people. I’d have loved to have met her." After the funeral, still homeless, still loyal, still deluded, he went back to his hostel. There is no record of whether Prince William was impressed by his visit to Kings Cross, whether he had ever wondered about how all those faded, malnourished people he had noticed in their cramped-up, unhealthy abodes survived and whether any of them cracked up under the strain of trying to get by as members of the working class.

Rich people 

There is no record, either, of what the prince thought when his mother told a Labour MP, a few months ago. that "Rich people just want more and more. It makes me sick." From his room at Eton, did Prince William worry whether Diana was so caught up in the media fantasies about her that she was going to give it all away and begin looking for a real job? There was an awful lot to give, if this woman who was made sick by rich people ever wanted to dispose of it. A fortune estimated at £40 million, made up partly from a £17 million divorce settlement and what she inherited from her father. Jewellery worth over £16 million. A private collection worth £1.5 million and a wardrobe—over 500 dresses, 150 evening gowns—priced at more than £3 million. Clearly she was a rich woman: was she also one who wanted more and more? She recently told an enquiring Lord that her "... investment portfolio from the divorce settlement is doing very well, thank you."

In fact that remark was made while she was in Bosnia, where she busily publicised the campaign to ban land mines. This was another basis for the image of her as a caring woman, waking up the world to the horrors of a ghastly weapon of war. Well nobody is going to argue in favour of land mines—there are said to be 110 million buried somewhere or other in the world—but they are not the only weapons. There are no friendly armaments, guaranteed to kill people in a way which a compassionate princess would approve of. Diana could apparently see no reason to question why capitalism produces wars—she was colonel-in-chief of the Welsh Guards, who were caught in a terrible incident in the Falklands—nor why this had led to monstrosities like nuclear bombs, which she seemed to find no difficulty in accepting. It was almost as if she reasoned, in her caring way. that wiping out a few million people in a minute or two is OK but blowing off people’s feet with land mines is going to far.

Confused

Maybe Diana was sincere about her campaigns and her charities: what is clear is that she was confused. Just like, in fact, her subjects—all those people who do all the useful work in this society but are denied the full fruits of their labour yet are grateful when someone they are taught to regard as superior to them condescends to be charitable towards them. While the media were spewing out their nonsense about the princess an official report (Health Inequalities) told us that for the first time since Queen Victoria was on the throne, the life expectancy of poorer people has stopped rising and in some cases has actually fallen. This report did not dominate the newspapers, there was no day-long TV coverage of it. It was about the lives and the deaths of people who are not important in capitalist society so it was not news.

And that is the political issue—it is what politics should be all about. The existence of a society of two classes, in one of which there are people as rich as Princess Diana and in the other the poor, the sick, the homeless, is not just the biggest political issue—it is the only one.

Ivan

These Foolish Things: Criminals (1997)

The Scavenger column from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Criminals

Profiles of 700 women in prison and hostels confirm that the majority are involved in "survival crime”, fraud and theft. In 84 percent of cases the women’s offending was associated with drink or drug dependency. Many have endured extreme adversity: two-thirds reported physical and sexual abuse, and nearly 80 percent were on medication (Guardian, 24 July).


Standing room only

Last year M&S stores made an average profit of £560 a square foot, but the company says high-earning stores earn "far in excess" of that figure (Financial Mail on Sunday, 20 July).


Producing new workers

Bringing up a child from birth to the age of 17 costs on average £50,000, according to a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation . . . However the study found that the difference between the better-off and families without much income was surprisingly small, as poorer parents tried to protect their child from poverty . . . Often by going without themselves . . .  One in 20. particularly lone mothers on Income Support, sometimes go without food to ensure their children have enough to eat (Guardian, 10 July).


International relations

It was the CIA's favourite coup. "We really had the T's crossed on what was happening," says James Critchfield, the head of the agency in the Middle East which organised it. "We regarded it as a great victory . . . " It started Saddam Hussein on his climb to power . . .  After General Abdel Karim Kassem, the country’s populist leader for five years, surrendered he was summarily tried in a studio in Baghdad radio station, tied to a chair and shot dead. In a new book [A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, Gollancz] Said Aburish, a writer on Arab political affairs, has gathered details of how the coup against Gen Kassem was organised and fine-tuned by the CIA. "We came to power on a CIA train," said Ali Saleh Sa’sdi, the Minister of the Interior of the regime which replaced Gen Kassem (Independent on Sunday, 29 June).


Big Brother

Elizabeth France, the Data Protection Registrar, made it clear she was deeply concerned about her lack of powers as the public faces increasing threats to privacy from computer banks building up in Whitehall and elsewhere. Mrs France said she was writing to Tony Blair over the continuing refusal of the security and intelligence services, including MI5 and GCHQ to register with her office. The agencies argue that they are exempt on grounds of “national security", and that the public has no right of access to personal information held by them (Guardian, 17 July).


The wastemakers

Russian. American and European and other space agencies have been firing stuff into orbit since 1957. Now a United States radar programme has to keep track of 3.000 tons of hardware racing round the planet at 18,000mph. There are about 9,000 objects ranging from a cellphone to Mir. But these, too. tend to collide with each other. Some—such as rocket casings—seem to explode of their own accord. So in addition to the big stuff, there are probably another 100,000 bits of stuff bigger than a fingernail. Even something this size is lethal.The calculation is that a £1 coin at six miles a second has the same impact as a minibus at 60mph. When one of these hits another, there are more fragments.There could be 17 million bits of garbage bigger than a millimetre and each of these packs the punch of a high velocity bullet (Guardian, 26 June).

The Scavenger

Fifty years of loot, plunder and intrigues (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pakistan, meaning a "land of the pure”, turned fifty this year. Looking back over the past five decades of Pakistan’s political history, a picture of utter hopelessness, disillusionment and decay in almost every field, flashed into the mind. A land which was carved out on the map of the world after enormous sacrifices were rendered in the form of precious human lives stands today in utter contrast to the ideals and goals which were promised by the pioneers of the Pakistan Movement and which were so gullibly believed by the people of that time.

