Running Commentary: More royal drivel (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

More royal drivel

The Police Federation is a strange body, dedicated as it is to improving relationships between the police and the people the police coerce through in-depth research into social problems. This learned lot were recently addressed by one of the world's great experts on psychology, youth delinquency and social pressures — which can only mean the Prince of Wales.

This typically unproductive member of the ruling class thinks that young "offenders'' — youths who break the laws which protect useless parasites in their privilege — have “icy and unfeeling’’ attitudes towards the elderly and would benefit from a spell of Army discipline. (The Army is another strange body, whose profession is to destroy things and kill people).

Of course the Prince is no fool and he had ready some evidence to back up his theories — after all, his audience consisted largely of Chief Constables who are famous for their persistent hunger for dispassionate, scientific research.

The “evidence” consisted of what the Prince saw — or thought he saw — when he visited some courses run by the Army last year, when about 2,000 youngsters put themselves through some risks and exertions. The Prince decided that they had "benefitted immeasurably” from it all.

Jolly good. But as a contribution to research it was useless because those young people were not delinquents, they did not come from slums and they had volunteered to go on the courses as a possible way of getting a job. It would have been a very different matter, if the courses had been filled with restless young offenders from places like Toxteth and Lambeth, sentenced by some pompous magistrate to find their true character dangling at the end of a rope on a rock face.

There is in fact some evidence, which the Prince did not use, about the effects of this kind of regime, in the “short, sharp shock” Detention Centres (now Youth Custody Centres), where youngsters are pushed by a variety of nasty methods beyond what they think are their physical and emotional limits. This evidence does not support the theory that such harsh discipline breeds humane responses. The “success” rate (the proportion of inmates who are frightened out of further offences) of this type of “treatment” is notably low. Perhaps this is because nothing a Detention Centre can do can be worse than living in the slums of Liverpool, Manchester or London.

It is to be expected that parasites like the Prince should be keen that the people whose work keeps him in privilege should be disciplined into accepting their inferior social standing. It is to be expected that the forces of coercion, in the persons of Chief Constables, should applaud his vacuous drooling on the matter. But the subjects of it all — the working class — should react with anger and contempt and a resolve to end such a miserable, decadent society.

Bad connection

The trade unions and the Labour Party are in high fever about the looming menace of Norman Tebbit and his threat to place a garrotte on the unions and in particular to make it more difficult for them to pump money into the Labour Party.

No one who has a concern for working class interests and for a healthy, effective trade union movement will object to plans to sever the ties between the unions and the Labour Party. By such standards — not to mention those of democracy within the unions — there is much to be said for substituting the “contracting in” procedure, by which any union member who wants to contribute to Labour Party funds must declare so, for “contracting out”, by which the contribution is taken from the member unless they say otherwise.

The present excitement springs from the popular fallacy that it is only Tory governments who wage war on the unions while Labour governments live in unbroken peace with them. The 1945-51 Labour government was constantly in conflict with trade unionists, especially with "unofficial” strikers — strikers who couldn't get their Labour-Party-dominated union to support them.

The Wilson government also fought the unions, in one famous strike denouncing the seamen as misled by a group of “politically motivated” wreckers. That government, after years of struggle over pay and conditions, tried to draw up legislation with which Tebbit would have found no fault, but Barbara Castle's anti-union proposals in In Place of Strife were too much for even the most obsequious of union leaders and they had to be shelved. The Callaghan government made their name by breaking the firemen's strike with troops in their Green Goddesses, for the battles with the pickets in the Winter of Discontent and for its ministers urging workers to break through picket lines.

Unions must clash with any government, whether Labour or Tory, because they stand — at least when the unions are doing their job — on opposite sides of the class struggle. The unions should represent the interests of the workers, and the government the interests of the capitalists, in the struggles on the industrial field.

The Labour Party have always cynically exploited their trade union connection to help them get into power. If, after all that recent history has taught them, the unions still go along with this they will find again, and to their cost, how mistaken they are. With friends like the Labour Party they hardly need enemies like Norman Tebbit.

Sick note

Poor David Steel, meaning well but so grievously misunderstood.

Some sections of the Alliance had serious doubts about him during the election, with people like Cyril Smith grumbling that he was hogging too much of the limelight and Steel expressing some rattiness with his supporters for their lack of involvement. It seemed to be coming to a head when the leader announced abruptly that he was taking himself off for a long rest. How could a capitalist party survive, asked bewildered Liberals, without a leader to sort out its knotty problems of compromise and deceit, to hand down decisions on policy and action for the mass of the party to obediently carry out?

But then relief for them. Steel was not mad or disintegrating but only struck down by the sort of virus which lurks about waiting to infect politicians who are exhausted by the effort of battling for the votes of the deluded supporters of capitalism.

Steel's illness was said to be making him tired and depressed so that his problems seemed insurmountable. At which point it is reasonable to question the nature of this illness, which has the effect of stimulating such an insight into reality. For the Liberal leader’s problems, like those of Thatcher and whoever replaces Foot, are insurmountable.

All leaders confront the difficulty of first persuading enough workers that theirs is the likeliest method of running British capitalism, that they have a unique ability to bring in an age of unprecedented peace and plenty. If that propaganda succeeds, and the leader passes through the door of Number Ten, they are faced with the further problem of hoping and praying that they will be lucky enough for their term of office to coincide with one of capitalism’s upswings, which they can claim credit for and so appear to keep their election promises.

Some leaders — like Harold Macmillan — have quite a long run of luck before they are exposed to a downswing. None of them are able to control the cycle of boom and slump, or notably to mitigate the effects; such basic elements of the capitalist system are out of their control. Capitalism works through its own laws and takes little account of the electoral needs of politicians.

That is reality. Perhaps Steel, at some blinding moment, glimpsed it and saw what was in store for him if he ever made the top. Enough to make him sick as a politician.

