That front cover . . .

Blogger's Note: 

As the September 1982 front cover of the Socialist Standard definitely ranks in the top ten — sod it, top five — of most controversial Socialist Standard front covers in its history ( I happen to like it), I thought it only fair to mention that it generated this critical response from Socialist Standard reader, L de Swart, in the November 1982 issue. They didn't just take exception to the front cover; they also thought Steve Coleman's front cover article, 'Holocaust 2',  in the same issue was also beyond the pale.

The editorial committee naturally replied to Mr. de Swart's strong criticisms.

Running Commentary: Accumulate (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Accumulate

The chief executive of the Lonrho company, “Tiny” Rowland, has once again demonstrated how wealth is constantly accumulated in the hands of those who already have it. In one week in July, Lonrho’s share price increased from 66p to 83p, and as a result the value of Rowland’s shares increased by £7,600,000 — from £29.2 million to £36.8 million. If one of the workers who produce this wealth were to save £10 out of their weekly wages, it would take 14,615 years to save £7,600,000. Even if somebody on an average wage spent nothing at all. it would still take them 1,826 years to accumulate what Tiny made in a week (The Standard. 7 July).

The point is that fortunes are not made by hard work or thrift, but by persuading others to work hard and be thrifty, with the threat of unemployment if they don’t. Before you can persuade others to work for you and make your fortune, you must possess some capital. But since four-fifths of stocks and shares are held by less than one per cent of the population, most people are condemned to lives of wage-slavery. And what did “Tiny” Rowland do with his little profit? He bought five million more Lonrho shares. His comment on company policy? "We pay a decent dividend because I need the cash” (The Standard, 7 July 1982).

Just wars

The war over the Falklands caused some embarrassment to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, many of whose members were torn between their supposed opposition to war. and their attachment to the very nationalist ideas which make war possible. In CND magazine Sanity, for example, a letter from several CND members complains about their national executive’s call for a negotiated settlement without recourse to force:

Most of our members arc not pacifists and are not campaigning for complete disarmament . . . CND, in our opinion, should point out that the present crisis illustrates the futility of a defence policy based on nuclear weapons (no. 3, June-July, 1982).

The role of CND, then, is that of a would-be adviser to the British ruling class on the most economically and strategically advisable way of waging “just”, national wars, that is, of killing people. The same issue of Sanity carries three separate letters from sailors who are quite prepared to go anti kill fellow workers in Argentina or anywhere else under orders if it satisfies the commercial interests of British investors, but who would prefer this killing to be done with good old-fashioned "conventional” weapons.

In the war in the Lebanon, the true attitude of organisations like CND is being tested more clearly than ever. Phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs are inflicting the most horrific wounds and fatalities before our very eyes. This is not some potential threat, some apocalyptic Armageddon somewhere in the future. It is happening to people at this moment, and CND has nothing practical to say about it. For one thing, nuclear weapons are not being used. But in any case, in order to deal with war we must understand how it is caused. Socialists are not only opposed to every and any war, on all sides, and whichever weapons are being used. They oppose the present system of society which constantly generates military conflict as a natural extension of the commercial conflict of the market.

Violent means

In the wake of the recent IRA bombings in London and similar terrorist attempts elsewhere, those whose interest is in changing society must make their attitude clear. The bombs in question are planted by organisations whose acceptance of capitalist ideas deprives them of the concept of intelligent persuasion. As nationalists, and sometimes Leninists or anarchists, their concern is not to build up support for changing society democratically and by open and unlimited political discussion. Their vicious and destructive techniques of murdering innocent workers in order to advance capitalist causes, such as the setting up of yet another nation state, are learnt directly from governments. Socialists oppose equally both the official state violence, in which millions can legitimately be killed with highly developed weapons, and their makeshift rivals eager to imitate these techniques. The war in the Lebanon, for all the public outcry against its atrocities, is still illogically seen as somehow more respectable and diplomatic than the campaigns of the IRA. The way to change society is not to let the capitalist system "beat” you by despair or "join” it by compromise of principle. The profit system, with its national boundaries and boundless cynicism, must be opposed at every level, determinedly, politically and with the force of understanding and democracy.

Clifford Slapper

Blood, oil and tears (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a hundred years since the first Zionist colonists “returned” from the diaspora to Palestine, and it is from them that we can date the origins of the current Middle East situation and its succession of bloody wars. It would have been far less traumatic a period, however, but for the fact that beneath the desert sands lay a substance which was to become one of the major objects of twentieth-century capitalist rivalry – oil.

Prior to the First World War, much of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire; Palestine; for instance, became a Turkish province in 1516. After the Turkish defeat in the war, much of the former empire was divided into British and French spheres of interest, and these two countries sought to divide up the area’s oil resources. A joint consortium explored for oil in the new state of Iraq, while a British-owned company (the forerunner of British Petroleum) ran the oil industry in Persia/ Iran, the Middle East’s first oil-producing country. Further west, Syria and Lebanon, both French dependencies, turned out to have little by way of oil reserves, though they were important locations for pipelines and refineries. The same held for Palestine, which came under a British mandate in 1918. Even an area with no oil of its own, however, could become a pawn in the oil-fired power struggle.

In Palestine, though, there was another complicating factor. European anti-Semitism had been responsible, towards the end of the nineteenth century, for creating a movement known as Zionism which aimed at creating a “Jewish homeland” free of racist persecution. Soon the idea took root that this homeland should be situated not in Africa or South America but on the Biblical territory of Palestine. The slogan was coined of “a land without people, for a people without land”, thus conveniently overlooking the existing Palestinian inhabitants. In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government undertook to look favourably on the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”. In a typical piece of capitalist chicanery, Balfour himself wrote in 1919:

“in Palestine we not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right” (Quoted in Edward Said: The Question of Palestine.)

So much for the British government’s respect for the wishes of the inhabitants of its colonies.

We may disregard the rhetoric about “age-long tradition”; but what were the “present needs” and “future hopes” of which Balfour spoke? Basically, an independent Israel was seen as an outpost of Western capitalism in an area that is both strategically and economically of great importance. The continued availability of Middle Eastern oil is vital to Western countries, as was the use of the Suez Canal. Israel represents a sizeable market for Western capitalism, especially the American armaments industry. The Middle East is geographically close to Russia, and consists mainly of developing countries whose policies are, from a Western point of view, largely unpredictable and certainly unreliable. Western nations’ support for the establishment and defence of Israel (without which it would not exist) has not been due to humanitarianism but to familiar economic interests.

After 1918 more and more Zionist colonists arrived in Palestine, though they never formed a majority of the population. The Jewish National Fund began to purchase Arab land there, though prior to 1948 it only owned six per cent of the total land area. British rule used such oppressive measures as the Emergency Defence Regulations of 1922 to control and restrict the movement and settlement of the population, both Jewish and Arab (these regulations were adopted wholesale by Israel to suppress Palestinians after 1948). The rebellion of 1936-9 saw five thousand Palestinians killed by British troops.

The Zionist goal of a Jewish state of Israel was now close to attainment. It involved transforming Palestine into “a land without people”, as was acknowledged by the Labour Party National Executive in 1944:

“Palestine surely is a case, on human grounds and to promote a stable settlement, for a transfer of population. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in” (Quoted in Rosemary Sayigh: Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries.)

