What their papers say (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a popular belief that certain newspapers report things "the way they really are" — without bias. In fact, there are no such things as neutral news items, recognisable entities independent of journalists. Rather, there are those incidents and issues which are perceived by editors as "newsworthy".

Journalists are trained to spot particular aspects of social affairs as suitable material to report on with a bias or “angle". Although we find a slightly different point of view in the liberal, "quality" press from that expressed in the rest, all newspapers have a common standpoint on the profit system — they support it. It follows that what they tell us about the world cannot help but be politically slanted. Last year thirty million people died through lack of food while mountains of beef were produced; thousands were slaughtered in wars while the combatants wished for peace; and millions remained homeless while palatial accommodation stood empty. The press was unanimous in ignoring these contradictions and reserving its astonishment and critical analysis for royal weddings and trying to detect a "new" SDP policy.

Before it is represented in the press, reality is put through the great distorting process. The four main journalistic devices are to personalise, trivialise, historically fossilise and moralise.

They personalise

Society is presently organised on the basis of minority ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Production is geared to profit for the few, not for social need. Problems like industrial disputes, unemployment and wars are consequences of our social system but the press encourages us to look at them in terms of individual responsibilities. Hence, Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as the demon who has somehow personally engineered the unemployment of over three million people, or else a triumphal heroine who will put "Britain" back on its feet. Strikes are blamed on the personal irresponsibility of reckless trade union leaders. Even self-proclaimed non-revolutionaries like the former Longbridgc shop steward Derek Robinson and the GLC leader Ken Livingstone come in for prolonged campaigns of abuse in which they are reduced to being known as "Red Robbo” and “Red Ken". A variation on this technique of masquerading social issues as personal is to actually personify territories and to speak of "Britain fearing the proposed EEC policy" or “France will be taking steps to ensure that . . .". The persons created by this linguistic trick embody the interests of various sections of the ruling class, so that "Britain’s overseas investments” are in reality the investments of a small minority of wealth owners associated with Britain.

They trivialise

The papers are always littered with inconsequential revelations. We are prompted to turn our heads away from the condition of the world, our poverty and insecurity and busy our minds with matters such as “Why the Duke of Kent is to visit Darlington”, the new rhinoceros at a famous zoo and a thousand other inanities. Socialists are sometimes accused of being killjoys for not wishing to participate in discussions on such matters. But stop to consider why. As they are sliding the neutron bombs into their launching positions are we really expected to open a copy of the Daily Express, read about the man who fell into a vat of custard and still be slapping our thighs as the radioactive dust descends upon us?

They historically fossilise 

Society is in a constant state of change. The institutions, social relationships and problems of today have not always been with us and are only transitory. Journalists give us a misleading vision of society because they have a “photographic” perception of affairs rather than an historical one. They try to present an accurate picture of “the way things are” but they tend to freeze what they look at without seeing each situation as part of a much wider set of social relations which are not only changing all the time, but which we are capable of shaping for our own requirements. Thus, nation states, armies, managers, police and the wages system are all regarded as part of the fabric of society which is beyond any critical comment.

They moralise

On many issues that they examine, journalists pass moral judgement. They try to persuade us that something is good or bad, but the point is that the morality which they peddle is one which favours our social superiors and flies in the face of our own interests. Their moral precepts contort to keep us in place. So strikers who seek a paltry addition to their wage to try and make ends meet are greedy, while business tycoons who acquire additional companies have praiseworthy initiative and enterprise. If a man murders people in North Yorkshire for no reason he is an anti-social wretched villain. If the same man, trained by the SAS, commits the same acts for H.M. Government with a uniform on he will be hailed as a hero. When wealth producers reclaim goods from the wealth owners without paying for them this is theft and is morally reprehensible, but when the capitalists steal from us the fruits of our labour this is making a profit and is seen as morally virtuous.

The press like any other industry is owned by a few privileged people. Three major companies (News International, Reed International and Associated Newspaper Group) own three-quarters of all British newspapers and each company has similar interests in book and magazine publishing concerns, television companies and independent radio stations. In 1948 Lord Beaverbrook said to the Press Commission: “I publish my paper (Daily Express) purely for the purpose of making propaganda and for no other motive”.

Earlier this year. Rupert Murdoch sacked The Times editor Harold Evans because he resisted pressure to take a more right-wing editorial line supporting Thatcher and Tory economic policies. According to Anthony Holden, the features editor, “Mr. Murdoch wants a poodle as an editor” (Guardian, 13 March 1982). The press barons still like to enjoy control over exactly which arguments, about how capitalism should be run, are put in their papers, but there is not a conspiracy of newspaper magnates and most of the time connivance in capitalist propaganda is less explicit.

Nevertheless, the propaganda is always there. Take June 28 this year when there was a brief strike by the National Union of Railwaymen. All the papers were against the workers and with varying degrees of openness took the side of the bosses. Reports were brimming with comments and views from David Howell, the Transport Secretary, Peter Parker, the BR chairman and cabinet ministers, but no report came anywhere near presenting an adequate account of why the workers were dissatisfied with what they had been offered. The Daily Mail displayed a headline “Britain WILL Get to Work” and listed the ways in which workers should attempt to get in to produce profits. On 7 May 1926 the same paper had a similar message for suffering workers: “If you must go about walk as far as you can . . . don't buy more coal than usual. Keep a stout heart and smile at your troubles”. The Sun headline on 28 June was “STRIKE RABBLE" while the Daily Mirror (the paper which claims to stick up for the workers!) spoke shyly about the urgent need to end the strike and for “increased productivity”. The tirelessly liberal Guardian was also urging the railwaymen to “give reality a chance” — in other words “get back to work and stop complaining”. The Times and the Daily Telegraph had identical lines, only couched in more stilted language, whereas the Star took a similar line but with a bare minimum of written language.