Labour's past (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every sensible delegate to this year's Labour Party conference will include in their luggage some long, sharp knives so that they can participate in a not-very-fraternal bout of blood-letting known as Taking Stock. In fact, stock is something the Labour Party need to take all too often for their own comfort but in 1983 they are under unusual pressure. No delegate can be in any doubt about the gravity of their situation and just in case there are any lingering optimists making their way to Brighton next month the leaders of the party are writing warnings like this, from Roy Hattersley:

For the Labour Party to succeed (perhaps even to survive as a major party of government) the long hard climb back to popularity and power has to begin at once . . . . Unless we swiftly demonstrate both our will and power to win in 1988, the Liberal-Social Democrat Alliance will successfully pose as the real alternative to Thatcherite Conservatism (Guardian 8 August 1983).

Everyone knows that people like Hattersley are gloomy about Labour’s crushing defeat in June, which diminished his ambition from Prime Minister to a columnist in Punch. Groggily, his party now contemplate the fact that they have not lost so conclusively since 1931, when MacDonald’s National government was returned with a majority of over 7 million votes, sweeping almost every former Labour minister out of Parliament. Since those (for them) calamitous days the Labour Party have worked hard to convince themselves that it could not happen again.

Michael Foot has paid the penalty for losing the election, hustled into retirement and likely to disappear almost without trace. If he had won it would have been very different; he would have been Labour’s hero and apart from anything else would have had a number of desirable jobs to distribute among faithful friends and followers. Now, his role in Labour’s future seems to be to make appearances at those empty emotional rallies of the faithful where the reality of both past and present is so distorted that eventually the same misguided view can be taken of the future. At such events, almost anything is possible; Foot may well become, like many a Labour politician since 1931, an aged conscience of the party to help them both forget what has happened and to believe that it will not happen again. Much hope is being invested in Foot’s successor as leader, whoever he may be, and in the prospect of a “dream ticket" — a leader and a deputy whose reputations and talents are such that between them they are able to assuage the prejudices and frustrations of all sections of the party. So that if one can’t pull off a particular deception, the other can.

It will be quite unprecedented, if Labour’s stock-taking is anything other than the familiar exercise in evasion and reassurance. There may be some criticism of their election manifesto, either on the grounds that it was not attractive enough or that it was too antagonistic. The party leadership might have expected a battering except that Foot and Healey have prudently taken their leave. A lot of hard things will be spoken about Labour’s organisation and their election machine, much of it in the conviction that it was nothing more than a matter of bad communication which left the voters in ignorance of the delights of living under another Labour government. Saatchi and Saatchi may prick up their ears at resolutions like this, from Oldham: "The Labour Party is sadly lacking in the modern techniques of organisation, administration, communication, advertising and public relations and even within a very limited budget much more effective action could be taken in the business of winning votes”.

It will not, then, be an enquiry into Labour’s basic nature as a party of capitalism, its appalling history and its dismal prospects but into why they lost the election — why didn’t they get their turn at trying to run the affairs of the British capitalist class? Some of the brainier delegates may agree with New Society (26 May 1983) which thought that the “skilled" workers who are buying council houses and installing central heating and video machines have decided that a Labour government could not be trusted to defend what they think of as their affluence. It is, of course, not only “skilled” workers who get it wrong about their class position under capitalism; sometimes they are compelled to get it rather nearer correct, when they take part in unpopular strikes which get some scathing publicity. If Labour’s enquiry comes up with some sort of an answer their next step will be to fashion a programme to attract the disaffected voters back. It won’t particularly matter what is in the programme: in any case it can all be forgotten soon after the election. The important question is — will it help in that “business of winning votes"?

We shall have to endure again the spectacle of those boring irrelevancies — the left wing and the right — parading their differences as if these are matters fundamental to working class interests. The left are already blaming the defeat on defective leadership. "The only hope", shrieked Tribune “is that in the autumn elections for the National Executive Committee and the Shadow Cabinet, the tired, ideologically impoverished, obsessive men and women who have led the Labour Party to the brink of ruin will be swept away for ever”. The right are less optimistic; they don’t think in terms of Labour’s problems being solved "for ever”, nor that they need ideologically wealthy people in the leadership. What they are sure about is that the party have lately been showing suicidal tendencies, like conference opting for unilateralism, like the confusion over Militant, like the hungrily-publicised blunders of Ken Livingstone.

But left and right are agreed on one thing; there is nothing fundamentally at fault with the Labour Party. Both wings think that it is possible to control capitalism and to make the system work in the interests of the majority and that Labour is the party best fitted to do this, even if they call it socialism. They both think that capitalism produces war, famine, poverty, by accident; it could be a benign, peaceful, abundant society provided there are one or two adjustments to the personalities and the programmes of the Labour Party. So at the election, when the working class might have voted for socialism. Labour’s left and right wings were hard at work inviting them to vote as if they were brainless, forgetting Labour’s wretched history, ignoring those ideologically impoverished leaders. In this cause Neil Kinnock nearly lost his famous Welsh voice and Denis Healey cheerfully allowed his equally famous, luxuriant eyebrows to be experimentally tugged at by children whose parents, he hoped, would thereby be persuaded to vote for the party of Ken Livingstone.

These unsavoury antics are what is actually meant by “the business of winning votes” and the Labour Party know all about it because they have been at it for a very long time. At their 1930 conference — the year when unemployment averaged 16 per cent of the total employees, almost 2 million people — Prime Minister MacDonald assured the delegates that they were ". . . moving, as it were, in a great eternal ocean of surge towards righteousness, towards fair play, towards honesty . . ." A year later MacDonald’s own personal surge had carried him into leadership of a coalition government with the Liberals and the hated Tories. This government moved promptly in the direction of fair play by protecting the interests of the British ruling class by cutting unemployment benefit below its already miserly level. The Liberal leader, Herbert Samuel, particularly wanted MacDonald to be Prime Minister; the workers, he thought, could more easily be persuaded to accept unpalatable measures from a Labour government. There was little difficulty in getting MacDonald to agree that he was the man for the job: "Tomorrow." he cheerfully assured the Tebbit-like Philip Snowden. “Every duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me".