And in 1948 the Palestinians did indeed mostly move out, about 840,000 being displaced from the area that become Israel, some to neighbouring countries and some to parts of Palestine that came under the control of Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (the West Bank). The “encouragement” to move out took the form of Israeli military attacks on Palestinian villages, backed up by instances of terrorism and massacre. The creation of a “Jewish homeland” saw a new diaspora, that of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine.

So the scene was set for a further generation of war, killing and homelessness. The Suez crisis of 1956 was the largest in its involvement of outside armed forces, while other major conflicts between Israel and neighbours include the Six Day War of 1967 and the 1973 war. The current Israeli attack on Palestinian camps in southern Lebanon and Beirut alone is estimated to have made up to fifty thousand refugees homeless. All this time, too, there has been fighting among Arab states, and it is worth recalling that more Palestinian fighters have been killed by Arab armies than by Israel. The deposing of the other friend of Western capitalism, the Shah of Iran, in 1979, has been balanced by Egypt’s treaty with Israel and the United States. The post-1973 oil crisis has forced Western countries to be more dependent on good relations with the Arab oil-exporters, while the Suez Canal has lost much of its strategic significance. But all in all, the Middle East remains a region which reveals only too clearly the effects of capitalist rivalry over resources.

There are now an estimated three million Palestinians in the world, of whom one in six live, as a discriminated-against minority, within the 1948 borders of Israel. Most of the rest live in refugee camps in neighbouring areas. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, founded in 1964, aims to restore the Palestinians to their pre-1948 position, via a state that will be open to Muslim, Jew and Christian. But a myth has grown up about what life was like in Palestine under the British Mandate. Rosemary Sayigh, in the book referred to above, claims that older Palestinians in the refugee camps are often heard to say, “We lived in Paradise”. But she then gives plenty of evidence to show that it was a strange kind of Paradise. In 1930, the average rural family in Palestine was in debt to the tune of £P27, which was approximately such a family’s yearly income. On 1936 figures, one-fifth of one per cent of the population owned a quarter of the land! Clearly pre-Israeli Palestine did not belong to the Palestinian peasants: in 1948 they were driven off land which was not theirs.

The PLO represents the interests of a would-be Palestinian ruling class. A minority of Palestinians have benefited from oil-financed development, while most have become a propertyless army of labour. The “secular-democratic” Palestinian state will be a capitalist state, required to play its own part in global politicking. Just as socialists opposed the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, so we oppose the PLO as a nationalist movement that puts forward capitalist not socialist solutions. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian capitalism can serve the interest of the vast majority of the population. The workings of world capitalism in the Middle East show that peace and prosperity there are only possible in a world-wide framework – socialism.

Paul Bennett

Holocaust 2 (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The campaign of genocide which is the current military policy of the State of Israel is a tragic reflection of the real face of nationalism. The mythical image of Zionism as a movement of pioneering, progressive, pious, peace-loving nation-building has been more than exposed by the ruthless attempt to liquidate the city of Beirut “for reasons of national security”.

In early August the Canadian ambassador surveyed fifty-five separate areas of Beirut and declared that “this would make Berlin of 1944 look like a tea party”. The International Red Cross has declared that “at least 80 per cent of the casualties are civilians” (Sunday Times, 8 August 1982). Our TV screens abound with pictures of families which have lost fathers, mothers and children—victims of a senseless struggle of national ambition. In early August a block of flats in West Beirut was destroyed and nearly all of its civilian inhabitants died. Not for a long time has the horror of capitalist war been quite so evident as in the Lebanon.

As ever, when there is killing to be done, God’s rep on earth is to be found sanctifying it. Just as God’s Anglicans were blessing the British killers as they set off for the Falklands, so the British Chief Rabbi, in an interview in the Guardian on August 7, had to say that “to the extent that the only principle governing this action is one of self defence, or that of the security of the State, yes, Biblical or divine sanction can be claimed for it”. One might ask God’s spokesman precisely how a soldier carrying a gun or a pilot dropping a bomb can be engaging in self-defence against unarmed children, but then, one might as well engage in such a seminar with the fairies at the bottom of the garden.

The curse of nationalism is not new. Let it be clear that unlike certain anti-Zionists, socialists do not oppose the tunnel-vision mentality of nationalism only when it is Jewish. To us, the flag-waving, trigger-happy Zionists are no more ignorant and abhorrent than those who have swallowed the diversionary, nationalist message of the PLO. Socialists do not take sides in national conflicts because it is not our aim to support one or other of the competing capitalist or would-be capitalist factions, each of which seeks its own territories and exploitable populations. No socialist will ever fight to defend a border—we want to do away with the divisiveness of countries and states.

But there is a bitter irony about Zionist nationalism. In Dachau, the site of the old Nazi murder camp, a permanent exhibition stands as testimony to the atrocities committed in modern times against millions of Jews. That the survivors of such persecution sought refuge in a nation of their own—a country which would never persecute or exterminate anyone and would be free of the perverse national chauvinism on which Nazism was based—is not difficult to understand. In Israel, and here in Britain, not a few Zionists are now beginning to ask themselves the question: “How can it be that the country created by the holocaust is now inflicting similar misery on people who are just as defenceless as the Jews in Europe had been?” Some of them are blaming Begin. Others say that the PLO has pushed the Israeli government to such measures. The truth is that those who saw a solution in Zionist nationalism—in having their own laws, prisons, borders, army and weapons of destruction—were naive. Their form of nationalism is no less aggressive or bigoted than is ever the case under a system of society where the laws of the jungle are presented as being the rules of civilised conduct. Every nation’s flag is dripping with the blood of its enemies; every ruling class pays for its power in other people’s lives.

Nationalism can never be a solution to the problems of oppression: it was not for the Jews; it would not be for the Palestinians. The problem is class, not national, racial, or religious origins. As a class, workers have no country. The British do not own Britain, the majority of Israelis have no significant economic stake in Israel, the impoverished Arabs do not share their exploiters’ national wealth. There are two classes in society: those who possess without producing and those who produce without possessing. Wars are fought over the interests of the capitalists and would-be capitalists. In the 1940s an aspirant Israeli ruling class, represented by such vicious thugs as the Stern gang (of which the present Israeli Foreign Minister was a member), used terrorist tactics to secure their goal. Having obtained power violently, who could have expected the Israeli ruling class to have maintained power except by the continued use of violence? Israeli workers identify with the aims of their rulers—they see their national identity as more important than their class identity with Arab and other workers. In this they are dangerously mistaken.

The socialist solution to the Middle East conflict is not a piecemeal policy. We do not advocate re-drawing the border or political deals or the exchange of one (American-backed) ruling class for another (Russian-backed) one. These amount to mere rearrangements of the capitalist furniture. Only when Israeli and Arab workers join the worldwide movement for a society without class ownership, nations or armies will the war finally cease.

This is not a pious hope for the future. Workers are dying in Beirut and there is every sign that more will be killed. What is now a local war could turn into something rather bigger. Who will stop the killing once and for all—Habib, Begin or Arafat? To expect this to happen is like hoping for Brezhnev and Reagan to shake hands, make up and disarm. We leave such dreams to the Utopians who are fond of calling themselves Realists. For socialists, it is clear that if there is ever to be peace it is those who are the sitting targets of war who must actively pursue it.

