Sting in the Tail: Discontented Capitalists (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discontented Capitalists

At present Lord Palumbo is facing a fierce legal battle with his son and daughter over his management of a £70 million trust fund. They reckon he should be replaced as trustee as they don't like some of the things he is doing with the money.

This wrangling over the loot produced by the working class amongst the families of the capitalists is no new thing, but what makes it interesting is some of the expenditure by Lord Palumbo that is revealed by the dispute.

"Among the transactions being questioned by the children are the purchase of a Scottish island and two houses in France worth £4.5 million; £9.5 m in directors' payments; charitable donations of £4.9m; and donations to Tory party funds of £263,000.

They also allege that £13m has been spent on works of art, £2.5m on wine and about £2m on assorted properties and vintage cars. Lord and Lady Palumbo deny any misuse of the trust fund."

(The Independent 6th August).

Managing a £70 million trust fund must be quite demanding, doing so while allegedly consuming about £7,000 a week, since 1987, on booze is mind blowing!

Would-be capitalists

Workers are forever dreaming of winning the football pools. Living, as they do, in poor housing and fearing the prospect of unemployment it is not difficult to see why.

If you live in a large city like Manchester or Glasgow, statistically you have a better chance of being murdered than winning a large prize on the pools.

Even if you should be one of the very lucky few it does not mean security for life as shown by a report in the Sunday Times (31 July)

"Stockbroker Peter Creegan, who advises Littlewoods winners, advises: no pools winner should give up work unless he is at least 40."

Certainly, if like Lord Palumbo, your wine bill is £7,000 a week, you should consider keeping on your day job.

Contented capitalists

Under the heading "City Warms to Tony Blair’s Labour", The Independent (6 August) in their View from City Road column recalled how pleasing past Labour governments have been to all those drones, hangers-on and speculators collectively known as "the City."

"During the first Wilson government of 1963 to 1970, shareholders saw a 100 percent return on shares, or 13 percent a year, and in the second period of Labour rule returns were nearly 200 per cent, or 40 per cent a year, according to figures prepared by BZW.

Gilt markets did not do so well in the first phase, returning only 5 per cent over the seven year period, but returns were over 100 per cent, or 20 per cent a year, under Labour in the seventies."

Remembering that the source of all rent, interest and profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, you can see that while some sections of the British capitalist class may rejoice at the return of a Labour government no member of the working class should.

Odious comparison

Some other shareholders are also upset. These are managers in British Telecom who are faced with redundancy. BT wants to get rid of 6,500 of them this year even if this means by compulsion.

As is usual in such cases, those faced with the sack argued that savings could be made elsewhere and pointed to the huge sums paid to BTs Board of Directors.

BTs Chairman, Sir Iain Vallance, had a predictable answer to that one:

". . . board decisions were more far-reaching in their impact and deserved a higher bonus level, while board salaries also had to reflect the level of pay at other top companies."

(Guardian 29 July)

That last bit is sheer humbug. What if BTs unions demanded a pay rise because "other top companies" were paying more than BT workers were getting? Vallance's answer to that would be equally predictable — that what other companies pay their employees in no business of BT.

Wrong union

In July we drew attention to some Buddhist monks in Japan who formed a trade union. Now we learn that the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF) has recruited a dozen Anglican clergy and hopes to enrol thousands more in a special clergy section.

Falling congregations and the loss of millions of pounds on the property market have forced the church into a major economy drive. "Livings" have been lost as parishes amalgamated and there is a proposal to abolish "the parson’s freehold" which has guaranteed free housing and job security until 70.

Faced with this twin threat, one union recruit said:

"On the whole, my background would not be particularly pro-union, but I'm in the process of being re-educated. We are being told bishops are man-managers, that they are adopting management structures. The logic is, if they want to adopt a more managerial stance, those at the coalface must adopt a more ’worker' stance."

(Guardian 3 August)

That clergymen should join a trade union is appropriate enough. What is not is joining one which has some connection with science.

God in retreat

Thirty-one years ago the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God, put the cat among the theological pigeons. In it he denied the existence of a supernatural God. Instead, God was love, tolerance and all that was best in mankind.

Now comes Anthony Freeman, the Sussex Gear, who has been sacked by the C of E for saying much the same. And he is not alone. He has the support of 22 vicars, non-conformist ministers and a Roman Catholic priest.

One of his supporters said: " . . . to hold to a traditional view of an external deity does not make sense" (Guardian 4 August), while Freeman claimed on TV that "a substantial number" of priests shared his views but are afraid to speak out in case they share his fate.

Islamic fundamentalism and crackpot evangelism may be temporarily on the rise elsewhere, but in this part of the world religious superstition is undeniably in headlong retreat.

Blogger's Note:

The August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article - written by Pieter Lawrence - which discussed the controversy surrounding the Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God.

How to end the rail strike (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A strike is not an act of nature, like a thunder storm or an earthquake. There were no strikes in the earliest human communities, when goods were held in common and no person worked as an employee of another. Fred Flintstone might have had trouble with his boss, but in the real Stone Age work was not conducted on the basis of exploiter and exploited, and the real Fred Flintstone would have been as baffled by such absurdities as working for wages as he would be by Hollywood cinematography. 

The strike is a result of an antagonism between two interests: employers and employees. The employer needs to pay the lowest wages or salaries possible in order to maximise profits. The employee, having no interest in the act of employment besides the money that can be obtained, seeks the highest wage or salary for the job.

The explanation of this antagonism lies in a brief examination of the nature of wages and salaries. These are, in fact, prices. They are the price paid by the employer for the labour power of the worker. A capitalist will only pay this price on one condition: that he expects the value of the worker's product to be greater than the wage or salary' paid. In short, capitalists only buy labour power if it will produce for them unearned income (surplus value) which is over and above its ow n value. So, contrary to the illusion that the boss gives his workers a wage or salary, the truth is that the workers give the capitalists a free gift (surplus value which is the basis of profit) and the wages/salaries paid are merely the part of what is created by the workers which is not stolen by the employer. To thank a boss for your wage is like sending a thank-you letter to a burglar who steals everything from your home and then leaves you a fiver to buy yourself a second-hand armchair.

Exploitation

Why do workers put up with this exploitative situation of constantly giving more to the employers than we are given back in the form of wages or salaries? The answer is simple: under capitalism we have no choice but to work for those who own the means of wealth production and distribution, i.e factories, farms, mines, railways, airlines, the media etc. The only productive resource workers own is our labour power, our mental and physical energies. Selling these for the best price we can obtain is our means of paying for the necessities, and occasionally luxuries, of life. Given that we cannot live on share interest or profits from employing others (because we lack capital), our only option is to try to sell our one possession of value: our labour power. We are wage slaves.

If the market creates a high demand for labour power workers are in a good bargaining position over wages and salaries. This is often so in a time of economic expansion, when both skilled and unskilled workers are scarce and capitalists, in order to receive their golden eggs, must pay the geese well. Often they will even seek to recruit labour power from overseas, as Enoch Powell did as Minister of Health when he urged West Indians to come to Britain and take low-paid jobs. Right now the market is far from expanding. There is an economic depression, millions are unemployed and the bosses have more supply of labour power available than they demand to make profits.

