Running Commentary: Miracle or Myth (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Miracle or Myth

When all is said and done, the reason British workers are encouraged into awestruck admiration towards Japan is because it is where the workforce are supposed to submit happily to their own intensely organised, single minded exploitation. Japanese workers. we are told, don't come out on strike; they wouldn't know a demarcation dispute if one came up and punched the clock beside them in the morning; Japanese managers wear the same work clothes, eat in the same canteen, do the same physical jerks, as the workers on the assembly lines. A Japanese company doesn't just employ its workers, it operates like a second family to them, taking care of them all their lives.

This, to take the argument further, is what has made Japan the second richest country in the world. Considering their defeat in the last war. it's nothing short of an economic miracle. Why don't British workers follow the example — kick out the trouble-making union leaders and learn to love working hard for the shareholders?

Well one reason is. perhaps, the evidence that Japan is not a land of unrelieved contentment. For example the suicide rate there has been rising dramatically during recent years. The figure for 1986 was the highest ever and averaged at one suicide every 20 minutes; 55 per cent were by people aged between 40 and 64. The reason, according to the National Police Agency, is ". . . the stresses of Japan's competitive society".

In 1985 the Japanese Ministry of Labour found that almost half the absences of more than one week due to sickness were caused by some stress related illness. One in 30 office employees needed treatment for mental disorder such as schizophrenia, depression or alcoholism.

It is no coincidence that these social ailments are appearing in such strength just as Japan s economy hits trouble in world markets. This has posed extra problems for managers and executives — the higher paid, higher stressed workers and many of them have taken their own lives rather than face the reality that, for millions of people, the Japanese economic miracle is a myth. It is not the Japanese workers who are the second richest in the world but the capitalist class there — the parasites who own the means of life.

Japan has been described by a psychiatrist as a country of ". . . 121 million people . . . ruthlessly competing with each other while desperately pretending to be co-operative". Does that sound like a place of secure happiness? Does it sound like a miracle of prosperity and mutual help? Or does it sound like the capitalist system which workers know and hate all over the world, all the time — but writ large for its distress and destructiveness.

Release

Douglas Hurd is the latest of the Home Secretaries who have declared their intention to bring an end to overcrowding in the prisons. Nearly twenty years ago the "liberal" Roy Jenkins warned that a prison population of 40,000 would be "intolerable"; the fact that recently it exceeded 50,000 and continues to hover around that level says something about the tolerant nature of Home Secretaries, not to mention the prisoners and prison staff. During his time at the Home Office Leon Brittan — who set something of a record by managing to upset the police, prison officers and prisoners pretty well all at once — promised to end the overspill of remand prisoners into police station cells. Yet until last month hundreds of prisoners were spending months crammed into those gloomy, insanitary conditions, at the end of which they may have been acquitted of the charges against them or given a non-custodial sentence.

Hurd's "solution" to the overcrowding has been to slash the sentences imposed on minor offenders so that anyone getting twelve months or less is released after half their sentence instead of after two thirds as before. As a result nearly 4000 prisoners were abruptly ejected from the gaols of Britain during August.

Leon Brittan did not approve: "a sad development for British justice" he called it. But what need was there for him — and for anyone who suffered nightmares at the prospect of hordes of dangerous thugs roaming the streets — are social inadequates, which means inadequate not only to keep up in capitalism's rat race but also inadequate in the crimes they commit in their efforts to keep up. For many of these the exact date of release matters little for within a fairly short time the seemingly inexorable cycle of destitution, crime and prison — perhaps speeded up by addiction or alcoholism -— will begin again. One authoritative estimate says that 80 per cent of short term prisoners emerge from gaol to face acute housing problems — which must make even Leon Brittan wonder why they should want to come out.

Hurd's reform is the latest in a long list which have failed to stop the rise of the prison population. There have been suspended sentences; community service; bail hostels and parole, to name only a few. In many cases there is little doubt that courts have adjusted their sentences upwards to compensate for such measures and the expectation is that this will happen to take account of Hurd's half remission.

No reform will affect, let alone solve, this problem. The roots of crime lie in the very system which needs a state machine with its police, judicial and penal organs, to protect the property right of the ruling class. No Home Secretary could ever have —- or want — a brief to do anything about that.

Success

Rudolf Hess' dramatic flight to Britain during the last war was at first met with a sort of stunned optimism. Did this mean that the Nazi leadership was breaking up. that in spite of the fact that Panzers had swept over half of the Continent Germany was on the verge of defeat? But this was soon followed by an official reticence; one theory about this is that the British government decided it was best to devalue the whole episode by labelling Hess as mad, placing him in the "care" of a squad of psychiatrists. At all events, the episode saved Hess from the death sentence at Nuremburg although what would have happened to him if the war had gone the other way. . .

The most popular theory about the reasons for Hess' flight is that he was trying to negotiate an Anglo/German alliance against Russia, which was about to be attacked by Germany. Of course such a proposal was bound to fail — at least at that time, when the British ruling class were in no doubt about the source of the principal threat to their standing and where their interests therefore lay.

It is a different situation today. Although he was not responsible for it, Hess may well have looked with an ironic satisfaction on the present unity between Britain and West Germany, directed as it is against Russia. Over the past forty-odd years the basic interests of capitalism have remained unchanged but their elements have been re-arranged, rather like a kaleidoscope, so that some countries which were once allies are now enemies and vice versa. Capitalism's history is littered with such changes, notably in the case of relations between the British and the German ruling classes.