Steve Coleman

Intelligence and equality (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is all about equality, but that does not mean that everyone will look alike, dress alike, live in similar homes, have the same interests, behave more or less the same. It does mean a society where everyone will have equal access to everything that is produced. Production in abundance is a prerequisite of socialist society, long since made possible by capitalism’s technological advances.

Sexual reproduction enables an unending variety of possible combinations of genes. It is estimated that each individual is capable of reproducing 8 million different germ cells which, when combined at fertilisation. gives a possibility of 60 billion different offspring. Given such a variety, how can it be argued that people can be "made equal”?

But what about the question of whether mental abilities are inherited? It could be argued that if "intelligence” is largely genetically determined, gifted people would always stand a better chance of ensuring a more comfortable life-style for themselves, provided that "intelligence” is well rewarded by society. But what is "intelligence"? The following quotation from Elements of Psychology, by Krech. Crutchfield and Livson, leaves us no wiser:

Intelligence is a concept variously used and variously defined. Some people define it as the ability to adapt to new circumstances, others as the ability to learn and still others as the capacity to deal with complex and abstract material. . .

Do people possess a greater share of wealth or a better standard of living because of superior mental abilities? Let us disregard the 10 per cent of the population who do not have to work because they own the means of living. This is a straightforward transfer of capital from parents to children; clearly, if these children were imbecilic they would still get their inheritance. It is within the other class—the 90 per cent who have to work in order to live—that some researchers feel they have found evidence to suggest that intelligence is largely hereditary.

IQ Tests

Tests to measure innate "intelligence quotients" were developed by the Frenchman Alfred Binct at the beginning of this century, for the purpose of detecting mentally “subnormal” school children. The formula for IQ is a person’s mental age divided by his chronological age multiplied by 100. If a child is at the average level expected of his age group he will have an IQ of 100. It was soon found that a person’s mental development stagnated at the age of about 15, so an adjustment was needed to this formula thereafter.

IQ tests were administered on a large scale in America before the First World War, supposedly to measure the recruits’ innate mental abilities and assign suitable candidates to officer jobs. These first tests were very crude indeed and looking at them now it is hard to believe that scholars could have seriously considered using them, or have granted credibility to their results. But they did; and some astonishing conclusions were drawn, such as that the average American had a mental age of 13, which was considered just above the level of moronity.

R. M. Yerkes, a Professor of Psychology, presided over the administration of IQ tests to 1.75 million recruits during the First World War. The tests were often worked out by people already in eugenic societies with definite biases towards "Nordics” and the upper strata of American society. The academic reports and recommendations of these mental testers were as nauseating as any of the propaganda put out by the Nazis in Germany. These are some of the views of Dr. Arthur Sweeney, in Mental Test for Immigrants, which were made part of the appendix to the hearings of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalisation on 24 January, 1923:

psychological tests . . . have furnished us with the necessary yardstick . . . The Army tests . . . revealed the intellectual endowment of the men . . . The tests are equally applicable to immigrants . . . All that is required is a staff of two trained psychologists at each port. . . We cannot be seriously opposed to immigrants from Great Britain. Holland, Canada. Germany. Denmark, and Scandinavia . . .We can, however, strenuously object to immigration from Italy, Russia. Poland, Greece, Turkey. The Slavic and Latin countries show a marked contrast in intelligence with the western and northern European group. . . One cannot recognise the high-grade imbecile at sight. . .

They think with the spinal cord rather than the brain . . . The necessity of providing for the future does not stimulate them to continuous labour . . . Being constitutionally inferior they are necessarily socially inadequate . . . Education can be received only by those who have intelligence to receive it. It does not create intelligence. That is what one is born with . . . The D minus group cannot go beyond the second grade . . . we shall degenerate to the level of the Slav and Latin races . . . pauperism, crime, sex offences, and dependency . . . guided by a mind scarcely superior to the ox. . .

We must protect ourselves against the degenerate horde . . . We must view the immigration problem from a new angle . . . We must apply ourselves to the task with the new weapons of science . . . the perfect weapons formed for us by science . . . it is now as easy to calculate one’s mental equipment as it is to measure his height and weight. The examination of over 2,000,000 recruits has tested and verified this standard . . . this new method . . . will enable us to select those who are worthy and reject those who are worthless.

Literate recruits were given what was called the Army Alpha, illiterates the Army Beta. The Beta was supposed to be "fair" to illiterate immigrants unused to American habits and frames of reference. In reality these were culture biased, as borne out by the fact that the average score of immigrants on IQ tests increased markedly with the duration of their residence in America. This fact was conveniently overlooked by the mental testers. Also, contrary to the statement that "education does not create intelligence", it turned out that the average mental age of American recruits during the Second World War showed a considerable increase on the average for those in World War One — the World War Two recruits had been much better educated.

The following is an example of the type of multiple-choice test given to recent immigrants with an inadequate grasp of the English language and little or no knowledge of American culture:

Crisco is a: patent medicine, disinfectant, toothpaste, food product 

The number of a Kaffir's legs is: 2,4,6,8 

Christy Mathewson is famous as a: writer, artist, baseball player, comedian

Or consider the Alpha analogy: Washington is to Adams as first is to. . . Considering the cultural bias of these tests, it is not surprising that immigrant groups least familiar with American culture and the English language scored low on the IQ charts.

Apart from being racist, in favour of "North Europeans", the tests were also used to explain differences of wealth in terms of "superior" and "inferior" genes. The argument in the following excerpt is still commonly heard today:

These men in their ultra altruistic and humane attitude, their desire to be fair to the workman, maintain that the great inequalities in social life are wrong and unjust. For example, here is a man who says, “I am wearing $12.00 shoes, there is a labourer who is wearing $3.00 shoes; why should I spend $12.00 while he can only afford $3.00? I live in a home that is artistically decorated, carpets, high-priced furniture, expensive pictures and other luxuries; there is a labourer that lives in a hovel with no carpets, no pictures, and the coarsest kind of furniture. It is not right, it is unjust". . .As we have said, the argument is fallacious. It assumes that that labourer is on the same mental level with the man who is defending him . . .

Now the fact is. that workman may have a ten year intelligence while you have a twenty. To demand for him such a home as you enjoy is as absurd as it would be to insist that every labourer should receive a graduate fellowship. How can there be such a thing as social equality with this wide range of mental capacity? The different levels of intelligence have different interests and require different treatment to make them happy . . .

As for an equal distribution of the wealth of the world that is equally absurd. The man of intelligence has spent his money wisely, has saved until he has enough to provide for his needs in ease of sickness, while the man of low intelligence, no matter how much money he would have earned, would have spent much of it foolishly and would never have anything ahead . . .

These facts are appreciated. But it is not so fully appreciated that the cause is to be found in the fixed character of mental levels. In our ignorance we have said let us give these people one more chance — always one more chance.

The first IQ tests were structured within the frame of reference of the educated, white city-dweller and therefore would not show up the true abilities of somebody from a different ethnic or social background. They measured a person’s training and the quality of their social environment rather than potential ability. A great deal of work has since gone into making IQ tests as “culture-fair" as possible, although this cannot be completely successful as long as social distinctions prevail; for example it would be possible to compare blacks and whites from a strictly “professional" background only, but even “professional” blacks would have experienced colour prejudice and a higher percentage of them would probably have come from a relatively poor family background—two environmental factors which would influence their IQ scores.

