Letters: The Poll Tax again (1989)

Letters to the Editors from the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Poll Tax again

Dear Editors,

Your article on the Poll Tax stinks of ignorance. The claim that the working class will not, in effect, be any worse off is a false hope and does not bear truth. How do you explain my situation? I'm unemployed and receive a pittance of £26 a week. The Poll Tax will cost me about £3 a week for starters, which I can't pay, but also my parents are paying the full amount and with rents already rising this means that my board will go up by a fiver. That's £9 a week I'll lose and that's just the beginning! But will my benefits rise, as you claim will happen to wages? No, I don’t think so either. And I'm far from being in a minority.

C. J. Stephen 

Montrose, Tayside

Dear Comrades,

The article on the Poll Tax in the June issue seems misleading. To quote, “any extra charge . . . imposed on workers . . . will tend to be passed on, through the operation of market forces . . . to employers of labour”. You quote a capitalist MP, David Ricardo, in support.

This may have happened in 1819, but it is unlikely that it will apply to the present poll tax. If one's income is increased so does the charge. In the recent rise in retirement pensions, letters were issued, in my case, on 3 May, informing recipients of "a re-assessment to calculate the new rebate entitlement". So it—the Poll Tax—is a sum which can be changed during the year, in contrast to the old rating system.

There are other anomalies. I still don't have the total amount of what I have to pay. The council seem to make up the rules as they go along, leaving it to luckless office girls to explain to any, usually irate, enquirer. With rising prices, the situation becomes worse. Scottish people seem to have been used as guinea pigs!

John Keith 

Huntly, Aberdeenshire

Dear Editors,

I read the June issue of the Socialist Standard with much interest and I found much to agree with in both the articles and the object and declaration of principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. However, the article about the Poll Tax ('What about the Poll Tax?') which argued that it is not a working class or socialist issue, I found hard to follow.

You quote David Ricardo as saying that taxes on wages will be passed on to the employers via demands for higher wages. In my view, this is both an optimistic view on the effectiveness of the Trade Union leadership in fighting for higher wages, or even fighting for wages that are in line with inflation, and a negation of the real hardship that will be caused by the Poll Tax for many working class people and the importance for the working class to organise for their own defence—although it could be argued that such a defence could prolong the wage system.

As everyone can see with the present dock strike, the Trade Union leadership is not willing to break laws designed to protect the capitalist system, and what action has taken place has been organised by the dockers themselves. Surely it is this type of organisation, and that against the Poll Tax, that will help bring forward the idea that the working class can organise for themselves outside the capitalist system? Secondly, why should the working class pay a more proportionate amount of their income in tax than the rich?

I hope you will answer these points.

Michael Wadsworth,  

Longsight, Manchester

Reply:

It is true that the editorial on the Poll Tax in our June issue did concentrate on the position of workers in employment. But the position of those not in employment and having their income made up to the poverty line by means-tested benefits is basically the same, except that in their case any increase in their income to compensate for the extra charge represented by the Poll Tax has to come from the government rather than through the operation of market forces aided by trade union action.

Of course, governments being notoriously penny-pinching in this field, this increase, introduced in April last year, will leave many worse off while many of those who existed just above the poverty line will find themselves levelled down to it. But to be squeezed in this way is the eternal fate of "the poor" under capitalism and underlines the urgent need to end the capitalist system which treats people who are useless to its profit-making activities in this way—and would continue to do so even if the Poll Tax were abolished and replaced by some other tax such as Labour's proposed local income and property tax.

We never denied “the real hardship that will be caused by the Poll Tax for many working class people". Our argument was that the way to mitigate this was not to wage a political struggle for the repeal of the Poll Tax but to press on with the struggle on the wages front while campaigning politically for the abolition of the wages system. It might indeed be argued that the defensive wages struggle could prolong the wages system but this is not our position. We say that as long as capitalism lasts workers should struggle to get the best price they can for the sale of their labour power.

We have no wish to defend “the Trade union leadership", but we must point out that the existing trade unions are more effective in the wages struggle than Michael Wadsworth gives them credit for: the figures show that at the moment wages are rising on average faster than the cost of living. Anti-Poll Tax groupings (quite apart from mainly being fronts for the Labour Party and/or various Trotskyist would-be vanguards trying to exploit working class discontent for their own anti-working class political ends) could never be as effective as trade unions or other forms of workplace organisation because they seek to organise workers as consumers and not as producers whereas it is only at the place of work—through strikes and the threat of strikes—that we workers have what little bargaining power we do under capitalism. Besides, a group based solely on fighting for the abolition of the Poll Tax can only divide the working class since it is never going to get the support of those workers who as individuals are going to pay less as Poll Tax than they did as rates. Such workers are to be numbered in millions: according to a special issue of Oxford Green News (Spring 1989) on the Poll Tax, “around 22.5 million people in the UK would be paying more and only 17.5 million paying less". Most of these 17.5 million will be workers, so what are they supposed to do to resist financial hardship? Organise politically to defend the Poll Tax? Some way to unite the working class! Socialists represent the common class interest of all workers and so can never be party to setting one group of workers against another over the crumbs that are available under capitalism.

Although we quoted David Ricardo, we could just as easily have quoted Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Here are a couple of quotations from Marx:

The level of wages expressed, not in terms of money, but in in terms of the means of subsistence necessary to the working man, that is the level of real, not of nominal wages, depends on the relationship between demand and supply. An alteration in the mode of taxation may cause a momentary disturbance, but will not change anything in the long run. (Marx-Engels. Collected Works, Vol 6. 1845-1848. p. 225).

If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which today goes into them. Either the employers' profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalist also advances, as part of the wage, the taxes which the worker has to pay, he [the capitalist] would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the state.(p. 329).

How does this work in practice? How does an extra charge on workers come to be passed on to employers of labour? First, we are not talking here about an individual extra charge imposed on an individual worker, but about an extra charge that is sufficiently widespread to enter into the average cost of production of labour power. So, a worker is Glasgow who previously paid no rates (because he or she was a "dependent" of someone who did) cannot take their Poll Tax bill for £300 to their employer and ask him to pay it. If, on the other hand, a majority of workers suddenly had to pay an extra £300 over and above what they had been paying, say in rates, towards the financing of local government then things would be different. The same sort of pressures would be generated for wages to rise as operate as a result of the fall in the purchasing power of money due to inflation: because their living standard would have fallen, workers would be more motivated to struggle for higher wages; once one group of workers had obtained an increase (through being better organised, through their employer having a full order book and not wanting the flow of profits to be interrupted, etc), then other employers are forced to follow suit to attract or retain workers.

The Poll Tax, however, is not a completely new charge on workers; it is a different charge, a different way of financing local government, replacing the rates. Since the rates—whether paid directly by those owning or buying their homes or indirectly as part of the rent paid by those in rented accommodation—have been long-established they will have become an element in the cost of living of wage and salary workers, so that existing wage rates will already reflect the average charge they represent. This means that the introduction of the Poll Tax will only exert an upward pressure on wages to the extent that the average Poll Tax charge turns out to be substantially higher than the previously- existing average Rates charge. For the time being, in fact, the Poll Tax. seems to be more of a redistribution of the charge for local government finance amongst workers with some paying less and some paying more than previously—in other words, a “redistribution of poverty" within the working class—than an extra charge that will tend to be passed on to employers. However this may change when the increases programmed in the Poll Tax for the coming years come into operation.

