50 Years Ago: The taming of the TUC (1998)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

What has happened to the trade unions, to their national platform the T.U.C., and to their political shadow the Labour Party? Where now is the trade union army that fought the general strike in 1926? In what dump have they parked their rusty weapon, the strike? Where are the Reds of yesteryear, and who are these men and women with their generous sprinkling of O.B.E.s, Knighthoods and Peerages who at Margate earned from the discerning observer of the Manchester Guardian (10/9/48) the tribute that “once again the T.U.C. has shown the moderate good sense that often seems to surprise its own leaders as much as the critics”?

How are we to account for the incontestable and remarkable fact that the workers—to whom the T.U.C. is supposed to give guidance and inspiration—got from it little but gloom, austerity, wage-freezing, and appeals to work harder; while the capitalist press and financial circles are congratulating themselves that it was a very successful congress from their point of view!

The long years of muddled thinking have to be paid for and there is no easy way out. Backing the Government in running capitalism means stultifying the trade union movement and spreading apathy and despair; with the certainty that at the end of the road, even if the present production crisis is eased for a time, there will be new crises and new and larger wars. The alternative is the seemingly slow but in fact the only way, the way indicated by the Socialist Party at its formation, that of working for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. There are no short cuts and there is no other way.

(From front page article by ‘H’, Socialist Standard, October 1948)

Voice From The Back: Capitalist profits (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalist profits

From December 1, when the second stage of this year’s pay award is implemented, a D-grade staff nurse will earn a basic of between £12,855 and £14,705. Starting salaries for teachers are £14,500 and for police constables £15,500. Guardian, 6 August.

Full Marx!

Karl Marx’s theories may not be much appreciated in police forces, but his observation that under capitalism everything eventually becomes a commodity may strike a few chords in the Los Angeles police department: it is registering its initials LAPD as a trademark. Guardian, 6 August.

Value for money

Barbara [Corcoran] says that in Manhattan, where she lives, her annual £45,000 investment in her looks is de rigeur. There, she says, “looking good is more important than being good . . .” “People judge you down to the tiniest detail, the cut of your suit shoulder, the size of the pearl in your earring, even how you apply your make up.” Express, 20 July.

This secret society

Gun Mart, a magazine for shooters, has a particular concern about the confiscation of the majority of private hand guns following the Dunblane massacre. In its August issue it draws attention to the fact that the police report on Thomas Hamilton, made to the Procurator Fiscal before the mass shooting of the school children, will not be put into the Library of the House of Commons. In fact, Lord Cullen, for the government, has recommended that a 100 year closure be placed upon this and related documents. Not even most war secrets are suppressed for this long. What are they hiding? Gross negligence is one possibility. A real excuse for the banning of guns is another.

Political starvation

“The country’s [Sudan’s] 15-year civil, war has uprooted millions. The UN World Food Programme predicted the food emergency last September. But a worsening drought, lack of interest in the international community, widespread fighting and a ban on relief flights by the Sudanese government have resulted in a much worse crisis today . . . people are dying, at an average of 50 a day in Wau, one of the hardest hit areas.” Catherine Bertini, Executive Director, UN World Food Programme.

Feelgood factor 1

Keith Bradley, Professor of international management at the Open University Business School was doing his bit for the class struggle in the Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 August. He said, “Chief secretary to the Treasury Stephen Byers touched a raw nerve last week when he hit out at ‘greedy’ power and water bosses whose massive pay rises of up to 70 percent fuel anger amongst ordinary workers. But while fat cats are easily pilloried, there is little doubt that huge pay disparities are here to stay. Indeed, the rich are likely to get richer-and deservedly so . . . In today’s world there is a massive difference between winning and coming second. Nearly winning a legal battle, nearly scoring a goal, or nearly completing a business deal are all worlds apart from actually achieving these things.”

Feelgood factor 2

Earlier this year, when he was anticipating, and perhaps trying to influence, the Labour government’s budget, Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank, told the Commons social security Select Committee that the working families tax credit (WFTC), which was expected to replace the in-work family credit, would have “important psychological effects on the way people feel about work”. Delivered through the pay packet rather than the benefits system, it would change the attitudes to living on welfare by associating state aid with work, said Mr Taylor. “If welfare to work succeeds, and I expect it will, there are going to be a lot more people in relatively low paid jobs . . .” “It’s important that they should feel good about that and that society as a whole should feel good.” Mr Taylor was doing his bit for the class war—on behalf of his class.

Feelbad factor

In May, the Boston Sheraton hotel in Massachusetts had to pay $200,000 (£120,000) in a lawsuit in which employees said they were videotaped in a changing room, and a California trucking firm’s employees discovered a video camera in the men’s toilet. Every aspect of employment becomes disputed territory in the class war.

Pollute and be damned

Asbestos pollution is one of the biggest environmental health problems in the world, according to the Johannesburg Star, and South Africa is the global epicentre of asbestos-related disease (ARD), in particular mesothelioma, which is a cancer related specifically to asbestos exposure. It was estimated that 30 to 40 percent of people who worked in SA’s asbestos mines for more than 20 years developed ARD. A study of the town of Mafefe in Northern Province revealed that half the adult population of 12,000 had ARD.

Editorial: Will America be next? (1998)

Editorial from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Capitalism is falling apart at the seams”—this apocalyptic statement from no other than George Soros, the international financier who broke the pound in 1992. This is a relative piece of honesty from our ruling elite who have so far done their damnedest to play down the severity of the global economic crisis. From the “quality” broadsheets to the television news-you have to look long and hard to find any serious coverage of the most newsworthy story of the day.

South East Asia, Russia and now Latin America are all in trouble and the only thing keeping the world economy going has been the bull market in the US—or so the “experts” tell us. What is interesting is the way each country or region is treated separately from each other as if what we are really facing is an aggregate of “local” problems the sum total of which adds up to a “global” problem. It is precisely this, which makes Soros’s honesty so refreshing yet frightening at the same time.

America, which has been growing for most of this decade is set to slow down. The “new paradigm” theory which argued that the US could grow forever will soon be proved demonstrably false-the only question is to what extent will the US crash?

The US has been attempting to get Japan to reslate its economy because Japan is considered to be the “motor” economy of South East Asia. But as we know Japan’s banking system is very nearly insolvent and its room for manoeuvre is extremely restricted. If the crisis in this region pulls Hong Kong and China down—the US fears that the cheaper exports from a lower exchange rate will put intolerable pressure on the dollar and the already glutted markets of the world will have to deal with even more cheap produce seriously undermining the US balance of payments. Couple this with a financial meltdown, you will have not just the rise of protectionism but a potential global trade war.

Finally, the US dominated IMF has nearly run out of money so its capacity to act as “lender of the last resort” and bail out any more countries is almost at an end. Even if more funds are found to re-capitalise Russia, what about the next time or the time after that? What about if America’s stock market bubble bursts and this leads to what one US economist called “the biggest depression since 1945”! The British and US stock markets have both now fallen about 15 percent in recent weeks. Who could now take a bet on capitalism?

Boom goes bust in Asia (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thirty countries covering a quarter of the world’s population are officially in recession. Even defenders of capitalism are now compelled to use the term “world economic crisis”.

It had to happen. Given the chronic state of overcapacity and potential overproduction in relation to the market in all the key sectors of global industry—electronics, computers, vehicle production, pharmaceuticals, shipbuilding, steel—the boom in Asia had to come to an end sooner or later. It already had in Japan, by far the biggest economy in the region and in fact the second biggest in the world after the US. Now the rest of East Asia—Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and other so-called tiger economies—has followed.