These were the events which led to the Labour Party being annihilated at the 1931 election and to them taking stock at their conference the following year. They quickly decided that there was nothing basically amiss with their party: “The events of last year,” said Charles Trevelyan, who had been MacDonald's Minister of Education, "Were a great shock to this party in its confidence in men. but there is no shock to its confidence in itself . . .’’ The problem was that too much power had been given to too few men — in particular to one man. the hated (although not by duchesses) MacDonald. The delegates were properly impressed and passed a resolution moved by Trevelyan that a future Labour government should immediately promulgate “. . . definite socialist legislation . . .” and should “. . . stand or fall in the House of Commons on the principles in which it has faith”.

At the 1933 conference another critic of MacDonald emerged into prominence, in the diminutive and reticent figure of J.R. Clynes, who had been Home Secretary and who again was quite clear on the reasons for the 1929/31 Labour government’s dismal collapse: "Never again should any one leader of the party be empowered singly to use his personal authority, and himself alone choose his cabinet or appoint his ministers”. Clynes was recommending a proposal by Labour’s NEC that a future Labour Prime Minister should select ministers only after consulting and acting in conjunction with the other party leaders. The delegates were predictably in favour of this; they seemed to be unaware that this was in fact the method used by MacDonald and Clynes did not tell them, although he himself had come to be Home Secretary in this way. Under the impression that they were making some triumphant, significant change, the conference left things as they were. The next time Labour came to office. in 1945, Attlee simply ignored the whole thing and chose the ministers he wanted.

There is no reason to believe, in 1983, that Labour Party members are any likelier to grasp reality than were those who were so readily deceived by Trevelyan and Clynes. The plain fact is that, such is Labour’s recent record and present condition. the working class are unlikely to consider them a possible administration of British capitalism. It is not permissible for the Labour Party to avoid all responsibility for this. They cannot blame it all onto poor, bookish, bumbling Foot or the reptiles of Fleet Street or the diabolical smoothies Saatchi and Saatchi. They have persistently argued, in opposition to the case for socialism, that there is no need to campaign for workers to understand and consciously oppose capitalism; for them the important thing has been to win votes by whatever method. This has left untouched — indeed it has usually stimulated — the support which the working class give to the capitalist social system; the Labour Party have overlooked the fact that workers who are so ignorant of their class interests that they will vote for capitalism under a Labour government will at other times opt for capitalism under the Tories, unemployment and the Falklands notwithstanding.

A useful enquiry into the Labour Party would expose its ideological poverty. It would denounce Labour's theory, held to so stubbornly through all the evidence of history, that by a policy of opportunism and duplicity capitalism can be reformed out of its essential character. The facts speak for themselves, through the fog of self-delusion which will be the Labour Party conference. After decades of compromise and deceit, of cynical grubbing in the business of winning votes, the Labour Party has made such progress that the Tories are back stronger than ever and Labour are back at 1931.

Ivan

Vote for yourself for a change . . . (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist system is fundamentally undemocratic: it does not run in accordance with the wishes and needs of the majority, but to satisfy the material interests of the small minority who accumulate rent, interest and profits. In Britain, capital ownership is confined to a very small minority: not only does one per cent of the population own more of the accumulated wealth than the poorest eighty per cent put together, but they have access to areas of power, information, communication and luxury goods and services which are not within the price range of the vast majority. Three quarters of all daily newspapers in Britain are owned by just three massive companies. The statistics of inequality are similar throughout the capitalist world; indeed, there are countries in Africa and South America where the ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution are in the hands of a few powerful families who, between them, determine the destinies of millions of human subjects.

It is nonsensical to speak of genuine democracy within a capitalist world when the vast majority of people — the working class, who do not own capital, but must live by selling our labour power for a wage or salary — is excluded from control over the resources and productive machinery of the earth. The workers have never been consulted as to who will own and control the vast multinational companies; there are no referenda called before the commencement of trade wars in which thousands of workers’ lives are wasted; the editorship of the Guardian or The Nine O’clock News has never been a matter for working class election; the millions who are starving in a world of potential abundance were never asked to cast a vote for malnutrition.

The workers run capitalist production and distribution from top to bottom but have no ownership or control. The minority, who live in affluence on the backs of the wealth producers, are in no position to determine precisely how capitalism will run. They are, of course, entitled to ensure that decisions made are socially beneficial to themselves rather than the workers, w'hose economic interests are diametrically opposite, but they are not able to plan the system with any accuracy. Capital, as a social force, is uncontrollable even by the capitalist class. For example, most capitalists would love to have a society where there was no war, no unemployment and no working class discontent. The anarchy of the profit system does not allow the bosses to govern the system: it governs them. So. capitalism is undemocratic not only because the majority class of people is alienated from the means of living, but also because it is impossible to plan capitalism on the basis of democratic decisions for the market, with its profit priorities, is a dictator which cannot be controlled by votes.

The only way to establish human control over society is to create socialism, which will be a democratic world society based on common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. Once we have done away with classes, markets and profits we will be able to take hold of this global village called the world and run it in direct accordance with democratically expressed human needs. The way that socialism will be organised will have to be decided consciously and democratically by the working class at the time of the establishment of the new system: we in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are unable to lay down blueprints for the next stage of social evolution. We can, however, make some comments about the advantages of worldwide socialist democracy.

Firstly, the new system would enable humanity to collect and use information on a global basis. At the moment countries duplicate the storing of necessary information about production and distribution; they often spend their time trying to mislead trade competitors as to what the real situation is or keeping secret knowledge which could make world production much more efficient in relation to human needs. World information authorities which exist at the moment, often under the auspices of the United Nations, are often ignored by governments because the statistical possibilities publicised by such bodies all too frequently are in conflict with the market capacities of capitalism. So, in a world socialist society there would be worldwide collection and storage of information relating to production and distribution. Such information could be handled with case by the computer technology which has already been invented, but which is presently used for the useless purposes of military communication and world trade.