Recalling the promises about independence and the high enthusiasm of the people at the time of partition 50 years ago, the present anxieties about the way things are drifting and about an uncertain future certainly cause dismay. Pakistan is almost on the verge of being declared a "failed state”. Public faith in the political leadership has been completely eroded and the working class are not sure about what they have to celebrate on the occasion of the "Golden Jubilee”.

Pakistan has floundered from crisis to crisis during its 50 years of existence. Over this period Pakistan has been a hotbed for self-seeking politicians, military adventurists and a corrupt bureaucracy, all of whom have played their full share in wreaking havoc on the country’s political and social fabric. More than half of the country’s lifespan has been under the rule of military dictators who in their bid to stay firmly in power left everything shattered and utterly ineffective.

Brutal and oppressive martial law regimes have made the country pass through a furnace of afflictions, but the civilian governments were no less corrupt. Every successive government simply brought more miseries to a country which was already suffering under the unbearable burdens of poverty, state oppression, and the worst kind of exploitation at the hands of those whom they have voted into power. The faces changed, the people’s lot didn’t. The policies which were framed during the last 50 years have been ineffectual and no serious attention has been given to the most pressing problems like health, education and other civic facilities. Today, the situation has reached a point of no-return. A country with a literacy rate of not more than 20 percent does not have the right to dream of progress and prosperity. Pakistan may have equipped itself with mass weapons of destruction and a powerful military, but the great majority of the country are poor. More than 70 percent of people have no access to clean drinking water, and about 70 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

Pakistan’s economic problems have gone from bad to worse. Its per-capita income is one of the lowest in the world. It is a debt-ridden country and has to pay enormous loans which it took from the World Bank and IMF. Every successive government has borrowed almost unlimited loans from these agencies at very high interest rates.The result is that the country lies as a hostage in the hands of the World Bank and IMF who dictate their terms and conditions at will.

To make matters worse every institution in Pakistan bleeds from wounds inflicted by greedy and corrupt politicians. According to a recent international report, Pakistan ranked second as the most corrupt country in the world. At the same time Pakistan governments have beaten the drum for holding criminals accountable for corruption. But how can a thief catch a thief?

Today the people of Pakistan feel betrayed and cheated. They didn't expect the kind of mess that has developed over the last decades.There is a class of a few who have amassed enormous wealth and monopolised all the resources while the majority remain in miserable conditions.

Political dynasties have been established and the same names appear again and again on the political stage every time elections take place. Pakistan is said to have democracy. But what is going on inside the parliament is a mockery of democracy. These ‘‘patriotic" politicians have made themselves a laughing stock for the rest of the world. The government machinery has failed to provide for the needs of the people.The police are the lords of the land.They are at liberty to round up anyone and implicate him or her on false charges. Recently extrajudicial killings became an issue as hundreds of political workers and innocent people were murdered by the state police. No-one has yet been brought to book. Pakistan is a strange land where the mighty and powerful seem to get away with anything because no-one dare lay their hands on them. The people of Pakistan have become so fed up with their rulers that they have lost their hope and are apparently awaiting some miracle to come to their rescue.

The widening gap between the rich and the poor has frightening dimensions. The lava boiling within the inner core of this land can explode at any time. The rulers have for a very long time cornered or ignored the masses of this country and further testing their patience might have disastrous consequences.

Many people are now questioning the rationale behind the very existence of this country as the promises given to the masses have not materialised. People are suffering due to price hikes, corruption, sectarian killings, and an utter collapse of state institutions. How can they now be expected to feel jubilant when they have been denied the basic amenities like food, shelter, education and health? The state apparatus stands to secure and guard the interest of those who are the unquestioned masters of this land. The entire country may go to the dogs. It may starve to death but it will not stir any emotion in their politicians’ hearts. These heartless monsters have played with the working class’s future for too long. Today all of them stand condemned at the bar of public opinion and they have been stripped of their pretentious and apparent supremacy. A time will come when they will face the wrath of the people.Then their wealth and riches will not save them.—

A Socialist correspondent from Pakistan

Power, corruption and pies (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The science behind the BSE scandal

It is well known that the “mad cow disease" or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy appeared due to the feeding of sheep carcasses infected with the brain disease Scrapie to cattle as a protein supplement. This was done because it was a way of producing meat as cheaply as possible, thus yielding a higher profit margin. It was done with callous disregard for dangers to human health, which were predictable.

Since the resulting appearance of connected cases of Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (the human equivalent of BSE) a programme of government propaganda has been instituted, never hesitating to bring in the pronouncements of official "scientists" to keep a lid on the looming crisis, while marginalising those who have warned of the real danger to human health. In spite of this, a picture of what the profit system has unleashed has peeped through.

Some background may be useful. All healthy mammals have within their brains prions, an unusual type of protein in that it contains no DNA (the code that allows for cell reproduction). It is a bit of a mystery, but what has become less so is that they seem to exist to prevent wasting of the brain. Mice bred free of prions have quickly exhibited signs of coordination problems, inevitably leading to total loss of movement and death. In addition vital areas of the brain have shrunk to a third of their normal size. All of these signs are hallmarks of BSE and CJD and other prion-related illnesses. As the problem with BSE and CJD is not the absence of prions, but the presence of mutated or “bad" ones it can be presumed that, when mutated, the prions cease to function in the proper way and this leads to the damage to brain matter which eventually gives rise to the now ominously familiar sponge-like appearance of the brain the final stages of infection. Worth bearing in mind is that all methods of killing proteins have failed to rub out prions (perhaps because of lack of DNA). All very interesting, but so what?