In the current situation, not only in Britain but across the globe, the capitalists can afford to be very arrogant. They will shed jobs, force workers to accept worse conditions, longer hours, fewer safety regulations and, above all, lower wages and salaries. In a market which offers wage slaves the simple choice between low wages or no wages workers tend to knuckle under.

The best way for workers to defend themselves is to form trades unions. Originally these were seen by the bosses as a threat and those joining them were deported (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) or outlawed in other ways. By uniting workers in a particular place of work or type of occupation unions could say to the employers that either certain demands must be accepted or the workers would withdraw their labour — strike. This is the most powerful defensive weapon which workers have under a system of wage slavery. It will not stop us from being wage slaves, but it can improve our conditions of exploitation.

Class Struggle

In this century two false beliefs associated with trade unionism have emerged. The first is that strikes can somehow overthrow capitalism. This is all nonsense: when workers decide to get rid of capitalism we will not withdraw our labour, but withdraw the capitalists' right to buy it. Striking is not a revolutionary strategy. The second fallacy adopted by some trade unionists, especially those with jobs within the union hierarchy, is to accept that employers and employees have a common interest. British union leaders under Labour governments have been especially willing to accept this illusion, particularly when state-run industries meant that strike action would place their members in conflict with a Labour-run state. These leaders are usually rewarded with well-paid retirements in the House of Lords. But the fact is that workers and capitalists can have no common interest. We are class enemies.

A more recent fallacy is that the class struggle is all a thing of the past. Strikes were once useful, but now workers have been "tamed" and outgrown such disruptive practices. It is quite true that in a recession unions are limited in their capacity to obtain improved wages and conditions, and that after several years of sustained attacks on trade unionism (not just in Britain, but across the world) many unions are demoralised, depleted and legally weakened. But the class struggle has not gone away; the struggle of the RMT against RailTrack is clear proof that strikes can still be used as a powerful weapon to force the bosses to retreat. If the Railtrack employers had accepted the original pay settlement without a strike they would have lost hugely less profits than has since been the case. The more united striking workers are the greater the chance of victory. This is why strikes should always be conducted democratically, for willing strikers will fight longer and harder than workers pushed into a strike by union leaders. Working class unity is also important because the bosses will always seek to bribe scabs to fill in for union workers, so weakening the effects of the strike.

Socialists recognise the important need for workers to be in unions. Not just to be in them, but to participate democratically. The unions must not be hijacked by would be Lords who use them to create a spurious class unity or by muddled leftists who use workers' struggles for their own ends. When there is a strike which is on sound class lines and democratically organised, socialists are always on the side of the strikers and against the employers and their hirelings, the scabs.

End Wage-slavery

We do not leave the class struggle there. Unlike those leftist groups which imagine that fighting the class war is the be all and end all of working class action, socialists maintain that fighting over terms of wage slavery, while necessary, is ultimately futile. The aim to struggle for is to end wage slavery and with it the class struggle.

We have stated that in pre-property society there was common ownership of resources and no employment. Socialists are not calling for a return to those times, but for the creation of those social relationships in the setting of current technological development. In short, we are not opposed to modern production, which is now capable of producing enough for all, but to modern relations of production. The objective, then, is to abolish the minority class ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth and replace this with common ownership and democratic control on the basis of production solely for use, not for sale or profit.

Do socialists want more strikes? No, we do not. The strike is essentially a feature of the waste caused by capitalism. Who wants trains standing still when there are places for people to go and goods to be moved? In a socialist society, where wage labour will be a thing of the past, there will be no reason to strike, for each of us will work according to our abilities and take from the common store according to our needs.

There will be those who say that this is too much to hope for. But what is the alternative? Years of workers striking and struggling over crumbs from the cake which we have baked. Is it not time to seek more then crumbs or even a bigger slice of the cake and go for the bakery itself?

Steve Coleman

Learning for survival (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists tend to emphasize the humanitarian aspects of Socialism. Given that the problems people face are gross and immediate and that they are an endemic part of capitalism, this is not unreasonable. We quote the millions of deaths every year from hunger and its diseases, we spell out the facts of poverty and unemployment, slums and homelessness and the rape of the environment and we try to put into words the horror of unending war and violence that is an ever-present feature of capitalism.

Like other workers, socialists live within the system; we experience these problems but, of course, we are not in a position to quantify them. Ironically, the measures of these appalling miseries that we do use to support our contention that capitalism is a blight on humanity are almost always drawn from the agencies of capitalism itself.

What is not quantified, and cannot be measured (except, perhaps, in terms of crime and other forms of socially-alienated behaviour), is the complex conception of isolation, of not belonging, of being of little or no consequence within society, of not achieving, accepting society’s definition of failure, being socially, physically or financially inadequate. These are among the problems and inevitable uncertainties that, in a competitive world, feed anger, frustration and despair and, against the heightened profile of the “success" culture, increasingly transmute these emotions into forms of depravity that the great majority of people find confusing and frightening.

You do not have to be a psychologist to appreciate that it is these capitalist inputs that cause the myriad conflicts and divisions that categorize people, minimize expectation and induce loneliness and fear. What passes for education, rather than being concerned with the development of knowledge and personality in the individual, to allow him or her a meaningful role in society, is, certainly for the working class, a fear-ridden process of training designed to equip the recipient to sell a major portion of his or her life to an employer (another human being or group of human beings) simply in order to live. The price of failure can be grim and permanent.

Two facts stand out in relation to this usurpation of young lives into the relentless, pressurized process of training that presently masquerades as education. The first is that many of the alleged “educational” facets peculiar to most of capitalism’s specialized functions have little or no value outside the marketing needs of the present system. Most of the training that underpins the legal profession, accounting, financial management and many other of capitalism’s much-vaunted professions, has no educational value in the true sense of the term; their value is solely in the functions they perform within capitalism and, if that system ended tomorrow, the acquired skills of practitioners in these areas would be redundant.

The second point is that because education is budgeted largely against taxation and taxation is ultimately a charge on capital, it has to be cost-efficient. It is this that dictates most of the practices in the schools and it is this that to a large extent determines success or failure because these qualities are determined by time. For working-class children the school programme is scheduled to take place within a given period of years. Wisdom gained after term, after exams or assessments or following the end of schooling doesn’t earn a diploma.

The whole process, rather than being one that integrates the young as caring members of society, is an intensive survival course that engenders the primacy of self. This concept is, of course, in line with the flawed notions of “individualism” that capitalism promotes as an alibi for the ghastly social plunder of the many by the few — within which framework the great majority of individuals have their lives demeaned and circumscribed by the alien interests of those who live on the fruits of their labour. The idea of self is an essential prerequisite of a world of property values.

While these values are unlikely to achieve any great measure of realization or satisfaction for the great mass of people who have no stake in ownership outside that of a few personal effects and, perhaps, a mortgage, they are of use to capitalism because they are the foundation stone of working-class acceptance of that system. The whole structure of capitalism is based on the belief, inculcated from childhood and reinforced in the school system, that every man and woman has the right to accumulate individual wealth even though such wealth is the product of the labour of others. The numerous religions accept this, the educational system generally embodies it in academic studies and, of course, the achievement of wealth, however unscrupulously gained, is a passport to influence, power and esteem.