It is difficult to believe that at the beginning of the decade Kinnock, when leader of the Labour Party, went into the 1992 general election holding up the Japanese model of incestuous government-corporation partnership as the way forward for Britain. Those who pointed to the relatively rapid rate of capital accumulation in East Asia to deny the socialist contention that world capitalism has been in a depressive state since the end of the post-war boom in the early 1970s have also had their come-uppance. Marx was right. They were wrong. There can be no such thing as a permanent boom. That’s only a dream peddled by smooth-talking politicians and ageing Keynesian professors.

Marx was right

Marx, the first person to provide a convincing analysis of how the capitalist economic system worked, concluded that, whereas capital accumulation—or economic growth, if you like—was a key feature of capitalism, this did not take place smoothly. Capital accumulation proceeds by fits and starts, periods of relatively rapid growth being followed by periods of contraction and stagnation. The graph of long-term growth under capitalism is not a straight line moving up from left to right but a jagged line with peaks and troughs, with each peak normally higher than the previous one. Marx argued that this cyclical pattern of growth was not just accidental but was inevitable under capitalism—it was the way capitalism functioned and developed, its “law of motion” as he put it—with each period of rapid growth ending in a slump and each slump preparing the conditions for the next round of growth.

The history of capitalism since Marx’s day has amply proved the validity of this analysis. In order to maintain or increase their share of the market and realise the surplus value embodied in their products, capitalist firms are compelled by competition to reduce their costs by improving their productivity, in particular by the introduction of more productive machines. This leads to an increase in overall productive capacity. During the period of recovery that follows a slump this poses no problem as the market is beginning to recover and expand again.

However, as the competitive pressures to increase productive capacity continue, the point is eventually reached when productive capacity in a key industry or group of industries comes to outstrip the market demand for its products. At this point a crisis of overproduction breaks out. As profits fall, production is cut back, workers are laid off and, through the knock-on effect on other industries, the market shrinks, so inaugurating the period of slump. During the slump, the least productive machines are taken out of production and capital is depreciated or simply written off. This purge of under-productive machinery and over-valued capital eventually creates the conditions which allow capitalist growth to recommence, so beginning the boom-slump cycle again.

This is how capitalism has developed and continues to develop, only now that (as Marx foresaw) capitalism is a global system the periods of rapid growth and purging slumps also occur on a world scale. The big slump of the 1930s was a world phenomenon, as was the post-war boom of the 1950s and 1960s which ended in the early 1970s. So of course is the current world economic and financial crisis.

Mad money

Just because the 1930s slump was preceded by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, some people jump to the conclusion that it is financial crashes that cause slumps. Actually, it’s the other way round: financial crashes usually reflect the situation in the underlying real world of economic activity. Where they occur this is a sign that something has already gone wrong in the real world, that, to be precise, productive capacity and production has come to outstrip market demand or is threatening to. As J. K. Galbraith showed in his book The Great Crash, this is what happened towards the end of the 1920s; when the gamblers on the stock exchange realised that overproduction was occurring they tried to convert their paper wealth into real wealth and provoked a crash. The slump followed but as a result of the preceding overproduction not of the stock market crash, which at most only exacerbated the economic crisis.

It’s the same today in Asia. The financial crisis there is a reflection of the fact that stock exchange and foreign currency gamblers have realised that the countries of East Asia have expanded their productive capacities beyond market demand. This has been obvious for a few years in the case of Japan where overproduction has led to full-scale recession with lay-offs and factory closures. But Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the others were in the same situation of potential overproduction since a significant part of their growth had been in the same industries which Japan had overexpanded: car and other vehicle production, and electronics and computer hardware.

The reason why governments and central bankers in Europe and North America are so worried about the financial crisis in Asia is that their own real economies are in the same state of potential overproduction as the Asian countries and that this could provoke a financial crash in their countries too. The king is naked here as well.

So far they have managed to avoid this though current indications are not good. Even if these countries avoid a full-scale crash this does not mean that they also have to power to avoid an economic slowdown or downturn. Such slowdowns and downturns can occur without a financial crash. Indeed this to an extent is what has already happened. Since the early 1970s the world economy has been in a period of slow growth, punctuated by falls in production from time to time. This is a reflection of the a lower rate of profit and of the unresolved problem of productive capacity having outstripped market demand in key technologically advanced industries such as aerospace, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and computers.

One consequence of this period of slow growth is that significant amounts of profits are not being reinvested in production but, instead, are being held in liquid form and invested in financial assets with the aim of making as large a short-term profit in as short a time as possible. All the multinational corporations and other big companies now have treasury departments engaged in financial speculation of one form or another whether on the stock exchange, the bond market, currency transactions, commodity markets or dodgy hedges such as derivatives. In France in recent years many major companies have even set up or taken over banks for just this purpose.

This extra demand for financial assets, deriving from non-reinvested profits, has driven up their price, so creating the anomalous situation of a stock exchange boom in what is essentially a depressed economy. Nothing could illustrate more clearly how divorced is the world of finance from the world of reality. Most of the financial transactions that take place on the world scale today are not investments of productive capital—are not used to set up factories or to buy machinery, equipment or raw materials—but are to buy and sell shares or bonds or foreign currencies or commodity futures or property or failing companies to asset strip them.

Such purely financial transactions are utterly unproductive, even from a capitalist point of view. Not only do they not result in the production of a single extra item of wealth but they don’t even increase the amount of surplus value available for sharing amongst the various sections of the capitalist class. It’s a zero-sum game. As socialists have always maintained, stock exchanges are places where capitalists gamble and try to cheat each other with a view to acquiring as large a mass as possible of the surplus value that has already been produced by and robbed from the workforce.

Rising share prices—and despite dramatic falls from time to time, there has been a steady long-term rise in the share price indexes of most stock exchanges—do not represent an increase in real wealth. They merely amount to a rise in the book value of the real wealth-the productive capital of the companies in question-that shares are supposed to represent. It’s a rise in paper values not real value. When a share goes up in price this means that you can get more for it if you sell it. If you don’t sell your shares all it means is that their book value has gone up, but if everybody or even large numbers tried to realise this book value by selling their shares, the real situation would soon reassert itself. The price would fall, bringing down the book value of the corresponding productive capital to its real value.

Is the Big One coming?

Even some supporters of capitalism, among them the arch-speculator George Soros himself, have begun to express concern about where the parasitic and volatile nature of global finance capital may lead the world. At a congressional hearing in Washington on 15 September Soros even spoke of the danger of the “disintegration of the global capitalist system”. We have always been cautious in predicting a 1930s-scale slump, but if even supporters of capitalism are discussing this as a serious possibility who are we to insist that they’re wrong?

One thing is certain, though. Until the problem—for capitalism—of excess productive capacity and potential overproduction in relation to market possibilities is resolved, there can be no return to any period of rapid economic growth as in the post-war boom when growth rates were twice the maximum that has obtained in any of the already industrialised countries since the early 1970s. But the only way this problem can be resolved is by a bigger slump than we have yet seen since the war in which the system would be purged of its excess productive capacity and overvalued capital.

If this does not happen, then global capitalism will continue in its present state of slow growth against a background of high unemployment and declining welfare provisions, staggering on from financial crisis to financial crisis and from mini-boom to mini-slump. Can this really be the end of history?

Adam Buick

Greasy Pole: Sex, lies and leadership (1998)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

What was remarkable about the Monica Lewinsky affair was not that Clinton had what he called a “not appropriate” relationship with here, nor that he then lied about it but that there are people—so many people—who profess to be surprised, shocked, outraged by his behaviour.