Rogue prions

Well, these problems are often hereditary (perhaps genetic), but mutated prions can also act as rogue disease agents. When transmitted to a new host the "bad" prions can lock into healthy ones, turning them into diseased prions and then spreading the process throughout the brain.The final destruction of the brain can take up to 30 years or it can proceed much more rapidly. The crucial point is that this transmission isn’t restricted to members of the same species, but can occur from one species of mammal to another, as long as the prions are similar enough. Now for the heavy stuff: humans do not share key prion similarities with sheep, but we do with cattle. Therefore sheep prion disease like Scrapie cannot be passed on to humans, but this does not mean that humans can’t catch the brain diseases of cattle or other animals. Quite the opposite in fact.

In this light, the government and their "establishment scientists" longtime insistence that BSE was merely a form of Scrapie can be seen for what it was: a smokescreen to throw people from realising the true nature of BSE and its implication for human beings (Scrapie being no threat). In other words a lie—a lie sanctioned by the dubious “science” the state and food and agriculture capitalists rely on for their credibility. Credibility that is beginning to look as solid as, er ... cow shit.

So, although we are not vulnerable to the sheep-form of this prion disease, cattle evidently are and, as we will look at later, we are vulnerable to the form the disease/mutation takes in cattle. And if we were not then why have the official agencies been so eager to obscure the true nature of BSE with theories like the above? Could the fear of economic crisis, the peril to profit, the world-wide collapse of industrial meat production and the inevitable knock-on effect on the major northern political apparatuses be behind it?

The full implications of what has been unleashed are suggested by findings which show that 16 species of mammal, including primates and pigs (close genetic relations to ourselves) can pick up the prion disease causing BSE/CJD via eating infected material. Such tests carried out by the World Health Organisation early this decade led to the conclusion that risk to humans from infected matter entering the food chain was unacceptably high.

All the more alarming. 1994 saw over 146,000 official cases of BSE and up to last year the WHO suggests that up to 40 percent of cases were not even reported and out of those that were up to 40 percent were left out of the statistics. The latter point again raises the question: Why? In addition government guidelines on what constitutes "safe" meat may be wrong by up to 10,000 percent. All of which means the amount of infected carcasses that actually entered the human food chain can only be guessed at. especially over the period it was being treated as of no threat to "consumers”, i.e. working-class people.

However, a rough estimate is that by 2001 up to 1,800,000 infected cattle may have been consumed on the British market alone. And this may be a bit too much on the rough side as methods of transmission to cattle and incubation periods are not fully know. Further, the susceptibility of pigs for instance to mutated prions may also mean that other types of livestock are possible infected. Recent government measures affecting sheep and goats can perhaps be viewed in this worrying context, although once again these are being presented as "Scrapie" control.

Infected food

The consequences are already working their way through.The recent spate of tragic deaths in young people with no family history of CJD can’t be explained by the state’s cover-up agents, especially as it is usually a disease of old age. These heartbreakingly young deaths suggest that exposure has led to a galloping form of brain degeneration almost without precedence.Why some people should develop CJD to such an extent, so quickly, is worrying and indicative and raises questions about who may be most susceptible to what sort of level of exposure to infected food before rogue prions take hold.

Is this a new thing? In scale maybe, but in 1978 the US government stopped supplying their troops with beef from certain sources. They must have seen these as “suspect" and we can only wonder just how aware the authorities everywhere have been of the danger to humans from potentially diseased livestock in the industrial capitalist system of food production. Still stateside, there are suggestions that many people diagnosed as having certain forms of Alzheimer’s Disease are in fact suffering from a type of CJD. We should not be surprised.

The ethics of those with socio-economic power and the ethos of their system have been thrown into the spotlight through their handling of this affair. Not least by the fact that the little research now being done on the problem has come so late in the day. The truth has surfaced through a cloud of bogus findings by the government and the Ministry of Agriculture Farming and Fisheries and the rubbishing of independent findings detrimental to those with economic and political interests at stake.

Those scientists who are not willing prostitutes to capitalism’s official bodies are only now getting across the probability of cases of CJD being a result of exposure to BSE-infected beef and related products. The view of BSE being on a par with Scrapie has gone down the toilet and other official pronouncements are gradually going the same way, especially ideas about only certain cattle body-parts carrying a risk to people. It is becoming clear that it is not just brain matter that is a danger. Exposure to the brain and nervous system of infected animals is the most potent, but ingestion of any part of a BSE-positive carcass must be viewed as a danger. At the least the previous line about liver, kidneys and flesh being unlikely to carry a health risk has no grounding in scientific proof. The reverse seems more likely, as the recent proscription of certain cuts of lamb seems to reaffirm. And this, again, raises questions about wider livestock contamination: has the brain disease returned to its source?

That this danger could arise, that health disaster is in the offing and the official abuse of "science" to sanction effective cover-up jobs tells us more than enough about just where the needs of people for safe, healthy rood rank in the priorities of food production in capitalism.

George.

Fifty years of "independence" (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In August Indians celebrated fifty years of independence from Britain, or at least some of them did. Socialists in India didn't, as Binay Sarkar of the World Socialist Party (India) explains

There were festivities down to the village level with flying colours displaying the logo to rekindle nationalism as “a people's event”. Fifty years previously, our class-elders had paid a high bloody price for the "Independence" that couldn't end their dependence.

National independence is a capitalist business. Feuding factions of the selfsame class that win and control territories for profit, their politicians, media chiefs and paid hacks—Indian, Pakistani as well as "the imperialist" British, and maybe their global compatriots—got the show in motion on Friday 15 August 1997 to celebrate the occasion that occurred on a Friday fifty years ago.

Colonialism
In the middle of the present millennium the search for markets, sources of raw materials, cheap labour power and most profitable locations for business gave rise to "colonialism", having transcontinental ramifications into all pre-capitalist formations. This indicated capitalism’s global dimensions right from the beginning. It was British merchant capital which navigated Job Charnock. who on 24 August 1690 arrived at the village of Sutanuti that later developed into the capitalist city of Calcutta, the first capital of British India.