Such is the credit side, for capitalists. For capitalism, on the other hand, this ruthless conception of self is a basic cause of many problems, not simply among those scrambling for profit but among the masses of frustrated individuals who are wholly or partially denied the realization of even their modest hopes or who are alienated by the denial of hope itself. This frustration, this denial, and the anger, fear and lack of concern it breeds for other individuals is the source of most antisocial behaviour, of crime, aggression and jealousy as well as much of the neurosis affecting society today.

Socialists see the individual truly liberated when human personal attainment is fully separated from the task of procuring the material means of living. In Socialism individuals would act in voluntary co-operation to produce all the goods and services required to provide each individual with the material means of a full life. The cost-factor that plays such an essential part in determining “education”, training, working and planning in capitalist society would disappear, along with the old social relations.

Certainly Socialism will solve the economic problems of society but, in order to appreciate how it will radically change the role of the individual in society, we would contrast the role of the individual in a Socialist society with the cost-efficient wage-slave that is an essential requirement of capitalism.

Socialism will measure efficiency in terms of human happiness. Every single person will have a claim on society for the provision of his or her material needs. Education, in whatever form it takes, will be a process aimed at developing skills and abilities in line with the individual preferences of each person —and, for those who require it, it would be an ongoing process rather than a crammed apprenticeship for work. Primarily, the emphasis will be on the individual but rather than the competitive selfishness which capitalism must inculcate in the individual as survival training for a world that pits student against student, worker against worker and human against human. the student in Socialism will live and study in an ambience of social cooperation. The logic of that co-operation will be evident in every facet of life and it would be no exaggeration to say that many of the anti-social products of our cost-effective grading and assessment system of today would be regarded, in Socialism, as abnormalities that required help.

Of course, our current systems of education have evolved with the present economic system and just as they would be immediately abolished in a socialist world because of their anti-social, even anti-human, nature, so, too, would the values and concerns of socialist education be alien and harmful to capitalism. Imagine an educational establishment turning out individuals today who see their role as actively co-operating with their fellows in the pursuit of the interests of society as a whole. They would quickly be chewed up in the competition and conflict of capitalism, the educational system would have failed them by failing to make them selfish, contending fighters for survival. Imagine the more general application of such a system: capitalism's workforce would refuse to compete with one another; refuse to partake in the exploitation of their fellows; there would be few police and the judiciary would become socially inquisitive. And, of course, who would make munitions and do capitalism’s killing?

As we said at the outset, Socialists usually emphasize the material problems of capitalism and, perhaps, one of the reasons for this is that we feel poverty, world hunger, slums, unemployment etc., are more visual than the mental enslavement of our class. But that mental enslavement is a terrible reality, a reality designed by the political pundits of capitalism and serviced by its system of “education” and conditioning.

Richard Montague

Letter: Distortions of Private Property (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter was sent to one of our members by Dick Frost, who was the Green Party's candidate for Cumbria and North Lancashire in the recent Euro-elections. We publish it, with his permission, together with our comments. We have also received a letter from the Green Party Local Support Coordinator, to which we reply, too.

Distortions of Private Property

Dear Mr Cummings,

Thank you for your letter and the material with it. I have had a quick read (knowing something about the subject already) and it is clear that we have much in common. I fear you over estimate the degree of anarchism in the Green Party: I am one and I can assure you I belong to a very small minority.

I read the review of the Pepper book (Socialist Standard, September 1993) and the interview with Jonathon Porritt and both raised some valuable points. One area of dispute between us might well be on the appropriate level of political and administrative organisation for a good world: the reason I am now an extreme de-centralist (in fact, I advocate the autonomy of any group in any and every area in which it claims competence) is that every social organisation must be consciously and directly controlled by every person who belongs (by choice) to it and who is subject to its decisions. To my mind, that places a low maximum size on social organisation. I do not accept that politicians, bureaucrats or representatives have a place in democracy; once they exist, democracy is dead. Administration has to be equally democratic.

Of course, I envisage the cooperation and federation of small autonomous communities; I also envisage a statute of universal human rights to which all communities would have to subscribe and consequently, an enforcement agency. However, everything I suggest has to be placed in the context of economic adequacy (not mere subsistence) which I believe is the normal condition in which our species would live had the distortions of private property etc. not intruded (Rousseau. Marx etc) and that adequacy is available to us now; it requires us to bring it into reality. The ordering of economic life has to be in the hands of people in small communities, directly, to ensure that they know immediately the effects their actions have on their environment and on themselves, though I do not mean lots of tennis ball-type organisations, rather a complex of Russian dolls; or better, an eco-system.

I am not concerned with the existence or not of money, but cannot see why the communities I envisage would require it

I reject Marx's class analysis, not because I can’t see class differences in our society, but because I don't think people exist, existentially or subjectively. in classes and the proletariat is not. therefore, going to act as a class “for itself'. I do not agree with Marx's historical analysis of human life and do not consider it is important because I believe the objective conditions for human economic freedom have always existed and the need to realise that freedom by destroying oppression in all its forms has not varied significantly from epoch to epoch. It has not been necessary to wait for the triumph of capitalism.

I also reject revolution because revolution cannot but be autocratic and establish a new autocracy. From my understanding of sociology, I think you and Jonathon Porritt do not take into account the essential conservatism and conformity of our species, traits which lead to masses of people accepting dreadful repression, for which they find innumerable excuses. From Roemer's Law, however, change comes about by species attempting to maintain a given way of life in changed conditions; revolution is likely when the changes are frustrated by a powerful minority.

The point I make is Jonathon Porritt’s: there have to be interim steps which allow of interim achievement; hence I am odds with the Green Party because I believe it should be fighting for democratic advance at low levels of government now, as well as seeking elected power. It should be campaigning against loss of residual local democracy, both by working on elected authorities and in community groups.

Dick Frost, 

Orton, Cumbria

Reply:

Dick Frost and other members of the Green Party are quite right to emphasise the importance of local democracy. However, your idea that the modern world could be run on the basis of local production for local consumption by a collection of autonomous local communities is not only impractical, it is not even desirable.

For a decent quality of life we depend upon machinery, equipment, energy, goods and services which are produced throughout the world. This includes materials such as metals and oil which are found in particular locations and a wide range of foods which require different climates for their cultivation. The technical division of labour which makes up modern production extends throughout a world-wide network of links and can give us the benefits of consumer goods and the pleasures of leisure equipment. To give some examples, it would be impossible for every local community to produce its own refrigerators, televisions, radios or music equipment.

And how would they deal with facilities and services concerning regional populations such as airports, transport systems, universities, specialised health services, energy supply, use and development of land? On a bigger scale, surely it is vital that we establish a world energy authority and other world agencies to co-ordinate action on the threats to the planet from pollution, and to continue such things as the investigation of space, the running of world communications for telephone links, and the celebration of such festivals as the Olympic Games.

We should certainly get rid of the State with its tentacles of power that keep us all in its centralised grip. But the answer is not to replace it with an idea of local autonomy which has no practical connection with the conditions of modern life.

What is needed is to replace the State with an integrated system of democratic organisation which would be adaptable for use at local, regional and world levels. Local communities, however we might define them, could be the basic unit of organisation but these should also be associated as regional populations which in their turn would be associated as the world community. Such a system of world democracy could be established, by a majority of socialists, from the existing structure of local and national government and such bodies as the United Nations Organisation.