Secondly, socialist society will utilise the information technology which has been developed within capitalism in order to allow every human being to have a say in matters which they feel to be important. Of course, not every person in a socialist society will want to be involved in every decision; democracy does not mean that all people must contribute to all decisions made by society, but that all people will be able to do so. On hearing this, the opponent of socialism has often asked whether it will be the case that every human being in a democratic socialist society is going to meet together in Wembley Stadium and put up their hands for or against a particular proposition. We would doubt very much whether four billion people are going to fit into Wembley Stadium — and we doubt even more whether the inhabitants of Peking or Mexico City will know the nearest tube station to Wembley! Of course, those who present such an objection are hopelessly caught up within the primitive thinking of capitalism which only allows them to envisage democracy in terms of some sort of grand tribal ritual. Society now has technology to enable human beings to sit in their homes and buy food from the local supermarket by pushing a button; business conferences are held with executive managers sitting in front of television cameras in London, Tokyo, New York and Moscow. These modern means of communication must be placed at the disposal of the whole community, who will make decisions on all the available evidence. Such decision-making will sometimes involve the entire world population but. needless to say, it will not require four billion people to decide whether to build a dual carriageway on the stretch of motorway between Hexham and Newcastle.

Thirdly, socialism will create a democracy where those who disagree with the majority will be free, within the confines of implementing the majority decision, to live in accordance with their own desires. It is quite possible that upon the establishment of socialist society there will be some people — perhaps millions — who are religious: they would be able freely to indulge in their primitive superstitions. Under capitalism, to be a nonconformist is to face problems ranging from psychological persecution to capital punishment; socialism will depend on the right of men and women to assert their individuality, but will require them to remember at all times that democracy is the only workable alternative to tyranny.

Democratic political action

There are two accusations which are often thrown at socialists: one is that we are Utopians who want to create a society of perfection; the other is that we are undemocratic and seek to impose our aims on a society which does not want it.

Socialism was only a Utopian proposition when it was detached from the concept of democratic change. The old Utopians, like Owen. Fourier and Saint-Simon wanted the new system, but imagined that it could exist without a socialist community to run it. It is only when a majority of the world’s workers understand and want socialism that it becomes a practicable proposition. The new system will not be free from problems but — and this is the essential qualification — a socially conscious world community will be infinitely more capable of dealing with those problems than is the present working class which is alienated from real social power. The socialist proposition depends entirely on the capacity of men and women to think consciously and to act responsibly. That is why, when the defenders of capitalism have been defeated in discussion on every single aspect of their outdated social system, as they invariably are, they always resort to the final argument of the anti-socialist: It's Against Human Nature. Of course, if they were correct and humanity was incapable of mass consciousness there would be no possibility of creating a democratic society. Curiously enough, many of the historically paralysed minds which assert confidently that humans are incapable of running society for ourselves insist that they are convinced democrats. We have all met the opponent of socialism who is sure that he or she would be quite capable of acting consciously within a democratic world society, but you'll never get everyone else to behave so intelligently. Capitalism's ideology of anti-democracy is based on the myth of inherent inequality; once workers realise that what they can understand, want and do others can also we will be ready to make our move to the next stage in history.

Do socialists seek to impose our aims on an unsuspecting majority? Alas, we could carry on insisting that socialism can only be established democratically until Ronald Reagan's hair turns grey; there will always be someone who will not believe us. Opponents of socialism will point to the Bolshevik revolution and to those anti-democrats who support its tactics today and, quite correctly, conclude that such socialism has nothing to do with democracy; it simply changes one ruling class for another. We go further and say that such so-called socialism has nothing to do with either socialism or democracy. It is nonsensical to imagine that you can impose social liberation on a majority of people who are content with the system of exploitation, oppression and misery. The socialist task is to take the discontent which capitalism inevitably engenders within the working class and to educate the discontented to reject the system which is the cause of their social problems and to establish socialism. Of course, capitalism is an undemocratic system and therefore socialist persuasion and education is made very difficult by the virtual monopoly by the capitalist minority over the means of education and communication. But we have on our side a valuable weapon: the experience of the working class which does not conform to the false ideas thrown out by the capitalist propaganda machine.

There will be no socialist revolution without socialists. The socialist revolution, unlike all those before it which have depended on the substitution of one ruling minority for another, will require a conscious majority. But it requires more than that: there can be no socialism without democratic political action. What form will that action take? Where democratic elections are held, workers will need to use our votes, not to elect the representatives of capitalism, but to elect delegates whose sole mandate will be to transfer the legal ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution from the minority to the whole community, without any distinctions of race or sex. Of course, capitalism's elections are never going to be completely democratic, but they are sufficient barometers of social consciousness to be used by the working class for the purpose of capturing political power. In those countries where democratic elections do not exist socialists must use their energies to create such institutions, either by putting pressure on the state or — perhaps — by setting up their own rival democratic institutions which the ruling class will be unable to ignore. In Britain, however, the political task of socialists is to capture power by means of the democracy of the ballot box; the fact that the ballot boxes are under the legal control of the capitalist class does not deny their validity as an instrument of revolution, any more than the potentiality of a blade to cut one’s throat denies its usefulness as an instrument for shaving.

Those who claim to be democrats and support the undemocratic system of capitalism are no more democrats than the Russian dictatorship is socialist. Democracy, in its fullest and most exciting sense, has yet to be tried by the inhabitants of our society. At the moment, to want power is considered a greedy and rather unpleasant aim; that is understandable, because power under capitalism means power to deny power to the majority. Socialists want power to produce what we need to survive, to live in comfort and to be free. Let those who stand against us tremble: the democratic revolution will not go away as long as men and women have brains in our heads. 

Steve Coleman

You need change . . . (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever line of work you are in, or if you are out of work, or retired, or a housewife, you face many problems. In the back of your mind you are aware that millions of people are starving to death, that there is a constant threat of nuclear destruction, that there are still thousands of homeless families. But, even with a steady job and a roof over your head, you have to face a weekly struggle to get as much as possible out of a wage or salary that is never quite enough.

When we say that you need a great change in the kind of society you live in, we are not trying to persuade you to give up the things you seek in life. We are all trying to obtain material security and emotional harmony, whether we do this by advocating socialism or by sacrificing any chance of a wage rise for the sake of the bomb, the nation and the employers’ bank accounts. The only difference is that the second way, which has been tried by millions of people for hundreds of years, doesn't work.

It is obvious that the present system, in every country in the world, does not look after people’s needs. That is because it is not based on doing so; it is based on a competition between a certain number of investors, extracting wealth from the rest of us, to pile up under their control. The present social system was not designed to serve human needs. It was not set up. with its market mechanisms of buying and selling and all of its institutions and laws, in order to provide the best for all. It gradually evolved, quite chaotically, out of previous systems.