Capitalism in India began to spread with the building of harbours, roads, railways, mills factories and banks—no matter what race, religion, language and territory capitalists and workers originated from. For capital is not a personal but a social force. Its movement in India accorded to its intrinsic alienating, uneven and competitive laws of motion. Battles, mutinies, marches and proclamations have well recorded this course in India as elsewhere.

Two centuries later in an atmosphere of great unrest due to poverty, famine and oppression, a populist platform became necessary to channel people’s wrath. Indian capitalists, intellectuals and their associations were encouraged by some British officials. Hume, Wedderburn and others with support from The Statesmen’s founder-editor Robert Knight in inaugurating the annual gathering of the nationalist movement called the Indian National Congress on 28 December 1885. The British government required it to work as a safety-valve, because by then a more confident and secure British capitalist class were learning to rule more with words than with swords.

In the 1906 Congress a group led by Tilak which favoured self-government secured a majority. Meanwhile on 30 December 1906 the Muslim League was founded by a group of well-to-do Indians claiming to represent the Indian Muslims with their "Pakistan" plan for separate states.

By 1920 the Communist Party of India was formed in Tashkent. On 15 May 1922 it launched its organ The Vanguard of Indian Independence, later changed to The Masses of India, on I January 1925. Right from its inception the CPI clearly accepted Lenin’s fatal reversal of the class position of Marx and Engels—that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself, and that proletarians have no country—to the ideology that workers are to be led by a minority vanguard party, that workers are the true patriots, and that "socialism" secures nation-states, and further that the struggle in the world is not between workers and capitalists but between imperialist and anti-imperialist states. However, "No party can serve two masters,” as the saying goes: a party serves the interests of one class or another.

Strikes and riots
Two lak [200,000] Bombay workers went into the first Indian general strike on 2 January 1919. Later the Great Depression caused strikes in industrial India—in Bombay textile mills (16 April to 5 October 1928), Tata Iron and Steel. South India Railways, Lillooah Railway workshops, Bengal Jute Mills. Calcutta Scavengers, etc. The Calcutta scavengers’ strike (April 1928) showed that the nationalist City Council could be as repressive an exploiter as the British nationalists. The lesson of the Tata Strike (January 1928) was that leaders would do anything to end strikes on terms to their own gains. Subhas Bose, the nationalist leader, assumed chairmanship of one union and then betrayed workers by accepting the very terms which he had described impossible in an opening speech. This leader once declared “Give me blood: I promise you freedom."

In the Burma Oil Works in Bombay on 5 December 1928 a strike began and kept going with mass pickets. The owners began bringing in Pathans (backward peasants and hillmen) as strike-breakers. Bitter and bloody conflict eventually led as many as 100.000 workers to come out in a massive demonstration on Bombay streets. Meantime efforts where made to rouse antagonism between Muslims and Hindus. Whenever there was a strike capitalists’ agents started quarrels between Hindus and Muslims so as to turn struggles between classes—workers and owners—into strife between religious crowds, the old rulers' policy of "Divide and Rule".

In 1930 Peshawar was in the hands of the people for 10 days.Two platoons of a Hindu regiment refused to fire on the Muslim crowd and fraternised with the people. In May 1930 Sholapur town was in the hands of the people for a week and in July Bombay witnessed large demonstrations. But all were to fall, under the sway of nationalist illusions. At the same time the Bombay Mill-owners’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce (British and Indian businessmen) demanded “self- government" for India.

Famine
In 1943 The Great Bengal Famine took "some two to four million lives" (FAO calculation). However, the per capita availability (rice and wheat) index for 1943 was higher by about nine percent than that for 1941. Bengal was producing its largest rice crop in history in 1943. The biggest section of those killed in the famine were landless agricultural labourers. They produced the food, but couldn’t buy it back to consume, for they had no money to buy it with, because they only worked, but didn’t own.

Transfer of power
The Viceroy signed the "Indian Independence Order and International Arrangements” on 14 August 1947 dividing "British India” into two: the Dominion of India with Mountbatten as Governor-general and Nehru as Prime Minister; and the Dominion of Pakistan with Jinnah as Governor-general and Liaquat Ali Khan as Prime Minister. At a special midnight session the Constituent Assembly passed the Oath resolution promising "common prosperity". Rajendra Prased, President of the Indian Constituent Assembly pledged an endeavour "to end poverty . . . hunger and disease, to abolish distinctions and exploitation, and to ensure decent conditions of living”. Nehru said. "When the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.”

But "the new" had no problem now with "the old", as Nehru expressed "grateful thanks" and assured the continuation of the "closest co-operation" with the British government in reply to Attlee's "greetings and good wishes to the Government and people of India".

Festivities followed: "volunteer rallies”, “route marches”, “flag hoisting", "gun-salutes", while Gandhi and Suhrawardy went to fast and pray after their joint peace mission in Beliaghate. Calcutta.

"The mass of India” got "lndependence’’.The public of Calcutta were ordered to enjoy “freedom” under curfew "due to disturbed conditions". And The Statesman (15 August 1947) headlined: "Political Freedom For One-Fifth of Human Race"—"Joyful scenes in Calcutta". Comment would be superfluous.

Pakistan was created comprising separate territories in NW and NE India on the notion of religious homogeneity. Yet India and Pakistan went to war in 1965 on the "Kashmir question" and in December 1971 on the "Bangladesh" issue. East Pakistan became "independent" Bangladesh in 1972 on the notion of linguistic homogeneity. Both were in ill accord with social reality. Then Bangladesh gave workers a famine in 1974.

The propaganda that "freedom" gave us the vote in 1948 is untrue. Workers had to achieve it.