Editors

Letter: Taxing problem (1998)

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

Taxing problem

Dear Editors,

I’d like to point out what I think is a mistake in the Socialist Party’s thinking on tax – that workers don’t really pay tax because they can’t afford to, and that it’s always a tax on profits. The poll tax fell most heavily on the poorest people and was not passed on to capitalists in paying higher wages – certainly not for unwaged people. The workers pay a lot of tax in VAT on fuel, electrical goods, taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. The council tax is much more of a burden to poorer people too. It got left to anarchists and Leninists to oppose the poll tax and these people are not known for believing in fairness and justice.

Lynn Stewardson,

Nottingham  

Reply: 

Actually, we don’t deny that workers pay, in the sense of themselves handing over the money, some taxes. Our argument is that the burden of taxation does not fall in the end on the working class but on the propertied class and profits.

This is based on the assumption that in the medium term workers sell their ability to work at its cost of production (or what Marx called its value), i.e. at the cost of what they must buy to keep their skills up to scratch and also to raise a family to take their place on the labour market when they retire. It follows from this that any permanent increase in the workers’ cost of living, whether from taxes or from higher prices will be passed on to employers as higher money wages and salaries (On the other hand, any permanent decrease in their cost of living, as from rent control or from subsidies to food or transport, will end up being a subsidy to employers in the form of lower than otherwise money wages.)

Having said this, most taxes in Britain are not even paid by workers but are collected and paid by businesses. Obviously, this is the case with corporation tax. It is also the case with income tax on wages and salaries, which is deducted by employers from nominal wages under the PAYE system and never even get into the hands of bank accounts of employees (income tax, in fact, is mainly a means of ensuring that workers without families don’t get that part of wages meant for raising a family)

Perhaps less obviously, this also applies to VAT. It too falls on and is collected by businesses. As its name implies it is a tax on “value added” which, in capitalist economics, translates into a business’s wages bill plus its profits. As we have just seen, wages in the medium term represent the cost of production of labour power, so though the amount of VAT payable is calculated on the amount of “value added” in fact just like corporation tax it only comes out of profits. Firms can’t automatically increase their prices by the amount of the tax; they reduce their profits by it.

Excise duties on beer, spirits and tobacco are also paid out of their profits by the firms involved. Only in this case prices are raised. The government in effect creates an artificial monopoly position allowing monopoly prices to be charged – and then taxes away the monopoly profits for its own benefit. lnsofar as these goods, selling at their monopoly prices, enter into the general cost of living of the working class they are reflected in higher wage levels.

The taxes workers actually pay out of their own pockets are such things as car licences, TV licences and, if they are owner occupiers, council tax – but, once again, in so far as these enter into the general cost of living they are reflected in wage levels.

As regards the poll tax, the Thatcher government clearly made a major blunder in imposing a tax which had to be physically paid by every adult. Not only was this not cost-effective in capitalist terms (the extra costs of collecting it) but it led to resentment amongst those who had never paid such taxes and in many cases couldn’t afford to anyway. In the end a combination of non-payment, riots, demonstrations and the loss of votes in by-elections, caused the government to back down and restore something akin to the old system under which only owner-occupiers paid local taxes.

As to the unwaged, since they depend tor their income mainly on handouts from the state, taxing them does not make much sense from a capitalist point of view – its just takting back part of what’s been handed out, so why hand it out in the first place? This is why the government will he introducing so-called “tax credits”, under which what is to be paid as tax (if anything) is to be set against what is to be paid as benefit and only the difference paid. So, as with PAYE, the poor will never see the taxes they “pay”. Forcing the poor to physically pay a tax like the poll tax doesn’t make sense either as the level of income support (formerly supplementary benefit, formerly national assistance, formerly the poor law) is fixed as the minimum supportable level which in theory can’t be reduced further. If you try, you get riots even in small peaceful towns like Wells and Taunton. 

Editors. 

Letters: To vote or not to vote (1998)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

To vote or not to vote

Dear Editors,

In his article on Class War (Socialist Standard, October 1997) Paddy Shannon wrote that “so long as there are revolutionaries out there with the energy to act and the will to think, we want to talk to them”. Unfortunately when talking to revolutionaries, Socialist Party members are usually caught up in the debater’s tricks that have so characterised any debate with anarchist revolutionaries, that is, to wilfully misunderstand what we are saying, and then accuse us of a whole list of things that we have never said or done. Such was the case with a recent exchange with the Anarchist Communist Federation. First we were falsely accused of punishment beatings, and when we strenuously denied this, we were then told we were also guilty of advocating head-shaving, tarring and feathering, tying to posts, sticking notices on front doors, curfews and chasing people out of town. This cheapjack debater’s rhetoric is camouflage for the Socialist Party’s own failure to address the problem of the State, the police and crime.

Are the police merely “workers in uniform”—“not the real enemy” as Paddy Shannon says—who will continue to exist after the Socialist Party has managed to persuade the majority to vote for them and who will carry on doing what they were doing before the Great Socialist Vote? You have never seriously tackled the question of the police, the army and the other forces of repression organised by the State and the ruling class. When others attempt to develop ideas about how we can control our own areas without the police, you readily caricature us as advocates of vigilantism.

The forces of State repression are our enemy just as much as is the boss class. Of course all methods must be used to counter them—not excluding fraternisation, revolutionary propaganda aimed at them etc. But this leads to the dissolution of these forces not their control by some benign Socialist Party administered State.

You seem to think that you are revolutionaries. But you have consistently failed to take part in any mass actions—for example against the Poll Tax—preferring the safe isolation of your own sect. You have consistently argued against revolutionary action on every occasion. In actual fact you are good old-fashioned reformists. Wait till you have an electoral majority to vote in Socialism—of course the boss class and the State won’t lift a finger-and in the meantime do nothing but propagandise! But you can’t even get the votes of most social-democratic parties and you have been trapped in your sterile logic for the good part of a century!

Of course as Paddy Shannon correctly says: “The more violence is involved, the more likely the revolution is to fail outright, or to be blown sideways into a new minority dictatorship.” But most revolutions are remarkably non-violent, in their constructive phases at least. The violence comes when the boss class starts fighting back. That’s when armed self-defence of the Revolution is necessary. You criticise Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine for defending revolutionary gains there. What would you have done there? Call for an election and a vote for the Socialist Party? As White and Bolshevik armies attempt to destroy any revolutionary gains!

There are many fine and decent people in the Socialist Party. But if a real revolutionary movement emerges in Britain, you will be forced as individuals to come to terms with the dead end of electoralism. Then there may well be splits in your Party, as some see the need for revolutionary action and others remain trapped within an irrelevant sect.

Ron Allen, 

London E1

Reply:

1. Perhaps we are doomed to misunderstand each other. You accuse us of caricaturing your position yet immediately go on to caricature ours by talking about “some benign Socialist Party administered State”.

Anyone who knows anything about us knows that we regard the whole idea of a “socialist state” or a “socialist government” as a contradiction in terms and that we envisage the dissolution of the repressive state upon the establishment of socialism.

So let’s start again.

We have thought long and hard about the state and its repressive forces. Our reasoning goes like this. We want the useful majority in society (workers of all kinds) to take over and run the means of production in the interest of all. However, at the moment these are in the hands of a minority of the population whose ownership and control of them is backed up-and, when necessary, enforced-by the state and its repressive forces. The state stands as an obstacle between the useful majority and the means of production because it is at present controlled by the minority owning class. They control the state, not by some conspiracy, but with the consent or acquiescence of the majority of the population, a consent which expresses itself in everyday attitudes towards rich people, leaders, nationalism, money, etc. and, at election times, in voting for parties which support class ownership. In fact it is such majority support expressed through elections that gives their control of the state legitimacy.

In other words, the minority rule with the assent of the majority, which gives them political control. The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule-they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control.