It does not have to be said, that Clinton is not the first politician to be exposed in this way and obviously he will not be the last. The sexual and political conditioning of capitalism work in combination to encourage relationships based on a recognition that, in the words of Henry Kissinger (who, it was said, knew what he was talking about) power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. This was put in another way by Antonia Sanchez, who experienced—whether she enjoyed it or not is another matter—a lot of attention over her affair with David Mellor, which did so much to undermine the Tories’ Back To Basics campaign. Ms Sanchez explained Mellor’s attraction for her by reference to his influence; he could, she said, “make things happen”. This influence—power would be a better word in the case of the President of America—is given to political leaders by the workers who vote for them, who surrender their own power to change human society to a few people mandated to keep the social system in being. There are so many elements in this for what is called the misuse of this power that the abnormal becomes the normal—the misuse becomes an appropriate use of the power. So we had all those Tory sleaze merchants and their hypocrisy about personal morality. So we had John Kennedy; so we have Bill Clinton.

Lies

Of course it would have been more than remarkable if Clinton had, from the first day of his exposure, told the truth and owned up to the affair. Because part of the job of a politician is to tell lies. (When they don’t in the House of Commons—or rather when they are caught out doing it—they describe it as “misleading the House”.) all their promises, which amount to an assurance that they can control, capitalism so that it stops being an anarchic, human-destructive social system and becomes an ordered, beneficial one instead, are lies. When the promises become discredited they try to cover it all up with more lies; they blame the depredations of greedy workers or foreign speculators or mad dictators in faraway countries ...

Imagine, if we can, the speech a political leader would need to make in order to tell the truth, in order to confess to their impotence and to the deceptions they have practised to hide it. Imagine, as well, how this suicide statement would be received by the workers who had voted for the leader. Millions of people vote for capitalism because they think their leaders are not impotent and don’t tell lies.That is why the same people who were so eager to denounce Clinton over his deceptions in the Lewinsky affair were falling over themselves in their eagerness to believe him when he said the American missiles recently sent into Sudan had destroyed a factory making material to be used in biological warfare and not pharmaceutical products.

Tough

This raises the question of what kind of leader the working class would like to have ruling over them—and what kind they think they get. “Strong” leadership is usually one of the most popular kinds—except that the “strong” leaders always have to be on your side and not on your adversary’s. For example foreign leaders like Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein are famous for, among other things, a certain lack of tolerance of opposition. In fact anyone who opposed them was usually killed—and you can’t get much stronger then that. But for some reason such leaders are always known as madmen, or megalomaniacs or some such description when all they are doing is taking the theory of strong leadership to its logical end.

A Guardian/ICM Opinion poll published on 8 September assessed how strong—or rather “tough”—the voters rate Tony Blair. The prime minister will not go down in history as one of those leaders who has his opponents executed but he does give them quite a rough time, which gives him the reputation of being tough. So there would have been some dismay at Labour headquarters to see that Blair’s toughness rating has fallen from 57 percent in 1997 to 42 percent today. It is difficult to know what Blair was doing in August and September last year to justify a reputation for toughness, which he is not doing now. The only thing that comes to mind is his intervention over the funeral arrangements for Princess Diana— forcing her family to have a big public event, making sure that flags were flown at half-mast, that sort of thing. And of course coming up with the wheeze of calling a neurotic parasite the “people’s princess”.

Nonsense

If all the verbiage about leadership— about the lies, hypocrisy, toughness and weakness—sounds like nonsense that is because that is what it is. No leader, whatever their character and style, has been able to make any significant impression on the problems and the deficiencies of capitalism. That is why today tough, decisive Tony Blair confronts the same situation as weak and dithering John Major. Bill Clinton’s campaign to save his presidency was centred on the fact that as president he had the job of running American capitalism, beside which personal sexual difficulties are insignificant. Another way of putting that is that the working class should ignore such irrelevant issues and concentrate on the fact that they can themselves change society, without leaders of any kind.

Ivan

World View: The world crisis spreads (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dominoes are falling all around: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Russia, and now Latin America. “On Wednesday, Colombia became the first Latin American country in the region to devalue its currency following weeks of intensive pressure, sparking a slide in bond and stock markets in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. Venezuela, whose currency has been under intense pressure for weeks, launched an immediate round of public spending cuts” (Observer, 6 September).

Venezuela is particularly vulnerable at the present time. It is one of the world’s leading oil producers; it also has vast deposits of iron ore and gold, much of which including other mineral resources have yet to be explored. Twenty years ago, when the price of oil plummeted on the international exchange, Venezuela suffered mass unemployment as well as inflation. In 1988, the price of oil went down further; and in February 1989, the government introduced austerity measures which severely cut working-class incomes. The result was mass rioting, which caused millions of dollars in property damage and the loss of 300 lives.

The 1990s, therefore, opened with Venezuela teetering on the edge of total instability. On February 2 1992, a faction of middle-rank officers tried to overthrow the government in a coup. The army, however, backed the President and soon regained control. On 27 November the same year, another coup was attempted, this time by junior officers of the air force; again it was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, many people wanted change, if only to end the cycle of corruption and instability.

In January I 994, Venezuela’s second largest bank, the Banco Latino, collapsed, and the government had to nationalise it. It had to pump in two billion dollars to cover its losses.The government began an enquiry, but the bank’s assets had been relocated overseas, and it proved almost impossible to get the money back. This caused panic among depositors, and most tried to withdraw their money without success. The effect was to undermine the economy and drain Venezuela’s already dwindling cash reserves. The Venezuelan economy has never really recovered.

What of the working class? It can only get worse for them. And they have always existed in poverty. Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, is a huge city of modern high rise buildings, mixed with many building which are in desperate need of repair. But even the people who live in these dilapidated apartments are “lucky” compared with the people who reside in the ranchos ringing the city, and in the mountains around the city. They only have run-down shacks. As in most of the world, the majority of the people in Caracas are poor.

The present, and the future, is indeed grim unless the workers of Venezuela, as elsewhere, rouse themselves and organise for the replacement of the present system by a new world-wide system of production for use and the satisfaction of individual and social needs. There really is no viable alternative.

Peter E. Newell

World View: Bogeyman or diversion? (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

By now, most will be aware that on 20 August the US carried out air-strikes against alleged “terrorist facilities” in Afghanistan and Sudan and that the launch of 75 Tomahawk missiles was reputedly a response to bomb attacks on US embassies in Africa orchestrated by rogue Saudi millionaire-cum-terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Islamic International Front Against Jews and Crusaders.

Likewise, most will be familiar now with the popular view that the US air strikes were in fact an attempt by the Clinton regime to get the Monica Lewinsky story off the front page. And if you’re into conspiracy theories, then you will have chanced upon the one that has the US bombing its own embassies to provide it with the pretext to attack militant Islam.

But would Clinton and his Joint Chiefs of Staff be so blatant as to carry out such military strikes while his sexual excesses were being contemplated by a Grand Jury, or is there a larger game plan?

The entire episode seems to have been sparked by testimony allegedly extracted from Mohamed Saddiq Omeh, a Palestinian and friend of bin Laden, extradited from Pakistan by the FBI and CIA in the wake of the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salem bombings, caught en-route to Afghanistan. Not that bin Laden had helped matters He had, after all, issued a fatwa against US interests back in February.