In India the process started under working-class pressure with the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. In 1935 the British government passed the Government of India Act—called the New Constitution—enacting the right to vote for more than 30 million people (about 12 percent of the population). Provincial elections were held in 1937. It was thus that arrived the ballot. But democracy for revolutionaries isn’t just the ballot, but the participatory democracy, revocable—delegated—socialist democracy based on a world co-operative commonwealth.

From “Go back” to “come back” 
In 1942 Indian leaders shouted: "Quit India"—"Go back.” Today they invite: "Catch India"—"Come back”. Of course, not to rule, but to invest, in Indo-British, Indo-Japanese, Indo-American "joint ventures."

Again there are round table talks. But this time to talk "international interdependence" and not “national independence". Talk they must; they are talkers, because they are owners. They needn’t work, but talk—to tell us not to talk, but to work.Theirs is "talk-culture", and they are true to their ideology. But when they make a showpiece with profit-hungry gangsters who say they gear international investments around concern for our children’s upbringing and "decent conditions of living”, we observe that they are being deceptive and fear the truth.

“Now the youth must be the focus of the drive”—goes the central celebration call. The leftists asked youngsters to fight for "the right to work", just a "right" to be exploited!

Socialists cannot encourage the youth to ask for "rights". Instead we urge them to forget the crumbs from the dishes of their masters’ feast, but instead organise to take the whole feast for themselves by replacing the capitalist logo: "One Nation—One State" with the socialist one: "One World—One People". The obstacle only lies in our minds—the "fear of freedom". Remove fear. Be free to be one to the Movement. Don’t feel you need to be led.

Binay Sarkar

What Socialists Want (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

We want the people to directly and collectively own the industries, utilities, transport systems, natural resources etc., and democratically decide how these vital means of living should be used.

With genuine socialism, workers aren’t exploited, because production is purely for use—not profits, which force employees to work much longer and harder than necessary, often in unwanted jobs. With production for use, there is free access to food, goods, electricity, trains, health care etc. as the means for providing these then belong to the people. You don’t buy what you already own!

With genuine socialism, there’d be no inequality, no unemployment, no homeless, no poverty, no debts, no lack of much-needed health care, and no deceitful politicians! Food can be of the highest quality. The crazy competition for profits drags standards down since firms must cut workers and corners, which, inevitably, means the most cheap and vile practices and ingredients end up being used (e.g. filthy E. coli-ridden abattoirs and cows force-fed other rotten cows and sheep).

No Solution in Devolution (1997)

Editorial from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Blair has declared that “the era of big centralised government is over”. Given this, the question that now needs to be asked is: why does a power-crazy government with a huge majority that was prepared to do almost anything to get elected want to devolve power, update the constitution and “democratise” Britain?

The only logical answer is that Tony Blair is looking to the long-term. Because of the intense pressures on government expenditure in Britain (as elsewhere) he knows that real social and economic reform is a non-starter—hence the government’s interest in fripperies like devolution and constitutional reforms. Blair is clearly aiming to preside over a new left-of-centre “consensus” politics that will spell the end of the modern Conservative Party The drive for “democratic renewal” is the linchpin of this strategy, naturally made all the more attractive because it will cost little if anything to implement. It provides a focal point for centre-left campaigns, will isolate the Conservatives (and keep them out of power after PR has been introduced) and it deflects attention away from economic paralysis, social failure and anything else that demonstrates the government’s real impotence.

Through promoting devolution in recent weeks the Prime Minister has cleverly provided a basis for cutting social transfers from the owning class to the poor workers of Scotland and Wales, and to some of the subsidised capitalists there too. The entire debate has emphasised the disproportionate amount of subsidy per capita in Scotland and Wales compared to other poor regions of Britain such as the north-east.

Devolution, particularly in Scotland where the Parliament is to have tax-varying powers, will sooner or later mean a cut in block grants from the Treasury. Furthermore, Blair’s government will be largely absolved of any responsibility over troublesome Scottish social problems and no will no longer have to sink as much money as before into a bottomless pit. (That this was going to happen was spotted months ago by the Conservatives, a party that knows a thing or two about double-dealing and political chicanery.)

This, not by coincidence, is precisely the sort of thinking which led the government to make the Bank of England independent during the summer. It is illustrative of the government’s strategy to raise political smoke-screens and shift responsibility from those aspects of life it thinks it probably can’t affect for the better in any meaningful way (e.g. the economy, social problems in Britain’s regions). By doing this it hopes to coat itself in political Teflon. Whatever goes wrong will not be the government’s fault, but something or somebody else’s. And the small and superficial bits that go right can keep the “forces for democratic renewal” in power for a very long time indeed. That is, of course, unless the working class wake up to the social chaos and political trickery paraded before their eyes daily and organise democratically to do something fundamental about it.

"Democracy" comes to Liberia (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Towards the end of July this year, Africa’s oldest republic— Liberia—held its first free and fair elections since its birth in 1847.

As had been widely anticipated, Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Party won a landslide victory—the same Charles Taylor who attempted to take power by force back in August 1990 and whose efforts were largely responsible for the ensuing seven-year-long civil war that brought Liberia close to socio-economic destruction, a conflict as bloody as any West African state had witnessed since Biafra’s attempt to secede from Nigeria back in the 1960s.

For the superstitious, it is paradoxical that the number seven meant nothing but bad luck for Liberia, for this is how long their civil war lasted, and that the number 13 now holds out hope. This is the 13th attempt that Liberia has made at resolving the conflict since 1990—all past attempt, under the auspices of Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States), having gone up in flames.

Whether Liberia is entering a new and real period of "relative” democracy is anyone's guess. For one thing, ethnic and factional tensions are still simmering and only half of the 60,000 combatants of the recent conflict have handed over their weapons to Ecomog—the joint West African peace force that has supervised the country during the elections. For another, both the US and Nigeria want to lay before the world a "peace’’ they helped to orchestrate— Nigeria's General Sani Abacha because of next year’s elections in Nigeria and the US because of their failure in Somalia and elsewhere to finally shed what may be seen as US responsibility to its former colony.