Apart from imparting news, the papers also vie with each other to cultivate and cater for a popular culture for their markets. They reinforce ideas about desirable lifestyles, from the adverts in the Financial Times for special credit cards “for people who travel and entertain around the world. People whose lifestyle and income requires and justifies an additional range of financial services" (28 June 1982), to the crude horoscopes and cheap, brash “lighthearted" pages in the gutter press. Pleasure is promoted here as a spectator sport, something you need to get with cash, something where you are “being entertained". The lowest common denominator of interest among an estimated readership is exploited to the hilt to maximise sales. This converts the paper into another type of mass entertainment to be mechanically produced for profit on one side and passively consumed for gratification on the other. As Richard Hoggart observes in his book The Uses of Literacy:

These productions belong to a vicarious spectators' world; they offer nothing which can really grip the brain or heart. They assist a gradual drying-up of the more positive, the fuller, the more cooperative kinds of enjoyment. in which one gains by giving much (p. 340).

The only paper which represents the interest of the working class, because it stands for socialism and nothing else, is the Socialist Standard. The press and the other means of communication can only be used for their proper function — the unrestricted dissemination of ideas and other information — when they, along with everything else, are commonly owned. Raymond Williams approaches this point when he observes:

The irony is that the only practical use of communication is the sharing of real experience. To set anything above this is quite unpractical. To set selling above it may seem normal, but it is really only a perversion to which some people have got used: a way of looking at the world which must be right and normal because you have cut yourself down to its size (Communications, p. 26).

Remember knowledge is power, and every new reader of the Socialist Standard makes the movement for socialism stronger.

Gary Jay

“A rose by any other name” (2002)

From the September 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Language is social consciousness, in as much as it exists only for other men”, Marx noted in the German Ideology . It takes its place in the social superstructure, on the battleground where the conflicts between classes are fought – speeches, laws, slogans. These are all merely words, but words through which groups of humans seek to map, describe and create images of the world around them, and through so doing, create and signal an identity for themselves. Without language we would not have society, we would not be able to co-operate the way we do. It is an integral and constitutive part of being human.

For the better part of this century language has intrigued philosophers. How does it work? What effect does it have on our consciousness, on our ways of seeing the world? One of the most important discoveries of this line of thought, is that words do not have any intrinsic connection to the object they refer to (this may sound obvious, but much of previous though, especially in the nineteenth century, assumed an unmediated connection between word and object). Words are just arbitrary signs, used to carve up the world. There is no reason D-O-G means a small stupid furry canine animal, it could as easily be C-A-T meaning the same referent.

This arbitrariness, however, does not mean that we can make any word mean anything we want it to, otherwise we would all be like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty (in Alice Through the Looking Glass ), nor can we just make up new words as and when we like, like Mr. Blackadder (Blackadder the Third) . According to the theorist M M Bakhtin, this association between the word and its object comes about through use. A dog is a D-O-G because the last time D-O-G was used it referred to the stupid furry canine. Thus social “signifying practise” is the driving force behind linguistic meaning, words get their meaning through human lived interaction and co-operation. But, further, it means that the individual is not the source of meaning, the ultimate deciding authority over their own words; it means that society, and its understanding and shared practice is. We do not own our own words.

Words get their meaning from use, every word is saying “this is like the object I referred to the last time I was used”. As such every word is a metaphor, for itself. Further, all words can therefore have their meanings changed, through a metaphorical slippage, where once it referred to one thing in the world it becomes another through a change in the world and in the way of using the word. Raymond Williams examines this point in his book Keywords. He pointed out how centrally important words have changed their meaning over the last two hundred years. Industry moved from meaning to work hard to meaning the abstract sum of factories; economy moved from meaning household management, to referring to the value of shares in the stock exchange; individual from being the constituent part of a greater whole, to being a unique, atomised, autonomous subject.

The way in which these words found themselves changing was through the rise of a class of people who used them to describe their world, and the eventual control this group of people took over the means of communication, and thus of language. Effectively, the changes in these words map the changes in society over the past two hundred years. These words were weapons in the class war, battering rams to change the perceptual world of society from its old feudal outlooks towards describing the world in capitalist terms. With these words came others, all of them fought over, between the different groups that used them. For the capitalist class, freedom meant the freedom to buy and sell, equality meant abstracted equality before the law, not social equality; property became the goods of the individual, rather than of the community.

At the same time, however, another idea arose, with a new word to describe it, an idea about common ownership of the goods of society, of co-operation and mutuality – socialism . Its first use (in English) was apparently in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine in November 1827. Very early on it became tinged with a radicalism, implied by its connotations of a change in the whole social system of society. Right up until the 1920s socialism was the preferred term meaning a society of common ownership.

However, as the word entered into a field of political combat, that meant its meaning became more and more disputed. The “immediate demands” of the Social Democratic parties of the Second International meant that in many minds socialism became associated with the specific statist reforms associated with these immediate demands. Furthermore, certain groups of “Socialists” (such as the Fabians) began to see socialism more and more as a compliment to Liberalism, rather than as a society of co-operative common ownership.

The break was further exacerbated by the Bolshevik revolution, and the renaming of their party “the Communist Party”, and the theoretical shift to “communism” as being the ultimate state to be attained, with socialism becoming a transitory society to this stage. With this predomination of meaning socialism soon became utterly associated in the majority of minds with state ownership and reformism. Its older meaning lost, except to a few bothered scholars, and to the likes of the Socialist Party.

This change of meaning has suited conservatives and reactionaries. It is easy to pigeon-hole opponents, lump them all in together under a common pejorative name, as it means they can all be dismissed out of hand. Thus conservatives, in an attempt to define themselves, and hold their own camp together, were more than willing to call the Labour Party socialist: “You are a socialist”, screamed Thatcher, to Neil Kinnock, “a crypto-communist!”.

All the while, a word, an essentially meaningless jumble of consonants and vowels is being bandied back and forth, while the idea that lay behind it, the idea that spawned it as a word, was all but forgotten, or banished to some alleged fantasy land by the pernicious practitioners of the possible.