Alternative ways of dislodging the owning class have been suggested, such as the head-on clashes with the forces of the state by a determined minority that you advocate. This is foolish, not to say suicidal: the state wins every time. The plain fact is that you can’t “smash the state” while it still enjoys majority support—and when those who control it no longer enjoy majority support there is no need to try to “smash” it: the majority can use the power of their numbers to take control of it via the ballot box, so that it is no longer used to uphold class ownership.

To do so they will need to organise politically, into a political party, a socialist party. This is what we advocate. We don’t suffer from delusions of grandeur so we don’t necessary claim that we are that party. What we are talking about is not a small educational and propagandist group, but a mass party that has yet to emerge. It is such a party that will take political control via the ballot box, but since it will in effect be the useful majority organised democratically and politically for socialism it is the useful majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society. They neutralise the state and its repressive forces-there is no question of forming a government-and then proceed to take over the means of production for which they will also have organised themselves at their places of work. This done, the repressive state is disbanded and its remaining administrative and service features, reorganised on a democratic basis, are merged with the organisations which the useful majority will have formed to take over and run production, to form the democratic administrative structure of the stateless society of common ownership that socialism will be.

This is perhaps a less romantic idea of the socialist revolution than yours but a thousand times more realistic. Which is why we think this is the way it will happen. When the time comes the socialist majority will use the ballot box since it will be the obvious thing to do, and nobody will be able to prevent them or persuade them not to. At that time it will be anti-electoralists like you who will be irrelevant. Presumably you’ll be there on the sidelines (except, that is, for those who will have split off and joined the socialist majority) chanting “Don’t Vote”. It is doubtful if anyone will be listening.

2. Our differences on this point lead to different conceptions as to what is “revolutionary action”. Since you favour head-on clashes with the forces of the state, it is such actions that you regard as “revolutionary”, irrespective of what the clashes are about.

This is the only basis on which you can make the preposterous claim that the campaign against the old Poll Tax was “revolutionary”. After all, this was a campaign to reform the tax structure of the capitalist state. It is true that it did contain elements of resisting some people’s standard of living being reduced, but that still didn’t make it revolutionary but merely a defensive action within the capitalist system (and a sectionalist one in that not all workers were worse off with the Poll Tax compared to the previous system of paying rates).

Our individual members made up their own minds as to whether or not to pay the Poll Tax (some did, some didn’t) and it is true that, as a party, we didn’t try to jump on the anti-Poll Tax bandwagon and hijack it for some supposedly “revolutionary” end by trying to provoke confrontations with the police. A reformist campaign does not cease to be a reformist campaign because its partisans, or some of them, resort to riots and grappling with the police. Violence no more equates with revolution than non-violence does with reformism. It is the end not the means that decides.

At the moment it is the peaceful activity of undermining people’s support for capitalist ideas that is the most revolutionary and subversive activity that opponents of capitalism can engage in because it is precisely people’s pro-capitalist ideas, not the repressive forces of the state, that maintain capitalism in being. Yet you consistently dismiss such revolutionary activity as mere propagandising.

3. Finally, to return to your idea of forming a “real neighbourhood watch” to deal with “anti-social elements” in place of the police, we don’t think you’ve thought this through either. People resort to drug-dealing, mugging and burglary, not because they are evil, but because to live in a capitalist society you need money and this is one option that is open for workers to acquire some.

Chasing the police off some housing estate or out of some neighbourhood won’t change this reality; it then becomes someone else’s problem. You then take on the responsibility for trying to suppress what is undoubtedly anti-social behaviour but which some people will always resort to as long as capitalism exists-and your “no go” areas will continue to exist within the framework of capitalism.

We don’t think that we are being unfair in putting you on the spot over this. How precisely are you going to deal with drug-pushers, muggers and burglars? No doubt you would begin by warning them off, but if that didn’t work what would you then do? OK, you could bring popular pressure to bear on them-boycott them, “send them to Coventry”-but, if that didn’t work you’d have to resort to physical force in the end, to chase them away (not that that would solve the problem; it would be a typical not-in-my-backyard reaction; they would merely move to some other area and continue their anti-social activities there).

We find it strange that people calling themselves anarchists should want to get involved in trying to maintain “order” under capitalism, to in effect try to do the state’s job for it. It won’t work anyway since crime, being endemic to capitalism, cannot be suppressed by the police, or by vigilantes or by your vague “real neighbourhood watch”. It will always exist under capitalism and to get involved in trying to suppress it is dangerous for revolutionaries as it is to take on responsibility for running capitalism, which, as we know from experience, always ends in tears. A self-policed neighbourhood under capitalism is no more revolutionary than a self-managed firm producing for the market-which is another mistaken idea from the same stable.

Editors.

Ending Poverty

Dear Editors,

Thank you for publishing your review of my book To End Poverty (Socialist Standard, November). It was very good and would give your readers a clear idea of what it was, and is, all about.

I was only a little disappointed that you did not mention the key factor—the disproof of the Theory of Division of Labour. This theory says that all members of a firm benefit with higher wages if the firm succeeds. I say that the lowest paid don’t benefit because the unemployed outside are prepared to work for less. Conventional economic wisdom used to say that theoretically there can be no unemployment because production creates its own demand (Say’s Law), so theoretically there are no unemployed outside to depress wages. Say’s Law has now been junked by Keynes, and everyone else, so the Theory of Division of Labour has been disproved; so industrialisation impoverishes.

Richard Hunt, 

Oxford

Reply:

We don’t understand the point you are trying to make. The Theory of the Division of Labour says that more can be produced by people specialising in what they are best at than by everybody having to produce everything they need. It applies equally in an agricultural, and even a hunter-gatherer, context as in an industrial one. For instance, in a tribe of hunters, it is more efficient if some members concentrate on making arrows while others concentrate on actual hunting than if every hunter has to make his own arrows.

This is a technical point which has nothing to do with Say’s Law which is an erroneous (as Marx pointed out long before Keynes) theory about markets.

What your example shows is not that the industrial division of labour as such causes poverty but that it only does so where the means of industrial production are owned by one class for whom the rest have to work for wages. If the means of production were owned in common and used to produce what people require, as socialists advocate, there would be no need for anybody to go without adequate food, clothing, shelter and the other amenities of life. We don’t need to abolish industry to get rid of poverty, only the ownership of industry by a minority, privileged class.

Editors.

(To John Williams, Kimberly Ellis, John Loomes and Ian Synclere: we will be replying to your letters in coming issues.)

Council tax or free access? (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pleased with your latest council tax bill? This tax on property was introduced in 1994 by John Major as a replacement for Thatcher’s poll tax which was removed (along with Maggie) after it caused widespread public resentment and riots. Council tax has risen by up to 60  percent since 1997. It leapt 12 percent on average last year, and after the latest increases it’s also now causing considerable upset and anger.

This government like previous ones wants to stay in power, so while it likes to be seen attempting to improve services delivered by local authorities, like education and policing, it doesn’t want to be seen raising taxes to pay for them. Whitehall and local governments both understand and play the resulting game: get what you can from each, but blame one another – and blame other parties – if and when the public complain. Councils blame central government for not providing enough money, and the government accuses councils of inefficiency, mismanagement and proclaim that they will cap unacceptable increases.

While the government is worried about a popular revolt against council tax – something Gordon Brown tried to diminish in his March 17 budget with a £100 reduction-cum-sop for pensioners over 70 – it seems likely Labour will keep this property tax but reduce future increases by allowing councils to raise additional money by charging for more local services.