Twin research

Identical twins have been used as test objects to prove once and for all which factor plays a greater role in the determination of intelligence—environment or heredity. Identical twins are the result of one fertilised egg dividing to produce two individuals with exactly the same genetic make-up. Fraternal twins—two egg cells fertilised by two sperm cells—have also been used in kinship related intelligence studies, although these twins would be no more alike than ordinary brothers and sisters.

At first sight, some of the studies performed with identical twins reared apart seem to provide strong evidence that heredity is the determining factor in mental abilities. Correlations varying between .7 and .9 for identical twins reared together and apart have been quoted in various studies (total correlation being set at 1.0). However, these figures are questioned by L. J. Kamin in his book The Science and Politics of IQ. After an extensive perusal of primary sources, he challenges the validity of famous twin studies, like the Shield study and the Juel-Nielscn study.

Kamin's objections can be summarised as follows. Firstly, the researchers were politically biased—they probably expected to find that their interpretation of intelligence increased with social status. This may have influenced the nature and administration of the tests as well as the interpretation of data. Secondly, the competence of some of the mental testers is questioned; for instance, interpretations of IQ were accepted from vicars who, in the course of their duties, would administer “concealed" IQ tests to London grandparents. Thirdly, twins reared apart were not, as often claimed, placed arbitrarily in totally different environments. It appeared that a large proportion of the separated twins were reared by relatives of more or less the same social standing. Fourthly, Kamin questions the methods and accuracy of the calculations used in arriving at the various correlations.

And lastly, he questions the reliability of secondary sources. Many famous writers on the social implications of the heritabilty of intelligence would pick out and quote those studied which agreed with their own point of view and leave out others reaching opposite conclusions. It seems then that as yet no reliable scientific evidence exists to enable anybody to claim that intelligence is genetically determined. However, it is known for certain that some illnesses resulting in subnormal mental abilities are hereditary—like trisomy-21 mental deficiency.

One programme in a recent BBC series on education in Britain examined the effects of young people's backgrounds on their scholastic performance and job expectations. A familiar trend showed up: students at universities still come mainly from “professional" families, while children of the unskilled still do not on the whole expect to take up academic careers. All this in spite of the observations of the makers of the series, who compared young children in a wealthy area of Surrey and a deprived slum area in Liverpool. The tiny tots in Liverpool seemed just as bright and lively as the Surrey children; however, with time the majority of the Liverpool youngsters would probably end up in unskilled jobs or on the dole, whereas the youngsters in Surrey would most likely end up in the more comfortable end of capitalist exploitation.

Some might argue that mental abilities exceptionally above or below average are inherited. But for the large majority it seems more likely that their scholastic performance is profoundly affected by their family background. If a person has had the optimum attention, stimulation and care from the new-born stage onwards, plus very good material conditions, this is bound to have a positive effect on their achievements in school. 

We are presently living in a social system, capitalism, which depends on an appalling waste of human abilities. Extreme poverty results in mass starvation. Malnutrition, if it does not result in death, often cripples brain capacity for life. In this part of the world, less extreme poverty still ensures that large numbers of people grow up in deprivation, non-expectation and obedience to the system and its various leaders—clergymen, politicians, royalty— who reinforce the idea that the majority of us are not "intelligent" enough to deserve a better existence.

Torgun Østenseth

Sources: 

"A nation of morons”, article in the New Scientist, 6 May 1982.

L. J. Kamin, The Science and Politics of I.Q. 

David Krech. Richard S. Crutchfield and Norman Livson, Elements of Psychology.

World hunger can be ended (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Late last year, Ronald Reagan was reportedly telling delegates from the World Bank that they should believe in the “magic of the market”. The latest World Bank statistics, however, reveal that 1.3 billion people suffer from a serious lack of calories and 700 million are on the verge of starvation. Those millions are direct casualties of the “magic” of the market, which responds to human needs only if they are backed up by the flow of money. Capitalism is based on class monopoly of the means of life and the destruction of food alongside mass starvation is just one of its insane contradictions.

The problem is by no means limited to Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 1975, the US Bureau of Census reported that over twelve million Americans were malnourished or sick because they had too little to spend on food. In 1981, a Common Market Commission report stated that more than thirty million people in Europe fell below even the official government poverty lines. Living standards in the industrially advanced countries are falling steadily, with the vast majority living in relative degrees of poverty compared with the ten per cent who possess substantial wealth. And yet, we are now able to produce an abundance of wealth; scarcity is artificial rather than natural, contrary to the assumptions of economics textbooks.

The 1980 World Bank Report declared that the quantity presently produced could provide 3000 calories and 65 grams of protein per person per day if it was more widely distributed. But the amount of food produced is often only a fraction of what is technologically possible, because of the artificial restrictions imposed by the world market. Even the 1.4 billion tons of grain grown in 1981 could not all be sold and so was not all eaten. In September 1976, Scientific American estimated that current resources could feed twelve times the present population of the world. In 1966 the US President’s Science Advisory Committee reported that less than half of the world’s arable land was under cultivation, and Canadian officials have said they could increase food production by fifty per cent in five years if necessary.

Sometimes famines result from a lack of food in a particular area, such as Kampuchea in 1979-80, but more often the problem is that farmers whose crops fail have no money to buy food elsewhere. This was the case in Ethiopia in 1973-4 and in Bangladesh in 1974. Why then is it that apparently unnecessary hunger is so prevalent in “civilised” societies? How can we read of farmers being paid by governments not to produce food and still imagine that we live in a sane society? The answer is that these contradictions are part and parcel of the way production is organised across the world today. The creation of surplus-value by wage-workers, and the competitive accumulation of this value as capital by companies and states, lies at the root of present social problems. Food is not produced to satisfy people’s hunger but for the primary purpose of making a profit. Proof of this lies in the fact that as soon as profit declines, production is cut back or even terminated, regardless of how many people might be starving. In India, over twenty million tons of “surplus grain" is being guarded by soldiers, while thousands of people starve. In 1978, the EEC dumped about 200,000 tons of fruit and vegetables in the ocean in order to maintain price levels. The insane logic of the profit system was made clear in the Financial Times:

There are now perhaps 750 million people who live at the margin of survival . . . gifts of free food, which can undermine local markets, can disrupt the process (7 August 1979).

So there is a strict incompatibility between capitalism and the satisfaction of human needs. The fact that the governments of the world are spending one million dollars a minute on armaments against such a background of hunger and waste is enough to demonstrate this.

But although the needs of humanity as a whole are not being met, those of the propertied minority generally are. Their privilege and property are in inverse proportion to our poverty and deprivation. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisations’s most recent world land census confirmed that one in forty of those with 250 acres or more control nearly three quarters of the land. Seventeen per cent of South American landowners control ninety per cent of the land; in Brazil, after the “economic miracle" of the seventies, the richest fifth of the population have more than twenty-five times as much as the poorest fifth. In Africa, three-quarters of the people have access to less than four per cent of the land. In Russia, the state allows access to the land and other resources only on its own terms which, as in the West, are guided by profitability. In Britain, one per cent of the people own more wealth than the poorest eighty per cent together. The world’s food resources are monopolised by people like the shareholders of Nestles, with a higher turnover than the Swiss government’s budget. The idea of “rich" and “poor” countries is therefore a distortion — there are people with great wealth even within the nations commonly regarded as “poor".