Human history has moved through many phases, each period quite different from the last. We are not now living under a system of slave-ownership, such as existed in ancient Greece and Rome. We do not work as serfs, a few days a week on our patch of land and the rest of the time on our master’s land, as they did in the Middle Ages, the time of knights, barons and the domination of the Catholic Church. The present age is based on the domination of the "profit motive”, which is in fact more of a motive not to produce wealth than to produce it. It means that wealth is only ever produced if shareholders or the government can profit by selling it on the international markets of the world.

Most anthropologists agree that for many thousands of years, humans lived without money. This was not because they were bartering; they simply made wealth freely available to anyone from the community who had made it. This was not because they were "savages” or “uncivilised”, although if “civilisation” means making nuclear bombs and nerve gas, then they certainly were not civilised. No, they didn't have money because they didn’t have any conception of private property. They simply organised themselves freely and democratically, to meet their needs mutually, in a dignified way. This “primitive communism" is generally thought to have lasted for at least 50.000 years. Then, in the past 12,000 years only, we have developed the concept of private property.

Of course, the various property systems which have succeeded one another, such as feudalism or capitalism, have been necessary at the time. There are certain conditions which would be needed before socialism could be brought into being, and these have not yet existed. It could even be argued that from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the capitalist system was useful in opening up lines of travel and communication through trade and enterprise. It was in the search for profit that capitalists encouraged the industrial revolution and the continuing rapid advance of technology, up to the silicon chip. But it has now become an outdated barrier to further progress. The present system across the world becomes more riddled with insane contradictions as each day passes, and these contradictions can only be removed by enacting a great change in the way society is run.

Humans emerged from the animal kingdom. with our uniquely conscious ability to plan society, something above a million years ago. Next to this, these past few thousand years during which we have had the institution of private (and state) property are just a scratch on the surface of human existence. Each system has been ended when it was of no further use. For example, when the early capitalists found that the medieval system of feudalism was obstructing their desperate search for financial profit, they took steps to get rid of it. The measures they took were largely unplanned and unco-ordinated, but they took them nonetheless, similarly, there is now an enormous number of people throughout the world who are being prevented by the present system from satisfying their needs.

But for the first time ever, the class of people who are being frustrated by the present lines on which society is run. form the majority of the world’s population. So when we act together, it will not be simply replacing one band of mediaeval parasites with a team of more up to date, legalised robbers. Ours must be a world-wide, democratic movement, to end all domination and exploitation for ever. This does not mean a return to “primitive communism". We are now in the exciting position of being able to combine the social co-operation of the “primitive" age, with the technological sophistication of the twentieth century. Indeed, it is precisely because modern technology is capable, if developed properly, of providing ample for all, that “modern" communism has finally become a real possibility. What need is there for private property, with the poverty that means in practice for the poorer ninety per cent, when we are now able to manufacture plenty for all?

This brings us to the contradictions of capitalism. These can be witnessed and suffered every day. One minute on a television screen, you see wine lakes and butter and wheat mountains being wasted or destroyed in order to keep up market prices and profits. The next moment you will see pictures of thousands of children, slowly and painfully starving to death. If they had the cash to form a "viable market”, to have “effective demand”, then the governments and food companies of the world would have no hesitation in making plenty of food available to them. As it is, in America last year 32 million hectares were taken out of wheat production, and most food companies have been reducing rather than increasing their production.

Every week, the papers carry stories about homeless people, as if it were unavoidable. But there are now nearly half a million building workers looking for jobs, in this country alone. They are not being taken on, and there are less houses being built than at any time since 1945, simply because there is not enough profit in it. Does it make sense that when you go shopping, you have to compare the prices along the shelves for everything you want, to see if you can afford what you want, or to see if you must take the second best, the inferior version, of a particular product simply because it is cheaper? Why should this be? We all work hard and do what we can for ourselves and others. There are very few people who can claim to be completely anti-social. So why should one person deserve £10 more than another? Why should one person struggle to be able to buy certain things in a shop, when there is someone else who has the power to walk along and buy the whole shop, and dozens more like it?

Clearly there are economic forces at  work which are bigger than any individual. The change we stand for is to stop producing wealth for the market, which is for the profit of a few, and to start producing wealth, greater in quantity and quality, for the free and direct use of all. This is the only basis on which we can solve the problems which confront us today; and the first thing we must do in organising this change is to educate ourselves on the question of what kind of system we are living under at the moment.

Doublethink

The present system produces millions of individuals who suffer from a kind of dual personality. On the one hand, we have been taught that as we grow older, we can find happiness and security through hard work and enterprise. We have been taught that by owning a house (paying a mortgage), finding a spouse (human possessions) and setting up a family (just like the ones that produced us), we will receive the reward of a healthy bank balance (hovering around a healthy zero), a place in the sun (crowded beaches once a year), and a fair pension (living death in the gilt-edged knackers’ yard). People begin to wonder, how they could have been so stupid as to have treated seriously the teachers at school who asked them what they would choose to be when they grow up. The dual personality of capitalism, on the other hand, has to swallow the stories with a pinch of salt in order to remain sane.

Half of you says “Yes, certainly” when the boss asks you (tells you) to do your work his way. After all, it's the boss you’re doing it for. The other half, meanwhile, says "Do it yourself, you lazy bastard”, very quietly. Your right hand is reaching out to wave at the queen as she smiles across the screen on Christmas day to assure us she’s still there, polishing the vases down the Mall, whilst your left hand is reaching into your pocket to check just once more whether you really did spend that last fiver last night. Your mouth seems to be saying something about the importance of the family as an institution, whilst your chest is still tense from that row you all had. Your macho head is shouting about the importance of the army, but your knees weaken when you thought you heard a “four-minute” warning siren.