You want to define the size of your autonomous local community by the maximum number who could consciously and directly control it. and say "that places a low maximum size on social organisation". Indeed it does and wouldn’t they all be busy! Even for a small community they would be so involved in day-to-day affairs they will hardly have time for their personal lives.

Fortunately, democracy does not require that every person should be directly involved in all decisions. The important thing is that every individual, institution, production unit or council should be accountable. The practice of delegated function would allow people to get on with their jobs. We do not anticipate that in a socialist society they would act against the policies laid down by the majority. Nevertheless, the community would retain procedures whereby the decisions and actions of people could be challenged and reversed if circumstances required it.

It is surprising that you say you are not concerned with the existence or not of money, even though you add that you cannot see why the communities you envisage would require it. In fact, the use of money or not is of fundamental importance. The use of money means the production of goods for exchange and this means the operation of the market. Production for sale on the markets inevitably sets up a range of constraints on social action because it limits what can be produced to what can be sold and puts profit before need as a motive of production. It also follows that all the corrupting features of property relations will operate.

Members of the Green Party seem to place too much emphasis on the scales of social organisation whilst neglecting the fundamentally important question of the kinds of productive relations we should have. If they think through how best to achieve the kind of better world they undoubtedly want, they will surely conclude that common ownership of the earth's natural and industrial resources is the key, together with democratic control at regional and world levels as well as at local level as appropriate.

Editors.

Letter: Talking About Greens (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Talking About Greens

Dear Editors,

Adam Buick ("Why the Greens are Wrong", June Socialist Standard) is not. in my opinion, correct about the Green’s analysis of contemporary society. He asserts that we are not against the market and not against profit-making, and that our political strategy begins and ends with the election of a Green government.

This is not the case. The paragraphs in which he says “businesses only take account of their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations . .. the result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision makers to plunder, pollute and waste" could come from any Green Party publication. As our political analysis deepens and matures (although the Green movement has deep roots, the Green Party’s history is rather briefer than your own 90 years) the thinking of Greens like Derek Wall (whom you quote approvingly) has become widely accepted. We know ourselves now to be anti-capitalist, and have long been anti-statist, seeking a shift to self-managing, self-reliant communities. Our vision of a green economy is one in which money is local and impossible to accumulate (witness our support for Local Exchange Trading Systems), in which all stakeholders and not just shareholders participate in the running of an enterprise, in which long-distance trade is regulated for fairness, sustainability and need and in which banking is democratic and community-based (note our participation in Credit Unions).

LETS and Credit Unions are only two ways in which we are putting this into practice directly. Our recently-adopted strategy was clear that elections are only one democratic opening available to us — Greens are active in community initiatives, nonviolent direct action and green economics. Our attitude to elections is clearly based on building local support first — earning the support of the community for Green action in local government, and seeking to build direct democracy through "town meetings" and referenda.

Of course, the Green Party has plenty of points of disagreement with the Socialist Party — we’d be discussing merger if we didn’t We do believe in a libertarian, rather than a planned economy — we believe that given control over their lives, people do act responsibly and morally. We believe that much of the “means of production" are not simply misused and monopolised, but destructive in their very design — we call for a retooling of society. We are not so certain that the working class will be the last to achieve emancipation — what about woman, subsistence farmers, the unemployed, or even other species? It is not your class background that determines your revolutionary potential, but your actual lifestyle or aspirations. And we do believe that important as community and workplace action is. change across the whole of society must be facilitated by Greens in every level of government

I hope these real points of difference will be dissected in your pages in the future — as the old saying goes, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Alex Begg, 

Green Party Local Support Coordinator, 

Leeds

Reply:

We’re sorry, but the Green Party does accept the market and it does accept profit-making. Not. it is true, in their present form but as modified by the legislation to be enacted by a Green government.

The “Green economy" that the Green Party wants seems to be a small-scale, localised economy but still one in which the market and profit-seeking firms have a place. You yourself mention that this will still involve money, banking and shareholders. But shareholders draw an unearned income from the firms they invest in, so these firms will have to make profits in order to be able to pay this out. Interest-free banking under capitalism is conceivable as a remote possibility, but not profit-free firms — even small ones.

If we had to put a name to it, we would say that this "Green economy" would be a small-scale, modified capitalist economy. The main objection to it is that it is never going to happen. Capitalism has a built-in tendency to the concentration and centralisation of industry and, with this, of government and the population as well.

Capitalism runs on profits. Under the competitive pressures of the market, most of these have to be re-invested in new and cheaper methods of production which are generally “capital intensive” and so large scale. This "accumulation of capital” (as Marx put it) is an economic law of the system which cannot be reversed by the action of any government. Still less by the sort of self-help action at local level (LETS, credit unions, housing associations, allotments, etc) that you say the Green Party is now into as well as trying to get a Green government elected.

We are not saying that a more decentralised decision-making and administrative structure with more local democracy is not desirable. What we are saying is that it is impossible to achieve within the context of capitalism. In fact the only framework within which it could be achieved is that provided by Socialism: a world in which the natural and industrial resources of the planet have ceased to be the private property of individuals, firms and states, and in which market forces have ceased to operate because production is carried on directly to meet needs.

The same goes for the problems faced by the groups you mention — women, subsistence farmers and the unemployed (most of whom, by the way, are members of the working class, properly understood as the vast majority in society who are excluded from the ownership and control of productive resources). Their problems, too, can only be solved within this framework.

Where this points is towards our policy of trying to get people to concentrate on working to establish this framework rather than diverting their energies into trying to get a few minor — and precarious —improvements within the present system. This is the real difference between the Socialist Party and the Green Party — and all other parties.

Editors.

Socialism on tape: A Novel Approach to History (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A number of these meetings are available in the audio file section of the SPGB website. Please be advised that the sound quality for many of these meetings are not the best.

MOBY DICK (51 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date 20th November 1993

Speaker: Ray Gibbon

Pt 2 (48 mins)

KIM (29 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 5th December 1993

Speaker: Kerima Mohideen

Pt 2 (55 mins)

Part Two is poor quality

HEART OF DARKNESS (31 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 19th December 1993

Speaker: Paul Clarke

Poor quality recording, especially for the floor contributions. The worst bits have been cut out and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

Pt 2 (40 mins)

THE JUNGLE (47 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Venue: PPU

Date: 23rd January 1994

Speaker: Richard Headicar

Pt 2 (48 mins)

KANGAROO (26 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: February 1994

Speaker: Ron Cook

Pt 2 (32 mins)

Pt 3 (42 mins)

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (39 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 20th February 1994

Speaker: Clifford Slapper

Pt 2 (21 mins)

Pt 3 (46 mins)

WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME (30 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 6th March 1994

Speaker: Emma Scarr

Poor quality recording in parts. The inaudible bits have been deleted and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

Pt 2 (28 mins)

Pt 3 (37 mins)

THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS (39 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 15th March 1994

Speaker: Les Cox

The sound quality is poor in parts.