Those who own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth agree that the most “reasonable" pay for any worker is the bare minimum. Their concern is to accumulate capital in competition with their rivals, to undercut them out of the market or swallow them whole. In 1981, for example, Whitbread brewery announced pre-tax profit of £66 million and earnings per share of 23p. Each worker was said to have created on average over £12,000 value in the production process, far in excess of the average wage. It is in this way that the shareholders expand their wealth while employees have to keep working merely to survive.

Brandt — more of the same

In recent years, the capitalist class and their political representatives have shown an increasing concern with some of the more embarrassing obscenities of their system. Their minds, fully in tune with their bank accounts, have come up with a spectacular and profitable solution: more of the same. By investing capital in the less developed parts of the world, they hope to open up lucrative new markets, and reduce starvation into the bargain. The transition from peasant to wage-worker, which took place over hundreds of years in Britain, is now proceeding more rapidly in countries like India. Nearly fifty million landless labourers have been produced there over the last twenty-five years, by the sweeping growth of world capitalism. Poor farmers cannot cope with the competition from multi-national corporations and with fluctuating prices, so they sell up and seek employment as wage-labourers. The “enlightened” capitalist philosophy is summed up in Brandt’s North-South, a programme for survival: “It is true that the rich cannot prosper without progress by the poor (p33), and by Sir Reay Geddes in The Role of Business in the world economy:

The business community abhors poverty, disease, malnutrition and illiteracy, considering their elimination to be both a moral imperative and the main route to social progress. It would also be good for business, (IDS Bulletin. Vol. 12, No. 2. April 1981.)

Brandt proposed an emergency four-point programme comprising the transfer of resources, energy conservation, a food aid programme and measures of agrarian reform. He also outlined a long-term strategy of industrialisation, free trade, and reform of the world monetary system. This is seen by some Western bankers as a way for the West to compete with Russia in the domination of markets. Brandt's proposals were in part a response to the recession of the late seventies and the consequent weakening of the financial system set up by the Western powers at Bretton Woods in 1944. By the end of 1980, “developing" countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and India owed about 500 billion dollars to various banks and governments. The credits used to finance the boom of the early seventies were difficult to repay with the onset of recession. Brandt sought to reorganise the profitable recycling of “petrodollar” oil revenues to pass through the banking institutions and be reinvested in “backward” countries.

All of these policies are concerned with ways of running world capitalism, and are likely to perpetuate the most unfathomable misery. The horrors of industrialisation in nineteenth-century Britain did not happen because the investors were malicious rather than kindly. Far from relishing these horrors, they preferred to forget them by wandering through parks and art galleries. Their aim, like Brandt, was the rapid accumulation of capital by squeezing maximum profit out of wage workers. This is in line with the logic of the market system, where success is measured in financial terms rather than human satisfaction. Reckitt and Coleman, whose interests include Robinsons Barleywater, Gales Honey. OK Sauce. Dettol, Disprin and Reeves' artists' materials, explain in their house journal, Roundabout, the success of certain policies in Chile:

Unlike the UK. the ideas are working in Chile. It is, of course, only fair to say that in putting the philosophies into practice Chile did not have democratic processes getting in the way. . . . One of the reasons we are so enthusiastic about our business in Chile is that it is getting the chance, through the country’s government, to operate in a good and peaceful atmosphere.

For the aptly named Reckitt shareholders, then, the notorious oppression suffered in Chile is just one more price to pay for the development of lucrative markets in Latin America.

The Brandt Report and other proposals for expansion, investment and reform might have been innovative two hundred years ago. Today they are irrelevant to the struggle for a world-wide, democratic society. We have the ability to provide food in abundance. The only barrier is the system of capital accumulation and class rule which Willy Brandt is intent on preserving. Even amongst those whose proclaimed radicalism prevents them from accepting Brandt, there is a blind acceptance of the capitalist principles which generate poverty as the cornerstone of class division. In their pamphlet. Beyond Brandt, the Third World First group propose the old and failed policies of Keynesian expansion, “self-sufficiency". and import controls, and mention the Chinese dictatorship as a model for liberation. Most ridiculously of all, they conclude:

Most importantly, Third World countries are debating the possibility of a Southern financial system, including a Third World bank, which would provide an alternative to the private banks and multilateral institutions of the North.

Unless world production is reorganised for use instead of profit, people in the less developed countries will be thrown directly from the frying-pan into the fire.

The possibilities of production are well established. The US grain boom of the sixties led to 20 million hectares being taken out of production; in 1972-3, they were put back in and the wheat crop was increased by twelve per cent. In 1977, the US wheat acreage was again cut back, this time by twenty per cent. The grain trade between America and Russia has been used by both Carter and Reagan as a political lever, while Gromyko summed up the position of the Russian ruling class last year when he said: "The Soviet Union would like to have normal, businesslike relations with the United States" (Guardian. 23 September 1981). As Bertholt Brecht put it. "famines do not occur, they are organised by the grain trade", and this includes Russia and China as much as America.

How, then, can the problem be solved? A useful lesson can be learnt from Honduras, one of the most fertile lands in Central America, where half of the children suffer malnutrition and stunted physical and mental growth. Two companies own about a quarter of a million acres used to grow bananas for export. The native peasants who work the barren hillsides last year organised several “invasions” in an attempt to take over the fertile valleys, but were put down by the military. The dispossessed majority across the world must instead take democratic, political action to bring resources into common ownership. If the state machine is not taken over democratically and dismantled, it will be used against any attempt to gain forcible access to the wealth we produce. The problem of world hunger can be solved only when a majority are prepared to act on the understanding that the abolition of poverty will involve the abolition of all property.

Clifford Slapper

The Iron Lady (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

This humorous photo was actually on the back page of the September 1982 Socialist Standard, alongside that month's Political Notes column. As there was no little or no reference to Thatcher in that column, I decided that the picture should be its own separate post. It was untitled, so I've added the rather obvious 'The Iron Lady' title.

Political Notes: Bad language (1982)

The Political Notes Column from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bad language

Of course, Willie Whitelaw has been under a strain lately, what with a representative of the common people sitting harmlessly on the Queen’s bed and the discovery that the royal person has been guarded devotedly by a sacrificed homosexual. But there is no excuse for him saying: “I should have thought than many people in the House and in the country would have believed that . . .", when what he really means is “Yes".

Whitelaw watchers will recognise his words as a typical piece of parliamentary language, in the coils of which MPs have an apparent need to entangle almost everything they say. But behind this oblique urbanity is a steely core. The job of Members of Parliament is to legalise and oversee the exploitation, repression and killing of tens of millions of useful people in the world. To describe this process clearly and directly would result in a charge of using unparliamentary language.

There is no greater offence an MP can commit. No Member is allowed to call a person who supports capitalism's exploitation of the majority a thief; it would be out of order to describe an MP who supported war a murderer. No matter what deceit they may practise, they are always honourable members; none of them may be denounced as a liar. Yet the social system which every MP stands for rests on legalised robbery; it is sustained by acts of socially organised killing and justified by a persistent deception.

When socialist delegates arrive at the scats of power they will not obscure their actions and principles in misleading verbiage. They will be too indignant at the degradations of capitalism and too impatient to abolish the system to have time for urbanity.

Life after death?