The contradictions of a society based on profit, not needs, are reflected in the confused characters of individuals. The movement for socialism is built out of the real desire for change which exists in millions of individual workers, whether they have to work as builders, secretaries or doctors. It is only the five percent who possess enough wealth not to have to work at all, who have a real vested interest in keeping the present system. There are very few people who like to see children being turned away from intensive care units and allowed to die, because the hospitals do not have the money to pay nurses. And yet that is what doctors at Guy's Hospital in London have been complaining of recently. There are millions of people who are infuriated by the thought of the governments of the world spending more than a million dollars a minute on weapons. There are hundreds of separate campaigns and thousands of charities, aiming to ease some of the problems which abound in the world today. But one thing so far is missing. This discontent needs to be united into one, genuinely democratic movement whose aim is to get rid of the system which keeps creating all of these problems. Anything short of that fails, because it attacks the effects but not the cause.

The social system we create instead must be world-wide and based on the control of all productive resources, including our own work, by the whole community, without distinction of race, age or sex. This would have to be organised on local, regional and global levels. Specialist bodies would exist, as they do now, to investigate what possibilities exist for meeting people’s needs for food, clothing, housing, entertainment and so on. But if we are to establish a democratic society, in harmony with a modern level of technology, the final choice about how we use that technology must rest with the population as a whole. It is a sad reflection on how capitalism has crushed human ingenuity and imagination, that this idea of genuine and world-wide democracy, based on common ownership of the productive machinery, is now sneered at by many blinkered victims of “education”. It is tragic that young people should be coming out of school forbidden to believe that they have the ability to change the world. Their religion, literature or history teachers might speak nonsense about humans being naturally vile, greedy, aggressive, uncooperative and murderous. Their biology teachers, however, will be quite unable to point to any part of the brain, blood or bodily organs bearing any trace of such evil traits. That is because they are social characteristics, representative of a particular period, and not natural at all.

How would this change to socialism help you to solve your problems? Feminists are against the subordination of women to men. If the socialist principles we stand for were implemented through majority support, we would have a society of men and women standing in equality on the basis of common ownership and democratic control. We seek to end the sexual oppression which is closely tied up with the economic oppression of industry and the family in which, so often, a woman and children are dependent on a man who is, in turn, dependent on his employer. In socialism, emotional blackmail will have the carpet pulled from under it by making the best food, clothing and so on freely available to all, directly from the social stocks, and not dependent on the whim of any other individual or bureaucratic committee.

Anarchists are opposed to the overwhelming powers of the state, with its police, army, courts, fuel supplies, computer banks and so on, so they try to engage in something of a running battle against it. The socialist movement aims to build up a majority of conscious socialists, who will then be able to disarm and dismantle the state machine by taking it over legitimately, through the electoral process itself. When a socialist majority send strictly mandated delegates into parliament, it will be on the basis of a complete rejection of the present, capitalist system. So it will not be a question of sitting in parliament and reforming the same old system over and over. It would be immediately ended. In a socialist world society there would be no state or government, no national boundaries, police or armed forces. There would just be a communal control of society by all the people who live in it, the wealth we produce being freely accessible to all.

Many Labour Party supporters are increasingly cynical about their own party. They are against the Tories because Thatcher glorifies the market system, and her followers clap her. while millions are starving because the market system cannot feed them. If you oppose the Tories because of their defence of capitalism, with its production of wealth for profit rather than direct, free use, then the next logical step for you would be to leave the Labour Party, together with the Liberals and SDP, taking it in turns with the Tories to run capitalism (under a variety of fancy labels), and join the genuine socialist movement. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has been going for about as long as the Labour Party, and still has far fewer members. But that is all the more reason for the thousands of people who have been leaving the Labour Party recently, to look further into what it is they have been neglecting and rejecting all these years. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is made up entirely of socialists, who have rejected the profit system in all its forms.

Whatever your previous political persuasion you need change, and you need it now. The only practical way to move away from poverty, war, violence and pollution is to build a practical movement for the socialist alternative. A democratic, political movement based on a conscious desire to establish a society of democratic control and direct satisfaction of needs already exists and has done for some time. Its numbers have remained small so far, only because the discontent which people have felt with their conditions has been channelled again and again into the blind alley of trying to make the present system work for the benefit of all. Socialists do not have leaders or religious faith. We ask you only to consider the choice between production for profit and production for use, and to think it out for yourself. All the time that we are not taking action to change society for ourselves, the way things are is threatening to change us. At best, it would turn us into automatons, slaves of profitability. At worst, ashes.

Clifford Slapper

SPGB Meetings (1983)

Party News from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There is an audio recording available of the debate between E Hardy (Edgar Hardcastle) and Arthur Johnston of the Conservative Party. The debate was hosted by the Islington branch of the SPGB. I haven't listened to it (yet), so I cannot vouch for the audio quality:

Friday 7 October, 8.00 

Capitalism or Socialism? 

Debate between the Conservative Party (Arthur Johnston) and the SPGB (E. Hardy) 

Prince Albert pub

Wharfdale Road, King's Cross, N1

Letters: Civil servants (1983)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civil servants

Dear Editors

Now a regular reader, I find myself in broad agreement with your views. Particularly. I see people’s faith in the money system as being capitalism’s jugular vein. Your position on Right to Work campaigns is also sound. If this were not so, armaments production could be justified as it provides jobs.

However. I found your April article on the power of the Civil Service's permanent officials to be unconvincing. You say that "the ease with which different governments adopt different policies, and the same government goes in for U-turns, shows that government policies are not determined by the permanent officials." Well, as you have pointed out, how “different” are the policies of Labour and Conservative governments? Secondly: surely, U-turns are more likely to be precipitated by the permanent officials, who remain anonymous while government officials face the music.

A. Beckett 

Great Boughton, Chester

Reply

Mr. Beckett holds that it is the Permanent Officials who determine government policies and reversals of policies; which, he thinks, explains why there is no real difference between the policies of Tory and Labour governments.

However it is a basic error to suppose that the capitalist class is a monolithic body having only one interest, that of defending capitalism and opposing socialism, for within that general framework different groups have sectional interests, absolutely vital to themselves. These lead to conflicts fought out with all the resources at their disposal, including stirring up the workers to support one side or the other.

This aspect of capitalism was already noted by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, 1848:

The bourgeoisie finds itself in a constant battle. At first against the aristocracy; later on with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.