Whether bin Laden is actually behind the bombings in Africa is anyone’s guess, but in the perpetual US hunt for new bogey-men to protect us from he certainly warranted a punishment beating. And why not? Afghanistan is, after all, one of the poorest countries on earth with little means of defending itself against a more powerful enemy. It is a country of which 90 per cent is controlled by the much feared Taliban, pursuing a Pushtu version of Islam that makes Iran look secular. And is not Afghanistan too close for comfort to the oil fields of the Middle East and the Caspian?

At a time when upstarts in North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and Iraq have been thumbing their noses at the US, the attacks carried out by the US may best be explained as a message to bogeymen, one and all, perhaps Islam in particular, not to get ideas above their station. It can also be interpreted as a message to the possessors of the new “Islamic Bomb”, an unstable Pakistani regime heading towards shariah law, and to anyone else paying attention: “the US is still in charge. Don’t fool with our interests.”

In the past, too many countries have found themselves as US patsies, the threats to global peace we all needed defending from: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba to name a few.

The episode, coming at the close of the 20th century, is also a timely reminder to the world, no matter how much we wish to dispute it, that the US will, as has been the case for 50 years, be calling the shots in the 21st Century. Britain has, for half a century, danced the trans-Atlantic tune with most of Europe happy to hum along.

In the wake of the Sudanese bombing there was no shortage of western experts, many who had actually worked at the now levelled Shifa pharmaceutical plant, prepared to come forward to counter US intelligence claims that the factory produced nothing more than harmless medicines, many intended for Iraq, and that the VX nerve gas precursors, allegedly found by US agents in soil samples taken at the factory, are also used in the manufacture of beer and cherry-flavoured sweets.

Though Clinton claimed the US had “irrefutable proof” that Shifa was producing nerve gas, the FBI refused to make soil samples available to a wider body of international experts. And guess, incidentally, which country has the biggest stockpile of VX nerve gas? Yup, the US have 1,700 tons stockpiled at the Newport weapons depot in Indiana.

As could be expected, the US was quick to cite Article 51 of the UN Charter, as they have done so many times in the past, as justification for the 20 August attacks. Properly interpreted, however, Article 51 applies to situations when the state is in imminent danger and when there is no time to consult the UN Security Council.

Obviously, the US itself was not in imminent danger and the issue could easily have been discussed at the Security Council. Moreover, the UN action flies in the face of a UN Resolution of April 1964, adopted by the Security Council, and which states unambiguously that such reprisals are “incompatible with the purpose and principles of the UN”.

So it’s a bold claim indeed when Clinton asserts that the US is leading the fight against international terrorism, for if ever any country could be labelled the world’s number one terrorist state then it is the US.

Not only have the US supported tyrants like Saddam, Ceaucescu, Trujillo, Marcos, Amin, Duvalier and Mobutu, they have backed the Contras in Nicaragua and financed terrorist proxies from El Salvador and Guatemala to Israel. For almost 40 years they have terrorised Cuba and Indochina, backing the Khmer Rouge for instance, and in this period the CIA have helped topple almost 30 governments.

Indeed, it was not so long ago—during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, that the CIA were hailing bin Laden and the Mojahedin as great freedom fighters, supplying them with blow-pipe surface-to-air missiles, building camps in Khast, distributing US Marine training manuals and providing info on Soviet troop movements.

What effects the air strikes will have on those in direst need in Afghanistan and Sudan remains to be seen. As US flags continue to burn across the Islamic world, and as the voices of preachers continue to boom out anti-Western sentiments in a myriad mosques, we are left with two choices. We can settle down in our arm chairs and follow the interminable discussions about the Lewinsky affair or we can contemplate the real nature of the politics of power and unite to take it away from those who will always use it to further the interests of the few, at the expense of the many.

John Bissett

Paying the Piper (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Roy Jenkins was a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer who was fond of good food and fine wines and elegant houses but who was always ready to denounce us for any tendency towards what he saw as extravagance. So in between his visits to the posher restaurants and country homes he would threaten us about the consequences of wage rises above the miserly level set by him. This all went to build up his reputation as a brilliantly successful Chancellor.

His first attempt to get into parliament was in late 1944, when he was one of the two main contestants for the Labour candidacy in Aston, Birmingham. Jenkins lost—according to the successful contender this was because when they were at Birmingham for the selection Jenkins stayed at the Queens Hotel, which was famous for its extravagant chandeliers while the winner put up at the house of the local party secretary—a back-to-back house with an outside lavatory.

As far as Jenkins goes, the rest is history but we may wonder what became of that secretary. If he is still alive, has he kept his enthusiasm for the Labour Party, in spite of all he must have seen of their failure to change capitalism as they promised and the deceit they practised to justify that failure? If he is dead, what does he think of New Labour? Of the Blair dictatorship within the party? Of the grovelling toadies who have abandoned what they once called their principles in the hope of pleasing their leader? Does he turn in a back-to-back grave somewhere, at the knowledge of Blair’s wealthy cronies, people whose money has bought them an entry into Number Ten, perhaps a seat in the House of Lords, certainly favours for their investments?

Sponsors

An important element in the creation of New Labour was the move away from the unions, to re-assure the voters that never again would there be a Winter of Discontent. But of course this would leave a big hole in the party’s finances; they have been spending money at about £8 million a year and the last election cost them £13.7 million. This was where all those years of doing the Prawn Cocktail Circuit, of cosying up to City bigwigs, of ironing out the doubts of wealthy capitalists that Blair’s Labour would not look after their interests, paid off. That hole in the balance sheet has been substantially filled by cash from a large monied band of what are evasively known as sponsors.

Leading the way in these is Lord Levy, fundraiser supreme, who has induced all manner of industrialists, investors, entrepreneurs, pop stars and the like to cough up for Labour. Levy is himself a millionaire whose money was made in the music trade. Among the people he persuaded to “sponsor” the Labour Party was Lord Sainsbury—ennobled by Blair—who needs no introduction especially to the millions who trail through his supermarkets day-after-day under the impression that this is where Good Food Costs Less, even if it does contribute to the £411 million profit the firm made during the last half-year. The Sainsburys are said to be the richest family in the country, worth about £3,300 million. So they could easily afford their contribution to New Labour, estimated at £3 million over three years. The company have suddenly discovered, after all that time, that such gifts break their “ethical guidelines”-according to a spokesman ” . . . could easily be interpreted as a political donation . . .” as if it were ever possible to interpret them in any other way. So Sainsbury plc no longer give to the Labour Party.

Then there is the matter less well known Lakshanu Mittal, who is big in steel—like his father before him. Mittal is in the habit of buying steel mills all over the world; he is worth about £2,000 million which makes him about the third richest person in England. Another lesser known (for the present at any rate) donator is Robert Earl, who represents a lot that is most grisly about Blair’s Britain as he substantially owns a lot of restaurants including the Planet Hollywood chain. Earl’s wealth is put at $450 million; the £1 million he gave the Labour Party came in handy because it replaced the money the party had to return, shamefaced, to Bernie Ecclestone of tobacco-ads on Formula One cars fame.

Convert

Among the converts to Blair’s brand of Tory policies is Alan Sugar, who is now famous less as the founder of an electronics and computer empire than as the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur. Sugar has wide-ranging investments and is estimated to be worth £221 million; he is thought to have given £100,000 to New Labour. He was once a firm supporter of Margaret Thatcher, who is now a firm supporter of Tony Blair so we can see that Sugar has not really changed his view of politics; indeed he didn’t have to.