In some quarters, the World Socialist Movement for one, this original idea has not been forgotten, and all through the shifts and turns in the meaning of this word, we have been adding our own, albeit small, voice into shaping its social meaning, so that the idea about what socialism “actually” means isn’t forgotten. The idea has been held up above the jumble of letters that make up the word. It remains, though, a word worth fighting for, for its history, for its associations of co-operation and mutuality, and because it describes something positive, a situation to be aimed for – a just state of society.

Socialism remains a good word to put our arguments across. Because of our different understanding of it, people are surprised by our answers and perspectives, and become genuinely interested, broken out of the stale old left-wing right-wing arguments. And just as words such as queer or Quaker have been wrested from negative senses to have positive meanings, thus can socialism , with all its history and associations be wrested back as well.

It is our ideas, our practices, and our values, that makes us the Socialist Party, not simply the word socialist , or even our party name. It wouldn’t matter what we call ourselves, as our ideas grow a word would be found to express them, in their full meaning. Since we think that, historically, that word already exists, we choose to use it.

Pik Smeet

Can we save the planet? (1990)

From the August 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live to-day within a social system which is sick to its core. Throughout the world, production is taking place not simply to satisfy human needs, but to satisfy the voracious appetite of profit. Within this system of world capitalism, the consumption of wealth is in fact merely a means to an end—the further rapid accumulation of capital for those who invest in this production, those who own and control the world's resources.

The past hundred years have seen the most rapid and uncontrolled industrial expansion. with a virtual explosion of productive methods. The driving force behind this was never simply industrialisation for its own sake. The reason for this unplanned and damaging use of natural resources lay in the market system, with its need for a constant flow of profit. The rapid and short-term accumulation of capital proceeds regardless of the cost in terms of upsetting any natural ecological balance, just as it also ignores the needs of the majority of humanity. Each profit-making unit seeks to maximise its own short-term economic gain, without concern for the common interest or longer-term ecological considerations.

We may all inhabit the same planet, but the environment of which we are a part is social as well as natural, and our daily experience of this environment depends on our social class. The working-class majority experience a poverty which is absurd when contrasted with what is technologically possible. Whether in the concrete jungle or in rural squalor we exist in a dirty, dangerous and shoddy environment. Our housing which we have a constant struggle to obtain and hang on to, is often damaged or damp and almost always cheaply built. The small minority who own and control the world's productive resources, on the other hand, are able to enjoy the open spaces and relatively fresh air of private country estates, and the comforts of secure housing, good food and reliable transport.

For millions across the world, "the environment” means lack of clean water, avoidable but fatal diseases and ultimately starvation. In this way 40,000 children under the age of 5 are dying every single day, whilst the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that if properly cultivated the world could feed the total population several times over. The reason for such obscene contradictions is the continued organisation of society on the basis of the market mechanism which is blind to need, unless backed up with cash. Throughout the world the vast majority are able to survive only by selling their working abilities to the minority who own and control the farms, factories, transport and other resources. Wealth is being produced not directly to satisfy need, but to be sold in order to realise a profit for the minority.

Reform or revolution?

Faced with the existence of this system, those who are concerned with its terrible effects have two options. They can struggle in an effort to reform and regulate it. or they can aim to replace it with a different social system altogether. This debate, between reform and revolution, took place in earnest at the turn of the century within the labour movement as a whole. The emergence of the “Green" movement in recent years raises just the same issue. Those involved in both the Green Party and the ecological pressure groups are trying to avert ecological crisis through legislation and other means within the framework of capitalism. But within this social structure, any concessions to such concerns will be "too little, too late" and will only take place if and when it appears to fit in with the dictates of profit.

There are several reasons why neither a Green government nor pressure-group activity nor legislative measures will succeed in their aims, however urgent a priority the saving of the plant may be seen to be. The claim that this urgency demands that we must set aside the struggle for social transformation and apply ourselves to preventing such ecological crisis is based on quite false logic. In fact, it is only through the replacement of capitalism by socialism that such measures can ever begin to be realised themselves.

First, governments are not in control. They are controlled in their actions by the in-built laws of the market system. Social action is moulded and limited by the underlying economic system of the world, because the way in which we organise the production of wealth shapes the priorities of society in general. Laws against "excessive" pollution are needed only in a system of society which has an inherent tendency to pollute. Productive units have the constant temptation to avoid such regulation in order to improve their competitive efficiency. At the time of the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. Captain Nic Rutherford of the International Federation of Ships' Masters Associations, was quoted as saying:

The big problem is that one owner is not going to make expensive alterations that would put him at a disadvantage compared with his competitors until he absolutely has to (Independent. 10 March 1987).

In fact, far from solving these problems, attempts at solving them within capitalism will often make things even worse. For example, attempts at legal and state enforcement of ecologically-sound policies would have an inevitable side-effeect of increasing state power over people's lives, creating an oppressive machine which could also be used in other spheres.

Second, legal reform by its very nature operates on a national level, which is meaningless in terms of pollution and environmental damage: rivers and winds never respect the artificial national boundaries that capitalism has set up.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the first step to controlling the environment is owning it. The Greens put the cart before the horse—the majority in society do not yet have control over the world's resources. to use or abuse. How can the ecological balance of the world be maintained without first bringing human society under the control of humanity? How can we plan or control the processes of production if we do not collectively possess the resources involved?

Those who do possess the world's productive resources are quite clear about their intention to continue using that possession in the interests of generating profit. through maximising sales of commodities. J.M.Roche, who was Chairman of General Motors at the time, was quoted in April 1970 as saying that "planned obsolescence in my opinion is another word for progress'. (In The Name Of Profit, Doubleday. 1972). And in Capitalism And Freedom Milton Friedman, that guru of the market mythology, was even clearer:

There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits if businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for stockholders. how are they to know what it is?” (1962. p.133).