The council tax is a property tax but it is only a pin-prick for those who own the most property. In fact, the more property you own the less painful it is. While the Duke of Westminster, worth £4.6 billion and owner of some 190,000 acres in Britain is able to live a luxurious life in the grandest of mansions, his council tax bill will be no more than a few thousand pounds. Rich aristocratic and agro-industrialists who represent just one percent of the population but who own 70 percent of the land in Britain, are actually paid property subsidies and grants of tens of thousands each year.

Those on high incomes can also shrug it off. Tony Blair and Cherie’s council tax can be paid off with just half-a-day’s worth of their earnings, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy’s with a mere couple of days worth of theirs. This reflects the inequalities of ownership and income that are at the basis of present-day society.

Despite appearances, in the end it does not matter to most people what form or level taxes take. To enable us to remain fit to work, our wage, salary or benefit has to cover all the normal costs of living, including any taxes. Abolishing or reducing taxes wouldn’t leave us any better off since it only allows them to pay us less. National and local finance is not really our problem. Whatever the system’s politicians decide, our after-tax income is never going to be much more than enough to keep ourselves fit to work.

Free access

We in the Socialist Party say people should have full access to services like public toilets, education, properly maintained roads, refuse collection,  libraries etc, but we ask you to reject taxation or direct charges as ways of providing them. Instead, we ask you to support free access to these vital services as well as to all other needs, like food, housing, public transport, domestic appliances, furniture, gas, electricity, clothing etc.

A society of free access to whatever people need is readily achievable by replacing today’s capitalism with a new system where we all collectively and directly own and democratically control the means of production and distribution (i.e., farmland, factories, raw materials, power stations, water supply, roads network, railways etc).

If we all directly own and control these assets – rather than them being owned by private individuals and, or, the state – then we will also collectively own all that they provide, resulting in free access to all goods and services. People don’t have to buy what’s jointly theirs already.

Nothing will have a monetary cost with real socialism. In fact, money, having no function at all, will be redundant. People will still work, but the purpose will then be for meeting society’s needs – not making profits for, and rewarding, a tiny minority class who have taken possession of the vital resources and machinery that make life possible.

Do you want to stick with council tax, local income tax, national income tax, value added tax, stealth taxes, National Insurance – a tax by another name – or get rid of the lot of them, along with the time-wasting, bureaucracy, confusion, stress and worry they cause, by choosing to have classless moneyless leaderless free access from democratic real socialism instead?

Reform or revolution? (1991)

From the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been a busy year for the reformers. There have been local taxes to abolish, NHS reforms to reverse, seven-plus tests to get rid of, the homeless to be provided with emergency shelter, bank charges to be made less harsh on the small borrower. Every year is a busy year for the reformer. No sooner has one minor concession been won—or, more often, half-won or quarter-won—than a ton of new problems, or old ones returned, fall upon society. The reformer's job is never done. The paint on the rusty machine is no sooner dry than it is peeling off.

The reformer is always busy. Petitions, marches, visits to MP’s, conferences of good-willed people to organise. Busy—too busy to stop and think. Have we been down this road before? Is the fight for a larger crumb worthy of their energies? When all the short steps forward are added to all the shoves back is any headway being made at all? No, the reformer has no time to think about that. After all, politics is not about theorising, says the reformer. They are people of the practical world.

Take the fight against the poll tax. Now, that was practical. No time to think about what taxes are . . . So, the opposition to the tax was mobilised and led on marches and forward unto the great victory of ... a new local tax.

To the reformist, with an immutable sense of the here and now, the revolutionary socialist presents a quite unacceptable spectacle. Here is someone who wants to go beyond the here and now into a system which is not here in a time which is not now, but could come as soon as the workers so decide. This discomforts the reformist because at root, despite all radical protestations to the contrary, the busy reformer is a hopeless conservative who cannot see more than the most trifling of changes as being possible. Reformists claim that revolutionaries irritate them because we seek what is impossible: we are “impossibilists”, to use the term of abuse applied to us back in 1904. But in reality it is the reformer’s conviction that nothing very much can change—a conviction shared between the left and the right wings of capitalist politics—which defines revolution as an unthinkable impossibility.

Sometimes the reformist will grant the necessity of a grand socialist change. But this must always be some time in the distant future. Reformists who flirt with the socialist vision turn socialism into a utopia. The conquest of the bakery is for the future, but for now the struggle for the crumbs must be all-consuming.

The political battle between Reform and Revolution is not a matter of tactical strategy: you take the high road and we'll take the low road. The reformist is taking the roundabout, never intending to stray from the here and now. All reformist talk about socialism in the future, but in the meantime . . . is so much hot air. The meantime of reformism is an eternity. Workers have died within this never-ending meantime. Indeed, it is a mean time, because the reformers aim is ultimately narrow and mean and constrained by a poverty of desire.

The revolutionary sets out to end and not mend the capitalist system. For the socialist there can be no such thing as humanised capitalism: the only good policy for capitalism is its abolition by the force of democratic, class-conscious action. Once workers get busy working for socialism, in larger and larger numbers, the owners and controllers of the Earth will shower us with piddling reforms. The capitalists will concede anything except their right to monopolise the resources of the Earth. It is this freedom which socialists, committed to common ownership, democratic control and free access to resources for all, will take away from the existing rulers.

The revolutionary seeks to defeat the class enemy—and defeat can only mean total defeat, i.e. dispossession. The reformist seeks to leave the possession of class power in the enemy’s hands and then plead for a better deal. It is a futile and time-wasting policy, however sincere its many advocates undoubtedly are.

Next year will be a busy year for the reformers—and the one after and so on into the next decade and century. Unless the political folly of Reform is understood. Unless the partial victories of the crumb-collectors are abandoned and workers realise that we have a world to win. Not to ask for, but to take.

Steve Coleman

The Poll Tax and the workers (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The government decision to replace rates with a "community charge" has sparked off furious controversy. The government claimed that the new system will get rid of existing anomalies and inequalities, and the opposition parties argue that it will destroy democratic local government and create new burdens for the poor. The new system is to begin in Scotland in April 1989 and a year later in England and Wales, starting with some London boroughs.

At present local authorities get their revenue from four sources: 40 per cent from central government through the Rate Support Grant; 20 per cent from local householders paying rates; 25 per cent from local industrial and commercial rate payers; and 15 per cent from council tenants paying rent. Domestic rates are payable only by the householder, not by other adults living in the house.

Pressure for the new system has come largely from the industrial and commercial rate payers. They complain that only 34 per cent of local electors pay full rates, and 57 per cent of those entitled to vote in local elections have no rates liability at all, due either to the rebate system or to the fact that they are not householders. The consequence is, they say, that local councils are elected by people who have no interest in keeping expenditure down — high rates are of no concern to them.

Under the new system everybody over the age of 18 will have to pay Poll Tax, except the mentally ill and elderly people living in homes and hospitals. Low paid workers and students will not have to pay the full amount. Business ratepayers will pay a standard Unified Business Rate pegged to inflation.

The Westminster Bank magazine, Money Care (February 1988), says that while many millions of individuals and householders will lose money another large group will gain:

  The people who will generally pay less are homes with only one adult and people living in large homes. Households where the total bill will be higher will be ones with more than two adults, small homes and those excused rates at the moment. Everyone will have to pay at least 20 per cent of the community charge.

The government has already acted to keep rates down. Councils raising rates unduly are penalised by a reduction in the amount of the central government grant. Mrs Thatcher, in a speech reported in the Financial Times (7th March 1988) said this about the new system.

  This will transform inner cities. No longer will they [the councils] be able to spend, spend, spend, putting it on owner-occupiers and businesses. It is being specifically designed so that the same degree of efficiency will result in the same community charge all over the country.

The new system has come under criticism from professional bodies interested in taxation and local government on the ground of its complexity and the difficulty of enforcing it against the large numbers of people likely to evade payment if they can.

