Socialist Sonnet No. 240: Punch and Judy Man (2026)

 From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Punch and Judy Man

 The tide ebbs and flows in Clacton,

Waves advance, pause and then retreat,

Quite unmoved by human conceit

Enjoying the fresh air and fun.

It’s not beyond Westminster’s reach

The squabbling for office and place,

Where everyone’s more than one face.

There’s to be drama on the beach,

A show that’s seemingly funny

And yet is actually grotesque,

The character behind the mask

Only performs for the money.

Once you given all you can spare

You’ll find he is not really there.

D. A.

 

Blogger's Note:

A sonnet prompted by Nigel Farage resigning his parliamentary seat in Clacton, in order that a bye-election is triggered, which he will then fight on a 'Let the people of Clacton decide' platform - I'm paraphrasing, of course. All rather silly.

Editorial: The same difference (2026)

Editorial from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

So Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has won the Makerfield by-election and can now challenge Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party. If he wins, he will become the new Prime Minister. So what?

Marx famously pointed out that governments are ‘a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. In Britain the Prime Minister is the chairperson of this committee which doesn’t have to be composed of actual capitalists. In Marx’s day most British Prime Ministers were not capitalists but landed aristocrats but this was acceptable as long as they managed things in the general interest of the capitalist class. In the course of the last century committee members and chairs came to be drawn from a pool of professional politicians who could come from any background. This, too, was acceptable and is the norm today.

All the governments there have been in Britain, whether Conservative or Labour or, earlier, Liberal, or a coalition of two or all three of them, have managed the common affairs of the owning class in the interests of that class. The first duty of any government is to guarantee and enforce the ownership rights of capitalists over the means of production. The second has been to ensure that priority is given to the making and accumulation of profits. These — class ownership and production for profit —are the basis of capitalism and no government has ever challenged them.

Governments have a free hand on narrowly political matters such as the structure of the state machine or what is a crime but, when it comes to the economy, its power is limited by the nature of the capitalist economy as one that runs on profits. If, in its taxation or trade or tariff or employment policies, it goes against this, then sooner or later it will provoke an economic downturn and the risk of the resulting popular discontent leading to it being voted out of office and a rival set of politicians taking over. This is enough to keep governments in line with the general capitalist interest. The Labour Party learned this the hard way while the Conservative and Liberals didn’t need to be taught it. The Green Party has yet to learn it.

If the government has to respect and apply the economic laws of capitalism then it is not all that important who is the chairperson of the board of directors of UK Capitalism PLC. It is true that there can a bad government from a capitalist point of view — one that doesn’t competently manage the common affairs of the capitalist class — and an incompetent chairperson, such as the over-confident Truss or the bumbling Starmer, can contribute to this. But that’s a problem for the capitalist class, not the workers.

Whether Starmer or Burnham is Prime Minister is not going to make the slightest difference to the workers’ subordinate position in society nor solve the problems this brings them.

Editorial: Stop blaming politicians (2026)

Editorial from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Public debate today is obsessed with personalities. Political life is reduced to a revolving cast of individuals who are either demonised as the source of society’s problems or celebrated as its saviours. Few illustrate this better than Donald Trump.

But focusing on individuals like Trump misses the central issue. He is not an anomaly, nor the cause of the problems people associate with him. He is a product of the system in which he operates.

Modern society is organised around production for profit, competition, and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a minority. At the heart of this system lies the wage relationship: the majority of people must sell their ability to work in order to live, while a minority owns and controls the means of producing wealth.

This is where exploitation occurs—not as an exception, but as a normal feature of the system. Workers produce more value than they receive back in wages, and that surplus is taken as profit. It is this process that generates wealth at one pole and insecurity at the other.

Within this framework, politics is not a neutral arena. Governments, regardless of who leads them, are compelled to maintain the conditions for profitable production. This limits what any politician can do. They may differ in style, rhetoric, or policy details, but they operate within the same economic constraints.

In such conditions, it is hardly surprising that figures emerge who are aggressive, self-promoting, and skilled at channelling frustration. They speak to real discontent—but redirect it away from the structure of society and towards scapegoats, rivals, or personalities.

The public, meanwhile, is encouraged to focus on those personalities. Outrage is directed at individuals, elections are framed as moral contests, and political engagement becomes a matter of choosing sides. This keeps attention away from the wage system itself—the very mechanism that produces inequality, instability, and recurring dissatisfaction.

Whether it is Trump or any other political figure, the pattern remains. Different individuals come and go, but the underlying relationship between those who work for wages and those who live from profit continues unchanged.

From this perspective, attacking individual politicians is not only insufficient, it is a distraction. It creates the illusion that replacing one leader will solve problems that are rooted in how society is organised at a much deeper level.

As long as the wage system remains—where the majority must work for wages and a minority appropriates the surplus—inequality and conflict are inevitable, and the kinds of political figures people argue over will continue to emerge.

If there is to be meaningful change, the focus has to shift away from personalities and towards the structure itself. The real question is not who governs, but whether a system based on wages, profit, and class division can ever serve the interests of the majority.

Until that question is faced, the cycle will continue—and so will the conditions that produce figures like Donald Trump.

I’m alright, Alec (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways, the selection of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as the new Tory Prime Minister made political history. What Macmillan called “the usual processes of consultation” will one day be the subject of countless essays, articles and hopeful theses on the techniques of political dealing. In the end, Home’s succession was a surprise to most of the observers who are supposed to be able to forecast such things.

But in one way—a way that will not be mentioned in the histories—Home’s appointment came up as expected. It was certain that whoever got the job would do so in a smokescreen of what can only be called nonsense. There was, in fact, a different sort of nonsense for each of the candidates. Hailsham was said to be tough, colourful, impetuous—just the man to give some stick to Khruschev or, darkly hinted the Labour Party, to press the button in a disastrous moment of irascibility. Butler was smooth, remote, soft on coshboys. And so on.

The nonsense which was put out about Home was influenced by his peculiar circumstances. There was the usual stuff about the new Prime Minister’s amiable manner, about his propensity for chatting with Foreign Office chars, about the way he eats his breakfast porridge. We have grown accustomed to such stuff and have come to assume that it is all meant to prove something.

What was unique about the Home propaganda revolved around the fact that he was the latest of a long line of Scottish noblemen. The first of these was created a peer by James III, although his gratitude at this was not enough to dissuade him from later joining a rebel movement against the king. That particular peer died in 1491 later holders of the title met a grisly end or figured in a long feud with another Border family. The amiability for which the last Lord Home was famous could easily be due to the serene security in which he has always lived and to the curious reasoning by which some aristocratic families convince themselves that they hold their superior situation in life as a favour to the less fortunate masses.