The struggle for the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 was not a sham fight. The factory owners wanted cheap food imports as the way to reduce wages, but the agricultural interests saw in it their own near-ruin.

Other struggles between sections with conflicting interests have been between those favouring the gold standard and those opposing it; (in America the anti-gold campaign by Eugene Debs, with his slogan “Shall mankind be crucified upon a cross of gold?” was backed by the silver mining companies); over a low pound exchange rate good for exporters and a high rate good for importers; over entry to the EEC; over Keynesian doctrines and “monetarism”; and between capitalists supporting the nationalisation of particular industries and those opposing it.

According to Mr. Beckett’s theory it was the permanent officials who made the 1945 Labour government nationalise steel; then made the Tories denationalise it; renationalised it under the 1964 Labour Government and made the Thatcher government get a mandate to denationalise all or part of it. (The Labour Party pledged itself to maintain nationalisation in its 1983 programme.)

But this is quite wrong. Labour Party demands for nationalisation all originated in resolutions passed by their conferences and embodied in election programmes. Likewise, all the Tory demands for denationalisation were, first, items in their election programmes. There can be no explanation why permanent officials should behave in this very peculiar way, giving contradictory advice to successive governments.

Of course the permanent officials have not advised governments to introduce socialism but no government has ever wanted, or would have accepted, such advice. If by chance one of them gave that advice a Tory government or a Labour government, both being firmly committed to capitalism, would get rid of that official or, as has happened in some instances when the advice ran completely counter to government policy, transfer the person concerned to a department in which they would no longer be involved in such policy questions.

Editors.

Crackpot Colonels

Dear Editors,

How is the neutralisation of state power to be made effective? In your publications, you say that with the advent of socialism, socialists will predominate throughout society, including the armed forces, which is fair enough as far as it goes. If the armed forces are for the most part socialists, then they will hardly oppose the new order.

But how will the armed forces first become socialists, in the main? Often the workers mistakenly joining the armed forces will be those who wish to preserve the existing social set up. But that’s not the point, after all, most workers, if not actually desiring the status quo. grudgingly accept it as a fact of nature, and I don’t consider that a barrier! The workers in the army etc. will be subject to more intensive indoctrination and greater isolation than the rest of us. This can only impede the spreading of socialist knowledge, so how do they become socialists? Through their families or acquaintances on the outside? Or perhaps socialists (when in sufficient numbers) will overcome their revulsion at being the boot-boys of capital, and enlist to propagate socialist ideas? Though as I understand it. being a member of the SPGB precludes membership of the armed forces (at least it will with a large socialist movement, hence aware capitalist politicians) and certainly vice versa.

Whatever the outcome, the non-socialists will be in a small minority. Fair enough, we will have abolished the state, and as military geezers are taught to obey orders, they should accept the change with no more trouble than a bit of flag-waving which most people wouldn’t particularly care for. But if there is a comparatively large anti-socialist faction remaining in the armed forces, mightn't some crackpot colonel take it into his head to attempt a disruption of the new society?

H T Muirhead

Dymock, Glos. 

(This letter has been slightly shortened — Editors.)

Reply

Let us be quite clear, that a socialist society will not submit to any efforts on the part of a minority to frustrate the will of the majority. Crackpot colonels will be suppressed with whatever persuasion, or force, is necessary.

But how will a minority be able to resist the revolutionary majority? How will they persuade people who have opted for socialism to turn back the clock to the society of war, famine, poverty, the Bomb? What point of social reference will they have, in a society without classes and class privilege? In whose interests will they advocate the abandonment of socialism?

The argument, of course, is that they will try to win their point not through persuasion but through violence. What instruments will be at hand for them to use in this? If violence is to have any hope against the wishes of the majority it must be a social effort, with popular support in its conception, organisation and carrying out. But the act of setting up socialism, by a conscious majority, will deprive it of these very essentials. The armed forces, for example, do not exist in isolation but rely in all senses on the sanction of the rest of society; deprived of that they cannot exist in any effective sense.

Workers join the armed forces for a variety of reasons; nowadays, probably because they are unable to find a job anywhere else. The armed and police forces are not peculiar in their requirement that their members act against working class interests; this happens in many other jobs as well. Although it is impossible to say why workers take up one job or another, we do know that the growth and the spread of socialist ideas affects them all; none of them are immune. The developing strength of the movement to socialism, then, will enfeeble the coercive state forces and finally the revolutionary act of establishing socialism will entail the working class taking over the state machine as the only public power of coercion. No minority will endure against that.

Editors.

Who said . . . (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here are some quotations. See how many you can correctly match up with their sources.

1. “I want to earn an honest living”

(a) Prince Charles

(b) Lord Wilson

(c) Ronald Biggs

2. “The Pope’s got great charisma. I’d like to sign him up”

(a) The Reverend Moon

(b) General Jaruzelski

(c) Lew Grade

3. “We must show that we have positive policies which are based upon the implacable requirement that the interests of the British people must predominate”

(a) Winston Churchill

(b) Neil Kinnock

(c) Martin Webster

4. “Whether you call it surplus or profit it is necessary, whether we live in a Socialist economy, a mixed economy or a capitalist economy”

(a) HRH The Duke of Edinburgh 

(b) Milton Freidman

(c) James Callaghan

5. “Is any sick among you? Let him call up for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick”

(a) Norman Fowler, Minister for Health

(b) The Chairman of Mazola

(c) The Bible (James v. 13)

6. “No sensible person suggests that students should not learn about Marxism any more than that a Medical course should omit venereal disease”

(a) Alastair Burnet

(b) Professor C K Grant

(c) Kenny Everett

7. “The belief in progress, the belief that Man can manage his own destiny is the most appalling death wish that ever afflicted humanity”

(a) A Neanderthal man

(b) General Haig

(c) Malcolm Muggeridge

8. “I cannot say in all truth that I do look on capitalism and business with the same joy as in 1960”

(a) Richard Nixon

(b) Jim Slater

(c) Roy Jenkins

9. “The efficiency of a business is much more important than the question of who owns the shares”

(a) Yuri Andropov

(b) Reg Prentice

(c) Denis Healey

10. “I went to the Lords because I had nowhere else to go”