People who narrowly escape death have been known to say that the crucial moments were enlivened for them by the rapid flashbaek of their past life, which is supposed to work wonders by way of remorse for their misdeeds. Well, Lord George Brown is not dead (although he has joined the Social Democrats) but recently he must have wondered if the end had come because it seemed just like a flashback for him.

It was all the fault of Michael Foot (Labour Party) and Len Murray (TUC) who presented, for the scrutiny of critical media hacks, the latest thoughts of the Labour Party on how to end the slump and get back to the days of full exploitation, sorry full employment. These thoughts were in a report grandly entitled Economic Planning and Industrial Democracy—the Framework for Full Employment. As might be inferred from this, the report's dominant theme is planning. If there ever is another Labour government they will set up a national planning council; a national planning college; they will plan investment, prices, wages. They will erect, from the bureaucratic reserves of Whitehall, a new ministry for economic and industrial planning.

Now what might well have troubled George was the memory of the time when all this was tried before, with himself as king planner. As the man in charge at the Department of Economic Affairs (no relation) he excitedly produced his National Plan (no relation either) for the rebirth of British industry and the birth of a new prosperity for everyone. But the DEA disappeared over the storm-wracked horizon when British capitalism was, in Prime Minister Wilson's words, ‘blown off course'. It perished in the reality that the Labour Party could not control the economic weather—although that was exactly what George Brown and his plans were supposed to be able to do.

As capitalism spirals into slump, the best the Labour Party can offer is this tawdry attempt to raise the dead. They offer us a corpse of a policy, which has already been exposed as a lifeless futility. This is an apt comment on their impotence and cynicism; they learn nothing and, even worse, forget everything except the technique of uttering worthless verbiage.

George Brown is himself now little more than a ghost. It would be more humane if his old comrades were to leave him in peace, untroubled by memories of those days of despair.

Passing trade union laws (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade unions are at their weakest in a recession. When unemployment is high and profits fall the ability of the workers to improve their wages and conditions is seriously curtailed, and governments take advantage of this situation to introduce legislation restricting their activities. The Tebbit proposals as outlined in the 1982 Employment Bill are the latest and follow the 1980 Employment Act.

In April a conference of trade union executives met to consider a report by the TUC General Council on Industrial Relations legislation. The TUC’s recommendations to its members included refusal to participate in secret ballots under conditions laid down in the new legislation; refusal to accept government finance for union ballots; financial assistance for unions that suffer legal actions; withdrawal of trade unionists from participation in Employment Appeals Tribunals; and a 10p levy on members to cover the cost of a TUC campaign.

Response to these proposals has been mixed, with many predicting little active support among the majority of workers. But there is another question; the choice faced by those who oppose the legislation is between breaking the law or supporting the return of a Labour government that will repeal the Act. Both of these responses show a failure to understand the really important points at issue.

Present society is based on a division between the owners of the means of production and distribution and the majority of people who have to find an employer in order to live. Workers can organise together to try and improve wages and conditions but this necessarily means eating into the profits of the owners. In a recession, when markets contract, profits are liable to fall and consequently the ability of workers to gain increased wages is reduced. With declining markets many firms go bankrupt, which means increased unemployment and more competition for jobs. This also reduces the ability of workers to gain better conditions of employment.

Where then does legislation fit into this? Governments are likely to take advantage of weakened trade unions in a recession in order to place restrictions on their activities. In the decade or so since the Labour government's White Paper In Place of Strife there has been a wave of trade union law, with different governments adopting different approaches; some seemingly favourable to trade unions and some obviously hostile. But it must always be remembered that all governments exist to maintain a society based on the class ownership of the means of producing wealth. Irrespective of the prevailing industrial climate, the purpose of trade union law is to strengthen the capitalist class, whatsoever form the legislation may take. To see this more clearly it is necessary to look at some examples of trade union law.

In the 1870s there was a wave of legislation concerning trade unions, on the face of it introduced under direct pressure from organised labour. Among other things, these laws provided a measure of protection for trade union funds and allowed some picketing. But this legislation was not simply a result of growing trade union organisation. In 1867 an electoral reform law had been introduced which extended the vote to skilled workers in the towns. For some time there had been agitation for this extension of the franchise by a number of movements, one of which was led by the industrial capitalist John Bright, who had been prominent in gaining working class support against the Corn Laws in the 1840s.

Bright realised that it was necessary to gain working class support in order to transfer political power from the landowning capitalists, who still dominated parliament, to industrial capitalists like himself. The extension of the vote to skilled workers, many of whom were prominent in the trade unions, facilitated this transfer of political power. The Tory leader Disraeli also supported the 1867 Act. He saw it as necessary because, as an associate said, he 

'would rather drag the working man within the pale of the constitution by force than suffer them to organise themselves into a separate community outside it’. [1]

Once the vote was given it was necessary to try to keep this working class support and the trade union legislation of the 1870s was a means to this end.

The years of recession that followed this legislation necessarily weakened labour organisations; in fact, many trade unions disintegrated or reverted to being purely friendly societies. Trade union law served the purpose of strengthening the political power of the capitalist class but did nothing to protect the organisations of workers.

In the years leading up to the First World War. more legislation concerning trade unions was introduced. The Trades Disputes Act of 1906 protected trade unions against employers seeking recompense for losses arising from strike action. This Act was a response to the famous Taff Vale decision, which followed the suing of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants by the Railway Company. The Taff Vale case certainly stimulated the trade unions to create the Labour Party, but what is not often made clear is that a new political party was not needed in order to reverse the decision. This was accepted both at the time [2] and by later writers of labour history [3].

The Liberals accepted that the Taff Vale decision was an anomaly and that the original trade union laws of the 1870s, which gave the Liberals working class support, had covered the protection of trade union funds. The anomaly had arisen because, since the 1870s, the expansion of capitalist production had led to a large number of unincorporated companies being formed; all that was needed was an updating of the law. But of course the Labour Party has had to present the Taff Vale case as their unique concern in order to provide some justification for its own formation. In fact the Liberals were just as concerned about working class votes in 1870 as they were. Neither party differed on economic policy and both accepted the need to introduce various reforms.

The other piece of trade union law in this period was very different. The Osborne Judgement of 1908 prevented trade unions from using their funds for financing parliamentary representatives. Now here was an issue of some concern to the working class. The Osborne Judgement meant that workers who wished to give financial support to a parliamentary candidate had to do it from a voluntary fund; trade unions could not make it compulsory for their members to contribute. The Osborne Judgement was therefore in workers’ interests but the real tussle over whether it should be maintained had nothing to do with workers’ interests. It was purely a struggle between the three political parties. Liberal, Tory and Labour, over who should be the party to take power and run capitalism. Labour MPs were largely dependent on finance from the trade unions, whereas the other two parties were in fierce competition to maintain their own positions in parliament which Labour Party candidates threatened.

It was therefore in the interest of both Liberals and Tories to maintain the Osborne Judgement. Yet in 1913 the Liberal government passed a new Trade Union Act enabling trade unions to keep a political fund for the purpose of financing MPs, while allowing those who did not want to pay to contract out. The explanation for this move by the Liberal government is to be found in the political, social and economic environment between 1908, the year of the Osborne Judgement, and 1913. Firstly, the Liberal government was partly dependent on the votes of Labour MPs; they did not have an absolute majority in parliament and needed support from either the Irish Nationalists or Labour.