This, as we might have expected, was meat and drink to the Labour propagandists. Just as they were basing their appeal on a drive to modernise and stimulate British capitalism, just as Wilson was telling us that the future lies in a disturbingly scientific Britain, the Tories make themselves appear outdated, obsessed with the old school tie, by electing the inheritor of an ancient Scottish earldom as their leader! How can such a man, demanded Mr. Wilson, know anything about the problems of kids taking the eleven-plus, or of a couple who are paying the mortgage off their house?

How indeed? But then, even if we accept that Home does not know anything about these things, would there be any advantage for us if he did know? The Labour Party have always tried to present an image of themselves as men who have come up the hard way and who are therefore, familiar with working class problems. Today they may pose as the party for young graduates who are bursting to get their hands on a computer and start driving the deadwood out of the boardrooms; not so long ago they were full of ex-miners who talked about getting the bosses off our backs. Yet what happened when the ex-miners came to power? The 1945 Labour government had many men like James Griffiths and Ernest Bevin whose early lives had been of appalling hardship. Did that government run the affairs of British capitalism any more humanely for that? Did they ever shrink from taking measures which, although essential to the interests of the British ruling class, were harmful to the very people whose votes and work had raised them to power? They did not.

The humble beginnings of some of the Labour ministers did not prevent them running British capitalism in the established manner, with all that that means. Indeed, perhaps there were times between 1945 and 1951 when miners, or dockers, or some other group of workers, may have wished that they were being governed by people who did not know so much about their problems—and about their methods of trying to alleviate them.

For all that, Wilson’s thrust at the fourteenth Earl was typically shrewd and may have set the tone for Labour's future attacks on Home. The Tories’ reply was enough to show that they are as concerned as they need be about the aristocratic lineage of their new leader. Heralded by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative machine set out to convince us that Home’s selection proved that a man can become Prime Minister on his own ability, and in spite of the fact that he is an Earl. This, in some peculiar way, is supposed to mean that we are developing a classless society in which all Britons are equal. Home himself made his own version of the point when he commented that the Labour leader is probably the fourteenth Mr. Wilson, which was joyously trumpeted by the Daily Telegraph as the best crack for a long time.

We can see, then, that the elevation of Home has released a flood of nonsense not just about the man himself but about the class to which he belongs and about the class division of society. Class, we know, is something of a dirty word, Every capitalist party strives to assure us that they do not stand for the interests of any one class and that their policies are designed to benefit us all. At the same time they work hard to convince us that their opponents' schemes are class-inspired. The Labour Party damns the Tories as the rich man’s party; the Conservatives sneer that the Labour Party is obsessed with class bigotry. That is not the end of the confusion. Some people think that classes do not exist, others believe that they do exist but they are not sure where the divisions between them begin and end. They talk about lower middle and upper-working class and other, equally meaningless, divisions.

Now the only way to clear up confusion is to present the facts. What, first of all, is a class? It has nothing to do with how much a person may earn, nor the sort of job he does, nor the school he went to. A class is a group of people who are united, whether they admit to it or not, by a common economic interest. This means that in modern capitalist society people are split into two classes, each of them with opposing economic interests. In this situation, it is nonsense to talk of a middle class—a class with “middle” interests somewhere between the two. The two classes which exist today are, on the one hand, those who have to work for a wage for their living and on the other those who can live without having to go out to work. The first of these—the working class have virtually no property in the means of producing wealth and for that reason are forced to rely on their wage to live. They sell their working ability to the other class —who, because they own enough stocks, shares, bonds, and so on, can live very well without having to work. The interests of capitalist and worker are opposed because one is a seller, and the other a buyer, of a commodity—the working ability of the worker.

It is a common fallacy that the gap between the classes is growing daily smaller. Yet there is obviously a pretty big gap between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the working people of Scotland—the miners, the dockers, the clerks, the farm hands and the rest. The evidence, in fact, says that the gap is as large as ever. The Ministry of Labour Family Expenditure Survey for 1962 gives some idea of what it means to be a member of an average working class family. In the year under review, the ‘families which had a weekly income of between £15 and £20 spent an average of £1 14s. 4d. a week on their housing, £5 7s. 10d. on food—and made what the Survey calls a “net loss” of 4s. 4d. on betting. We know, because these figures are pretty general for all of us, that this sort of expenditure does not allow a very opulent life. But that is all that the average member of the working class can afford.

On the other side of the gap it is a very different story. Last September a young heiress lost her life m a sailing accident off the South Coast. Although she was only 21 when she died, she left a net amount of £82,309—which is far more than any worker can ever dream of earning. A classless society? The Earl of Harrington recently put up for auction his family seat, Elvaston Castle, and the 4,500 acre estate that goes with it. This estate includes three villages. This sale, which was worth over a million pounds to the Earl, will not leave him homeless. He owns 5,000 acres and will be going to live in his other place in County Limerick. These are only two glimpses at life on the other side of the gap. We may not exactly know, but we can take a guess, at what that life is like and at the sort of expenditure the people, on that side can afford. It will not be anything like that of the average family under the Ministry of Labour's microscope.

It is obvious on which side Sir Alec is. He is a member of the capitalist class who also happens to lead a government which avowedly stands for capitalism. The Labour Party may not have many leaders to compare with Home's aristocratic background, but this does not alter the fact that they also stand for capitalism. In fact, what matters is not whether the men who run the private property system of society are blue-blooded or bear the blue scars which prove that they once sweated and suffered down a coal mine. Experience has told us that the ex-miner runs capitalism as ruthlessly as any Tory nobleman. The important thing is what each of them stands for.

Capitalism, by its class ownership of the means of living, its inequalities and its privileges, perpetuates the class system. It is hypocrisy for a party to say that they are opposed to class privileges while they stand for the social system which fosters them. And all the capitalist parties are guilty of this. All of them, in whatever accent, pay lip service to human equality. And all of them in fact support the world in which the masses are condemned to the paltry and the shoddy while a small minority own the land we walk over, the things we work with, almost our very lives themselves. This minority live, to put it mildly, very well off the masses. Perhaps, of a night, they offer up an extra prayer—I’m alright, Alec; do your best to keep it that way.

Douglas-Home has no proposals to alter this state of affairs and neither have his Labour and Liberal opponents. If class society is to be brought to an end, the first essential is that the nonsense has to stop. But capitalist parties thrive—indeed they live—on nonsense. If the working class were to see through it all—now that would really make history and Alec would no longer be alright.

Ivan

Running Commentary: Famine Relief (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famine Relief

In a hangar at Khartoum airport in the Sudan, an aeroplane sits loaded with milk powder, butter oil, high protein biscuits and medical supplies. Elsewhere in the same city warehouses contain enough food to meet the basic needs of several thousand people for a number of months. Lorries able to transport the food to where it is needed also stand idle.