Pt 2 (61 mins)

TV Review: Camping it up (1994)

Brookside

TV Review from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the history of British TV comedy there has been little to match the comic effect of an outrageously effeminate male camping it up with the best of them. Exaggerated mannerisms and affectations have delighted audiences for decades. Many of the popular sitcoms have had a camp figure of fun somewhere - Frank Williams as the overblown vicar in Dad's Army, the twinkly German Lieutenant in ‘Allo 'Allo, Melvyn Hayes in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and John Inman in everything he’s ever been in are among those that spring readily to mind.

As far as mainstream British comedy has been concerned, campness is the “acceptable” face of an unmentionable homosexuality to the viewers and actors alike, so much so that such a great actor as Kenneth Williams — as camp as a row of tents to the end — could barely admit his own homosexuality to himself let alone anybody else, as his Diaries testify. Williams was clearly aware that camp humour, in his day at least, hinted at homosexuality but rarely endorsed it in any way, being content to remain at the level of innuendo and whimsy. In recent years one or two comics have broken this unspoken rule, most clearly Julian Clary whose full frontal assaults on the sexual sensibilities of the audience have won him an army of gay supporters, but most homosexual actors have kept with the approach developed in the music halls and adapted for TV and film.

The British film and TV industries have been the masters of camp humour. It can still be seen in Coronation Street occasionally, though with the welcome twist that it emerges most notably of all in the affectedness of the definitely heterosexual Racquel. barmaid at the Rovers. More straightforwardly. Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard and Charles Hawtrey all became household names because of their ability to mince in front of the cameras. Did they do their sexuality a disservice? To the extent that they reinforced one of capitalist society’s most enduring stereotypes, probably, but those homosexuals in the acting profession and elsewhere who took an outwardly hostile stance towards homosexuality for the sake of their public image did a greater disservice still.

Innumerable actors have been paid to betray their own sexuality. A recent re-run on BBC2 of one of the classic Steptoe and Son episodes saw old Albert berating Harold for consorting with an antique dealer he considered to be "a bleeding poof’, in the true style of a working class Tory bigot. What many viewers wouldn’t have been aware of was that Wilfred Brambell, the actor who played Albert, was himself a homosexual convicted in the early 1960s under the British state's anti-gay sex laws. Watching this episode again, it was difficult to raise much of a laugh.

Prisoners all

The current cult TV show among the active gay lobby in Britain is the Australian import Prisoner Cell Block H, which is still showing on most ITV networks. This is strange, as Cell Block H is a programme transparently about Good and Evil, and the active lesbians have generally slotted into the latter category. The leading lesbian, a warder called Joan Ferguson, otherwise known as ‘The Freak", has a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp and the general manner of a woman whose role in life is to cause as much anguish for others as possible. Since Prisoner finished its turn in Australia several years ago. we can surmise that she can soon expect the call-up for EastEnders.

The only reason lesbians can find this show attractive, apart from its marvellously worked-out plots, is that it focuses on the lives of oppressed women. But with what is commonly considered to be a psychopathic "bull-dyke” as the chief character, it is not much of a blast forward for the gay counter-culture. In truth, for all her entertainment value, "The Freak" gives far more succour to the stereotypical image of homosexuals than Kenneth Williams or Larry Grayson ever did.

To find the most realistic treatment of homosexuality on TV we must turn, once again, to Channel Four's Brookside. Here, the unfolding of Beth Jordache’s lesbian sexuality has been tastefully and seriously portrayed, even if her lesbianism is a partial reaction against the sexual abuse meted out by her father. Most pleasing of all, the character of Beth is not stereotyped — on the contrary, she appears to be a normal intelligent teenager confronting bigotry and deceit, and winning support because of the strength of her arguments to live her life without the interference of those who want to impose their own norms on her.

Brookside could have gone for cheap laughs with this storyline, but it is to be congratulated on its approach. For the more the working class see their differences — of colour, gender and sexuality — eclipsed by their common bonds rather than highlighted through division, the easier it will be to achieve a society where stereotyping is remembered primarily as a feature of daft old films and peculiar Australian soap operas.

Dave Perrin

Russia: nationalism on the march (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years Russia has provided a continuous stream of surprises for many outsiders. The most recent was what happened at the last election in December, when the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party received a third of the vote. This party, under its leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky is actually a manifestation of fascism.

Zhirinovsky has an aspiration to be President of an enlarged Russia. He has made it plain that as President he would not only aim to control Russia as it is at present, but would extend his rule to include all lands of the former empire of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that Zhirinovsky’s empire would also include such territories as Finland and Alaska. When he says such things it is not just idle talk — it is all meant for the ears of the Russian military who have lost the glamour and prestige they enjoyed in the old USSR. Indeed, it is estimated that between 60 and 80 percent of the army voted for Zhirinovsky last December.

Nationalism and patriotism have a great influence on the sorrowful people of Russia. Economic conditions are worse then they were before the break-up of the Soviet Union and many now dream of the “good old days” — good old days, of course, that never were. The former “Communist” leaders — who are actually supporters of state capitalism, and like Zhirinovsky, extreme nationalists too — attempt to pep up the working class with patriotic talk and unrealistic reforms. They do not speak of genuine socialism or communism and give no hope to a largely helpless and apathetic working class. Across the political spectrum, nationalism and reformism are the vogue, a situation that can only help the likes of Zhirinovsky.

Military posturing

The present nationalist madness was reflected in a recent article by Andrei Kozyrev, Russian Foreign Minister, in the New York Times of 18 March. He stated that America and the West should not attempt to threaten Russia, claiming that no-one should forget that Russia was still a great military power with a huge nuclear arsenal. Aggressive-sounding noises from some in the West were inappropriate, he added, as Russia had a massive resource of conventional weapons and good strategic positions in many key areas. No-one should believe that American world hegemony was assured, he argued.

The more pro-US President Yeltsin finds himself in a relatively isolated position. He did nothing to prevent an amnesty being granted to those who took part in last October's nationalist and Communist revolt, and earlier all the Communist leaders were released who took part in the events to depose Gorbachev. Yeltsin has certainly lost much of his former confidence. Some say he is seriously ill, but whatever the truth of that matter, he is severely hindered in his fight against the more extreme nationalists due to the lack of a mass political party supporting him. Since December the fascists and Communists have had control of the Russian Parliament and Yeltsin’s influence is now weaker than ever. The so-called “experts” in the bureaucracy give him conflicting advice, and he seems unsure about precisely which course to take.

The next Presidential election takes place in 1996. However, Zhirinovsky and the Communists are hoping to unseat Yeltsin well before then, and they will stop at nothing to do so. 'The two principal names that have been put forward as challengers to Yeltsin are Zhirinovsky himself and that of Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Prime Minister. Interestingly, no-one has mentioned reformers like Gaidar or Yavlinski, who at one time commanded quite some support among the working class. Evidently, few now have confidence in such people since the earlier reforms have not brought about the hoped-for prosperity.

Crime explosion

Undoubtedly, working class confidence is at a fairly low ebb. Living conditions are poor and organised crime has reached horrendous levels, affecting a great many workers. Poverty and the rise in nationalism have encouraged large numbers to emigrate, especially those of German origins, while those of Jewish origin emigrate to Israel, even though some have been sent back on the grounds that they are not Jewish enough.