New Labour recently published a list of people and companies who had given them more than £5,000. There are 134 of them—pop stars, publishers, property tycoons, advertising people, industrialists. It is a fair bet that at the most a very small number of them gave their money because they thought this would help change society for the better. The rest—the people and firms who took a more realistic view, who knew what they were spending their money on—want to promote the Labour Party because they know that at present it is the party which best represents their interests in Britain. This means they know it is the party which best protects their wealth and their standing in society and which will keep up the system where one class lives a life of opulent chandeliers while the majority effectively makes do.

Ivan

After Darwin (1998)

Theatre Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Darwin by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Hampstead Theatre.

Timberlake Wertenbaker, perhaps best known for her inspirational play about the transportation of prisoners to Australia, Our Country’s Good, now offers After Darwin, another drama set mainly in the 19th century. I say “mainly” because Wertenbaker both follows Darwin’s famous voyage on the Beagle—noting the cataclysmic effects of his discoveries on the ship’s captain, FitzRoy, a man of absolute religious conviction—and she also offers these insights as scenes from a play which we see in rehearsal in contemporary Britain.

The play abounds in irony and paradox. FitzRoy is scrupulous in his precise, scientific observations, but cannot accept the validity of Darwin’s observations and inferences, because they undermine the basis of his belief in God. Later, however, he was to become one of the founding fathers of the modern science of meteorology. And he it was who named those familiar weather zones around Britain: Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, etc. By comparison Darwin’s own observations are often short on facts and full of value judgments. Moreover, when faced with evidence pointing to the evolution of species he is careful not to place himself in an exposed, heretical position. Rather he uses the discoveries of other scientists as props and supports. FitzRoy, who is clear that the nature of human kind has been fixed immutably by God, nevertheless believes that the “poor wretches” he finds in distant parts of South America, are capable of infinite adaptability. The Beagle carries sets of exotic cutlery, embroidered antimacassars, copies of novels of Jane Austen, etc, which will be used in an attempt to resocialise the natives. Darwin is hot on the fight against slavery, but indifferent to the native people he confronts seeing them as “abject, filthy and ugly”. When reminded by FitzRoy that they are human beings, Darwin retorts, “I feel closer to these beetles.”

The actor we see playing Darwin turns out to be a disingenuous, feckless rogue, whose behaviour nicely demonstrates the absurdity, not to mention the dangers, of social behaviour which is underpinned by the idea of “the survival of the fittest”. He wishes to abandon the play in favour of appearing in a film of stupendous crassness. He claims he is thus “adapting to his environment” the better to survive. On the other hand the actor playing FitzRoy chooses to be principled, loyal and dependable.

Does Timberlake wish us to take any lessons from this? It is difficult to know. But whatever her intentions by setting the drama as a contemporary play in rehearsal, she leaves the audience wondering about the consequences of applying ideas which seem to have considerable power when explaining the origin of species, as providing a relevant model for social behaviour.

I enjoyed the evening. It is rarely that a play entertains and informs, stimulates and amuses, and leaves its audience with so much to think and talk about later. But I have a cavil, and it is a substantial one.

I can see the attraction of Wertenbaker’s format, especially to a dramatist. Using a rehearsal room performance to inspect both the subject of a drama and the actors’ reaction to it, is an imaginative idea. But if the intention is to look seriously at the world “after Darwin”, perhaps more time needs to be spent looking at the impact of the theory of evolution. What about social engineering, eugenics, the tendency to see human society as a biological system, and to use imperatives derived from the natural sciences to explain social behaviour? Habermas and Marcuse have been keen to point out the dangers of using “scientism” to bolster the ideological basis of capitalism; to reduce matters which properly lie in the province of values, to the merely technical. I would argue that such things are much more central to the world “after Darwin” that those which Wertenbaker seeks to discuss. Wertenbaker’s analysis, enjoyable though it is, is sadly both insufficient and incomplete.

Michael Gill

Letter: Media Manipulation (1998)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Media Manipulation

Dear Editors,

I want this letter published because I believe my voice is not being heard. I want my voice heard because there is nothing so frustrating as not being given a chance to speak.

My subject is this: Princess Diana. Old hat? Maybe. At the time of writing, it has been a year since she died, and by the time you get round to this, it will probably be long gone, but I need to speak.

I was inspired to speak by a radio phone-in on Radio One about Princess Diana and death in general-asking opinions, that kind of thing. I tried to call with my opinions but my efforts proved fruitless. I listened to the calls that were aired. They were all grieving citizens, shocked and saddened by her death, feeling they had lost someone special to them.

All I wanted to say was this: I was surprised when I heard the news, as it is not the kind of thing one expects to happen. But Princess Diana was such a tiny, incidental part of my life—a mere face in the background—that in (literally) a matter of minutes (I can’t really remember how many), I had consigned Diana to the same mental file that held such people as Kurt Cobain—dead people who have had virtually no impact on my life. In other words, my life went on as per usual—in my mind and in what I did.

Then they called off the Top 40 out of respect. It may sound cruel, but this made me angry. Are my interests not as important as the media’s? Someone who I don’t know, never have known and have never been connected to in any way is dead so I have to put my little bit of Sunday pleasure on hold?

Loads of people who I don’t know die all the time. While I write this, while you read this, while you do anything. Millions of people die in their mid-thirties. Millions of people die in agonisingly gory road accidents. So? Would you, or I, or anyone give a flying one about these people if we only barely knew them from a few pictures and stuff someone else has told you. Yeah, you might think “Oh, dear, what an awful shame”, but you wouldn’t cry and send thousands of presents-it’s none of your business. So why does it matter if this person’s rich or royal?

The socialist follow-on from this argument was inevitable. The first socialist point is the money/royal thing of course. The implication from the outpouring of grief is that royal, rich, famous people are all far more worthy of mass mourning than people who are “normal”—if such a thing exists. The logical conclusion is that royal, rich, famous people deserve better treatment in all aspects of life than other people, people who are moderate in money and quiet of life.

I think this media hype about the royals is getting ordinary Joes to view the royal family as demi-gods because of their status. They are the ruling class and if the working class is brainwashed by the media into hero worshipping the rich and famous, they will believe that with them in charge everything’s great and so no need for any kind of change.

The second socialist point is that all the callers to the aforementioned phone-in were Di fans. One man likened her death to losing a sister. Several of them said it had changed the world for the better-since people had become more socially aware and eager for Diana’s charity work to be continued. (The world getting better? The word “bollocks” springs to mind.)

My point is that there were no indifferent people. There were no anti-royals. Where are they? Surely some must exist. I saw “Diana-the mourning after” on Channel 4 and there I saw people who thought how I did. Where were those people?

The first possibility is that people were put off from phoning with those kind of views because they thought they wouldn’t be listened to. This is an example of how people can be forced to give up through the use (by others) of the powerful capitalist weapon of “not taking any notice”. They try, try, try and fail, fail, fail. Not everyone is strong enough to continue.

The second idea is that people got through to a researcher, said what they intended to say on air and were “refused access”. The calls were screened. They don’t want those kinds of nasty views dirtying up the airwaves. This is censorship, which only promotes one image of Britain. The world as we know it. Thus, the media can convince people they are alone in feeling like this. No-one wants to be alone, so they conform because they are scared of being noticed or hated or whatever may happen if you stand out. People will be convinced also that it is wrong to be different. This is probably because lone people and titchy other radical groups cannot be controlled with the great mass and so present a terrible inconvenience. Being different and alone is therefore wrong. People must conform. This worry about if you are weird stops you from worrying if the system is weird. Plus they can make you buy things to make you look less weird! Profits up!