Meanwhile on the outskirts of Juba, several hundred miles south of Khartoum, at least 50,000 refugees are camped with a further 40,000 expected to arrive from the countryside in the ensuing days and weeks. There is food in Juba's shops but the refugees have no money with which to buy it. They are dependent on emergency food supplies handed out by the aid agencies which are now almost exhausted.

The plane in the airport at Khartoum cannot take off and air-lift the food supplies into places like Juba in the south because no company can be found that is willing to insure it. No company will insure it because the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has said that it will shoot down any plane that tries to land in the towns of Wau, Malakal or Juba. This is no idle threat: the SPLA claims to have shot down 24 planes over southern Sudan in the past three years. The trucks cannot move the food because it is feared that they will be attacked or diverted by fighting between Ugandan government troops and Sudanese rebels.

So while politicians and the military play their war games, while insurance companies haggle over premiums, innocent refugees must die of starvation — unwitting victims of power struggles in which they play no part.

Political circus

As another summer season drew to a close and the holiday entertainers packed their bags and headed for home, some seaside towns prepared for the arrival of the circus. Not the usual big top and sawdust affair but a collection of clowns, jugglers and illusionists who make up the political circus, each group demonstrating that no one party has the monopoly of political ignorance.

Possibly, with the media providing saturation coverage, many workers were deluded into believing that these events should be taken seriously. But whatever importance a minority of the working class attached to these proceedings for the vast majority the speeches, interviews and standing ovations were of little significance. After all, once you have seen one circus you have seen them all.

How many times have we watched the juggler with the unemployment figures. Up they go higher and higher, out of control then suddenly they drop when a new set are plucked out of the magician's hat.

Year in, year out it is the same old material. Even when it is borrowed or stolen from one of the other parties, it is always presented as something new. Dress an elephant in a tutu, parade it around the ring and it will still be an elephant. Do the same with some forgotten economic theory and in the crazy world of the political circus it becomes a wondrous new idea capable of solving all manner of problems.

To some people a man with a red nose and baggy trousers who talks nonsense, squabbles with his partners and makes rude noises is a clown, but to others he is an elected representative entrusted with the responsibilities of running the country. A figure of fun he may appear to be but his contribution to the greatest illusion of all is no laughing matter.

For the famous "Make Capitalism Operate in the Workers' Interest" trick is one that has kept the clown and other buffoons employed for a long time Like all good illusions this one relies heavily on deception and the willing participation of the audience. It is not in performing the trick that the deception lies but in convincing the audience that it can be done. For their part the audience has possibly assisted in the deception. Duped into supporting the very system that causes the problems around them the answer must lie with themselves. Because of their acquiescence capitalism continues. In a world of potential abundance this sickening farce should have no place.

It is up to the working class to bring down the curtain on the present economic system and introduce socialism. Only then will the world be able to live in peaceful co-existence freed from the constraints of the profit- motive and the absurd posturings of a small band of professional idiots will be as out of place as a one-legged cyclist in a present day circus.

Independent It’s Not

The new "quality" newspaper the Independent is, we are told, politically, financially and editorially independent. So is this the breakthrough we socialists have been waiting for? A chance to put across our ideas to workers through the columns of a newspaper that claims to be politically non-partisan?

Well, this socialist hasn't actually tried submitting an article to the Independent putting the socialist viewpoint, but then I haven't much confidence in the "independence" of a newspaper whose editor. Andreas Whittam Smith, previously worked on the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Investors Chronicle and who is described by those who claim to know as a "wet Tory or Social Democrat". An editor who had relatively little trouble in raising the £18 million necessary to start the new paper because he enjoyed the confidence of City investors with whom he had developed extensive contacts when working for the FT etc.

It is hard to believe that a newspaper that has such close ties with the capitalist class can really be taken seriously as independent. If the Independent gives good factual news coverage on a wide range of issues so that people can make up their own minds about those issues, then that would be a small step forwards. But the question will still remain which facts are we being given; on what basis are they being selected; and by whom? The Independent may be politically unaffiliated and editorially independent, despite the editor's personal political views; it might even be financially independent in that a number of investors have bought shares in it rather than just one member of the capitalist class owning it outright; what is extremely unlikely is that it will offer us anything like an alternative perspective on the world around us.

New Page: Caught in the Act column (1989-1992)

As promised, new pages for the blog. These new pages of old Socialist Standard columns will eventually be grouped together in one page at the head of the blog alongside the pages for the current Socialist Standard columns, film reviews and theatre reviews.

The clue to this series of columns is in the title of the first piece. This was very much 'Ivan's' (Ralph Critchfield) first incarnation of the long-running Greasy Pole column. Month on month, Ivan primarily covered the vicissitudes of British domestic politics, focussing on those career politicians who had made it their lifetime work to climb over their colleagues in order that they ascend to the top of political greasy pole. Both this column and the latter Greasy Pole columns are excellent introductions to post-war Britain and its political life.

1989

• July: The Greasy Pole
• Aug: No, No, Nigel
• Sep: High Hopes
• Oct: Back to Work
• Nov: Cutting Up
• Dec: Breakdown

1990

• Jan: The Loyalty Game
• Feb: Also rans [Article on Denis Healey, Kenneth Clarke and Willie Whitelaw.]
• Mar: Punishers and Moonlighters
• Apr: Missing a stroke
• May: Out of touch
• Jun: Who's afraid of Labour?
• Jul: Mad Politicians Disease
• Aug: Check out
• Sep: One of us
• Oct: Oil and carrots
• Dec: Brylcreem Boys

1991

• Jan: Two Of A Kind
• Mar: Goodbye To All That
• Apr: Chequered career
• May: A Matter of Timing
• Jul: Eric Heffer
• Aug: Relief for the Rich
• Sep: On the agenda
• Oct: Review of Tariq Ali's novel Redemption by Steve Coleman
• Dec: In the raw

1992

• Jan: Whimper, Whimper, You're Dead
• Feb: At Issue
• Mar: Politics and Sex
• Apr: Future Uncertain

Editorial: None of the above (2025)

Editorial from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the next general election most voters in England are likely to have a choice between candidates representing six different parties: Labour, Tory, LibDem, Green, Reform UK, and the new Corbyn party. In Scotland and Wales, with the nationalists, it will be seven. This appears to extend democracy by offering voters a wider choice. But does it?

What, on paper, is on offer? Labour is in office nationally and has pledged to bring about economic growth and to improve education, housing and social amenities funded by the increased tax income that will be a by-product. The Tories are also promising growth but by being even more in favour than Labour of giving private capitalist enterprises free rein. The LibDems advocate something. The Greens promise to pursue reforms to benefit the environment. Reform UK says that cutting back on immigration will improve things for the rest of us. The new Corbyn party wants to return to what Labour promised in the 1970s by redistributing wealth and income more evenly.