The Liberal government tried to get over the Osborne Judgement by introducing the payment of MPs. But that was not enough for the Labour politicians who had “fastened their hungry jaws on the vitals of the labour movement” [4] and in the end the Liberals conceded. There was, however, also another reason why the Osborne Judgment was not maintained: 1911 was a year of widespread strikes and riots with troops being used on a number of occasions to fire at workers. It was a period when, especially after the two General Elections of 1910, workers lost interest in the abilities of government to solve their problems. As one witness put it:

Nothing was more noticeable about the last two General Elections than the rapidity with which the mass of the electorate has become disillusioned as to the worth of the vote. [5]

All manner of actions, consultations and legislation was tried by the government to solve the unrest and restore their authority. The strikes continued and in the following year the stoppage by the miners led to the government intervening directly to try to solve the dispute. This was in fact an abandonment of traditional Liberal policy of laissez faire. In desperation the government introduced a Minimum Wage Bill to try to placate the miners. This, like so much similar legislation, guaranteed nothing in the long term; it was purely a crisis measure. Speaking on the Bill in parliament, Asquith the Prime Minister said: “We have exhausted all powers of persuasion and argument and negotiation". [6]

In the end the Liberals backed the legislation changing the Osborne Judgement, partly because they believed that Labour MPs would be of use to the government in reconciling the workers to their class position within capitalism. Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Party leader, had already helped to end a major rail strike. This was perhaps a foresight by the Liberals into the role the Labour Party would play in the future, as a government and as an opposition.

More recent trade union law, including the Labour government’s proposals In Place of Strife and the Tory Industrial Relations Act of 1971, has the same purpose as earlier legislation. Government proposals may arise from actions taken by the working class, whether because of restrictions placed on trade unions or because of strikes and disputes. But the law will always ultimately serve the interests of the capitalist class. Yet laws, whether they are supposed to assist trade union organisation or place restrictions on it, can do nothing to change the actual power that unions have. The laws of the 1870s did nothing to prevent the fragmentation of trade unions in the years of recession that followed, but they did increase the political power of the industrial capitalists. Similarly, the legislation of the 1974-79 Labour government, which included the Employment Protection Act, did nothing to prevent unemployment rising from million to 1½ million during that period. Nor has it protected workers from massive redundancies and unemployment since.

There is no substitute for the workers consciously organising to defend their interests. They should not look to leaders, whether in trade unions, the Labour Party or in government. Legislation, whether for or against unions, does nothing to change the fact that governments exist to serve the interests of the capitalist class, to maintain the system in which the majority of people are exploited. Workers need to organise to defend their living standards whenever possible; but they should also organise consciously and politically for the purpose of abolishing the system of society that can only operate in the interests of the owning minority.

MD

References:

[1] Quoted in Victorian People, Asa Briggs. Penguin 1970. p203.

[2] See Lloyd George speech at National Reform Union meeting Bacup. 5 November 1904.

[3] See G.D.H. Cole: A Short History of the British Working Class Movement. Allen and Unwin 1947, p293.

[4] Socialist Standard November 1910.

[5] Stephen Reynolds: Seems So! A Working Class View of Politics. Macmillan 1911, p!30.

[6] Parliamentarv Debates, 5th Series. V36, p234.

[Quotes] (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Class Struggle must be understood, not in the contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages of malevolence in personal violence, but must must be worthily conceived as a great Social Drama." 

Socialism and Positive Science, Enrico Ferri (1905).

 "Private property in land implies the privilege of the landlord to exploit the body of the globe, the bowels of the earth, the air and with them, the conservation and development of life." 

Capital, III (page 898).

Correction (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Mitterrand clamps down" in our August issue appeared the following statement: "A sustained policy of increasing 'popular consumption' under capitalism must sooner or later restrict popular consumption to protect profits" (foot of column 3. page 148). This should have read: “A sustained policy of increasing 'popular consumption' under capitalism is just not possible. On the contrary, all governments of capitalism must sooner or later restrict . . ." We apologise for this omission.

Socialism and anarchism (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In so far as it can be said to exist at all. the anarchist movement is characterised by a conviction that the destruction of the state must be the principal aim of those who value individual freedom. When the ideas of its philosophers and adherents are closely examined, however, the phenomenon disintegrates into a jumble of competing tendencies, each marching resolutely in different directions. But then, by definition there can be no authority on anarchism, no authentic anarchist path.

The desire to abolish the state has a long history. Some anarchists claim certain ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers as their precursors. Anti-statism has been most popular among producers operating at a fairly low technological level, such as peasants, artisans and those working in “cottage industries"; in their individual and narrow lives they often failed to perceive the wider social relationships within which they laboured. To these small producers the state was an alien, exploitative and oppressive force — intruding into their lives in the form of police and tax collectors and maintaining large armies and swollen bureaucracies at their expense. It was supposed that the abolition of the state would leave a “natural" society governed only by natural laws, customs and agreements between free individuals.

The social conditions which gave rise to anarchist groupings in the nineteenth century were exactly those which stimulated the emergence of the Chartist and communist movements. The new capitalist class was squeezing the small producer, destroying the independence of artisans and homeworkers through mechanisation and creating a huge proletariat; the liberal and "modernising" state generally supported the accumulation of bourgeois property. In the struggle to overcome social problems thrown up by capitalism, several anarchist philosophies were developed, the most important of which were anarcho-syndicalism, Bakuninism, syndicalism and anarchist communism.

The liberal view of society as a mass of independent individuals was taken to its logical extreme by anarchists like Max Stirner, who evolved a philosophy in which the ego was conceived as the main force in the world. Each ego had to strive for as much personal satisfaction and independence of action as possible without regard to the interests of others. Many of the Young Hegelians held Feuerbach’s view that god was a symbol of alienated human powers; Marx extended this line of thought to show that the state and commodity exchange also exemplified human alienation. However, Stirner took the concept of alienation to absurd lengths by regarding society itself as oppressive of the human individual. Much of Marx and Engels’ materialist conception of history was clarified in opposition to Stirner’s egotism — as is testified by a reading of The German Ideology. Marx held that it was only in and through society, where the range of resources and cooperative talents facilitated the development of personalities, that individuals could fully exist; to a considerable extent we are the products of our social environment (though simultaneously helping to reproduce and transform it).

Stirner’s obsession with individualistic, anti-social revolt (which he assumed would eventually produce a “union of egotists”) could easily lead to political quiescence. In his literary guise as Mad Max, Stirner ranted and raved against society and all its forces, but in his everyday life, under his real name of Johann Caspar Schmidt, he was a mild-mannered teacher of young ladies. The practical application of his philosophy would result in the domination of society by those with the greater physical and economic power — in other words, it would merely preserve the present class divided society, changing only the rhetoric of its rulers and the labels attached to their instruments of power.

The term “anarchy" was first widely used to describe the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who introduced the term in his famous work, What is Property? (1840). While Proudhon declared that property is theft he was far from wanting to do away with property altogether. Coming from a peasant-cum-artisan background, he regarded petty proprietorship as the basis for any free society. What Proudhon objected to were large accumulations of capital by the ruling class and the existence of the dispossessed class of proletarians into which petty proprietors were increasingly being depressed. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx describes Proudhon as a “bourgeois socialist", one who seeks to abolish the proletariat but preserve the bourgeoisie. More accurately, we can say that Proudhon sought a society composed exclusively of petty bourgeois and peasant elements.