Celia Gardner , 

St. Austell, Cornwall

Reply:

We hope you like the article “Digging up the dead” in our September issue.

Electronic democracy (1998)

Pamphlet Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Autonarchy, the Ultimate Democracy. By Akiva Orr. Pamphlet can be downloaded from: http://www/autonarchy.org.il

Autonarchy, a word coined by Orr himself, means literally “self-rule” which in his view can be achieved by instituting what he calls “Magnetic Card Direct Democracy”. Every citizen would have a magnetic card and their own PIN number and all telephones, public as well as private, would be equipped with a device to read these cards. This would enable people to register their votes, which could be counted almost instanteously, on any policy issue put before them (Orr in fact argues that all policy decisions should be made in this way). Questions requiring a policy decision would be drawn up as a range of options by experts in the particular field concerned or proposed by a minimum number of citizens. A special TV channel would be devoted to discussing the pros and cons of the various proposals for policy decision which citizens could look at before deciding which way to vote.

Orr adds some other refinements but the basic idea is clear. Modern communications technology has opened up the possibility for mass participation in decision-making:

“The revolutionary changes in communications technology make it possible, for the first time in history, to sum up millions of decisions taken far apart into a single total in seconds and to display this continuously on millions of TV screens. Political decision-making by millions of people is now possible”.

This is undoubtedly true and some socialists have suggested that it could be used extensively in socialism. Certainly, socialism would be the best framework for such an “electronic democracy” and no doubt this will be incorporated into the democratic decision-making procedures which will be a feature of socialism. Whether people will want to go as far as Orr appears to and have “magnetic card direct democracy” as the only such procedure appears more doubtful as “indirect” elected delegate democracy also has its advantages. Not all decisions can be reduced to a simple “yes-or-no” question, nor can people spend all their time voting.

Orr puts forward his proposal as a move “beyond capitalism, socialism, anarchism”. While he understands the drawbacks of capitalism and anarchism well enough, he misunderstands socialism as “state ownership and rule by a socialist party”. This is not what we would recognise as socialism but is rather state capitalism.

Adam Buick

All academic (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Economic Cycles by Solomos Solomou, Manchester University Press, 1998. £10.99

What should be a fascinating book about capitalism’s enigmatic trade cycle is marred by the academic pretentiousness of the author. How could it be otherwise with a writer whose egocentricity extends to the point whereby the citations for his own works on economic cycles are greater in number than those for Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter, Kondratieff and Kuznets added together? That this book is part of Manchester University Press’s Insights From Economic History series makes this all the more remarkable and fantastic.

Solomou’s own particular insight into the boom-slump economy is that “the idea that business cycles can come to an end seems naive. Today we realise that economic fluctuations are part of economic life. Moreover, as we have a better understanding of concepts of equilibrium in economics, it is clear that the path of business cycles is not predictable”. Quite an “insight” indeed, only 150 years or so after Marx first said just about the same thing!

Students of the business cycle and of economic history would, frankly, be far better off reading some of the original texts of the various business cycle theorists, or, at the very least, some of the serious works written about them and their analyses. They would be better off too with a spread of the more intelligible contemporary accounts rendered by authors like Galbraith, Kindleberger and Beckman than with this scramble of convoluted academic-ese. They should also remember that while the precise course of the boom-slump cycle of capitalism is notoriously unpredictable, this does not mean that there are no observable tendencies about the development of capitalism at all, or for that matter, that the trade cycle and its devastating impact on human lives will be with us for evermore. The trade cycle can be abolished once and for all when the working class consciously organises to abolish trade, money, prices and profits altogether.

Dave Perrin

Buddhism—a big zero (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism by David Edwards, Green Books, 228 pages, £9.99.

It is well worth reading this book, or at least around two-thirds of it. Much of Edwards’s work revolves around an incisive analysis of US foreign policy and the nature and operation of the media industry.

The sheer scale of what successive American governments have done to further the “national interest” (i.e. the creation of market-friendly world conditions overseen by effective client states) is exposed at some length. From the installation by military coups and coercion of murderous regimes throughout the South and Central Americas, to the subsequent official training and funding of the state death squads of those regimes, to the more indirect support given to other “friendly nations” (Algeria, Indonesia etc) who maintain conditions favourable to US capital through mass murder; the whole story of America’s fight for “democracy and freedom” is shown in all its bloody reality. Indeed, if you were so inclined, you could write a whole new chapter on it every month of every year. You could include the headings “Panama” and “Somalia”, two other parts of Planet Capitalism where the World’s Copper has recently been to restore Law and Order. In both, atrocious destruction and loss of civilian life was the result. However, for public consumption these onslaughts were labelled “removing dictatorship” (installed, incidentally, by the US) and “peace-keeping”—labelled and packaged for the proles by the media, that is.

Which brings us to Edwards’s analysis of the role of the media, which he credits largely to Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. Essentially, hideous acts of state terrorism are generally presented as noble quests for justice, not because of some conspiracy or official state censorship, but because of the basic operation of capitalism. It’s all about money after all: the ruthless securing of markets, trade routes, raw materials to make the world safe for the profit system-and the media (as it is vaguely termed) is part of that system. Edwards puts it well:

“The modern mass media is not, as some . . . like to remark, controlled by corporations; it is corporations. Businesses do not control the car industry; the car industry is big business. Likewise, the media is made up of large corporations, all in the business of maximising profits . . . This immediately suggests that, at the very least, media corporations might have a tendency to be sympathetic to the status quo, to other corporations, and to the profit-maximising motive of the corporate system . . .” (p.62).

Far from some Orwellian vision of state control ITN, the Guardian, and pals are voluntarily “on message” because this is in the long-term interest of their product. Although the odd “exposé” of “scandals” is acceptable (the cleaning up of the system’s image can only make it more secure after all), an attack on the foundations of their system is unimaginable. As Edwards puts it, the media operates in such a way as to ensure that “something remains ‘missing in the middle'”. By their very nature media corporations could hardly provide their consumers with the missing analysis that links corporations and western governments with massacres in Guatemala and starving children.

Sad to say that after an approach such as this the final third of Edwards’s book is so infuriating. The contrast actually seems disconcertingly odd, but then this reviewer is a socialist. I will restrain myself from actual anger if only because Edwards informs us that the “real enemy . . . is anger itself”. Earlier he identifies problems, such as the rape of Latin America, and their cause: capitalism. His conclusion, though, is not the abolition of that system; and therefore the book’s title is misleading. Edwards counsels that we, as individuals, practice compassion and meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Rather than urging us to relieve the capitalist class of their power to oppress and destroy us he advises us to pity and nurture them, because then they will surely stop their anti-human activities.

To summarise, he argues that “rich and poor are united by suffering” and that if the rich became a bit kinder by way of the individual promotion of “compassion for . . . both rich and poor”, then our problems would just melt away.

So what has Buddhism got to do with revolution? Nothing at all apparently, as Edwards sees nothing wrong with the rule of a parasitic elite, just as long as they are nice about it, and the approach he suggests can only lead to the continuation of the abusive system he has previously bemoaned. Compassion for the bosses? This book itself contains enough reasons why we should give the lot of them the boot immediately.

Ben Malcolm

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Film Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Saving Private Ryan. Director: Steven Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg’s latest film is a distressing and harrowing account of one part of the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 in World War Two, and one particular mission that followed. The plot is based on a true event. It concerns a group of American soldiers, led in the film by Tom Hanks, who have to find and “save” a Private James Ryan. Ryan’s three brothers have all just been killed in action and to ensure that their mother has at least one son left alive it is decided to send the one surviving brother home.