There could yet, of course, be a backlash against the rising tide of nationalism. Parties to the left of the Communists in Russia are as yet relatively insignificant, but, as movements like the Black Hundreds reappear, so have small groups of Trotskyists and anarchists of various hues. What Russia needs most of all though is a strong, democratic socialist movement to consistently counter the increasing myths about nationalism and the old state-capitalist regime. Let us hope that there are some in Russia now emerging who see the importance of such a movement and have the courage and tenacity to bring it into being.

D. Szczescie

50 Years Ago: From the Cradle to the Grave (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Evening News of May 25, 1944, publishes an article by a staff reporter under the heading, “Control of Funerals, Unlikely.”

We are not here concerned with the question of price control, whether for ingress to or egress from “this sorry scherne of things entire”—that we can safely leave to those “financial wizards” and “price ceiling experts” whose job it is to “navigate” the “good ship Capitalism.”

The footnote to the above mentioned article is much more interesting and informative, and we quote it as follows :

“Prices at Southern Cemetery for Graves range from £3 4s. 6d. to £72 15s. More than 50 per cent. are buried in £3 4s. 6d. graves. Those at £72 15s. are double spaces in prominent positions on main drives. Single space in same position costs £30 1s. (Our italics.)

Human beings born into the working class are rocked in “shoddy” cradles, dressed in “shoddy” clothes, fed on “shoddy” food, housed in “jerry” buildings, and when their days of toil are over buried in “shoddy” graves. Worn out by a lifetime of toil and poverty midst plenty, the worker “giving up the ghost'” reaches his goal—a “£3 4s. 6d. grave.”

[From an article by G. R. Russell in the Socialist Standard, September 1944.]

SPGB Meetings (1994)

Party News from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sting in the Tail: The common factor (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The common factor

Following the Estonia tragedy:

"Swedish and Finnish ferry lines admitted hushing-up six serious incidents which preceded the Estonia’s sinking ” (Teletext 30 September).

These roll-on roll-off ferries are liable to capsize when even a relatively small amount of water enters the vehicle decks, yet Alan Clark, ex-Tory MP, said on Question Time (29 September) that marine architects can quite easily design ships which prevent this, but, with touching concern for human life asked “would this really be worth all the expense and inconvenience?”

And this is what it is all about:

“The economic reason why vehicle decks are not subdivided to prevent rapid capsize is that this would obstruct bailing, increase turnaround times and reduce the number of cars or lorries a ship should carry. That would mean higher fares, lower profits, or both — and at a time, so far as British operators are concerned, when ferries are facing fresh competition from the Channel tunnel” (Guardian 24 September).

Every disaster which comes along, be it Piper Alpha, the King's Cross Underground fire, the train crash at Clapham Junction or the Herald of Free Enterprise, provides evidence aplenty that capitalism’s remorseless drive to cut costs at the expense of safety is the prime cause of them all.

Healthy profits

Today’s economic climate has seen many employers cut the wages and conditions and increase the workload of their employees.

This often leads to the deterioration of the physical and mental health of the workers involved, but some other employers recognise that this approach is counter-productive and are concerned to protect and even improve the health and well-being of their employees.

Companies such as Grand Met, Glaxo. Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer, IBM and Nestle are participating in the Wellness Forum which promotes preventative health care by health screening along with weight control, anti-smoking and anti-alcohol abuse programmes.

There are sound commercial reasons behind this. A spokesman for the Institute of Personnel and Development told the Independent:

“Employers in their own interests have got to maximise the use of people at work as far as they can. Absenteeism is very expensive ” (9 September).

This absenteeism is estimated by the CBI to cost £13 billion a year, and the Independent adds that the Forum has “a belief in the correlation between a healthy workforce and healthy profits”.

Looking after the goose that lays the golden eggs always made more sense than killing it.

YC’s get KO’d

A new book True Blues, claims that Tory Party membership has slumped from 2.8 million in 1952 to below 500,000 now and is still falling.

Feeling better? Well, there’s more good news, because the Young Conservatives are set for the chop. And no wonder. Having been taken over by the “radical right” in much the same way as Labour's youth wing was by Trotskyists, the YC’s have long been a thorn in the side of the parent party.

There were well-publicised links with the BNP and other racists groups, support for apartheid, jokes about the Holocaust, vicious faction fighting and lots of hooliganism From a peak of 100,000 membership has plunged to around 5,000, so Tory Central Office probably reckons that what’s left isn’t worth the hassle.

A Tory' youth organisation may well continue to exist in one form or another, but the heady days when the YC’s seemed to consist of youngsters all desperately trying to outdo one another in sounding more reactionary and bloodthirsty, are probably over for good.

Heller’s history

Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, published in 1962, was a brilliant and hilarious account of the corruption and insanity of capitalism set against the background of World War Two.

The long-awaited sequel is now ready, so Sally Vincent travelled to interview Heller, and her account of their meeting appeared in Weekend Guardian (24 September).

Heller’s perception of capitalism has not dimmed. According to Sally Vincent he thinks:

“We can produce enough food to feed the world, hut simultaneously can V because there's no profit producing enough food. ”

And he apparently thinks that “Marx was right”, although about what he didn't say, but his perception leaves him when it comes to interpreting history which he thinks is “autonomous and proceeds independently of the people who make it.”

Marx took a very different view: 

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. ” 

As a novelist, Heller takes some beating, but when it comes to explaining history then it has to be Marx.

Doubting Thomas

The sacking of the Sussex vicar Anthony Freeman for revealing that he doesn’t believe in God highlights the problem facing many of these sky pilots.

Take the example of an anonymous Church of Scotland minister, whose dilemma was reported in Scotland on Sunday (14 August):

“Thomas does not believe in God. There was no virgin birth, no resurrection, Jesus was a mere inspirational mortal like Ghandi and there is, most sadly, no life after death. The last bit gets tricky, for he must pretend to believe in some kind of afterlife to soothe many of the pensioners he talks to each Sunday from the pulpit. "

All workers must sell their ability to work for a wage or salary, and these professional holy men are no different. Here is what our reverend gentleman has to say about it:

“To be honest, I've got a family to feed and a career and a pension to think about. I don't think I should put my job on the line just for the sake of discussion of some arcane beliefs and ideas that probably don't really matter anyway. ”

Blogger's Notes: 

• Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• The King's Cross Underground fire was covered in the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• The Piper Alpha disaster was covered in the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Capitalist agriculture . . . the profits of doom (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since Malthus, population growth has been the subject of heated controversy. By and large, disputants in the debate have tended to polarise into two camps.

For the Neo-Malthusian pessimists there is no prospect of an end to world hunger while population growth continues, indeed it could well increase as the latter begins to exceed — and thereby undermine — the carrying capacity of the land.

Then there are the Technological Optimists. For them, the concept of a “carrying capacity” is problematic; it is not something that is fixed but can be enlarged by human effort and ingenuity. Indeed, Ester Boserup has argued in her book The Conditions of Agricultural Growth that population pressure, far from being a harbinger of doom, is a prime stimulus to technological change. Thus, extensive farming practices, which become subject to diminishing returns, are abandoned and more intensive forms of land use are introduced, resulting in an increased “carrying capacity”. In fact, some of the wealthiest parts of the world — like Western Europe — are also amongst the most densely populated.