We could attempt to advise these owners what they should do with their wealth, how they really "ought" to place the health of the planet or the welfare of humanity before maximising their profits. But this would be to plead from a position of weakness, and really would not stand a chance of success. The only answer is to repossess the Earth itself

Profit and Pollution

There are many examples of how unrealistic it is to expect the social order of capitalism to put ecology before profit. There was the recent fiasco in relation to the greenhouse effect. The report in May of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommended immediate reductions of over 60 percent in carbon dioxide emissions in order to stabilize the problem as it stands. In response, Thatcher said Britain was prepared to set itself the “very demanding target" of maintaining (not reducing) present UK emission levels through to the year 2005 "provided others are ready to take their full share". And yet those pushing for Green reforms say that ending capitalism must be put off indefinitely. whilst they pursue these "short-term” obtainable measures' Gerald Leach of the government's Advisory Committee on Renewable Energy stated at the time that the technology does exist to cut UK carbon dioxide emissions, but that it would cost £8 billion to implement. He suggested that domestic consumers should bear the burden by replacing old or inefficient household appliances which contribute to these emissions. It is industry, however, which in its pursuit of profit plays the major role in causing such problems and is least likely to reverse the damaging trends involved.

An even less likely reform is currently being campaigned for by Friends of the Earth. They believe that the Green Party's anti-pollution taxes on coal, oil and gas would hurt the poor most, and are therefore urging a £16 billion fifteen-year programme to insulate and heat all low-income homes. It is sometimes thought that a non-party political group like Friends of the Earth might have a more positive influence on such problems. In fact, however they are hopelessly caught up in this dangerous and time-wasting myth that capitalism can be usefully reformed. The futility of such campaigns was evident in a revealing article by Neil Verlander of Friends of the Earth in the June 1990 issue of Voyager, the magazine of British Midland Airways. In a column presented as an introduction to the work of his group, he states:

Price is still the most important factor to most people, and many green products are more expensive than damaging rivals. Less environmentally damaging modes of production often incur bigger overheads, and greener products therefore tend to be more expensive.

Having acknowledged this stumbling-block to their efforts at reform, he goes on to show an acceptance that the division between rich and poor is here to stay, and even urges the impoverished majority to cut back on the little we consume:

It is essential that the environment is not the exclusive preserve of the middle class. People on lower incomes should be able to buy less damaging goods, and the best way of doing this is to make prices more realistic.

Green consumerism is still consumerism. and we must all, in the West, learn to consume less, as well as better.

The weakness in the position taken up by such pressure groups was well explained by Raymond Williams in his booklet Socialism and Ecology:

Having no political position is a form of political position . . .  Characteristically, this non-political approach calls upon generalised public opinion or upon the world . But in the latter case, they are calling upon the leaders of the precise social orders which have created the devastation to reverse their own processes. They are calling upon them to go against the precise interests, the precise social relationships, which have produced their leadership. Moreover, at a certain point, although the actual pronouncements are honest and important, the political position can be worse than merely mistaken, because it creates and supports the notion that the leaders can solve these problems.

Only when we all own and control the Earth's resources in common can we ever hope to sustain the planet s ecosystem in balance. Only by ending rather than regulating commerce as the mechanism of production can needs be satisfied harmoniously. This is the logical conclusion and for this vast social transformation to become a practicality, majority understanding and support for this needs to be built. A decision must therefore be made by any one who cares about their own future and that of the rest of the world: do we continue on the futile roundabout of reform, with its history of desperate failure, or do we instead advocate the practical solution of production for use. not profit?

Clifford Slapper

Blogger's Note:

In the same issue of this Socialist Standard, there is an advert for a new SPGB pamphlet, Ecology and Socialism, which can accessed here.

The Leftovers (1967)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Words are cheap. Any organisation can label itself socialist. What is more difficult is to develop a body of socialist theory and to stick to it. Over sixty years we have seen many left-wing movements, from the Labour party onwards, group themselves around different political programmes. Superficially some of them seemed to differ only in tiny details from the Socialist Party of Great Britain. But these ‘details’ were always sufficient to confirm our opposition to all other political parties. Without exception our hostility has been justified. There is not one of them which has not ended up supporting capitalism. The first and second world wars especially were acid tests which separated the revolutionary Socialist party from the rest.

In other words, the old cliché about the ‘unity of theory and practice’ holds true. A party is only as good as its theoretical platform. It Is because of this that the Socialist party was able to correctly analyse the prospects of both Labour and Communist parties years before either had established themselves as the undisputed government in any country. From the start we attacked these movements for their capitalist policies and predicted that they would administer capitalism in the only way possible—against the interests of the working class.

So when we examine the New Left May Day Manifesto it is not just a case of abstract intellectual analysis. The answer to whether the New Left is socialist—or capitalist-orientated will be in this pamphlet. If they are socialists, we will unite with them; if not, it is our job to expose them. How do they measure up?

The first thing to point out is that it has taken most of the people who signed the manifesto many years to see through the Labour party. And even now they cannot really grasp why Labour has failed so monotonously. Their bewilderment comes through on every line:

We are faced with something alien and thwarting: a manipulative politics, often openly aggressive and cynical, which has taken our meanings and changed them, taken our causes and used them; which seems our creation, yet now stands against us, as the agent of the priorities of money and power.

For all that, they have at least now reached the stage of identifying Labour with what they call the new or managed capitalism. They are also moaning about some of the harsher injustices arising from private property—hitting cut at the chronic poverty which haunts the working class and at the vast concentrations of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority. Scattered throughout the text are odd sentences which show that they have got some inkling of what the problem facing working men and women is. For example,

At the centre of capitalism is the power of a minority, through ownership and control, to direct the energies of all other members of the society.

There is, of course, nothing very novel about all this. Generations of reformers have voiced similar complaints about capitalism and have dignified their futile efforts to humanise it by dubbing them ‘socialism’. The New Left is no exception; in fact, they claim that this manifesto is the work of “a group of socialist workers, writers and teachers” and they even chance their arm at defining socialism. The result is ludicrous—a useless definition, painstakingly obscure and obviously designed so that it can mean all things to all the various quaint brands of Leftists:

We define socialism as a humanism: a recognition of the social reality of man in all his activities, and of the consequent struggle for the direction of this reality by and for ordinary men and women. ,

As the pamphlet progresses a few more facts about this ‘socialism’ are carelessly let slip. On pages 3 and 4, for example, it becomes clear that wages and profits will be just as concrete “social realities” as will “man in all his activities” in this ‘new’ social system. Also they think in strictly national terms: “It would make an important difference, in the balance of power in the world, if we could make a socialist Britain . . .” But it is only after ploughing through twenty seven pages of close print that we finally discover just what form this humanistic socialism takes—Russia, we find, is a “socialist state”.