There is nothing new in one group of property owners, in this case the business rate-payers, trying to unload some of the burden of the rates on to other groups. Professor Cannan, in his History of Local Rates in England (1912) showed that it was going on throughout the 19th century. Then, as now, one of the issues was how much of local authority expenditure should be paid by central government and there were then, as now, complaints about the "extravagances and mismanagement" of particular local councils. The business rate-payers naturally wish to reduce the burden of rates and most of them can count on doing well out of the change.

But what about the working class and the assertion by the Labour Party and others that the Poll Tax will, on balance, make the workers worse off?

At its formation the Socialist Party rejected the popular theory that rates (and taxes) reduce the workers’ standard of living and that they therefore have an interest in keeping them down. They are. in the long run. a burden not on the workers but on the propertied class. The argument against rates is that they are an addition to the rent workers have to pay for accommodation and that any increase in the rates makes the working class worse off.

Examination of what actually happens in the matter of rates and rents shows that the argument is not valid. High rates do not increase the amount the workers have to pay but reduce the rent the landlord gets. If rates are higher in one district than in others, businesses and tenants of houses avoid these districts if they can, compelling landlords to accept less then they would otherwise be able to get. Professor Cannan gave evidence of this. He wrote:

  The high rates of a highly rated district undoubtedly tend to deter population and businesses from settling in it, and this means that they will not settle in it unless the owners charge less than they would if the rates were lower. If the rates were reduced the owners would be able to charge more for their properties.

Examples of this were quoted in the Socialist Standard (October 1904). One was West Ham, at that time the most heavily rated district in England: "rents are falling, while rates are rising, owing to the decreased demand for houses". At the present time a shift of this kind is taking place between Camden, where the average rate charge is £752 a year, and neighbouring Wandsworth where it is only £327.

Since 1938 there has been a huge increase, in real terms, in the amount of rates collected by local authorities (as in the amount of taxes collected by central government) but it has not had the effect of lowering the majority of workers' standard of living, which is in fact very considerably higher than it was in 1938. The point is that the workers, through organisation on the industrial field, can take advantage of the favourable phases of capitalism when production and profits are rising, to get higher wages. In most of the years since 1945 the average wages of workers who are in work, have risen more than the rise in their cost of living. It is going on now. Since 1982 when production and profits began to rise again, average real wages have been rising continuously and are now well above the level of 1979.

It has happened in defiance of the regular pleas by government ministers that the unions should modify their wage claims and employers should not agree to large claims. Chancellor Nigel Lawson said, for example: "It is very important for businessmen to keep firm control of their pay costs" (Financial Times, 18th March 1988). Trying to keep wages down has been the line taken by every government, Labour as well as Tory.

Edgar Hardcastle

Disenfranchising the poor (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some phrases in the item Disenfranchising the Poor (Running Commentary, August 1987 Socialist Standard) may not have conveyed the socialist attitude on rates and taxes entirely clearly.

For example, we referred to every adult's "ability to pay" the proposed new local authority tax and stated the new tax will leave many people "substantially worse off," which may read as if socialists think the working class pay rates and taxes. That is, of course, the impression which most workers have but reality is different. Whatever effects the new tax may have on workers' incomes these will be only temporary and even at that, while some workers will "pay" more under the tax others will “pay" less.

The important point, however, is that whatever deductions or liabilities appear to be imposed on workers' incomes the wage they have available to support themselves and to reproduce their energies has to be determined by what is necessary to do that — by the value of their labour power. This fact is unaffected by what seems to be deductions for income tax or by liability to pay rates or any similar charges. The two main influences on workers' standards of living are whether capitalism is in a boom or a slump and the strength of their bargaining power to improve those standards.

The cost of the machinery of government, national and local, and till that implies, must therefore be borne by the capitalist class — paid from the surplus value extracted from working class exploitation. The capitalist class may legitimately concern themselves about the level and the administrative details of rates and taxes but these are of no concern to workers.

The introduction of the so-called poll tax may be motivated by the government hoping that it will persuade workers to vote Conservative in both national and local elections. The whole issue of rates and taxes is often used in this way because, like so many others, it is imperfectly understood by the workers. We hope the item in the August Socialist Standard in no way contributed to that confusion.

Editors

Letters: William Morris (1990)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris

Dear Editors,

The two articles on William Morris in your October 1990 issue are most welcome. Although it is the hundredth anniversary of the publication of News From Nowhere, the left has been almost silent about Morris. This, despite the fact that Radio Four made it a “Book At Bedtime". Sadly others, particularly Greens and modern-day Utopians have not been so slow to pick up on claiming Morris for their own philosophies.

Against this your two articles do a good job in situating Morris firmly within a socialist and Marxist tradition. C. Skelton gives a fair summary of Morris's political ideas, although I think I prefer Morris's original views to Skelton’s gloss on why they didn't work. Central to this, of course, is Morris's connection with extra-parliamentary anarchism. Now that Stalinism has collapsed perhaps it will be possible to examine this afresh. Certainly while I would agree that parliamentary activity cannot be ignored, one can understand how Morris, faced with Hyndman's SDF, came to take the stand that he did.

I am not so sure about DAP's review of the book William Morris and News From Nowhere: A Vision of Our Time. There is no doubt that, as DAP notes, it is an "interesting and important" book. It explores some of the themes in News From Nowhere and tries to show their relevance for the 1990s. So far so good. But the ultimate aim of the book is, of course, not to reinforce our understanding of Morris's position as perhaps the outstanding early British Marxist. Rather it is to suggest that Morris's heritage is confused and that he could be claimed equally by Greens or by radical liberals. Indeed, the Communist Party of Great Britain, which is just about to rename itself as the "radical party" is using Morris in just this way. DAP's review of the book is fine as far as it goes.

But if Morris is not to be taken from the Marxist tradition we will need to be much more critical of those who would isolate certain elements of this thought while denying his socialism and Marxism.

Keith Martin

London N17

Reply:

We agree that an attempt is being made to claim Morris as some sort of harmless Green reformist, whereas in actual fact to his death he called himself a "revolutionary, international socialist".

Editors

Poll Tax

Dear Editors,

Instead of campaigning to abolish the poll tax. the working class should organise politically to end the capitalist system itself. Without the capitalist system there would be no poll tax, no rent, gas bills, house repossessions, wage slavery, no money or private ownership of the means of producing wealth.

Why object to paying poll tax when one has to pay to eat. to drink, to keep warm, in fact to exist!

Anti-Capitalist 

Seaham, Co. Durham

Labour Party and Entryism

Dear Editors,

Please can you say what is the SPGB's attitude re Labour Party members? Recently I have met some London Labour members in Bradford—they were here to help the local Labour Party MP's. councillors etc.

I had a chat with them on the precinct as they were "signing up" passers-by at a bench. I asked these people what they thought about the SPGB. One or two did know of the existence of the SPGB, but did not know much about what it stands for—they had not been conversant with the Socialist Standard. After a discussion about all manner of aspects of current affairs but noticeably nothing re Socialism itself (I thought that very strange) they seemed to disregard the possibility of the SPGB growing into a mass party of the proletariat and they said that the Labour Party was the only one today to challenge modern Toryism, Thatcherism and present-day State Capitalism in the UK.

Please could you assess these postures of the Labour Party? I would appreciate if you are able to forward the SPGB's view of the Labour Party's claim. Basically it is this: The Labour Party sees the contemporary state capitalism as the full development of previous capitalism reaching an advanced (albeit decadent) level even with all the terrible exploitation which is caused by it.