There is another reason for viewing Liberia's newly-won ‘‘democracy’’ as illusory. Namely that for many voters. Taylor was a pragmatic choice. Most of Liberia’s largely illiterate population still view Taylor as a powerful demagogue, holding him in fear and awe and seeing him as possessing the keys that can both open the doors to further destruction or reconstruction. In this light it is easy to see why Taylor's vote could well have been premised on the assumption that had he lost he could have used those same keys to Liberia’s detriment.

Critics have suggested that Ecomog—charged with monitoring Liberia’s first six months of democracy—are more interested in the lucrative spin-offs their stay will bring (access to resources such as timber, rubber and diamonds) than the peace they are supposed to watch over.

And neither will the US be turning down the opportunity to make a few quick dollars.They have indeed several geo-political interests in Liberia such as the world’s largest rubber plantation set up by the Firestone Rubber Company in 1926 and an Africa-wide communications network that from a US viewpoint can only be of use to serve the capitalists back home.

As always, bourgeois democracy comes at a high price to African countries and Liberia is no exception. Over 150,000 lost their lives in the recent conflict and the country’s economic and physical infrastructure has been decimated. Further upset is undoubtedly on the horizon as Taylor, sitting in his Executive Mansion faces the pressure from a population’s high expectations.

As can be expected, a fraction of what is required will only ever be delivered to those Liberians in greatest need. The real winners, in time-honoured tradition, will be those Liberians and foreign investors who own and control the means for producing and distributing wealth.

The greatest and saddest irony is that 150 years after Liberia was declared a republic (26 July 1847), a colony founded for freed slaves, the country is still inhabited by slaves, albeit wage slaves, and the only real freedom they can enjoy is that involving the sale of their physical and mental abilities to the highest bidder in order to survive.

In a country ranked 158 on the United Nations Human Development Index of 174 countries, with an unstable ruling class and an unpredictable leader at the helm of a society ravaged by poverty and war, democracy has a somewhat hollow sound.

John Bissett

Another Victim of Capitalism (1997)

TV Review from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among all the protracted TV coverage devoted to the death of Princess Diana. (BBC and ITV all day. every day) several important questions remain unanswered. Not just why she should have received countless hours of TV airtime devoted to her work with the poor and needy when millions across Britain— who have done just as much and rather more besides— never get mentioned and probably never will get mentioned.

And not necessarily the type of questions that have been concerning the media either—like whether Dodi Fayed’s bodyguard was drunk, what speed the car was going at when it crashed or whether MI6 are competent enough to kill renegade princesses. No, there are other questions, at least as relevant as any of these, that spring directly to the fore of the inquisitive mind.

One of the most obvious is this. Which person in modern human history has received the most attention from, and been the subject of more media predictions by astrologers, numerologists, spiritualists, soothsayers and other crystal ball gazers, than Princess Diana? And furthermore, why did not a single one of these professional fraudsters prophesy Diana’s fatal accident? And just as bizarrely, why has no-one apparently noticed this? The British media, increasingly including the TV media, feeds the working class a meaty daily diet of tricksters and charlatans who claim to have the future in their hands. And yet when further incontrovertible evidence emerges of their complete inability to do what they claim they can, we don’t hear a peep from their media pimps. How odd.

Shooting from the hip

More questions, and of greater import still. Who or what really killed Diana? Was it the press? Or, as Andrew Neil and others have seemingly implied, the public who actually watched the news and bought the papers? Frankly, neither of these explanations is truly plausible. The media could hardly be described as sole agents in her death as they were merely responding to the competitive impulses engendered by circulation wars and the market (as indeed were the paparazzi). But in that case, were not the buying and watching public themselves to blame?

This idea is even less plausible.There has not been a single UK national newspaper or TV channel which has not pursued Diana at some time or another to sell papers or attract viewers and advertising and thus make more profit. In that situation, where is the choice for those who want genuine news? Wherever people looked, there she was on the most ‘‘serious’’ of TV channels and newspapers commonly available.

Even if it can be argued that the bulk of the working class have tended to gravitate towards those sectors of the media offering the more sensationalist type of coverage of the royal family it is risible to claim that the newspapers were only providing what the "real culprits’’—the general public—wanted. Firstly, this totally ignores the effect the media has in determining what is on offer to the public and the undercurrent of bias and manipulation with which they steer the public towards certain ways of thinking and acting. Secondly, it is little more than pathetic to suggest that the media was just bowing to "popular demand" as if they—or any rational person—think that majority opinion at any one moment in time and on any issue in today’s society must be followed to the letter.

Given the spurious and hopelessly distorted levels of democracy currently in existence in countries like Britain, majority opinion at any time can be taken to be just that and no more because whatever majority opinion exists on a subject is refracted through a distorting prism called the economy where there is no democracy at all. The resulting picture is often mangled and disfigured beyond recognition as a result. It would be ludicrous to take an opinion and defend it on all grounds simply because it is currently that of a majority. The media have certainly not done so in the past so why use this excuse now?

Taking some examples, if the majority of people had been calling for Diana’s imprisonment or worse on grounds of treason would that have been okay and would the media have led the charge simply on the grounds of giving the public what it wanted? Extending this logic further, if the majority of the population was overtly racist would we all have had to start going round killing black people and would the media have campaigned for the setting up of concentration camps? Hitler had majority constitutional backing at one key point in Germany’s history—was that all right too? Of course not, and the media must know it. Democracy is a qualitative not just a crudely quantitative phenomenon.The bottom line is that if you know something is wrong you argue and fight against it, not pander to the worst sort of prejudices going. What the media have been doing is merely using the public to divert attention from their own alleged complicity in the whole affair.