These changes bring obvious problems to the makers of national propaganda. The wartime alliance between Britain and Russia was represented by both sides as a unity in defence of democracy. Now the alliance between Britain and Germany, aimed against Russia, is justified with the same reason. The only way to make any sense of this is through grasping the fact that wars — including 1939/45 are not fought to save democracy. In the last war the nature of Nazi Germany enabled the British propaganda machine to persuade many workers to join the war effort under the delusion that they were fighting for some worthwhile, human objective and to conceal the truth — that the war was fought to protect the economic interests of their national class of exploiting parasites.

The essential cynicism and lies of capitalism are rarely revealed more clearly than in wartime. One thing about the flight of Rudolf Hess is that from beginning to end it was subject to this treatment. Even his death was a matter of international wrangling, of one ruling class trying for advantage over the others. As a one-time political leader himself, he could have asked for no more appropriate end.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hess (1941)

Editorial from the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The landing of Rudolf Hess by parachute was rather more than a nine days’ wonder. People are still debating whether he is mad or sane, whether he left Germany in a hurry in order to escape a vindictive Fuehrer or a jealous husband, whether he came to sue for peace or to warn us of the wrath to come, whether he was Goering’s emissary offering to bump off Hitler, or Hitler’s emissary offering to liquidate all the other toughs.

In short, at the time of writing, nobody knows anything, and any guess is as good as any other. Time alone will reveal what Hess is after and whom he wants to betray. It is, however, possible to consider the point of view from which Hess has been surveyed by various people. From the military standpoint of gaining an advantage over the Nazis it is no doubt a sound policy to work on the lines of the saying:

“ My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

It seems fairly clear that, with this in mind, those public men who were convinced that Hess is now an enemy of Hitler, were at once inclined to find merit in him. Hence the remarks in The Times (May 14th): “It is thought that Hess, essentially an idealist, may have acted out of disillusionment,” and “Hess has always had a quite false and idealised view of Hitler.”

Are there “good” idealists and “bad” idealists, as The Times defenders say? Is he a “good” man or a “bad” one, or, like the curate’s egg, good in parts? Or good only sometimes, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Which brings us to the fact that the Labour Party, and, to some extent, the Communists, have always acted on these lines in their political dealings. Hess, a leading figure in German Nazism, apparently quarrels with his associates and is suspected of being willing to help in their destruction. Politics in Great Britain in the past 40 years have had many Hesses, and almost invariably the Labour Party has been willing to welcome them, support them, and even give them positions of influence. In the early years of the century Mr. Lloyd George was savagely denounced by the Conservatives and some sections of his own Party, and this was sufficient to make him popular with wide circles in the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. They regretted it afterwards, when Lloyd George was Prime Minister of the Coalition Government, particularly in the years immediately after the last war. Yet, when Mr. Lloyd George was out in the political wilderness he found favour once more with the Labour Party. Mr. Winston Churchill has been the object of similar changes of affection in the same circles. Again, the Labour Party gladly received into its ranks the group of Liberal M.P.s who quarrelled with the official Liberal Party over the last war. The Labour Party never stopped to ask whether these men had radically changed their political principles. From the same short-sighted viewpoint the Labour Party has always been ready to support and associate with groups of industrial capitalists who from time to time denounce the bankers, or to identify itself with free-trade capitalists against those who were imposing import duties. Over a period of years the Labour Party has supported the small capitalists against the big ones, supported the co-operatives against the small trader, supported the farmers against the Government, and the agricultural workers against the farmers. Always the principle —if it can be given that dignity—is the same. Always, if a political Hess quarrels with, or is kicked out by, a political Hitler, the Labour Party feels drawn to him.

Not so the Socialist Party. Socialists only want to know whether an individual understands Socialism and is prepared to work consistently for its achievement. If he is not, and if, indeed, his utterances and actions show that he stands for capitalism, we are not moved by the fact that he may have quarrelled with the other defenders of capitalism.

That the Labour Party behaves as it does indicates weakness and uncertainty and confusion of mind. They are unaware of the nature of capitalism and of their own aims; hence their inability to distinguish between socialist conviction and a mere quarrel about the recurrent problems of capitalist administration. The Socialist Party knows where it is and what it wants and does not need to cling to Lloyd Georges and other disgruntled Liberals for the illusion of strength.

For the workers who are concerned with the real problem of their emancipation and the building of a different and better social system, the only sure line is to give up trusting and hoping in the temporary convulsions of the political Jekylls and Hydes.

It Also Happened a Long Time Ago (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the year 415 B.C., at the height of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, a young Athenian landed from the sea on the Peloponnesian peninsula and made his way to Sparta. There he addressed the assembly and declared that be had never really been in sympathy with the Athenian democracy, whose policy, he declared, was to conquer Sicily and then make herself mistress of of all Greece. He proposed measures to resist Athens, which were acted upon by the Spartans and resulted in the total annihilation of the two strongest fleets. Athens had ever sent out, and proved to be the turning point in the war. Athens never recovered from the blow.

The young man responsible for this disaster was of noble birth, handsome and wealthy. He was a clever political leader, a persuasive speaker and a successful general. He is referred to as having been “popular without being respected, and followed without being trusted.” 

The name of this young man was Alcibiades, and he was one of the three generals in command of the expedition sent by Athens in 415 B.C. (the finest ever organised in Greece) to conquer Sicily. He left the expedition at Sicily and sailed for Sparta.

It is true Rudolf Hess landed from the air and not from the sea, but it is curious how incidents in history of a sensational nature are repeated.

Alcibiades was the ablest general of his time, but he was ambitious and a member of a privileged aristocracy, and this latter fact was the determining factor in his conduct. He subsequently deserted Sparta and went over to the common enemy—Persia, urging the latter to let Athens and Sparta wear each other out.

The motive behind Hess’s aeronautical adventure is still shrouded in mystery, and in this fantastic world, where real information is so scarce, one guess is as good as another.

Gilmac.