My impression of Labour Party members is one of a strange lack of clarity and lucidity re Socialism. Your evaluation of the eastern states, USSR and others in the past has been proved perfectly correct, as recent changes have shown. Having assiduously studied the proofs and tenets of the SPGB, my findings are that the SPGB is totally validated re Socialism.

M.Henson 

Leeds

Reply:

You have obviously come across a group of Trotskyist infiltrators into the Labour Party. Which would not be surprising since the MP for Bradford whose death provoked the recent by-election was associated with the so-called “Militant Tendency". Talk of capitalism involving exploitation and being decadent would make Neil Kinnock livid if he heard it, as what he and his fellow leaders of the Labour Party want is a chance to try and show that they can manage capitalism better than the Tories.

It is true that the Labour Party can win elections whereas we in the Socialist Party are without much influence. Since, however, Labour support is built up as support for managing capitalism, when in office they can do absolutely nothing to further the cause of socialism. Socialism will only become a real issue when more and more people want it and organise into a separate political party opposed to Labour. It is to this end that all our efforts are directed.

Editors

Christianity

Dear Editors,

Although I think the October issue of the Socialist Standard is the most forthright condemnation of capitalism you have published during the last ten years that I have been reading it, there is one topic which I would like to question. "Does Religion Matter"?

Would it not have been better if socialists had ignored religion until real socialism had been established? We know that religion has always been used as a weapon of oppression against the working class. However, if we had not publicly denied the existence of our mythical Jesus Christ, who, according to the equally mythical bible, preached a socialist way of life, we might have had a few million Christians fighting for socialism!

After a few decades of world socialism, the Christians who had helped to bring it about would have departed this life, taking their religion with them. Hypocritical views maybe, but better than the evils of capitalism.

Peter H. Reynolds 

Sevenoaks, Kent

Reply:

We don't think that our relative lack of progress is due to our opposition to religion. After all, if there were millions of Christians who would otherwise want socialism, why haven't they formed their own movement which would advocate the same as us except on religion? Nor can we see how it can be said that the mythical JC “preached a socialist way of life". The early Christians were a sect very similar to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of today who cared little about changing society as they expected their Messiah to return in the near future and inaugurate a theocracy in which God would rule over humans with an iron hand. Hardly socialism!

Editors

Profits before trees

Dear Editors,

What happened in our village today is a mini-example of how the Green Party and all other reformist poitical parties will be unable to save the world from environmental destruction. Four very healthy mature trees stood immediately outside our back fence. They were a home for the birds, played their part in cleaning up the polluted air we breathe and were a pleasure to look at. Unfortunately they stood in the way of our local land baron and his plans for the future development of his land for either houses, car parks, access or factory units. He was not concerned that the North Herts District Council had asked for all existing trees to be retained, his object is the acquisition of money and all must bow down before this aim. So the trees were cut down and he is no doubt thinking hard for a good excuse when the NHDC asks questions. Those trees were no threat to our house but were immediately behind it. The lesson for the Green Party and all other reformist political parties is that, in our capitalistic society where money is supreme most acts are performed if profitable, and exploiting the earth is profitable. Vote out capitalism for a better society.

John E. Windebank 

Little Wymondley, Herts

Running Commentary: Today’s Technology (1987)

The Running Commentary Column from the August 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today’s Technology

The Today newspaper, notable for its fuzzy colour and its equally fuzzy comment, has been sold to News International — another title to add to Rupert Murdoch's ever-expanding collection. It is perhaps an ironic consequence for a paper which, when it started, was seen as symptomatic of a trend towards a wider range of newspapers made possible by new technology and lower production costs.

In fact, Today was very quickly sold off to millionaire, Tiny Rowland, whose Lonrho company already owns the Observer, prior to its recent sale to Murdoch. The promise of a plethora of new newspapers has not been fulfilled. The concentration of ownership in the hands of a few media tycoons continues unabated. Once again the laws of capital have been more than a match for the potential benefits that could be obtained from advances in technology.


To a Labour Supporter

So, the Tories are going to be in power for another four or five years. Four or five more years of handouts for the rich and poverty for the poor. Four or five more years of official praise for money values, competition and the profit motive. Four or five more years of "that bloody woman" preaching in her horribly affected voice the survival of the richest in this rat-race society of ours.

An appalling prospect, isn't it, the only consolation being the failure of the shamefaced Tories of the SDP? But we should not forget that what we are up against is not the twisted attitudes of one insufferable individual. What we are up against is a system which forces governments to give priority to profit-making over satisfying needs, whatever the personal attitudes of their members.

We've seen other governments — Labour governments, to be precise — composed of ministers committed to improving the lot of ordinary people being forced by the economic laws of the system to do just what the Thatcher governments have been doing: attacking wage and salary levels, cutting benefits, closing hospitals, charging for health care, wasting resources on arms, presiding over growing unemployment. The only difference has been that whereas Thatcher has been unrepentant about doing these things, Labour ministers have been apologetic about it but the end result has been the same. Living standards and social services have been cut to give priority to profit-making.

So what can we do to achieve a better society, one geared to meeting needs? An understanding that we are up against an economic system operating according to blind economic laws which not even governments can control or alter suggests that, to be effective, we should direct our energies at getting rid of that system rather than changing the personnel who preside over it.

At one time the Labour Party did claim to want to replace this capitalist system of production for profit by a socialist system of production for use even if this manifested itself more in words than in deeds. Now it merely claims to be able to administer the system in a more caring way than the Tories. Against the better inclinations of many of its ordinary members, it has employed the slick publicity tricks it once despised to present itself as a more acceptable, alternative government of capitalism. The Nice Party as opposed to the Nasty Party.

But this superficial approach to politics is self-defeating because, as experience of past Labour governments has shown, accepting to govern within the system means accepting in the end to govern, reluctantly or otherwise, in accordance with its economic laws. All governments end up being uncaring not because they are composed of uncaring people but because they are presiding over a system which, being based on putting profits before needs, is by nature uncaring. If we are to change things, then the whole profit system must go. In other words, socialism remains the only solution. Socialism — common ownership, democratic control, production for use and distribution according to need — is therefore an urgent necessity.

The best way — the only way — to advance the cause of socialism is to concentrate on advocating it. presenting socialism, and nothing but socialism, as the only solution to the problems ordinary people inevitably face under the present system in such fields as housing, education, health care and the environment. In other words, to get at the cause rather than seek to deal with effects; to advocate fundamental change rather than mere defensive action within the system.

In this way we work to build up the strong and determined body of socialist opinion without which the present system cannot be abolished and a better society achieved.


Disenfranchising the Poor

The poll tax, which received such little attention during the election campaign, has now rocketed to the top of the political issues charts as people begin to appreciate its implications.

The plan is to replace the present system of rates — a tax on property — with what the Tories have chosen to call a community charge — a tax on people. It is scheduled to come into effect in England and Wales in 1990 and in Scotland in 1989. The poll tax will be levied on every adult in the country irrespective of their ability to pay. The theory is that it will increase the number of people contributing to the cost of local services which, it is argued, will be beneficial both economically — 35 million poll tax payers as opposed to 18 million ratepayers — and politically. The political argument is that those who are at present not liable to rates have little incentive to vote for local authorities that will reduce public spending. In other words the government sees the poll tax as a means of increasing support for local Conservative politicians.

During the election campaign the actual consequences of the introduction of the poll tax were hardly discussed. Instead the focus was on the more appealing idea of the "abolition of the rates". In fact for many people the poll tax will leave them substantially worse off. Those who will benefit will be those who are most wealthy since, within any local authority area, everyone will pay a flat rate poll tax. So. for example, an average household in which there are two adults in Liverpool currently pays £500 a year in rates whereas on present figures the poll tax per person will be £301. The presence of a third adult in the household will mean that the total poll tax bill will increase by a further £301.