Which brings us back to what really did for the "people’s princess". Avoiding the trap of scapegoating, it was clearly the pressures and conflicts brought about by present-day society itself, not just isolated parts of it. At root we live in a money and status-obsessed society which elevated the wretched girl to the ridiculous and fantastical heights of being a royal princess, stuffed her mind full of some of the most ridiculous notions and "rules" imaginable until she became possibly the world’s most visible neurotic, and it was this same hierarchical and profit- hungry society which hunted her to death in the pursuit of the great god Mammon.

Socialists are unremittingly hostile to hierarchy and privilege (far more so of course than Diana herself— despite the claims of Trevor McDonald and his like) but that does not mean we have no sympathy at all for those outside the working class who are also sometimes victims of a mad. uncontrollable system. For let there be no mistake. Diana the Princess of Wales was not merely killed by “the media", the "paparazzi" or the amorphous "general public". Diana, in truth, was created by capitalism and then killed by it too. But what are the chances of a week's constant TV discussion of that?

Dave Perrin

The Work Test (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The profit system offers us work that is at best useless and at worst harmful.

Governments are elected to run capitalism. They don’t like paying "benefit" to people who could be employed turning capital investment into profit. Men and women who receive "benefit” (whether unemployment, sickness, invalidity, or whatever) are a drain on the profit system. Never mind that the owners of the means of wealth production are themselves a drain on the rest of us who do all the world's useful work.

To save money for the taxpayer the previous government introduced a test to weed out what it called benefit cheats. According to an unpublished report quoted in the Big Issue (2-8 June), 198,500 out of 785,000 people examined were denied benefit between April 1995 and September 1996. Many claimants failed the “all work" test.

In capitalism there are three kinds of work, only one of which will be needed in socialism. First there is work that is harmful to those who do it or against whom it is done. Second there is work that is "useful" to the profit system but useless in any human need sense. And third there is work that has a purpose, whose result does meet some human need.

There are, unfortunately, plenty of examples today of the first kind of work. There is the legally authorised killing and injuring of "the enemy" by members of the armed forces and the whole paraphernalia of occupations and "enterprises" which have violence as their end product or reason for existence: the arms manufacturers, the arms dealers, the plotters and planners, the spies and counter-spies, the propagandists, the war correspondents, and so on. Apart from a few psychopaths drawn to such destructive occupations, the people involved are mostly ordinary, respectable citizens, honest, law-abiding, kind to children and animals. It is the profit system, organised within potentially if not actually hostile nation-states, that requires such work to be done.

Besides work that is harmful to others, there is work that causes harm to those who engage in it. Coal-mining is a greatly reduced industry in Britain, but many miners in other countries still have to risk their lives and their health in dangerous working environments. Ironically, some work undertaken by members of the ruling class can be harmful to them if indulged in excessively. The Evening Standard (25 June) reported that the Duke of Westminster, with his estimate £1.65 billion mega-fortune, had been ordered by his doctors to take three months off from "running his business affairs and his work for 160 charities". Of course the big difference between the Duke and the millions of real workers is that they have to find an employer or rely on state charity, whereas he can choose whether or not to work shuffling money around.

The third kind of work is that which is really useful, producing goods or services which people actually need: producing and distributing food, making clothes and furniture, building and repairing homes, schools and hospitals, teaching, healing the sick, and so on. It is difficult to estimate what proportion of all employment in capitalism is useful—work that would still be done in a socialist world. A generous estimate would be half, but the true figure may be 20 percent or less. In our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative we discuss how we can eliminate the waste of capitalism and choose productive methods appropriate to socialism.

People who have to do harmful or useless work for a living are encouraged to believe that they have no choice in the "real world", dominated by the system that is endorsed by the voters at periodic elections. A first step towards socialism is to stop believing that this capitalist “real world" is inevitable. It’s a good idea to make the best of any job you have to work at, whether its end-product or service is worthy or worthless. But it's not a good idea to pretend that a "nothing" job—doing it only in the service of capital—is any better than it is.

Some years ago— 1968 to be precise— Ronald Fraser edited a book on Work: Twenty Personal Accounts. The accounts make fascinating reading, many of them offering a powerful indictment of the waste of life involved in capitalist employment. Take the night-watchman, for example. He describes his job as "guarding the sleep of capital". Producing nothing, this labour exists to make nothing happen, its aim is emptiness. The night-watchman has the sensation of being turned into an object, a labouring material thing. Demanding no part of himself, the job in fact demands everything, on the lowest possible level.

Studs Terkel, an American writer, is best known for his book on Working, subtitled "people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do". Listen to the automobile salesman: "The public thinks the automobile salesman is a rat. Some of the customers arc the real animals . . . They don’t have to be animals. It's the whole system that makes 'em animals".

The productive potential of modern industry is immense, and so is its potentiality for human liberation. In a rationally and humanly organised socialist world it could be used not only to meet basic and imaginative human needs but also to create more humane and satisfying conditions of work.

Capitalist employment offers much work that is at best useless and time-wasting and at worst harmful and destructive. The profit system treats the working abilities of men and women as commodities useful only to create marketable goods and services. It pays for workers’ skills, but everything also they are or have or want is subordinated to their "efficient” employment. It wastes them in unemployment—when no profit can be seen from employing them—and it wastes them in much of what they have to do only in the service of capital.

There is. however, an alternative. Today we have to be employed or unemployed, but tomorrow—or at least as soon as we can dissuade our fellow workers from continuing to support capitalism—we can have truly human work. As Ray Pahl put it in his book On Work: "the value system that encourages competition or greed at the expense of collaboration and altruism may not ultimately succeed”.

Stan Parker

Obituary - Peter Furey 1913-1997 (1997)

Obituary from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with profound regret that the World Socialist Party (New Zealand) inform members and supporters of the passing of Peter Furey.