Labour and the Tories — the Ins and Outs of British politics — have had many chances to implement their policies and have both consistently failed. It is tempting to conclude that it’s because their leading members are bungling incompetents, corrupt or nasty people, or, in the case of Labour, sell-outs. Some of them undoubtedly will be but that’s not why they fail. Even if they were all competent, well-meaning and honest it wouldn’t have made any difference. Replacing them in office by the members of some third party such as the LibDems or some new protest party such as Farage’s wouldn’t make any difference either.

The reason Labour and the Tories fail, and why the others would too, is because they all accept capitalism and believe that the government can make its economy work for everyone. But it can’t. Capitalism is based on the resources needed to produce wealth being in the hands of a minority and used to produce goods and services for sale with a view to making a profit. This is what drives the economy and is what all governments have to respect and implement. Governments don’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s the other way round. The coercive economic laws of capitalism impose on governments what they can — and can’t — do. Governments can’t conjure up growth, can’t give priority to the environment, and can’t redistribute wealth and power.

In this way conventional politics is based on an illusion. Governments are assumed to be able to do what those elected to office say they will. And so elections are seen as being about voters choosing what policies they would like to see pursued or what reforms they would like to see enacted by voting for the candidates of one or other political party that they consider would best do this.

There is a choice at elections but it is a choice of which grouping of politicians is to carry out what the workings of the capitalist economy demand. It’s a choice as to which of them is to preside over capitalism’s operation and implement its priorities.

Faced with this limited choice, socialists, opposed as we are to capitalism and all of its works, say ‘we are not voting for any of you’. What is needed is a change of system not a change of politicians in office.

Why you should be a socialist (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some years ago, a Guardian writer wrote a succinct sentence: "Who stands for nothing falls for anything." This statement rings true for all socialists aware that their fellow workers, voting, for instance, for mainstream parties come election time, are in fact acquiescing in their own exploitation.

Labour, Tory and Liberal candidates are fond of telling workers, and indeed of convincing them, that a vote for them (the candidate) is a vote for themselves (the workers). By electing such-and-such candidate, we are told our taxes will come down, our hospitals will improve, our schools will churn out brighter pupils, that homelessness will disappear, that there will be less unemployment and more jobs and streets free of criminals. In short, we are offered a vision of utopia. The optimistic worker falls for all of this, only to have their expectations dashed on the rocks of capitalist reality.

In the absence of any coherent ideology, the worker will invariably fall for anything. This is not to insult members of the working class by casting aspersions on their intellect. It says more about the skill of politicians when it comes to regurgitating the same old cant. These administrators of capitalism, the politicians, have been plying their trade since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They have, therefore, become adept, highly skilled in the rhetoric of bullshitting workers. So successful are they, in fact, that a lot of what they have been saying have become the prevalent ideas in society; racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, hostility to the unemployed, the disabled, trades unions and criminals — all these prejudices have their roots more or less in the advent of capitalism.

Workers in this country are constantly reminded they are British, that they have a queen and a culture and a heritage, that they live on an island "the envy of less happy lands". Workers are raised to be nationalistic, patriotic and to stand when the national anthem is played at closing time in the British Legion. And then when wars break out, workers are encouraged to fight workers from other countries, under the delusion that freedom and democracy is at stake. But wars only break out when the interests of the dominant class of one nation clash with those of another, whether it be over trade routes, areas of domination or mineral resources. One US worker-cum-soldier, being interviewed en route to the Gulf, said he had never even heard of Kuwait until the order came through to mobilize. If he had not heard of Kuwait, you can bet he had no idea why he was being told to kill workers in Iraq.

Some workers actually believe their interests are served by killing workers they have never met before in far-away lands, workers who are similarly hoodwinked by their masters to protect their profits and potential markets. They fall for all the jingoism circulated by politicians.

When the Tories came to power in 1979, they had made great use of the slogan "Labour isn’t working", pointing out that unemployment stood at 1,000,000 and that this would fall under Conservatism. Workers fell for this, but within a few years unemployment figures had tripled, in spite of the Tories having made 17 adjustments to the way the original statistics were calculated. Statisticians put the real figure at 4.5 million.

When Mrs Thatcher resigned from office, workers were told she was the "greatest peace-time prime minister". Workers applauded her, some gave her a standing ovation, forgetting she had sent troops to the Falklands and the Gulf, sanctioned the US bombing raid on Libya, increased the troop presence in Northern Ireland and sent battalions of shield-thumping police to confront striking workers at Wapping and Orgreave.

The Labour candidate tells the worker how the coal industry would be safe under Labour, pointing to the number of pits closed since 1979. The worker tuts and pledges support, unaware that a Labour government closed 223 pits between 1965 and 1970.

Lies

The Tories conned workers into investing their hard-earned savings into the newly-privatized nationalized industries. The Labour governments who introduced nationalization (or rather state capitalism) had already told workers these industries belonged to the people. This did not, however, deter workers from buying shares in what theoretically already belonged to them. The Tories did not tell the workers that the returns on their investments would be minimal, nothing compared to the returns big business could expect, and that privatization was only meant to benefit the capitalist class in the first place.

The Tories had another idea — to encourage workers to set up their own businesses. Hundreds of thousands of workers were hoodwinked into believing they could compete with the big boys. Hundreds of thousands were to realize that in a climate where even some of the big boys could not survive, what chance had they. Politicians are always keen to assure workers that a country under their administration will be crime-free, but in the past 15 years there has been a sevenfold increase in reported crime and Britain's prison population is the largest in Europe. Inner-city riots have become so commonplace that they no longer make the headlines, and crimes such as joyriding and ram-raiding are so widespread they have become hackneyed in the plots of television serials.

Over the years, workers have been told there will be "peace in our time", that they’ve "never had it so good". Workers are urged to "watch" the lips of politicians while they repeat "no more taxes". The promises are as endless as they are futile, but still the worker falls for them.

In March this year, William Waldegrave reaffirmed what socialists already knew: "In exceptional circumstances, it is necessary to say something untrue in the House of Commons" (Guardian, 9 March). It doesn’t take much imagination to envisage which "circumstances" — those hidden truths about the nature of capitalist society that would cause a furore amongst workers were they revealed, but which remain a hidden truth because to reveal them would upset the capitalist minority whose system the politicians administer.

Leaders

Again, the administrators of capitalism have convinced workers that they need leaders. So prevalent is this idea that workers perpetuate the illusion themselves on behalf of the leaders, for instance, conditioning their children to take heed of everyone from the local vicar to the village bobby — all of whom see to it that the child never thinks for itself and will never challenge the status quo. The leaders, the politicians, however, are themselves only following the dictates of the profit system, which is itself governed by uncontrollable economic laws.

Workers have been led so long they have forgotten their potential collective strength. We seem unaware that everything in the world is produced by workers, from a pin to an oil rig, not thanks to politicians, but in spite of them.