Those on low incomes will be able to claim a rebate of up to 80% of their poll tax charge and those living on social security benefits will have their income support (due to replace social security from next April) increased to cover the 20% which everyone must pay. However, they will receive 20% of the national average poll tax charge so they will be substantially out of pocket if they live in an area where the poll tax exceeds the national average.

The financial costs of the poll tax may well be so high that many people will attempt to avoid paying it. That shouldn't be too difficult: the problems of administering a system of poll tax on a highly mobile population are likely to be enormous and it has already been estimated that the new system will cost twice as much to administer as the rates. But the cost for those who do decide to opt out of paying their poll tax could well be disenfranchisement. The most reliable list of local adult residents is the electoral register which is likely to be used as a checklist for the collection of the poll tax. Many people faced with the prospect of paying community charges which they can ill afford, may decide that it is worth sacrificing their vote to avoid paying. Is this the increased choice that Thatcher promised us if she achieved her third term?

Greasy Pole: No More Mister Nice Guy (1996)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like watching the sun rise, inch by inch, beyond a distant hill the idea is beginning to dawn that John Major is not, after all, the Very Nice Man he was once supposed to be. Not the simple, relaxed chap you’re pleased to have a chat with over the garden fence or a pint with at the local. Not the concerned family man with the homely wife and the nice kids who do well at school and who are always polite and respectful.

When Major first got the job of Prime Minister, after the men in grey suits had done their duty over Thatcher, it soon became apparent that his background was so obscured as to defeat the most penetrative of media hacks. We were told he came from Brixton, in those innocent days before it gained a reputation for hyperactive police and hyper-reactive rioters. He went to grammar school locally and then failed to become a London Transport bus conductor, which did not seem to have affected his later career at a bank, where he mysteriously scaled the promotion ladder. This must have stood him in good stead when he began to claw his way up the greasy pole of politics, from the local Young Conservatives to MP, to junior minister to Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister.

This was highly unsatisfactory to all those frantically excavating hacks. They could not exhume anything like a scandal about Major, except for still-born stories about a long past relationship with an older woman and a non-existent extramarital affair. Meanwhile Major made soothing declarations about the desire to build a classless society and to lead a nation at ease with itself. A bewildered population began to ask itself whether it could be true: were we about to be governed by a Very Nice Man?

Well, Major himself has answered that question, with evidence that he is as ruthless a political operator as he needs to be. He may lack some of the skills required for this—for example he has not mastered Harold Wilson's knack of never completely leaving all his boats burned—but he is trying hard. Any problem which attracts publicity is explained away as if the past sixteen years had been spent under some other party in government. If necessary ministers who get in trouble are sacked, after an initial period when Major ritually declares they have his complete support.

Poll Tax debacle
This would have been a shock only to those who had failed to appreciate the steely edge of Major's ambition. For example, when Thatcher was confronted with the ominous result of the first leadership ballot in 1990 she turned to the two most powerful people in her cabinet—Douglas Hurd at the Foreign Office and Major at the Exchequer—for support in the second ballot. Hurd agreed, according to Thatcher, "at once and with good grace”. But Major was different. This was the man clearly chosen byThatcher as her eventual successor; it might even be said that he owed it all to her. How did he respond to her, in her hour of need?

  “I asked John to second my nomination. There was a moment's silence. The hesitation was palpable . . . Then he said that if that was what I wanted, yes. Later, when urging my supporters to vote for John for the leadership, I made play of the fact that he did not hesitate. But both of us knew otherwise" (The Downing Street Years).

There are other examples of Major’s careful duplicity. As Financial Secretary to the Treasury and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was closely identified with the Poll Tax. From the outset this was a very unpopular measure; multitudes of workers saw it as a blatant attack on their incomes and they showed how they felt with their votes.

It was only when Thatcher had gone and the fact that the Poll Tax was a monumental vote-loser became obvious to all but the most stubborn or stupid of Tories that Major changed his line. During his campaign for the Conservative leadership—and this was partly to undermine Heseltine’s appeal—he promised to review the tax, which really meant to abolish it. It was as if he had never supported it in the first place, just as if the whole mess was someone else’s fault.

Lucky Lamont
That was how it was again over the issue of sterling and the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Again, Major was a supporter of this policy, arguing that it would result in lower interest rates, a stable exchange rate for sterling—and so a big political advantage for the Tories.

Well it didn’t turn out like that and it all came to an end on that September day when interest rates were raised three times within a few hours and the Chancellor of the Exchequer wearily told the assembled media in Downing Street that sterling had been withdrawn from the ERM.

This withdrawal was, apparently, in order to achieve the very conditions which membership of the ERM was to bring in the first place. It was such an abject collapse of a policy that it might even have persuaded some politician—the Chancellor, the Prime Minister—to confess their impotence to control capitalism and fall on their political sword. What happened was that Norman Lamont, who was Major’s choice as Chancellor, took all the blame. He it was who stood mumbling into the microphone in Downing Street and he, some time later, who was sacked by Major. Again, it was almost as if the policies had nothing to do with Major. Not surprisingly, Lamont now sulks on the back benches, sniping at Major’s Teflon-coated image.

So far Major has got away with such breathtaking betrayals of what he claimed were his principles. If the day comes when he is finally, unavoidably, exposed as yet another political trickster we may be sure that we shall be encouraged to believe it matters whether our leaders are nice or nasty. We will be told we can really have a classless society, at ease with itself, if only we have a nice, unassuming, sensible person in charge at Number Ten. When that happens we should remember the cynical, disreputable history of capitalism of which John Major is a part.

Ivan

Tolpuddle and today (1990)

From the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Rally is held every July to remember six Dorset farm labourers who in 1834 were sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia for the crime of organising a combination of workers to protect and attempt to improve their wages and conditions. In the past few years Socialist Party members and supporters in and around Dorset have attended this event, organised a stall offering a wide variety of socialist literature, and generally argued the case for world socialism and against capitalism in all its forms.

The Tolpuddle Rally, in common no doubt with many other trade union and working class events, shows the positive and negative aspects of working class organisation in the 1990s. On the more positive side, there is the anger of many workers at the problems, frustrations and limitations imposed upon us by a social system based upon minority class ownership of the means of life, production for profit and the exploitation of the useful majority; our ability to struggle and organise against such conditions is also clear. The problem is that workers seem too content to endlessly struggle against particular problems, attempting to treat them in isolation from the social system which creates them.

The events that the Tolpuddle Rally commemorates took place well over 150 years ago but despite the gap in time many similar problems remain today. One such example is trade union organisation. Workers at GCHQ are still involved in the basic struggle for the right to combine to protect and attempt to improve their wages and conditions of employment, following the ban on trade union organisation in that establishment in 1984. Trade unionists as a whole have in the last few years seen the introduction of legislation designed to weaken their ability to engage in effective industrial action. These events in themselves say much about the concept of freedom and democracy in capitalist society.

The struggle for trade union rights is of course a vital one so long as society is divided into two classes: those who produce but do not possess and those who possess but do not produce. For the former, trade union organisation is the only means of protection from the encroachments of capital. However, trade union organisation needs to be more about working class self-organisation and democratic control from bottom to top and less about letting leaders make decisions on our behalf. Secondly, trade unions which attach themselves to political parties which support capitalism, such as the Labour Party in Britain, risk having their effectiveness reduced when that particular party is in government. Also, the effectiveness of trade unions is very much dependent on economic conditions. Finally, whilst trade union organisation is vital for working class industrial self-defense, it is not an end in itself; workers also need to organise consciously and politically to abolish the system which is the root cause of the need to engage in this endless day-to-day struggle.