Peter was one of the longest serving members. Joining the party in 1945, he was one of the nicest and genuine of persons I ever met. If ever there was a "misnomer", it was in Peter's surname, for I am sure a more gentler and honest person never lived. In world war 2 Peter was an objector going to what he referred to as the concentration camp at Ohakune, a very bleak and cold place in winter. Peter never said much about his sufferings behind the wire, and later on in Auckland's dungeon Mount Eden prison, but he referred me to a book in the library, and my heart went out to those brave men and women who refuse to bear arms against fellow workers who they have never met. Some of the things they did to them—for instance, deliberately turning off the hot water when they returned covered in mud from the fields after drain laying, road making, forestry work etc. One fiendish trick they tried was to take all the bedding and blankets  from the single person tiny huts, but placing the King's uniform with warm flannel underwear, greatcoat, etc. on a chair. However not one of them cracked. Not only Socialists but Quakers, Pacifists and other religious people offered this. After the war they were not allowed to vote for ten years. So much for their much the ruling class's rhetoric about democracy! Peter lived in Australian for a while where he taught Marxian economics at Victoria Labour College.

Socialists and supporters of the Auckland branch farewelled Peter in what I feel sure a ceremony he would have liked. The service was performed by a member of the NZ Society of Rationalist's and humanists. How refreshingly different from the usual claptrap spouted by the clergy. At the funeral parlour we sang "Imagine" very fervently and just as fervently at the grave, as Peter was laid to rest we sang the "Red Flag". Farewell Peter and one last thing (with tongue in cheek of course). If there is a Heaven, well it won't be contaminated with the capitalist class—for have not the bead-and-cassock brigade bashed our ears constantly about the camel and the eye of a needle!

Jim Ryder

"Communist Kids" (1997)

Book Review from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Children of the Revolution: Communist Childhood in Cold War Britain by Phil Cohen, Lawrence & Wishart. £12.99.

To begin with I was quite excited at the prospect of reading this book. In a sense I would be returning to my childhood, to a life shared with a Communist Party father, and then later on to a schism in that relationship during the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the revelations about Stalin, and to my subsequent resignation from the Communist Party at the age of twenty-two.

Although it would be true to say that I could identify, politically and emotionally, with some of the experiences of the "children" interviewed, there are nonetheless, major differences. Whilst I lived with a father who possessed a paid-up CP card but was not active within the CP the people portrayed in the book are offspring of parents who were very active within the party and also often held leading positions in the CP and the trade union movement. Despite my father's infatuation with Communist Party ideals, the fact that he met few other party members meant that he did retain some original Marxist thinking, so that although he always supported the Soviet Union he most certainly never claimed they had socialism and he believed implicitly in the abolition of capitalism. Also only two of the people interviewed in the book were born in the thirties (1936 and 1937) others in the forties and fifties and one in the sixties, while I entered this world in 1935 and eventually became a member of both the YCL and the Communist Party where I was to remain for about six years.

But I found much in this book to depress me. When those interviewed use the word "socialism" none of them gives a satisfactory definition of it. Neither does anybody talk about the abolition of the wages system, although all appeared to believe in a fairer distribution of wealth and social justice, apparently this to be achieved by reforms to take place sometime in the future. Most disturbing is that even with the full knowledge of the denunciation of Stalin and the tragedy of the Hungarian uprising the children could still see no reason not to join the YCL and the CP not so long after these very events had become a catalyst for my leaving. But, as Phil Cohen says in his introduction, "Values are partly a question of upbringing affected by what you know will please your parents, and the experience that shape you as a person, which are inevitably bound up with your parents. But the benevolent paternalism of the CP could be stifling to those growing up within it. Teenage rebellion was not easy when you were told that saving from the world from imperialism was the key thing in life." Quite so, but similar pressure did not prevent me from making my exit from the CP in 1957 and what is more I still held to the basic tenet of socialism somewhere in the back of my mind.

But some lessons had been learnt. Another contributor states "We weren't a revolutionary party at all, and I was a member for thirty years, half of its existence. We had the rhetoric, we talked about the class moving this and that but we never saw it in those terms. Even when we analysed our electoral work, which I now look back on as a complete waste of time, we presented the lowest common denominator of the argument: that we were part of the anti-Tory movement and a lot of people who couldn't bring themselves to vote communist would be stimulated to vote Labour, so we were vital to help return Labour candidates. To some extent that was true, my great moment was getting five hundred votes in the East Lewisham constituency and people saying to me there was absolutely no doubt I had helped Labour to get elected. But what is revolutionary about helping to change the complexion of parliament."

To Communist Party parents the education of their children was of vital importance so that as a result most of those interviewed have professional jobs or careers. I had a rather different experience where my father saw nothing wrong with manual work or labouring although he did tentatively suggest I might feel more comfortable in an office. My own experience of being a member of the CP was that those members with well-paid careers or important political administrative posts were much admired. I'm not saying that this was in any way party policy, but doctors, teachers, writers, scientists and so on were regarded with a good deal more respect that, say, factory workers or shop workers. During my time in the party I was very much aware of this, perhaps because I was a factory worker at the time. Another theme running through the book is of the liberality and freedom permeating the children's childhoods. Books, family discussions, and always a feeling of being somehow "different" from other children. My own experience too, but some of the children say their parents exhibited a kind of religious fervour and a streak of puritanism.

This book cost me a couple of sleepless nights; reading it forced me to examine my own political life since 1957. I too joined the Labour Party, but briefly and for infiltration purposes, and I became quite active in the peace movement, whilst always arguing from a working-class standpoint.

This is a fascinating book, well worth reading, but at the end of each and every interview I felt disappointed, let down, as though I had come to expect something "other" from the children, perhaps even fuller analyses of why they had come to join the CP at such an inauspicious time.

Heather Ball