Think of the artificial brakes that are put on production, the inventions that could benefit humanity, but which are suppressed because their introduction would cause the influx of a product which would in turn diminish somebody’s profits from a similar more expensive product. Most workers are aware of this, but fail to challenge the contradictions of capitalist society because leaders have convinced them there is no alternative society. Workers are told that socialism has already been tried and has failed miserably. But socialism has never been put into practice in any country, and those nations that called themselves communist were in reality only state capitalist, which politicians knew all along.

Workers will continue to be led and to believe what leaders tell them so long as they do not believe in themselves, in their own capabilities. A worker who does not understand how society is really organized, whose conditioning has alienated them from their consciousness will fall for anything.

There is nothing special about a socialist. They do not assume the airs and graces and the arrogance of Leninist vanguard parties, who believe the workers can only achieve a trade union consciousness and who wish to lead the workers into oblivion. Socialists are simply workers who have made a conscious effort to understand society from their own objective position and who have realized that is their position in the relations of production and who can apply this relationship to every aspect of life in present-day society.

The capitalist system is only as strong as the socialist cause is weak. The contradictions of capitalist society will only continue as long as workers are oblivious of them. If you’re reading the Socialist Standard for the first time, then you’ve already made the conscious decision to think for yourself and to reject what you had hitherto been told about socialism. If you stand for socialism you’ll fall for nothing.

John Bissett

Tories : No holds barred (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like someone picking at a scab, the Tories seem unable to forget their leadership controversy.

Even the declarations of unity—almost every weekend at least one Conservative M.P. tells a meeting somewhere what a sound fellow Sir Alec Douglas-Home is—only draw attention to the fact that the controversy is still going on. The most ardent of speeches merely succeeds in suggesting that, if Home were not under fire, there would be no need for such a show of loyalty towards him.

It is, in fact, an established tradition—and one with good political reason—in the Conservative Party always to do their best to present a united front against all comers. Sometimes, it is true, we get a glimpse of knives flashing in the background behind this front; but generally the Tories do not treat us to the spectacle of the glorious public rows which the Labour Party have indulged in.

The Tories have always posed as the gentleman’s party, implying that, whatever the difficulties, they know how to behave themselves. This should deceive nobody. Precisely because they are a political party aiming to run capitalism, and especially because they are never far from the seat of power, the Conservatives, collectively and individually, must be as ruthless as anyone else.

They have had their share of leaders who have filled this particular bill for example Stanley Baldwin, who played the political game with a relentless cunning under the guise of a pipe-sucking, ruminative, honest countryman. More recently, too, the gentleman’s party have had their tough infighters. There was a lot of truth in the crack from Harold Wilson (who knows a thing or two about this subject himself) that whenever Macmillan, when he was Prime Minister, came back from abroad, Mr. Butler hurried to the airport to grip him warmly by the throat.

At the moment there is obviously a bitter struggle going on for the leadership of the Conservative Party. From some points of view this may appear as a battle between Maudling, Heath and McLeod for the succession after Home has gone. Whether or not this is true, a battle to succeed Home may of itself be enough to unseat him.

Sir Alec, it seems, wants to stay, although some political correspondents whisper that he is weary of it all and is only waiting for his troublesome underlings to decide who is to take his place and then he will fade away into the substantial shadows of Coldstream. It is possible that Home’s hand was forced into agreeing to the new method of electing future Tory leaders—something unknown in a party which, as befits gentlemen, has always relied upon discreet soundings rather than an open vote.

Home assured us that, although he was very pleased with the new election plan, he did not think highly enough of it to allow it to apply to himself. He, who came to the leadership through the customary processes of consultation, was not going to risk losing it all in a vulgar, demotic election. Perhaps there is some political sense in this. If Home agreed to stand, and was opposed, the split in the Tory ranks would be revealed for all to see. If he stood and lost . . . but that simply does not bear thinking about, in the deep leather armchairs of the Carlton. Better to leave the whole beastly thing alone.

The election plan was conceded only after a long period of agitation. Men like Mr. Humphrey Berkeley were the frontrunners in this, but behind the scenes there must have been more powerful—and more hopeful—voices also pressing for the same thing. Of course, when it was all settled all good Tories made the best of it, claiming that they had found an ultra-democratic method of electing their leader. They forgot that they had always insisted that the method they were abandoning gained a far clearer assessment of opinion in their party, and was therefore more democratic, than any simple election.

They also forgot—or ignored—the fact that leadership has nothing to do with democracy. All capitalist parties agree that it is necessary to have a leader, and that it is his job to lead. But this means that the leader must often go against popular wishes, for what is the point of having a leader to take decisions if he is also supposed to take orders from the people he is leading?

The Tories clear up this point very simply, by making no secret of the fact that they intend to run—and perhaps reform—capitalism from day to day as they think fit, with no reference to their members. The Labour Party used to have a different line. Their members were supposed to have a voice in deciding their policy; some of them may actually have thought that the decisions of a Labour conference would influence a Labour government. There is no room for doubt on this score now. Labour has made it clear that they will govern as British capitalism requires, and not at the dictates of their members, who are liable to get all sorts of woolly and inconvenient notions about keeping out of wars and sticking by election promises. Democracy, in other words has been put firmly in its place.

Home’s sudden elevation to the Premiership was attacked by many people, especially of course the Labour Party, on the grounds that he is an aristocrat. These attacks were based on the argument that aristocrats are bound to govern badly because they are aloof from the great mass of honest, horny handed people. The corollary of this is that political leaders who come from the ordinary people are sure to govern us wisely and equitably.

We do not have to work very hard to dispose of this delusion. Labour governments have always prided themselves in having more than one son of the toiling masses among their ranks. Sometimes these men have held top jobs, yet they have done them in much the same way as any High Tory aristocrat.

There was, for example, Jimmy Thomas, who was so proud of his engine driver background that he went around mislaying and misplacing as many aitches as he possibly could, much to the amusement of the opulent circles in which he moved. (He once complained, at a glittering social gathering, of having “an ’ell of an ’eadache”, whereupon the late Lord Birkenhead advised him to “go home and take an aspirate.”) Then there was Ernie Bevin, who cultivated the same habit, allied to a fondness for blunt speaking which recalled his beginnings as a farm labourer.

Neither of these men, when they were in power, did anything to encourage us to elect their like to office again. The interests of the British capitalist class had no more zealous defenders than they. They walked with kings but made sure that they did not lose the common touch, which was so useful at election times and when addressing the TUC.