Two of Proudhon’s key ideas were federalism and “mutualism". The problem of federalism in a property based society is that, within the federation, different economic interests will invariably pull in different directions and consequently there will be a power struggle between the various members (individuals, regions, federal executives) for de facto political/economic advantage. Only in a society based on common ownership, where everyone has the same basic interests, can voluntary factions operate without degenerating into sordid politicking. However, as we havenoted, Proudhon remained firmly wedded to property ideas.

Similarly, Proudhon's “mutualism" is built on shaky foundations. His central economic idea was that there should be a national bank dispensing “free credit" (with only minimal interest to cover bank administration costs) so that everyone could acquire property and hence become “independent". However, the direct exchange of products that he assumed his bank would facilitate could only take place in a technologically underdeveloped society. Proudhon’s economic thought was essentially outdated; in an increasingly industrialised society it was impossible for everyone to be a petty proprietor, as the process of mechanisation required an accumulation of capital beyond the reach of small producers. His legalistic notion of fixing the value of commodities for all time was hopelessly naive, as the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour time socially necessary for its production and hence technical development constantly reduces cost.

Proudhon's ideas, therefore, were basically conservative. Not only did he stand out against the current of technological development and class polarisation, but his highly conservative notions of the family, the subordinate role of women, democracy and party politics (as well as more than a hint of national and racial prejudice) combined to make him posthumously popular among the fascists of Action Française. He opposed Marx’s attempts to organise a socialist political movement, preferring to combat capitalism on a purely individual basis. Likewise, Proudhon opposed trade union combination, as strikes appeared to him a distasteful form of coercion and he held that any rise in wages would instantly lead to a rise in prices — a view that Marx successfully debunked in The Poverty of Philosophy anti Value, Price and Profit.

In much of his thought, Proudhon was anticipated by other petty bourgeois theorists. In America Josiah Warren, who had participated in Owen's “New Harmony", established various schemes for the exchange of goods proportionate to their preconceived values; they all failed for the reasons already noted in the case of Proudhon’s "mutualism". Another school of North American anarchist individualism was founded by Benjamin Tucker, whose philosophy stands mid-way between Proudhonism and modern anarcho-capitalism. Believing that if everyone minded their “own business" a hidden hand would ensure social harmony. Tucker went on to justify individual and group violence, including capital punishment, in the enforcement of contracts between allegedly "free and equal” individuals and for the defence of egotistic pursuits.

Modern anarcho-capitalism, which has recently gained a tiny group of adherents in Britain, essentially continues the ideas of Tucker, though shorn of any Proudhonian notions. The anarcho-capitalists take one step further the Liberal view that the state should be prevented from “interfering" in the affairs of society by demanding its total abolition. In reality, of course, the state is an integral part of capitalism and uses its police and armed forces, judiciary and prisons, and its bureaucracy and “welfare” apparatus to maintain the capitalist class in its privileged position. If, under capitalism, the state were ever to be declared “abolished” it would immediately be reconstituted.

So long as private property continues the state, no matter what its form, will remain. Capitalism requires an authority to define property rights and employ, or sanction the use of, physical force to maintain them. Only when a socialist working class takes control of the whole of society, including the governmental machinery, will it be possible to dispense with the state. Then we will have a form of society in which, in the words of Marx, the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.

Brian Philips

In our next issue the relationship between anarchism and the workers' movement will be discussed.

Blogger's Note:

Sadly, there's no record of a follow up article in the Standard. I wonder what happened?

Letter: ". . . a helluva lot of grey in between" (1982)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

The sentiments of Mike Scott (Letters. June) are broadly mine. Your reply shows that we differ only about means. You support my trade union efforts to improve my position as a wage earner but not my efforts to (say) improve local housing and health care for my neighbours at the expense of (say) bigger and better bombs.

Maybe the only consistent action for socialism is work to persuade fellow workers to agree with us about our final goal but in the meantime, for some of us, there is an obligation to house the homeless, feed the hungry and care for the sick.

I am not advocating a form of modified capitalism by trying to alleviate some of its effects on me and my fellows. Politics is like religion — black and white at the ends and a helluva lot of grey in between.

Having read your excellent journal for some time now I feel the SPGB is about as effective as "Captain Anarchy”, whose story was ironically on the same page as the letter referred to above.

Reg Holmes 

Hounslow, Middlesex

Reply:

Many of the Socialist Party’s permanent sympathisers believe that working for "something now" is the only course of action for politically committed workers since socialism, desirable as it is. remains a distant prospect. While they get stuck into feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, fighting for jobs, banning the bomb, expanding health services and improving everything else in sight socialists, it is said, spend their time merely talking about social change. When we get up front our armchairs, knock on the table and ask "Is anybody there?", thousands of voices reply: "Yes, Reg Holmes. I'm with you in spirit but tied up in the day-to-day struggle".

In reality, of course, these people generally display about as much understanding of the workings of capitalism as does Mr. Holmes. Far from differing with us only about means, they singularly fail to grasp the essence of our case: that any real diminution of the worst effects of capitalism cannot be achieved while the system itself remains intact. They prefer to believe, in face of their experience and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that resources set aside for destruction can somehow be channelled into areas of human need and major social problems successfully tackled piecemeal.

Socialists are not impervious to the sufferings of workers under capitalism or dismissive of their attempts to alleviate it by individual action. We simply point out that this will leave the cause of the problems untouched and socialism no nearer. The irony of Mr. Holmes’ letter is that it is precisely because so many workers share his approach to politics that capitalism continues and socialist propaganda is comparatively ineffective. If, at the end of his life. Mr. Holmes looks back at his endeavours and sees that nothing much has changed it will be no comfort to us. We will still have to convince workers of the urgent need to deal now with causes rather than effects.

Editors.

SPGB Meetings (1982)

Party News from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

On the subject of Robert Barltrop and the Cockney language (see the West London branch meeting), Barltrop and Jim Wolveridge wrote a book entitled The Muvver Tongue, which was published by the Journeyman Press in 1980. Barltrop was considered a bit of an expert on the subject.

Here's footage of him speaking on the subject back in 1988. (He appears 2 minutes 43 seconds in.)

50 Years Ago: The Truth about the Co-operative Movement (1982)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the economic side they are merely capitalist concerns out for profits. As to purchasers' dividends, they are not alone in giving something back in order to retain customers. The practice of giving coupons entitling purchasers to free gifts is quite common and the article bought, plus the free gift, is generally the equivalent in value of the price paid. The fact that cooperators spend such a small proportion of their wages in the stores proves they are not deceived on the question of value for money. To the bulk of them the Co-op is just a convenient place to shop.

But so far as Co-op leaders hold out hopes to the workers that their support will help towards a new order of society, or will even provide an escalator to reach it, they are practising deceit. The only way out for the workers is to organise politically for that purpose. A special objective requires a special organisation for its achievement. However, the objective must not be obscured by lesser things of little or no importance.

Dividends and profits can have no place within a socialist system of society. They belong to the present lop-sided arrangement of starving workers and over-fed idlers. Dividends and profits belong to capitalism, and the practice of cooperatives helps to keep them alive in the minds of the workers, to the detriment of a true understanding of their real position.

(From an article "The Truth about the Co-operative Movement" by F. Foan, Socialist Standard, September 1932.)