Where do Socialists stand in this debate? At first glance, we appear to side with the technological optimists in asserting that the world is not overpopulated. We base this claim on an empirical analysis of the relationship between global food demand and the global capacity to satisfy that demand. This suggests that the world could adequately feed its population. According to the World Bank in its 1986 Report Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries, enough grain is already produced to provide everyone with 3,600 calorics per day, well above the recommended 2,400 calories for an adequate diet — though, much of this, it should be said, is (inefficiently) used to feed livestock.

The prevalence in hunger does not arise from any shortfall in agricultural potential but from the operation of economic factors which impede full realisation of this potential for the benefit of all. The objective of capitalist production is not primarily to meet human needs. Instead, human needs are only met to the extent that these are backed up by purchasing power. That is why vast quantities of food are destroyed and why farmers are paid not to produce, while millions starve because they lack the means to buy or grow food. In short, the much-vaunted productivity of capitalism has now reached the point of open and irreconcilable conflict with its social relations of production, its mode of distribution.

There is a further point on which we part company with many technological optimists. This concerns the nature of technology itself. This is not independent of, but is profoundly conditioned by, the social relations of production. In this regard we share the concern of many environmentalists about the impact of modem capitalist agriculture on the environment. It is conceivable that this, rather then pressure of population, may ultimately precipitate the doomsday scenario. Unless, that is, a socialist transformation of society — and thus of its productive methods — can intervene first.

Not neutral

Technological innovation does not occur in a vacuum; it has socioeconomic consequences in a capitalist economy which benefit some but often at the expense of others. An example is the Green Revolution initiated in the 1950s 

This represented a major incursion of an industrialised mode of fanning into Third World countries. Based on the introduction of new high yielding varieties (HYVs) of cereal crops, it sought to increase the productivity of local agriculture. However, this required the application of a whole package of inputs, around which HYVs were specifically designed having in mind, the interests of multinational conglomerates supplying such inputs. This absence of any one of these inputs meant that the expected gains in productivity would not be realised, and HYVs would tend to perform poorly compared with traditional crops. Thus, without irrigation, nutrient uptake would be much reduced, without pesticides, the very inputs, such as chemical fertilisers, that promote crop growth, will encourage a proliferation of weeds, and so on.

It is this in-built complementarity of inputs, not just the costs of individual inputs, which explains why it is mainly richer farmers, particularly in Asia and Latin America, who have benefited from “Green Revolution” technology, accentuating the process of land concentration in these countries at the expense of poorer farmers. It raises the critical threshold at which farmers are able to afford, and make effective use, of such technology.

But what of the long-term productivity of an industrial mode of fanning promoted by capitalism, i.e. its sustainability? To increase output, more land could be cultivated. However, much of this uncultivated land is ecologically marginal and would be highly vulnerable under capitalist industrial farming. Alternatively, cultivated land could be made more productive. Since the 1950s, rapid increases in output — faster than population growth except in Africa — have been based upon increasing applications of four major non-land inputs: artificial fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation and mechanisation. However, there are now growing doubts about the wisdom of such an approach. Since the 1970s, there has been a levelling-off of per capita output.

According to J. Harris in World Agriculture and the Environment, these earlier increases were made possible because they occurred in a world not yet heavily damaged by soil erosion. But today, the current annual rate of topsoil loss — 25 billion tonnes — is such that the world can expect to lose 50 percent of its topsoil by 2050. Since there is a strong correlation between topsoil depth and crop yields, this is an alarming development for the future of fanning.

Soil erosion

Applying yet more fertilisers to compensate for the loss of soil fertility will not solve the problem in long run. Indeed, US agriculture today uses five times more fertiliser than in 1947 to produce the same amount of crop, but it is not clear whether this growing demand for fertilisers — particular phosphates — can be indefinitely met. There are also many minor nutrients and trace elements, lost through harvesting, which are not being replaced by industrial fanning, but which may be essential to long-term maintenance of yields. Furthermore, excessive applications of fertilisers actually exacerbate the problem of erosion by facilitating a breakdown in soil structure — both directly, through its effect on soil chemistry and, indirectly, by allowing farmers to dispense with organic recycling, leading to a decline in humus content which binds the soil together and helps it to hold water and oxygen essential for plant growth.

A similarly worry emerges in the case of other major agricultural inputs. The narrowing down of the genetic basis of farming, typified by HYVs, and the simplification of the agro-ecological landscape associated with market-oriented monocultures, has created ideal conditions for the spread of pests. To counter this threat, chemical pesticides have been applied on an increasing scale. However, it is often the natural predators of pests which are more severely affected by this than the pests themselves which, because of their larger populations, are more easily able to develop mutations giving them resistance to pesticides. This in turn, tempts farmers to apply more frequent, and stronger, doses, but the evidence suggests that, as with artificial fertilisers, this too may be subject to diminishing returns. As a result, farmers find themselves trapped in what is aptly called a “pesticide treadmill” while a significant proportion of output — some 45 percent overall — continues to be lost through pests.

Increased mechanisation and tractorisation too contributed to soil erosion through deep ploughing, a practice that is particularly damaging when applied to the fragile soils of many tropical countries.

Sustainable

Technology, as pointed out, is not neutral; it is conditioned by the economic system in which it is applied. Capitalist agriculture is constrained by the profit system and the need to maximise output in the short-term without regard to wider consequences for the environment and society. The type of technology this entails cans only be modified with extreme difficulty. Farmers must, afterall, seek a financial return on any investment they make.

The trend towards environmental deterioration and social dislocation associated with capitalist agriculture, is likely to gather pace as recent developments in the world economy unfold. An example is the new GATT agreement which covers 90 percent of the world’s agricultural trade which will further strengthen the hand of agribusiness at the expense of many small farmers and undermine much existing environmental legislation. Similarly, structural adjustment programmes imposed by the IMF on many debtor countries to reduce their debts will increase pressure on them to expand cash crop production and to that end employ industrial methods of farming, despite the fact that the cost of these have risen far more steeply in recent years in comparison with the price of agricultural commodities.

In short, agriculture today stands at a critical crossroad; where we go from here will have profound repercussions for both urban consumers of the products of farming as well as farmers themselves who, lest we forget, still constitute a majority of humankind. We can choose to retain the status quo and risk going down the road of possible, if not probable, ruin. Or we can decide to take Earth, and all that is in and on it, into common ownership and democratic control. By fundamentally changing our relationship to one another, we shall fundamentally change our relationship to nature. You cannot do one without the other.

Freed from the constraints of market competition, we could begin to adapt our technology to suit our needs within limits imposed by nature We cannot predict precisely what this entails but we can tentatively sketch the broad outlines of a new agriculture:

• A scaling-down in the overall use of industrial inputs with some redistribution towards those parts of the world where marginal productivity of such inputs is still relatively high.
• The adoption of a more labour-intensive approach to farming, particularly in the more developed areas, where today the proportion of socially unproductive labour is highest, i.e. occupations essential to the functioning of capitalism which will disappear in socialism.
• Greater emphasis to be placed on small-scale mass-produced “appropriate technology” which would rapidly transform the situation that currently exists in the less-developed areas of the world.
• Selective reversion to traditional farming practices, such as intercropping and agro-forestry, combined with a careful "holistically-oriented” application of useful innovations in the field of biotechnology, e.g. self-fertilising crops.
• Blurring of the distinction between town and country; a huge expansion of small-scale horticulture in and around existing conurbations with the aim of ensuring a substantial and diverse supply of locally-grown food, thus incidentally reducing the costs of transportation.
• Related to the above, a massive phased programme to systematically overhaul existing urban infrastructure to facilitate the return of off-farm wastes to the land.
• Finally, to conserve ecologically marginal land by restricting the use of it to rotational/extensive farming.