Fruitless diversions
Workers have been distracted from engaging in all-out struggle against the root cause of their problems by becoming involved in fruitless diversions and worthless causes. The two distractions that were most evident at Tolpuddle this year were the Poll Tax and state capitalism.

The collapse of state capitalist dictatorships in much of Eastern Europe has not deterred small groups of extreme dogmatists from putting forward the obscene idea that state capitalism equals socialism. The group next to the Socialist Party stall, the Revolutionary Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), were putting forward the outrageous claim that Albania is a socialist country where people live in peace, harmony and prosperity. "Hands Off Albania!" their headline screamed. The one interest socialists have in Albania is in looking forward to the day when workers in that country follow the example of other workers suffering under the heel of state capitalist dictatorships and organise to bring down that system, not as an end in itself but as a prelude to co-operating with workers in the rest of the world to establish genuine freedom and democracy.

There are hopeful signs that the end of the detestable regime in Albania might not be that far off. Whilst most workers have quite rightly rejected the idea that systems similar to the one in Albania can in any way serve the interests of the working class, groups such as the RCP(ML) have succeeded in distorting the idea of socialism in the eyes of millions of workers across the world. The fact that any person, group or party should still put forward such undiluted crap is a testimony to their inability to understand the world they live in.

As for the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign, whilst this might be seen as less dangerous than the nonsense put forward by the Albania Supporters Club, in many ways it is just as damaging if only because more workers are attracted to it. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their actual campaign. what stands out is how such reformist demands direct workers' energies towards single issue campaigns and distract their attention away from analysing and acting on the real cause of their problems. Thousands and maybe millions of workers may be drawn to this campaign but. even if it is successful in abolishing the poll tax and replacing it with something else, workers would still be left facing a hundred-and-one problems. The poll tax is not the cause of workers’ problems, which existed in abundance before it was even thought of. Policies such as non-payment could well leave workers facing action by the state which will result in them becoming more impoverished than would have been the case had paid their poll-tax bill, and the failure of such campaigns will lead to political disillusionment.

Opposition to one specific policy such as the poll tax will not create conscious socialists as this can only be achieved by a movement whose one aim is the abolition of capitalism through education, organisation and democratic and conscious political action. This is not to deny that it is the experience of capitalism that causes workers to ask fundamental questions about the society they live in and to seek explanations and alternatives. The point is that more often than not reform movements lead only to dead-ends and disillusionment.

Socialist presence

What then can be achieved by attending events such as the Topluddle Rally? Whenever workers gather, and particularly at events where ideas are being discussed and exchanged, socialists have to be involved in putting forward the basic fact that capitalism cannot be reformed to work in our interests and that alternatives such as state capitalism are no alternative at all. Unclear ideas cannot be defeated by ignoring them.

What was achieved at Tolpuddle this year on 15 July was that the socialist movement was seen as being alive and active and putting forward a clear alternative. Participation was very encouraging. Apart from members and supporters from the Bournemouth area, support came from socialists in London, Brighton, Bristol, Surrey, Kent, Wiltshire and Devon. All in all about 20 members and supporters were engaged in selling literature, distributing leaflets and engaging in political debate.

To the workers we came into contact with at Tolpuddle and to all workers throughout the world, the socialist message is loud and clear. Don't waste any more time or effort attempting to reform capitalism or in the delusion that in some part of the world state ownership has proved itself to be a more effective or humane system than the private variety of capitalism.

Instead of campaigning for this or that reform join the movement which has as its sole aim ending a social system which cannot satisfy the needs of human beings and replacing it with one that could—one based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing the things we need to live, production directly for use. and free access to all goods and services on the basis of self-determined need: in short, a world-wide system run by human beings for human beings.

Ray Carr

Editorial: What about the Poll Tax? (1989)

Editorial from the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

People are already paying the Poll Tax in Scotland while in England and Wales council officials have begun the task of drawing up the register of those liable to pay the tax (nearly everybody) in preparation for its extension south of the border in April next year. The registration forms have been dropping through peoples letter boxes since the end of May.

All the opposition parties are against the Poll Tax and. urged on by left-wing chants of "Fight the Tax, Smash the Tax", a campaign of civil disobedience (refusal to register, then refusal to pay) has been launched to try to prevent its implementation. The claim is that the tax is unfair because, compared with the old system of rates, the rich will pay less and the poor will pay more.

"The rich pay less, the poor pay more", says a leaflet put out by the Camden Stop the Tax Campaign in London. “93% of inner London residents will pay more in Poll Tax than they do in Rates, while millionaires in Hampstead will pay much less". The Poll Tax "redistributes income from the poorer members of the community to the richer members", adds a claimants group from Merseyside, describing this as "Robin Hood’s philosophy in reverse".

The rich owners of big houses and mansions certainly will be paying less, and this was no doubt a deliberate intention of the present government which has never disguised the fact that it is a government of the rich by the rich for the rich. But it by no means follows that what these rich property owners will no longer be paying will have to come out of the pockets of ordinary wage and salary workers, as the anti-Poll Tax campaigners suggest.

Despite the appearances, taxes are not a burden that falls on wage and salary workers. On average, over time, we receive as wages enough to keep ourselves fit to work in the trade or profession in which we have been trained and are working. It is around a level sufficient to cover the expenses involved in this that market forces, helped on by trade union action, will tend to establish wage rates.

This means that if any extra charge is imposed on workers it will tend to be passed on. through the operation of market forces again aided by trade union action, to employers of labour. This was once clearly understood even if it has become obscured today. As David Ricardo, who was an MP and a capitalist, wrote as long ago as 1819 in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation: "Taxes on wages will raise wages, and therefore will diminish the rate of profits of stock . . .  A tax on wages is wholly a tax on profits, a tax on necessaries is partly a tax on profits, and partly a tax on rich consumers. The ultimate effects which will result from such taxes then, are precisely the same as those which will result from a direct tax on profits".

In so far as the Poll Tax is a tax paid by wage and salary workers it will tend to be passed on to employers. But the speed at which this happens will depend on how determined workers are in fighting the wages struggle. So the way to "fight the Poll Tax" is to press on with the trade union struggle for higher wages and salaries.

The arguments which take place about taxes are about which section of the rich, propertied class should bear the tax burden: employers of labour, landlords or people living on interest. The Poll Tax certainly does shift the burden of local taxation off the shoulders of rich people with big houses, but it shifts this burden not on to us workers but, in the form of higher wage bills and lower profits, on to those who directly employ us. Yes, smash the tax, employers might say. but why should we pull their chestnuts out of the fire?

To pay or not to pay? There is not really any serious choice here as the law has been very cleverly framed so that everybody is going to pay in the end. even if out of deductions from their wages or out of the proceeds of the sale of their furniture. In any event even if the campaign of civil disobedience was successful and the Poll Tax abolished, this would make no essential difference to living standards. In the highly unlikely event of it being abolished and replaced by nothing else, this would exert a downward pressure on wages. In practice, however, the Poll Tax would be replaced by some other local tax (the Labour Party is talking about "a modern property tax and a local income tax”) just as it is replacing the rates and which would also be incorporated into the workers' cost of living.

We are not saying that workers should never defy the law. There are occasions when they should, as over being conscripted into the armed forces to kill fellow workers in some other country or over laws banning trade unions and strikes, but the Poll Tax does not fall into this category. The Poll Tax is not a working class or socialist issue. As Socialists we are not prepared to get involved in arguments about local, or for that matter any other, taxes, as we know from our understanding of the economics of capitalism that taxes, even if they are paid by workers, are not a burden that ultimately falls on them.