All capitalist parties are wedded to the lie that this is the age of the Common Man. It is true that the Common Man sometimes gets to power, but when he does so he runs capitalism as ruthlessly—and often with a sight more cunning —than any landed lord. The Labour Party has always set the pace in propagating the lie, although nowadays their favourite badge is not so much the cloth cap as the scientist’s white coat. The Tories, too, are in on the deception. They produce tame trade unionists, and give them hopeless seats to fight at election time. They announced that their new chairman, Mr. du Cann, is an ex-grammar schoolboy. This was meant to convince us that they had a leader who had battled through the eleven plus to the sort of school which our own kids might go to. In fact, they were stretching the meaning of the term grammar school; the places where Edward Dillon Lott du Cann got his education—Colet Court and Woodbridge—represent something much more expensive than is open to the average working class child.

Thus, in many ways the dice may seem to be loaded against Sir Alec. Any mistakes he might make will be blamed onto his blue-blooded origins. Tory publicists do their best to cover up his faux-pas—his confession to doing his balance of payments sums with the aid of matches, his “little donation" speech, his half-moon glasses. They assure us that although Home may not have a great deal of political cunning, he is possessed of abundant integrity.

Those of us with longer memories, or with a thirst for the facts, will know that Home was one of the supporters of the 1938 Munich agreement, and that he needed something other than integrity when he was defending that agreement in the House. We also know that he was Secretary for Commonwealth Relations from 1955 to 1960, which means that he is firmly identified with the Suez double-cross, the Nyasaland fraud and all the other dirty deals which were pulled off during that period and subsequently, when he held higher office. In fact, one of the first things a capitalist politician must discard is his integrity.

In any case, honesty will not rescue Home. His position is insecure, there are hungry men waiting to pounce, and his party is in confusion. Amid this chaos, it is appropriate to state the facts on the leadership issue.

Leaders, whoever they are and whatever their party, exist because of the ignorance of their followers. But at the same time their actions must be confined within, and must not offend, that ignorance. At the present this does not cause any upsets because the people who are content to be led are also content to keep capitalism going.

But this means that the leaders, who often get power on promises to solve certain problems, are quite unable to keep their word. They must promise to safeguard peace at the same time as they are assiduously organising the production of weapons of war. They must promise to conquer capitalism’s economic upsets when in fact they have not the faintest idea of what to do about them.

It also means that they must cheat and lie; they must wholeheartedly engage in the ruthless game of politics. They must shake hands with their deadliest political enemy while keeping the other hand firmly on the safety catch—and while knowing that their enemy is doing the same. And all this must go on while they are professing, if they are Tories, to being a party of gentlemen, or if they are Labourites, to being the party of common humanity.

Mr. Enoch Powell, an M.P. who has the endearing habit of often blowing inconvenient gaffs which his colleagues find embarrassing in the extreme, once wrote:

. . . political purposes . . . are concerned with public opinion and the persuasion of large numbers. The politician’s business is not investigating and expounding facts for their own sake. Facts become relevant to his job only when people are ready to lake an interest in them, so that they become potential instruments of persuasion and action.

Sometimes the politicians succeed in convincing the working class that they are effective. Then they are canonised as great men. Often they fail. Then one leader is deposed, as Home may be deposed, to be replaced by another. But the essential of the situation—the repressive and degrading capitalist system- remains. The majority of people continue to be exploited and harassed and, peculiarly, to opt to stay like that.

As long as they have their leaders to show them the way into chaos, the workers are content. Home may go but the set-up which bore him and finished him will remain. The roundabout goes on and on, round and round, up and down. Only the man who is in charge of the engine changes occasionally. The sickening motion of the thing goes on, and will continue to do so until the passengers who are suffering from it all decide that they have had enough.

Ivan.

Editorial: A Damp Squib. (1908)

Editorial from the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of course we cannot expect anything better of Victor Grayson. He’s a firework, rather damped by the humid atmosphere of the Commons, but liable to little fizzles where the powder remains dry. On the occasion of the discussion of the visit of the great peacemaker (which his other name is Guelph) to Russia, when Keir Hardie, swearing he would ne’er withdraw, withdrew his references to the bloody autocracy and feudal savagery of the “Little Father,” and his bigger sisters and cousins and aunts of the Arch-Dukeries, Victor Grayson wanted to give a one-horse pyrotechnic display. He doubtless felt that he had reached a dry spot in his powder magazine and could let off a few crackers. But Henderson, who is the “Little Father” of the Labour Party (MacDonald being his wire-pulling Grand Duke), was not going to allow Grayson to break up the order of the proceedings which the “black hundred” (less ninety-eight) had decided upon in collaboration with the Government. So Grayson was promptly “closured.”

o o o

It was a decided exuberation of bad manners on the part of Grayson, who might easily have followed the example of Pete Curran. Pete, who is a model of self-restraint, found himself once up against the rules of the “House” when he wanted to do desperate things against the Government in connection with the shooting of the people at Belfast. (Russia does not entirely monopolise the institution of “Bloody Sunday.”) With an effort Pete managed to maintain the entente between the Labour Party and the Government unfractured, and relieve his feelings at the same time. In this way. Bubbling over with indignation, he went outside the “House,” and while no one was looking, exploded (under his breath) in these epoch-making and entirely original words—”Damn the Rules !” And so went back to his duties.

o o o

This is the story told, with modest restraint and with less detail perhaps, by Pete himself. It is an example of statesmanship that Grayson should have at least endeavoured to emulate. That he did not is a sign of youth—and of the fact that he does not draw his £200 from the Labour Party exchequer.

Instability and Corruption (1995)

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now almost universally accepted that politicians aspiring
 to positions of power do so on the failings of those already in 
power rather than on any ideas of their own. Everywhere we 
look in the world today capitalism is in chaos - and it isn't
 going to get any better.

It seems that the more capitalism develops the more anarchic the global as system becomes, with chaotic economic development in such areas as China's free enterprise zones and the mad scramble for power in the wars of Soviet succession. In the West so-called democracy just seems to lead to confusion as politicians are unable to solve basic economic and social problems. As people have not yet identified capitalism as the real cause of these problems, the latest set of incumbent politicians are blamed, as if the next lot have the magic formula.

So in France we have seen the “Socialist" government and parliamentary representatives decimated in elections as unemployment and crime rise, to be replaced by a right-wing government who in turn are incapable of solving economic problems and will probably be replaced by a resurgent left. Whilst in Italy a government elected on a specific anti-corruption ticket has collapsed through corruption allegations and a confused electorate are prepared to vote in desperation for extremist parties.

The list could go on, so in this context the convoluted events in Ireland do not seem so surprising. The fact that Ireland's electoral system, in common with much of Europe, creates coalitions means that frequent changes of government are common as partners in these coalitions squabble. In Ireland the specific causes of that squabbling in recent years revolved around the main coalition partner, Fianna Fail, and its cosy relationship with Ireland's largest beef baron and how that relationship upset the “normal” running of government business, irritating the other coalition parties.