To those who dismiss this, our response is quite simple: never has the need for a clear and practical alternative to the chaos of capitalism been more pressing, more vital. Only on this basis can we ensure a fruitful and sustainable future for ourselves and our children’s children. The seeds of that future lie within us; it is up to us to nurture and cultivate them.

Robin Cox

Labour, Tory . . . Same Old Story (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can you spot the difference? Which is the party of Law and Order, Family Values, Prudent Public Spending, the Market Economy: Labour or the Tories? Such is the public confusion over this that even the Tories have thought of exploiting it:

“Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, and other key members of the Cabinet favoured attacking Mr Blair as a pale copy of the Tory party. This is called ‘the Coke option’ by researchers who say the Tories represent ‘the real thing'” (Independent, 26 July).

Since Blair became Leader in July Labour’s strategy has been to criticise the Tories on their terms –as incompetent managers of the economy and unable to implement tough policies against criminals, single mothers and other scroungers. Guided by their marketing advisers, Labour politicians don’t attack the Tories’ policies but only the incompetent and ineffective way in which they are carried out. Vote for us, Blair is saying, and we’ll carry out these policies better than the Tories. The aim is to attract enough ex-Tory voters for him to be able to enter Number Ten as Britain’s next prime minister.

Labour being the vote-catching party it always has been, it had to come to this sooner or later: the end of Labour as a party of radical reform of capitalism. Labour never was a socialist party but it did once see its role as trying to shift the balance of power and wealth under capitalism in favour of working people. They never did do this of course nor, given the nature of capitalism, could they have done so. But this was what they said and this at least showed that they thought capitalism was far from being the acceptable economic system they now think it is.

Incredible as it might seem today, Denis (now Lord, of course) Healey told a cheering Labour Conference in 1973 that he was going to squeeze the rich till the pips squeaked:

“Our job is to get power, and we join battle armed with the most radical and comprehensive programme we have had since 1945. Its aim is honestly stated, to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families . . . We are going to introduce a tax on wealth. We are going to turn the estate duty into a real tax… I warn you, there are going to be howls of anguish from the 80,000 rich people. “

Labour got to power, but it was working people who ended up getting squeezed till the pips squeaked. The result was a massive wave of strikes in the public sector over the winter of 1978/9 – and the election of the Tories under Thatcher pledged, as she openly boasted, to undo everything Labour claimed to champion. Which, as demanded by capitalism’s worsened economic conditions, she did and, spiteful woman that she was, with glee. State industries were privatised, council houses sold off, local services axed, welfare payments slashed and the health service subjected to market forces.

Power for what?

Today all that Labour has retained of Healey’s rhetoric are the first six words: “our job is to get power”. Since radical phrases, indeed any definite policies, are now perceived to be a drag on this drive to get power they have been ruthlessly abandoned. Just attack the Tories as incompetent and clapped out, the marketing team advise, and, anxious for power, the Labour politicians oblige.

But power for what? In the end, since they are only projecting themselves as better and more competent managers of the status quo, it amounts to power for its own sake. The Labour leaders want power because they are professional politicians and the ambition of every professional politician is to become a government minister.

Is this being too cynical? Can they be that bad? Perhaps not, but it doesn’t really matter since even if they were sincere (and, on the law of averages, some of them must be) they still wouldn’t be able to make the capitalist market economy work other than as a system that puts profits first and so as a problem-ridden system incapable of meeting human needs properly.

In so far as they might have a theory of what they would do if they get power it will be no different from that behind the failed policies of ail previous Labour governments : trying to redistribute profits towards socially desirable projects such as a better health service, better education and better housing.

This involves accepting the profit system – not a problem of course for Blair and company – and allowing firms to make the maximum profits, justified on the grounds that this also supposedly maximises the resources available for social spending.

The trouble is this makes what a reformist government can do depend on the profitability of capitalist industry. As Richard Crossman, a Labour politician who was to become a senior Cabinet Minister in the 1964 Wilson Labour government, wrote following Labour’s defeat in the 1959 election on such a classic reformist programme:

“A Socialist Government, it is often argued, would be able to finance the huge extension of welfare, education and other pubic services by encouraging a much faster rate of development in the private sector of industry and then taxing away a sufficient amount of the profits. This was the policy put forward by the Labour Party at the last election and in the short run any Labour Government would to attempt it. But experience should have taught us that the run might be very short indeed. In the Affluent Society no Government is able to give orders to Big Business. After one budget a Labour Chancellor who tried to squeeze private industry too hard would soon discover that he was not master in his own house and that there is a relatively low level above which taxation rates, whether on the individual or the company, are only raised at the cost of provoking tax evasion and avoidance so widespread that revenue is actually reduced. If the motive of your economy is the profit-making of large-scale modem private enterprise, a Labour Government must be prepared to allow very large profits indeed and to admit that the number of golden eggs he can remove is extremely limited. ” (Labour in the Affluent Society, 1960)

His answer was that Labour should therefore seek to establish an enlarged state sector so as to give a Labour government more room to manoeuvre. The present Labour leaders would recoil in horror at such as suggestion, not that anyway it would have worked to protect a Labour government from the economic pressures of capitalism to keep costs down and profits up. Nor that the Labour governments of which Crossman was subsequently a member made any real attempt to do it.

Profits first

In fact Labour ministers ended up making speeches accepting that profits should be encouraged. Here is how one of them (Harold Lever who, like Healey was later ennobled) put it:

“Labour’s economic plans are not in any way geared to more nationalisation; they are directed towards increased production on the basis of the continued existence of a large private sector. Within the terms of the profit system it is not possible, in the long run, to achieve sustained increases in output without an adequate flow of profit to promote and finance them. The Labour leadership know as well as any businessman that an engine which runs on profit cannot be made to move faster without extra fuel.” (Observer, 3 April 1966).

This could be Blair or Gordon Brown or any of the other Labour leaders speaking and well sums up what will be the only economic policy that a future Labour government will be able to pursue. Profits First, that’s the economic law of the capitalist system, which all governments of capitalism have to accept and apply.

If you accept the profit system, then you have to accept that profits have to be made and all that this implies, including opposing strikes, restraining wages and keeping taxes on Big Business low. Labour does accept the profit system, much more openly than they have done in the past, to the extent that today they are even prepared to advocate these things while still in opposition.

Nobody who is against the profit system has any place in Tony Blair’s bland new Labour Party. If you want more Law and Order, more Family Values, more blurred nothingness you might as well join Labour as the Tories or Liberals. But if you are a Socialist and want to get rid of the profit system you should be in a democratically-organised socialist party campaigning for socialism and nothing else.

Adam Buick