Just like the Labour party, then, the New Left has not even begun to understand what a system of social ownership and democratic control entails. Yet it might still be argued that it represents a step forward from Labour—or rather a step back, to the pioneer days when Labour leaders were supposed to have their honest, if hopelessly confused, principles. But, if the people who signed the manifesto are anything to go by, the New Left’s talent for compromise is every bit as polished as Harold Wilson’s. Their attitude to wars makes this clear enough.

During what passes for peace under capitalism both socialists and reformers agitate against war but, as we mentioned before, the outbreak of hostilities inevitably sees the Socialist party standing alone in its call for international working class solidarity. Predictably enough, the New Left has some brave slogans:

Socialists have traditionally seen war, in the twentieth century, as the conflict of rival imperialisms; for colonies, for trade, for spheres of influence.

It also has some blindingly original solutions for exorcising armed conflicts from capitalism:

In Europe we must press for disengagement between East and West in the political sphere (whether in the form of nuclear-free zones and a European Security Pact, or in piecemeal initiatives by individual nations), and for active association in economic, cultural, social and educational spheres. Negotiations to enter the European Economic Community should be judged by their relation to this more important objective.

New Left May Day Manifesto signatories.

But obviously this is for the shop window. When the shooting starts, there is no nonsense about socialist principles or proletarian brotherhood. To give a few examples, Arnold Wesker—who signed the manifesto—was fervently campaigning for Israel last month during the Middle East conflict. (To be fair to him we should, perhaps, point out that he advocated the peculiar combination of “Israel and peace”.) Another signatory, Anthony Arblaster, was writing about “how Nasser helped Egypt”, while Michael Barratt Brown (“I am not particularly pro-Arab”) gave “every support to a United Nations cordon around Israel”. Clearly, as with its definition of socialism, the New Left caters for all shades of opinion—bar the socialist.

Finally, the New Left is hooked on reforms. The manifesto refers to “the separate campaigns in which we have all been active” and, under a mysterious heading of "Successes and Failures of the Left”, lists some of the recent ones:

In 1951, against massive rearmament and cuts in social services: in 1956, against aggression at Suez; in 1961 and again in 1966. against the wage freeze; since 1965, against British support for the United States’ war in Vietnam.

Perhaps they could point out which of these were its "successes”.

How do socialists look at the New Left, then? “None of this is surprising. It is exactly what one would expect new capitalist politics to be — changes of techniques to maintain older priorities.” This passage, taken from the manifesto, neatly sums up this rag-bag of discredited ideas. The ‘‘group of socialist workers, writers and teachers” turns out to be nothing but a collection of bewildered, Labour party dissidents. Illusions wrecked and hopes shattered, they now want to build another platform of reforms from which they can operate in the traditional Leftist manner—as the uneasy conscience of the capitalist class.

John Crump

A Question of definition (4) - socialism/communism (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is the name we give to the new society we wish to see the working class establish, defined in our Object as “a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community”.

Actually, at the time our Party was founded in 1904, socialism was not the generally used name for the society Socialists wanted to see established. Even the early issues of the Socialist Standard referred to future society as "the co-operative commonwealth” (an Owenite phrase which is expressive enough), the "social republic” (from the French revolutionary tradition) and "socialist society”. The word socialism referred rather to the body of theory which criticised capitalism and argued for a new society based on common ownership and democratic control. This is the sense in the title Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (given by Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue to the extracts from Engels’ Anti-Dühring which he translated into French and published as a separate pamphlet in 1880) and in the old sub-title of our companion journal the Western Socialist: "journal of scientific socialism in the Western hemisphere’’. It is of course a natural transition from socialism as the name of the doctrine to socialism as the name of the application of the doctrine, viz. the new society to be established. Nowadays the original situation is reversed: we use socialism almost exclusively to refer to the system of society and virtually only in the phrase “scientific socialism” to refer to the doctrine.

Socialism and socialist originated in both Britain and France in the 1820s and 1830s. In Britain, where it was popularised by Owen and the Owenites, it was used to describe a doctrine which favoured co-operation instead of the competitive individualism of capitalism. In France it had more the sense of a doctrine favouring reforms in the interest of the poor. Communism, on the other hand, originated in French in the 1840s as the name of the doctrine of those descended from Babeuf’s 1796 Conspiracy of the Equals who favoured the seizure of power in an insurrection in order to introduce genuine “equality” through abolishing private property. The German League of the Just also supported this doctrine and in 1847 changed its name to the Communist League, for which Marx and Engels wrote the famous manifesto of 1848.

Thus, in 1848, as Engels explained in a preface he wrote to the Communist Manifesto in 1888, communism was what Williams calls the “harder” word:

We could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, Socialism was a middle-class movement, Communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the continent at least, respectable; Communism was the very opposite.

Clearly since in 1880 Engels was prepared to have his doctrine described by Lafargue as socialism a change must have occurred in between.

Williams suggests that in the 1880s in English socialism was the harder term because it, in whatever form, envisaged some reorganization of society as a whole while communism tended to be associated with small- scale experiments in common property, or “community of goods”, as in a number of agricultural colonies established in America (equivalents of today’s kibbutzim). There is some truth in this, but it is not as simple as that. The “community of goods” and “levelling” associated with the word communism were looked on with more horror by the capitalist class than the social reforms in favour of the poor associated with the word socialism. Thus when Sir William Harcourt, the Liberal politician, who served as Home Secretary and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated in the late 1880s "we are all socialists now” he did not mean that “we are all in favour of a community of goods”! And it is no accident that William Morris in the 1880s, when he wished to contrast his views with the reformism of the Fabians, chose to call himself a communist. Some anarchists such as Kropotkin were also at this time describing their aim as “free communism” in contrast to the State capitalism (which they misleadingly called “State socialism”) favoured by most of those who called themselves socialists.