Having already caused one general election this underlying feeling quickly soured another coalition, this time between Fianna Fail and an electorally confident Labour Party. The catalyst that broke this coalition, as everyone probably knows by now, was the inexplicable delay by the Irish Attorney General's office to extradite a paedophile priest to Northern Ireland, and the insistence of Fianna Fail to promote the very man responsible for this delay. The catalogue of excuses, blame and backbiting that ensued meant that the coalition was doomed. This bizarre story finally ended with a parliamentary coalition reshuffle excluding Fianna Fail and the introduction of Democratic Left into the coalition to make up the numbers.

Political instability and corruption seem to be endemic to governments but whatever the specific causes of each incidence of graft or dispute the general underlying cause is capitalism.

Never-ending search for profit

Capitalism as an economic system is inherently unstable for a number of

reasons.

• It is based on the never-ending search for profits through competition, which manifests itself as rivalry between companies, regions and social and economic interest groups. Just the fact that the world is divided into about two hundred countries at the last count is example enough. The majority of them are divided again into numerous regions each with their own elites who in turn are divided into various factions due to historical, cultural or regional developments. This can only result in unequal economic development as resources go to areas of greatest potential profit or patronage rather than to areas of greatest economic need. This economic confusion and instability caused by capitalism leads to threatened or actual armed conflict between economic rivals on a grim and regular basis.
• The economic cycle of boom and slump caused by the tendency of capitalism to over-produce during a boom and thus reduce the rate of profit causing a slump. This cycle tends to hit the most economically and socially vulnerable harder in a slump and benefit the wealthy most in a boom.
• The division of society into two opposing and unequal classes. The minority owns the means of production and obtains profit by extracting unpaid labour from the majority who have only their labour power to sell. This fundamental difference of needs automatically results in conflict, class conflict, a never-ending, daily war of attrition that manifests itself in various ways. The most obvious is continual industrial disputes throughout every sector of the capitalist economy as workers attempt to defend or improve their economic position and are resisted at every step by the employers intent on improving their profit margins.

Thus, because the economic base of society is unstable, it is logical to assume that the social and political structure which rests on this base is also unstable. The facts prove this assumption correct. The supposed separation of powers in liberal democratic governments between the judiciary, legislature and executive, rather than acting as checks and balances on each other, are just the tools or conduits through which rival groups compete for access to power and resources. Indeed the American government, which is supposed to be the prime example of the separation of powers, can also be the prime example of a government in thrall to graft and corruption from lowly congressmen up to the President and riven by rivalry between the regions and social groups.

So what of the future? Well it's business as usual. The political theatre may provide entertainment but, as one economic commentator mentioned at the height of the crisis, who is in government has very little impact on the workings of the capitalist system. The iron laws of competition, profit and class conflict will remain as long as capitalism remains together with the disastrous global ramifications that this entails.

Jonathan Meakin

Hobson’s choice (2025)

From the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 20 January Donald J Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States of America.

Hopefully, given the American predilection for violence, Donald Trump won’t in the interim have suffered the fate of Caesar, like a lot of other American presidents, political figures, civil rights advocates and so on. We come not to bury him and certainly not to praise him.

‘Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.’ This aphorism seems particularly pertinent given the reaction which the election of ‘47’ seems to have generated. The media, and social media especially, went into paroxysms of rage, frustration and general crazed madness. The meltdown displayed by individuals, who seemed to think that upon being sworn into office Trump was immediately going to pass an Enabling Act, was off the scale. The ire and emotion directed at Donald Trump would be more positively channelled into changing the capitalist system.

Robert Tressell in his book, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, gave an example of how those who favour the alternative are treated:

‘At the conclusion of the singing, Bert turned another picture into view. “’Ere we ’ave another election scene. At each side we see the two candidates the same as in the last pitcher. In the middle of the road we see a man lying on the ground, covered with blood, with a lot of Liberal and Tory working men kickin’ ’im, jumpin’ on ’im, and stampin’ on ’is face with their ’obnailed boots. The bloke on the ground is a Socialist, and the reason why they’re kickin’ ’is face in is because ’e said that the only difference between Slumrent and Mandriver was that they was both alike”.’

There’s nothing comic of course about the American adult population voting for the continuation of capitalism. Socialists have to live with the result of this happening time and time again, but socialists don’t throw their toys out of the pram. They just roll up their sleeves and work harder to make socialists.

It’s said if America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. One objective the incoming President has declared is the implementation of protectionist economic measures, ie, raising tariffs on foreign imports. This action is intended to have a negative impact on America’s economic rivals and competitors, but it will also damage the economies of ‘friends and allies’ (sic). Is it likely that American workers will see some material benefits in the next four years? Possibly, if only for a while. American capitalists will almost certainly see their wealth and power increase. But what about the working class in the rest of the world? Can they expect a mild dose of flu, or pneumonia? However, as demonstrated by the UK Labour Party’s recent performance, politicians will simply lie in order to gain power, so nothing they say is set in stone.

Thomas Hobson (1544–1631) owned stables in Cambridge, and is said to have told those wanting a horse, take the one in the stall nearest the door or don’t bother taking one at all. ‘Hobson’s choice’ therefore means there is no choice. For voters in the November US election, just as in all states claiming to be democracies across the world, it’s always Hobson’s choice, because whatever inducements are offered the result is always to the benefit of capitalism.

The Scottish stand-up comedian Billy Connolly said, ‘The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one. Don’t vote. It just encourages them’. In socialism we won’t need them and we won’t have them.

But this is not to say that voting and elections are useless. The World Socialist Movement aims to use political means in order to implement the change to a socialist society across the world. As we say in our pamphlet What’s Wrong With Using Parliament?:

‘Control of the state is operated by those who hold political power as a result of being elected via universal suffrage (the vote). This means they have to get the formal agreement, at election times, of the majority of the people. This is not too difficult since most people are imbued with capitalist ideas and see no alternative to present-day, capitalist society with its class ownership, production for profit, working for wages and rationing by money… there is a more positive reason for winning control of political power. The state is an instrument of coercion, but it has assumed social functions that have to exist in any society and which have nothing to do with its coercive nature: it has taken over the role of being society’s central organ of administration and co-ordination. Gaining control of the state will at the same time give control of this social organ which can be used to co-ordinate the changeover from capitalism to socialism’.

Dave Coggan

The big picture (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have a few friends who are politically active. One with the Green Party, another for Labour. A third is/was in the Jeremy Corbyn camp, though comes from a Trotskyist background. All three agreed the priority in the election was to get the Tories out.

I must confess to an emotional sympathy with this sentiment. The Tories seem to embody the worst political features of selfishness, virulent nationalism and an absence of empathy for the plight of others. Their appeal is to encourage such in others. However, the socialist knows no matter how accurate this view may be, the alternatives cannot offer policies of significant difference. They may well have varied and more humanely positive motives, but the practical outcomes of their governance would be so similar to a Tory administration as to be virtually indistinguishable.