What has attracted so much attention about this film is the initial 25 minutes, where we are thrown straight into chaos of one part of the D-Day invasion without any introduction to the characters. One of the invasion beaches, code-name Omaha, was a disaster for the young Americans that were chosen for the first wave of attack. As soon as the invading boats let down their doors all hell broke loose, with the sea becoming a blood bath. But words cannot convey what Spielberg shows, we can only witness it on screen. Much debate has centred on how true his depiction is, although many survivors believe it to be authentic, with some veterans claiming that the reality was even worse. After the initial battle the film settles down into developing the main characters and the story of how they find Ryan. Eventually the film is climaxed by another battle, almost as sickening as the first.

Whilst Spielberg can always be relied upon to tell a good story, albeit without much subtlety, I found Private Ryan sometimes unsure of itself on the issues it raised. Spielberg admits this was deliberate as he wants his audience to draw their own conclusions. On two occasions the American flag is seen flying, but it’s not one we are used to. It is faded and grey so that we can barely make out the colours but the significance of this is uncertain. One theme in the film appears to be the question of the value of saving one man when so many others are being slaughtered. Another is the possibility of humans behaving decently when death is always a threat. What the film does not directly question is the purpose of the war or its justification. It cannot even be said that the film is, in itself, anti-war despite its violence and loss of life. For that stance we have to re-visit films like Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 classic Paths of Glory, which also has class as a theme as it contrasts the poverty of ordinary soldiers with their generals living in luxury. As socialists we always question why a war is being fought. Invariably it is bound up with ownership and control of a particular part of the world. As ordinary people do not share in the benefits of this ownership and control we have always taken the position they should not get involved in fighting any war. Spielberg does not address any of this.

Where the film does succeed more is in its depiction of “human nature”. Socialists are sometimes confronted with the argument that war is, at least, party caused by “human nature”. That we are naturally aggressive and that conflicts come easy to us. Spielberg shows this to be nonsense. His men kill but only because they know no other way. On the beach they do not thrive as individuals-they are lost, isolated in a situation that is alien to them. All they fight for is the chance to get back home, and when they get shot they cry out helplessly, almost pathetically, for their mothers. At the same time when Ryan is found and has the chance to escape home he chooses to stay, not because he wants to fight but rather he cannot bear to desert his comrades. Such a noble portrayal of people has nothing in common with those that argue that we are aggressive, selfish creatures always concerned with looking after our individual interests.

Even as I write this review 48 hours after seeing the film, the images of grotesque suffering still stray painfully into mind. Spielberg doesn’t glorify the fighting or lean towards cynicism, he merely attempts to recreate experiences as close to reality as possible. It is left to us to condemn what happened, which is just as well because if we are to stop the threat of future war then it is only us that can do it. Film-makers can portray and interpret history but ultimately we must draw our own conclusions. Many of us, particularly the younger generations, will be filled with bitter incomprehension that as a society we can allow such atrocities to happen, along with great determination that a society that breeds such conflicts should never be tolerated.

G. T.

On The Box (1998)

TV Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last Friday I found myself in a television studio feeling unable to take part in what was going around me without wanting to throw up. I am seldom at a loss for words, but I am struggling now to describe this programme with any degree of objectivity or enthusiasm. I wouldn't know whether to call it a game show or a quiz show. And I am still not quite sure what the point of it was. True the information I had received on it had not endeared it to me long before I was due to take my place, along with three other socialists, in the studio audience. I rarely watch programmes of this ilk. A woman representing the Audience Research Unit had promised me we would be involved in a lively debate. Now I think I could be forgiven for believing this might lead to an opportunity to voice ideas sympathetic to socialist thinking. I didn't know then that the studio audience had been—how can I put it? — manipulated.

We arrived at the television centre several hours before the programme was due to go out, whereupon we were ushered upstairs, along corridors, round corners until we finally reached a place called "hospitality", but which looked like a works canteen. We were invited to help ourselves to tea and coffee. I jokingly asked if we got a glass of wine. Sharon from the Audience Research Unit told me "We can't run to that." I bet they "ran to it" for the guest celebrities. Someone called out names from a list and about six people marched off to another part of the building. The same people turned up later, already in place in the studio, and did most of the talking once the programme had got underway. And I had thought it was going to be a free for all. What naivete on my part; but this was my first time ever on television. Of course this did not necessarily mean we could not voice our opinions, but what it did mean to us was that having once discovered that people had been previously singled out for their contribution, and having realised also that the programme was tasteless and a load of rubbish to boot, we became hard put not to sit in the front row of the studio audience with arms folded and wearing, each of us, expressions of doom. It was so awful.

This is what was on offer. A panel of three celebrities (one of them describing herself as a "socialist anarchist" in some information handed out to us), a studio audience taken from a cross-section of the public, a well-known name to "host" the programme, and a chair reminiscent of the Mastermind hot seat. Three people in the news that week had been asked along to occupy the chair, one at a time. Each member of the panel would ask questions of the newsworthy guest with the intention, I think, of making him squirm. The audience got its turn, but the people who had been primed beforehand spoke first and had the most to say. Anyone lucky enough to get in after that was often cut short so that the next chair guest could be introduced. But not before we had voted. We were asked to hold up a card with an H on one side and a V on the other. H for hero, V for villain. Such responsibility! We three didn't bother, except that I did vote once in an attempt to look as though I was joining in. Debate was very limited before we were expected to make that all-important decision as to whether the chair guest was a hero or a villain. One contestant for the chair was the landlord of a pub who had incurred local disapproval for wishing to employ male strippers on his premises. The host went to town on this one with a line in jokes and puns on male genitalia, the kind of which I had given up laughing at when I was thirteen years old, and I didn't laugh much then either. "Turkey's giblets" was one of the expressions used. It was all so pathetic that my fellow-socialists and I looked at our watches and yawned. It was going to be some time before we could repair to the pub.

It is no wonder that when the programme went out the cameras seemed to have missed the three of us. We could be seen as three blurred images. It was obvious that someone in authority had given us the thumbs down. What self-respecting producer, concerned for his ratings, is going to allow shots to be taken of three people who look as though they are taking part in a mass suicide? What a relief. Who wants acquaintances coming up to them in the street the next day saying "I saw you on telly last night" when in reality that turned out to be the last place they ever wanted to be. And talking of reality-that little square box in the corner of our living room is not reality whatever else anyone thinks it is. Even members of the celebrity panel looked bored and lethargic and they were getting paid. Since we live in a world where money is the name of the game then perhaps audiences should be paid too. Not that a freebie could ever be any inducement for me to take part in such tripe.

Heather Ball

The Algebra of Revolution (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Algebra of Revolution. The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition. By John Rees. Routledge. £14.99.

We in the Socialist Party have always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards "dialectics" mainly because of the use that was made of it by the old Communist Party to justify its policy zigzags on the grounds that "progress proceeds through contradictions". On the other hand, it was a term used by Marx and Engels.

The concept was first introduced by the German philosopher Hegel who died in 1831. This was as part of his religious view of the world. However, shorn of the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo Hegel surrounded it with, dialectics means that, in analysing the world and society, you start from the basis that nothing has an independent, separate existence of its own but is an inter-related and interdependent part of some greater whole (ultimately the whole universe) which is in a process of constant change.

This is a fairly widespread view today (sometimes called "holism") and can even be said to have been incorporated into mainstream scientific method. "Holism", however, is only partly the same as "dialectics" as dialectics brings in another factor: contradiction. Hence Rees's definition that it is "an internally contradictory totality in a constant process of change".