"State socialism”, again, was a term used to describe measures taken by the State to try to aid the poor. The word socialism unfortunately in widespread usage has never lost its association with reforms and reformism. Hence Labour and similar parties in other parts of the world describe themselves and are described as “socialist”. This does not deter us from insisting that our use, to describe someone who works for a new society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is not only the more adequate definition but also the more historically justified: those who introduced the word into English, the Owenites, favoured a co-operative commonwealth rather than reform of capitalism.

The word communism (which Marx preferred as the word to describe future society) has suffered a fate just as bad, if not worse. It has come to be associated with the State capitalist police dictatorships in Russia, China and other such countries. This goes back to a decision of the Bolsheviks in 1918 to change the name of their party from Social Democratic to Communist Party. They did this to distinguish themselves from the Social Democratic parties of the rest of Europe which had so shamefully betrayed the working class over the war. From then on communist has been used to describe supporters of Russia, inaccurately since it is not communism in its original sense of common ownership that they stand for but state capitalism.

Williams is quite wrong when he states that in the period 1880-1914 communism was used “as a description of an ultimate form, which would be achieved after passing through socialism”. This dates from after 1917 and was an innovation introduced by Lenin. Before then the only person to make such a distinction was William Morris but this was not taken up by anyone else in the Social Democratic or Socialist movements. It is true that the reformist Ramsay MacDonald in his book The Socialist Movement (1910) distinguishes communism from socialism, but as alternative and not successive societies and, as we have noted, this was a distinction made also by some anarchists. It is interesting that MacDonald distinguishes the two societies, as Lenin was to do, by the method of distribution: under “socialism” consumer goods would be distributed in accordance with work done, under “communism” according to needs.

Lenin’s innovation (to use a neutral term) was to make “socialism” and "communism” thus defined successive societies after the abolition of capitalism and to attribute this view to Marx (a gross distortion since Marx made no such distinction: he only distinguished a “first phase” of “communist society” when there would still have to be some restrictions on individual consumption—a reasonable assumption for 1875 but outdated today— from a “higher phase” when the principle “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” would apply, but these were phases of the same society based on common ownership and democratic control and not successive, separate societies).

As far as we are concerned, socialism and communism are exact synonyms, alternative names to describe the future society we wish to see established and defined in our Object. We don't object to this being described as communism and us as communists but in practice we only use the words socialism and socialist.

Adam Buick

Concluded

A Question of definition (3) - revolution (1978)

From the May 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolution

Revolution originally meant a revolving movement and is still used in this sense when we talk about engines doing so many revolutions per minute. It later came to be extended to describe a change in the political set-up (a change of ruler or constitution). Thus, when in 1688 Parliament and the Bishops expelled the Catholic King James II and replaced him by the Protestant William of Orange, appointed by Act of Parliament, they described this as the Glorious Revolution. Then, in the following century, there was the American Revolution and of course the French Revolution.

The French Revolution was a great deal more radical than the so-called “glorious revolution” of 1688 in England, but it gave rise to a body of thought which demanded an even more radical change which by 1848 was called “la révolution sociale”. The exact significance of this phrase will not be grasped if the French word social is understood to mean simply “something to do with society” so that “social revolution” would merely mean revolution in society. Of course “la révolution sociale” was to be a revolution in society, but then so had been the French “bourgeois revolution” as it was now being called. It meant a particular kind of revolution in society, one which would benefit the mass of ordinary, working people. Thus it might even be said that “social” in this phrase had some of the meaning of “socialist”. A contrast was also drawn between “la révolution sociale” and political revolutions, which, like the French bourgeois revolution, involved as far as the mass of people were concerned a change of rulers

Social Revolution

We would be more precise today and use political revolution to describe a change in the class which controls the State, social revolution to mean a change in the basis of society and socialist revolution to describe the particular change of society from capitalism to Socialism following the winning of political power from the capitalist class by the working class. Proletarian revolution is not a phrase we use though it was used by early Socialist writers and thinkers but, if we did use it, it would mean the winning of political power by the working class, i.e., the political revolution (change in control of political power) preceding the social revolution from capitalism to Socialism.

Now, whether we like it or not (and we don’t), we cannot deny that the word revolution has often been used to mean “violent overthrow” and in fact most of the political and social revolutions of the past have been violent. We deny, however, that there is any necessary connexion between revolution and violence. Here we endorse Williams’ comment on the revolution versus reform controversy (which he calls, confusedly, “the distinction between revolutionary and evolutionary socialism”):

From one point of view the distinction was between violent overthrow of the old order and peaceful and constitutional change. From another point of view, which is at least equally valid, the distinction was between working for a wholly new social order (socialism as opposed to capitalism) and the more limited modification or reform of an existing order . . . The argument about means, which has often been used to specialize revolution, is also usually an argument about ends.

Peaceful change

This is an important point, and one we have always made ourselves. In our view the distinction between revolution and reform is not between violent overthrow (insurrection) and peaceful change (using elections and Parliament), but between those who want to replace capitalism by Socialism and those who seek merely to re-form capitalism in one way or another. We claim to be revolutionaries because we stand for a fundamental and rapid change in the basis of society following the capture of political power by the working class, even though we hold that the working class can capture political power peacefully through elections and Parliament. On the other hand, there are many who believe in the violent capture of political power but who would use it merely to re-form capitalism (generally into State capitalism). We deny they are revolutionaries, irrespective of their commitment to violent tactics.

In other words, there is no necessary link between revolution and violence: there can be revolution without violence and violence without revolution. The criterion for revolution is the end envisaged (a change in control of political power, a change in the basis of society) not the means advocated (peaceful or violent).