This is because at root the political problem was not the Conservative Party, no matter how unpleasant it may be, but the economic system that drives all government policy, whatever party label it is enacted under, capitalism.

Billions of pounds required

It was instructive listening not to what the parties claim to be offering the electorate, but the advocates for various groups and sections of society. Child care, for instance, the expense or lack of it, inhibiting family incomes and, often, women’s career opportunities. Billions of pounds required.

Care for the elderly presents increased life expectancy as an ever burgeoning financial burden society must find billions for.

The National Health Service is unable to meet the demands made upon it. People in long term pain or dying prematurely for want of appointments, treatment and operations. Hospitals literally crumbling. Another pot of gold required.

Many incomes are below what workers and their families require simply to sustain themselves. Men and women often doing two, sometimes more, jobs and still not having enough money to afford rent, never mind buy, a home, or put adequate food on the table. Food banks and income credits/ benefits required: more billions of pounds.

The mantra of the anti-Tory parties was that all this, and more, was the result of 14 years of Conservative government. Which surely poses a question. Why would they intentionally govern to deprive the vast majority of what they need?

Perhaps it is because they are the nasty party. Yet, if this was the case they would be foolishly prioritising their visceral nastiness at the expense of their hold on government. Surely, if they could simply arrange the money transfers to meet all such urgent needs they’d garner the votes of the electorate for the foreseeable future.

The argument may well be made that the Conservative Party is in such collusion with the capitalists their priority is to protect capitalism’s profit-making at the expense of the workers, the great majority. This analysis is correct, as far as it goes.

Unfortunately, the Tory motivation, in this respect, is not unique to them, but fundamental to whichever party assumes government responsibilities. It is instructive to consider what occurred when a Tory administration acted against the interests of capital.

No one could accuse Liz Truss as being anything other than an archetypal Tory, other than she has blonde hair rather than a blue rinse. Yet her premiership was brief and quickly ended not via the ballot box, but the actions of the market. The leader of the democratically elected government was brought down because she was perceived to be a threat to the financial structure of capitalism. No secret cabal required, no illicit meeting of shadowy figures acting on behalf of capital. Merely the mechanisms of the market were enough to be self-protecting and dispense with the prime minister. What price democracy?

All this will have been, and still is, perfectly obvious to the now Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer even when they saw themselves as the government in waiting. The Labour Party campaign in this general election was founded on protestations of fiscal probity.

It’s time for a change, but without spending more. Or at least no increase in taxation. As taxation is the only source of government income, other than borrowing which is also being disavowed, the financial requirements just to sustain society, set out above, cannot be met.

Not created by governments

Unless, of course, there is the sharp upturn in the country’s economy that is being cited as a potential wellspring for meeting the increased and increasing demands. There is historical precedent. The post-Second World War boom did enable an expansion of government spending on social programmes by Labour and Conservative administrations.

But that financial boost was not created by governments. The recovery from the destruction of the war created the possibilities for capitalism to exploit and create the wealth. It was starting from the very low baseline of the economic depression preceding the war and ended rather abruptly in the 1970s.

Since when, governments have largely been managing greatly reduced financial resources. The Thatcher years saw manufacturing subordinated to finance capitalism and the supposed free market. That baton was then handed on, via John Major, to the Labour administration of Tony Blair. His government benefited from a financial uplift for a while, then in 2007-8 came the crash. By the 2010 general election the Conservative opposition was proclaiming 13 years of Labour misgovernment as being responsible for the general financial woes.

This was as an unjustified claim as is the present Labour one of 14 years of Conservative maladministration. The similarity of time periods is interesting. Governments create neither booms nor busts. Undoubtedly if they did there would only be booms.

So, voting Labour, whether of the present Starmer, or previous Corbyn, variety could not fundamentally change the economic situation. It matters little how good or bad their intentions are. The Green Party could, along with the Liberal Democrats (and even Reform), make whatever promises they wish as they won’t be in a position to realise them.

Even a proposal such as the basic income, advocated by the Greens, is really just another form of benefit that would have to be funded. Ultimately, that funding, via income tax, business tax or some sort of tax, would come from capital. However attractive that might seem initially, it is a subtraction from wealth creation that capitalism would be bound to react to. The markets would decide and an economic downturn would be of no benefit for workers.

International dimension

It always has to be kept in mind that capitalism, while it has national iterations, is an international system. A government policy, no matter how well intentioned, that was deemed adverse to capitalism would see its productive resources relocated elsewhere.

Presently some FTSE 100 companies are deserting the City to relocate in other stock exchanges. Their motivation is simply expectation of greater financial returns. The Henley Private Mitigation Report indicates that 2024 will see a net loss of approximately 9,500 of what the report terms high-net-worth individuals, compared with 4,200 the previous year. The Henley is a consultancy that monitors migration trends. It reported that between 1950 and the early 2000s Britain saw a continuous influx of millionaires. That trend has now been seriously reversed. This has been exacerbated more recently following Brexit with 16,500 leaving between 2017 and 2023.

Such is surely a demonstration of how government policy, even if implementing the decision of the ballot box, can adversely affect capital decision making. No matter how determined a particular government might be to access the wealth of non-doms, for instance, those funds all too easily migrate.

This is how capitalism works, no matter how reformers wish it were otherwise. Consider what happened to British manufacturing in the Thatcher years. For example, it is still possible to buy the quintessential British motorcycle the Royal Enfield, but made in India.

Any short-term gain made by a basic income will be undone in the medium to long term. Just as has, and is, happening to the welfare state and National Health Service.

What’s the alternative?

Supporters of the ‘let’s get the Tories out’ parties asked what other alternative there was. Truth can be difficult, especially when it is inconvenient or not immediately helpful. The only truthful response is, look at the big picture.

There is indeed a better way. That is a worldwide commonwealth based on meeting people’s self-defined needs through production based on those same people contributing whatever they can. Then there will be no need for billions or even trillions of pounds or dollars or whatever as there’ll be no money.

Capitalism transcended by socialism is the only solution. Otherwise, the electorate are merely voting to maintain what presently is with all its ills unaddressed and beyond solution while things stay as they are. Every vote, for whichever party, is a vote for capitalism.

Voters can decide they will pursue real change, but they must act consciously together to achieve it. No party, including The Socialist Party, can deliver it for them. It is undoubtedly a tremendous task and responsibility. Although it does not address immediate concerns which are so very difficult for many, it is the only real alternative.

Capitalism has developed the technology and the means for the socialist change, but its own fundamental motivation of capital accumulation through profit-making will always prevent it from being generally beneficial.

So democracy will either continue to be the means of choosing governance on behalf of capitalism, or become part of the change to socialism. That is the big picture.

Dave Alton