Hegel was, in philosophical terms, an Idealist who saw social systems as being a reflection of the "spirit of the age" as he called the dominant ideas of the people living in them. Applying his theory to the development of society, he argued that social change came about as a result of internal contradictions within the "spirit of the age" leading to people developing a new such spirit and a corresponding new system of society.

Marx took over this idea of social development through contradiction but, as he himself once put it, he turned Hegel upside down (or rather put him back on his feet again) by making the basis of society, not the "spirit of the age" but "the way in which people are organised to produce society's means of life"; as this changed-through the internal contradiction of conflict between classes with antagonistic interests-so did the social system.

This of course is the materialist conception of history which Marx and Engels first worked out in 1844-45 in some notebooks published after their deaths as The German Ideology and which Marx summarised in the 1859 Preface to his A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy.

Rees's discussion of the influence of Hegel's ideas and terminology on Marx and Engels is competent enough. As to the others, our criticism would be of his selection of those to include in "the classical Marxist tradition". As a leading member of the SWP Rees is not in this tradition himself. Anyone who adheres to Lenin's theory of the vanguard party-which is such a fundamental departure from Marx's own view both of the intellectual capabilities of the working class and of how workers should organise to establish socialism-puts themselves outside the Marxist tradition. They are Leninists not Marxists.

This means that the last of those discussed by Rees to come into the Marxist tradition were Rosa Luxemburg (who Rees specifically criticises for not supporting a vanguard party) and Karl Kautsky. If the book had lived up to its sub-title, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs and Gramsci (the last two thinkers constructed convoluted philosophical defences of the supposed need for a vanguard party) would have been replaced by Joseph Dietzgen (who was the first to use the term "dialectical materialism"), Antonio Labriola, (whose Essays in the Materialist Conception of History only gets a brief mention because Trotsky happened to have read it) and Anton Pannekoek (author of brilliant criticism of Lenin called Lenin As Philosopher which Rees dismisses in a footnote). All three had interesting and relevant-and different-things to say about dialectics.

Adam Buick

The politics of joining (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who know us must have noticed that we don't go out of our way to recruit members. Some would say we do just the opposite. At first sight, we seem to have the oddest approach to recruitment of any political party in existence-we have a test for membership.

Applicants are only accepted if members of a branch, not excluding those who joined the week before, are satisfied by the answers to their questions about what we stand for, and the applicant's understanding of it. Now what we stand for isn't particularly hard. We often say that it's easier to learn than the rules of football. But hard or not, why do we insist on this test? Surely it must put some people off? Well, that may be, but we can't help it.

One can always dismiss this peculiar feature of our case-and the test of socialist understanding itself is part of the case-as mere sectarian elitism. Perhaps, like the People's Front of Judaea in the celebrated satire Life of Brian, we simply don't want people to join, and we don't want to grow, because that would spoil our little club, as it were. Our detractors will certainly say this, and worse.

But let us consider for a moment what happens when people join other groups which don't have this test. Actually, they face a test nonetheless, and one which takes a lot longer and is far harder to pass than ours. For a significant sub-text behind every statement and action that members make in these groups is the exchange of political credentials. In this subtle transaction, which may take any number of forms, the objective is always the same, that the individual is perceived as being "all right". The individual is therefore judged by the group according to a range of what might be called "credential indicators".

Why does this "judging" process take place? Simply because every group is afraid of internal divisions which might destroy it-one reason why debate may be actively avoided-and credential indicators can be viewed as a kind of defence mechanism against this. Power and influence is universally denied to new members, whether officially or unofficially, until judgment is reached, and judgment can take a long time when indicators are unvoiced, subtle, multifarious and hard to inspect. In addition, counter-indicators may be present, or arise accidentally, which will further delay conclusions and further marginalise the member.

So what are these indicators? Obviously the most appropriate of these are the "theoretical" ones. For example, saying that you hate capitalism is a powerful credential indicator to another anti-capitalist. But taken alone it is inconclusive. After all, some fascists claim to be anti-capitalist. Or you might just like the idea of feudalism. Similarly, being against the money system does not exclude the possibility that you favour a barter system-a retrograde step-and being anti-state is a sentiment shared by many rightwing freemarketeers. Animal rights might imply you care nothing for human rights while eco-politics might, or might not, ignore the concept of class struggle. What is needed of course is a coherent approach, but in groups where formal debate is not regularly practised this is very often lacking.

Unofficial indicators

In place of or supplementary to formal "theoretical" indicators one can often find other indicators which may be even more powerful for being unvoiced. Dress can be a strong credential indicator. In groups where young people predominate, the habitual styles of dress will tend to become familiar, and departures from these styles-say a three-piece suit-will stand out as incongruous, odd and perhaps suspect. Older people with differing dress styles therefore present the wrong indicators to such groups.

Language and dialect have been used, especially in Britain, where accent denotes cultural status to a great extent. If the group ethic leans heavily towards the stylised "working class" image, posh accents and Received Pronunciation (i.e. BBC English) are definitely out. This can give rise to speech changes among members.

These two powerful credential indicators work more at the unconscious than the conscious level. Nevertheless new members may be acutely aware of them, and, feeling that they are perpetually on trial, be disposed to change their behaviour, language and dress in order to fit in. This can then give rise to phoney displays intended to impress, and self-conscious reluctance to speak out or assert oneself.

An indicator which is, by contrast, highly articulated, is education, or rather erudition in theoretical matters relating to the group. If the way to be accepted by the group is perceived as being this kind of expertise, the group will not attract anyone but amateur academics who are constantly trying to prove how clever they are.

There are any number of other indicators that may be applied. Even musical taste can be used, or social mannerisms, or background, or income. But very rarely do they spring from deliberate and dishonest policy on the part of the group. People don't mean to keep checking each other out, but it is inevitable that they do so, because the process of social bonding requires a measure of trust and mutual compatibility that makes effective organisation possible.

One indicator is quite deliberate, however. Heavily in use by the leftwing is the indicator of commitment. According to this indicator, hard work and obedience by new members is the main criterion of trustworthiness in the organisation. In these hierarchical, "top-down" groups the leaders wish at all costs to remain the leaders, and reward only those with proven commitment to the "party line" with preferential treatment, more responsibility and more say. New members who present the wrong indicators remain peripheral to the party structure, and finding themselves unable to influence decision-making at any level, eventually give up and leave, often embittered by the hard work they put in and the hollowness of the party's claims of equality and democracy.

The Socialist Party does not need these indicators, because we choose to get the whole business done with and out of the way first, upon application to join. As far as we are concerned, our test of socialist understanding settles the matter once and for all, and in an honest and friendly way. Even applicants who are rejected are strongly encouraged to continue the dialogue, and very often are accepted at a later date when the disagreements are resolved. Once a member, you have the same rights as the oldest member to sit on any committee, vote, speak, and have access to all information. Thanks to the test all members are conscious socialists and there is genuine internal democracy, and of that we are fiercely proud.

One other result of our test is that, whereas many groups are identifiably linked to social niches, it's quite hard to find two Socialist Party members who are alike in any respect apart from their political viewpoint. The first Party Conference any new member attends is invariably a revelation, as they gaze out at a motley assortment of tradespeople, pensioners, hippies, housewives, cockneys, academics, salesmen, musicians, unemployed, ethnic minorities, dockers and doctors. The "typical Socialist" doesn't exist, except in popular myth. This is as it should be, for all the above are members of the working class.

Paddy Shannon