Adam Buick

A Question of definition (2) Class and reform (1978)

From the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class was originally a general term for a division or a group and was thus equivalent to modern “category”. Thus it had no particular social significance but from the period 1770 to 1840 it came increasingly to be used to describe divisions in society. Williams explains its displacing of previous words for social divisions such as rank, order, estate, degree by the fact that, unlike them, class did not imply a hierarchical arrangement of society—such as feudalism had been but as;, emerging capitalism was not.

Even so, the first uses of class were hierarchical: lower classes, middle classes, upper classes. “Working classes’’ dates from early in the 19th century and seems to have been coined by Robert Owen (who is also responsible for another key word in the socialist vocabulary: socialism itself). At that time the big political struggle in Britain was for the Reform of the House of Commons, i.e., a redistribution of constituencies to give the new industrial areas more representation and an extension of the franchise. In this struggle “the middle classes”, as the capitalist employers called themselves, supported by ‘"the working classes”, saw themselves opposed to “the privileged classes” (i.e., the landed aristocrats, the clergy of the Established Church, those with government sinecures).

The compromise reached between the capitalists and “the privileged classes” in 1832, which left the great bulk of workers without the vote, led groups of workers to perceive the conflict of interest between the working class and "The middle classes” or capitalist or master class (a term used in our declaration of principles in 1904 but which has now dropped out of use) as they came to call them. Pro- working class writers showed how “the middle classes” too should be included among “the privileged classes” since they lived off profits got from the labour of the working class. By the 1860s “capitalist class” and “working class” were in current use. ' . .

Marx in Capital (1867) in fact distinguished a third class: the class of landlords who monopolise natural resources and live off rents, not only without haying to work but also without having to invest' any capital either. Nowadays this class, through long ago investing its rents in industry and banking, has merged with the capitalist class arid so virtually disappeared as a distinct class.. Thus we can say that today society is, to all intents and purposes, divided into two classes: the capitalist class and the working class, defined by their different relationship to the means of production. The capitalist class, as a class, monopolise the means of production; they own and control them. The working class are excluded from ownership and control of the means of production and only have access to them on the capitalists’ terms: on condition that the capitalists think they can make a profit by selling what the workers produce. There is thus a fundamental conflict between these two classes which takes the form of a permanent class struggle, ultimately over the ownership and control of the means of production but at the moment only over wages and working conditions.

The phrase working class was, as we saw, originally “working classes”,, but this usage is loose and theoretically wrong since there is only a single working class. But there is another confusion arising out of the phrase’s association with “working man” and “workman” which refer to manual labour, so that it is often assumed that the working class is confined to manual workers, in the factories and mines', on the railways and docks, etc. This mistake is made not only by those who do not want to be considered as members of the working class, but also by manual workers who do not consider civil servants, clerks and other “pen-pushers” as real workers. But it is a mistake and arises from an alternative and inadequate definition of class in terms of social status rather than relationship to the means of production. Thus there is supposed to be an upper class of aristocrats and capitalists enjoying high social status, a middle class of professional people and office workers enjoying a middling social status and a lower, working class of manual workers with no social status; various refinements can be introduced according to taste like lower middle class, upper working class, etc.

But it is clear that, as far a relationship to the means of production is concerned, office workers (including managers) are in precisely the same position as shop floor workers: they are excluded from ownership and control of the means of production and are forced to obtain a living, by selling their mental and physical energies to an employer. This in fact is our definition of working class: all those who are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. It would have been convenient to use some phrase such as “wage-earning class” in order to make our point of view clear at first sight, but unfortunately not only does a section of the working class call itself the “middle class" but even denies that it is paid wages as workers are and insists on calling them a salary instead. In fact a salary is equally a price for the sale of a person’s mental and physical energies, but this snobbery means that in order to make ourselves absolutely clear who we mean by working class we have to say “those forced to work for a wage or salary” or, less adequately but more simply, “wage and salary earners”. 

Williams detects a third use of class defined not by relationship to the means of production, nor by social status but by political consciousness. It Is true that Marx did sometimes, especially in his earlier writings,use class in this sense, saying that the workers or the peasants did not constitute a class until they perceived themselves to be a class with a common interest and organised themselves consciously to pursue that interest.This has been expressed, in philosophical terms, by distinguishing between a “class-in-itself" (defined by relationship to the means of production) and “class-for-itself" (defined by political consciousness). While not denying that this is a useful distinction it is hardly an adequate definition of class; otherwise the working class would be reduced to the tiny minority who at present want Socialism! The distinction is better made by saying that the working class now exists, but is not yet class conscious (defined politically to mean not simply a trade union consciousness but as wanting and understanding Socialism).

Reform, Reformism, Reformist

Reform, as a noun meaning a specific measure, dates from the end of the 18th century and was particularly associated with moves to make elections to the House of Commons more democratic. Thus the 1832 Act of Parliament which redistributed constituencies and extended the franchise was called the Reform Act. A second "Reform Act”, which further extended the franchise, was passed in 1867. But then, as the focus of popular agitation shifted from trying to change political institutions to trying to change society, reform came to mean also a specific measure aimed at improving society, hence “social reform”. But (at least in the way we have always used the word) reform does not refer to all attempts to improve social conditions but only to measures passed by Parliament or implemented by the State; thus, for instance, trade union activity and the work of private charities, whatever may be said for or against them, are not reforms.

Raymond Williams (Key Words, Fontana) detects an ambiguity, dating from the word’s first appearance in English in the 14th century, between reform in the sense of improve and reform in the sense of re-form, restore, rearrange. Thus someone who wants to reform capitalism may justify this as a supposed step towards Socialism or as a means of strengthening capitalism. There is no doubt that Williams is right here as can be seen from how the meaning of the word reformism has changed over the years.

This word is less than a hundred years old and originates from arguments within the French Social Democratic movement towards the end of the last century. One tendency argued that it was possible to gradually reform capitalism into Socialism by a series of reform measures; this view was known as “réformisme” and its supporters called themselves “réformistes”. In Britain a similar doctrine was propagated by the Fabian Society where it was more commonly known as “gradualism” (from the Fabian slogan “the inevitability of gradualness”). The Social Democratic Federation too had a similar position, labelling the reforms they advocated “stepping stones to Socialism”.

Today, however, we use the word reformist to refer to anyone who seeks to reform capitalism for whatever reason and irrespective of whether or not he claims to be a Socialist. This (quite justified) extension of the word reflects the fact that nowadays the leaders of parties such as Labour have no idea of what Socialism is (unlike some early Fabians who were on record as calling for the abolition of the wages system) and so cannot be said to want to transform society, even gradually, into Socialism and the fact that openly pro-capitalist parties, even the Conservative Party, also claim to stand for the improvement of society by means of reforms. Thus when we call someone a reformist today the suggestion is not there, as it once was, that he wants Socialism but has a mistaken view of how to achieve it. A reformist today is simply someone who (Williams', second sense) wants to re-form capitalism in one way or another or for one reason or another.

Adam Buick

A Question of definition will be concluded with an article on Revolution and Socialism.

A Question of definition (1) (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Words, written and spoken, are the tools we use in our task of trying to spread socialist understanding and we are therefore particularly concerned to clearly define the words we use. Language, like everything else in the world, is constantly changing, as new social experiences demand new words or as old words assume new meanings. Dictionaries only give the meaning of words at the date they are drawn up and even then merely describe how words are used rather than prescribe how they should be used.

This is why when there is an argument over a definition of a word this cannot be settled by a simple reference to a dictionary. To assume that it could is to assume that the definition of words has been settled once and for ail and that arguments over the definition of words are illegitimate. We don’t accept this, not only because we know that words change their meaning but also because we reserve the right to define certain words in ways which we consider more useful, from the point of view of understanding and changing the world, than the currently used definitions This is why we do not accept current dictionary definitions of such words as class, socialism and revolution. As dictionaries merely describe how these words are used they merely reflect what is in our opinion confused and confusing current popular usages.

A book such as Raymond Williams’ Key Words (Fontana), which seeks to give both the history of a word and controversies over how it should be used, is thus to be welcomed. Williams is the author of a book published in 1956 called Culture and Society, a title which indicates his main concern: literature and art in relation to society. Nevertheless there figure among his “key words” words which are also key words for us such as (to mention only those which occur in our declaration of principles): capitalist, class, common, community, democracy, equality, evolution, interest, labour, mankind, monopoly, socialist, society, wealth. We do not of course always agree with his conclusions, or even his history (he attributes, for instance, the coining of the phrase dialectical materialism to Engels whereas it was first used by Joseph Dietzgen in the 1870s), but we will follow his practice and give our history and definition of the key words in our vocabulary: capitalism, class, reform, revolution and socialism.

Capitalism, Capitalist

Both these are key words in the socialist vocabulary since we describe present-day society as capitalism and one of the two classes into which it is divided as the capitalist class.

Capitalist came into the English language in the early part of the 19th century and meant someone who had “capital”. Capital was a shortening of the phrase “capital stock” and referred to a monetary fund. Thus capitalist was basically somebody with money. Later, as the classical political economists came to distinguish various types of capital employed in production—circulating capital, fixed capital—the word came to apply also to employers of labour and owners of factories, mines and mills.

Capitalism was not originally the name for a system of society but for a system of production, one based on the investment of money-capital. Williams claims that to talk about capitalism as a system of society it to confuse a distinction made by Marx between “bourgeois society” and “capitalist production”.

Certainly Marx did speak of “bourgeois society” or rather its German equivalent “bürgerlich Gesellschaft”. Bourgeois is of course a French word and originally referred to the citizens of towns in Mediaeval France which enjoyed certain privileges, for which the English equivalent might be “freeman”. Later it came to be associated with anyone who, not being an aristocrat, enjoyed a steady income and led a respectable life. As it was precisely this class of people which gained from the French Revolution, taking over from the landed aristocracy as the ruling class, it was quite natural that in French this should have been called a “revolution bourgeoise” and the society over which they ruled a “société bourgeoise”.

The German equivalent “bürgerlich” is a further complicating factor in that it aiso means “civil” (hence “Burgerkrieg” = civil war) and was used by Hegel, who considerably influenced Marx, in the phrase “burgeriich Gesellschaft” (= civil, rather than bourgeois, society) which he contrasted with the State. Civil society was, if you like, all the non-political activities of men, i.e., above all their economic activities. Thus, whether translated “bourgeois society” or “civil society”, the German phrase used by Marx led him to a study of the system of production which, in both English and German, he called “capitalist”.

Bourgeois is not a word we use except in the phrase “bourgeois revolution” (to describe political revolutions in which the rising capitalist class—then only a “middle class” or, even, a “bourgeoisie”—takes political power from the landed aristocracy). It is not and never has been in wide use in English where there have always been adequate alternatives.

In this connexion it is significant that when Marx and Engels wrote in English they chose to avoid the word “bourgeois”. Thus in Value, Price and Profit, a talk delivered in 1865, Marx talks of “the capitalist class” and “the capitalists”. Engels in the series of articles he wrote for the Labour Standard in 1881 followed the same practice and in one place even used the phrase “capitalist system”. Both Marx and Engels were deliberately trying to express themselves here in English idiom, to use phrases already current in the working class movement in England, phrases which have survived and fully justify the use of “capitalist” rather than “bourgeois” to describe present- day society.

Later, when in the early part of this century the ending -ism, in connexion with socialism, came to mean not just the theory but also the putting into practice of that theory and so to a system of society, it was natural that the same transition should take place with regard to capitalist so that capitalism became an alternative word for what had previously had to be called “capitalist society”.

Capitalism, then, is defined by us as a system of society based on the monopoly of the means of production by a minority class and their use to produce wealth to be sold on a market with a view to profit, i.e., as capital, as wealth used to produce other wealth with a view to a profit.

Adam Buick

A Question of definition will continue as a series with future articles dealing with, CLASS, REFORM, REVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.