(a) Lord Shinwell

(b) Ian Botham

(c) Lord Gormley

11. “I used to say that politics was the second oldest profession and now I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first”

(a) John Profumo

(b) Shirley Williams

(c) Ronald Reagan

12. “Its (the workers’ state) officers are elected and subject to political control. All epaulettes and privileges of rank are abolished. . . All judges must be workers and subject to regular education”

(a) Monty Python record

(b) International Socialists Pamphlet

(c) A Bulgarian politburo brochure

13. “We demand therefore: abolition of incomes unearned by work. Abolition of the thraldom of interest. . . The ruthless confiscation of all war profits. We demand the nationalisation of all businesses which have been amalgamated. We demand that there should be profit-sharing in the great industries”

(a) A Militant editorial

(b) Manifesto of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)

(c) Programme of the National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazi Party)

ANSWERS:

1. (c). 2. (c). 3. (b). 4. (c). 5. (c), 6. (b). 7. (c), 8. (b), 9. (b), 10. (a), 11. (c), 12. (b). 13.(c).

Gary Jay

'Pack Up Your (Capitalist) Troubles' (1983)

Socialist Standard advert from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: The True Ramsay MacDonald (1983)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

From these disgruntled people we have now learned the most surprising things. If they are to he believed they knew all along that MacDonald was childishly ignorant and credulous, extremely vain, a word-spinner to the point of incoherence, unduly fond of the company and flattery of the Peerage, a mere tool of big business and the bankers, obstinate yet easily turned from his path by hints from his political opponents, arrogant and unapproachable, always indifferent to the hardships of the workers, always dishonest in his political enthusiasms, a worshipper of applause and a seeker for limelight, and altogether a most unattractive, uninformed and useless person. If these things are true how comes it that the whole band, from Maxton to Henderson, and from Bevin to Clynes, went on year in and year out following MacDonald, re-electing him leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, praising him extravagantly and vowing that never before was there a man so deserving of trust and confidence? How did the stupid and incompetent MacDonald so easily bamboozle all these clever fellows? They say that they always saw through him, yet he. apparently, twisted them round his little finger? What were they? Innocent victims or criminal fellow' conspirators? Did MacDonald take them in — in which case they are plainly unfitted for the hurly-burly of politics — or were they consciously helping MacDonald to take the workers in?

(From an editorial “Tales told by the Lady’s Maid", Socialist Standard, September 1933.)

Media Politics (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not an exaggeration to say that the media lives in a world of its own where reality is only reluctantly recognised, and only then when it has been distorted. This is especially true of its political content, such as there is, where its relationship with the realities of working class life is tenuous indeed. To achieve this miracle of deception, with the help of its great allies of family and school environments, the media employs the use of the intellectual straight jacket of “left, right and centre” political concepts. All political events and ideas are squeezed into these pigeonholes, where they fight for space with lesser political cliches. This cannot be explained only in terms of being capitalist propaganda since even the people actually responsible for the events and ideas also share this rigid dogma of left and right. Why is this?

To find the answer, let us first see if there is any relevance in this “media ideology”. They give us as examples of extreme left-wing and right-wing political regimes the countries of Poland and Chile. But are the lives of working people in these countries so radically different? Wage slavery, violent state discipline, poverty, industrial conflict, are common to both and, next to these shared realities, any differences so beloved by the media are indeed inconsequential. Then there are, they tell us, the “centre” or moderate countries such as England, Sweden, Australia and even the United States. But do these great democracies allow their working class to escape the economic and social realities of the so-called extremist countries? The “free” trade unions in these countries are emasculated when they enter into “economic arrangements" (wage freezes) with the state for “the good of the nation", as would state controlled unions.

All this media talk completely misses the real issues involved in an explanation of the world’s agony. It is the world system we call capitalism which dictates policy to all governments, left or right. Politics only become relevant to this reality when it is explained in terms of the class conflict which it engenders. There is no ideological difference between state or private ownership of the means of production; in both cases the workers are excluded from ownership.

So why does almost everyone abide by the media rules in political discussions? This is a testament to the power of television, radio and newspapers, but it goes much deeper than this. Most journalists seem actually to believe what they write. On his television chat show, after hearing Arthur Scargill’s confused criticism of the media by reference to its private ownership, Michael Parkinson declared that during all his journalistic career he had never experienced editorial censorship. This, of course, says everything about Parkinson and many like him. but nothing about the media since he is quite incapable of writing anything damaging to the owners.

A clue to the reason for this tenacious intellectual prejudice in journalists might be found in their educational background. Journalism, like politics, history and economics, is considered a trade which must be learnt academically from so-called experts in the profession. Those who go through this training quite often consider themselves qualified to comment on politics with the same authority. What they have in fact learnt is capitalist ideology with its attendant elitist attitudes which, as we have seen, are irrelevant to the real world. This may cause considerable confusion in new journalists when confronting the real world but they are reluctant to give up their newly acquired authority and may sink into cynicism rather than injure their ego by accepting their ignorance. This attitude applies to many professionals in all fields — politicians, civil servants, trade unionists, economists, historians and so on. Why their intellect becomes so rigid and unable to facilitate new ideas is a question which must be asked of humanity as a whole. That it has more than a little to do with the psychological effects of capitalist “education” and family life is undeniable.

Andrew Westley

Editorial: End of the hammer and sickle? (1983)

Editorial from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Skilled commercial artists who also have political knowledge and (most important) an active memory might like to submit their suggested design for a new symbol for the Communist Party of Great Britain, to replace the traditional, and once much revered, hammer and sickle. According to a recent report in the Guardian, the CP are discarding the old symbol because the hammer and sickle, representing a unity between peasants and workers, is out of date. There aren't that many peasants now. Hardened cynics will not be alone if they question whether this is the authentic reason, whether the CP is not also worried about its falling membership, the desperate financial straits of the Morning Star and the fact that they have been outsmarted and overtaken by the trotskyist fringe in the long-running farce of trying to be what is called the vanguard of the working class. Beside the dramatic and exciting activities of the Socialist Workers Party and the rest, the CP appears to he faded and stale If the CP are now looking for a new logo it could well be that, like any commercial firm in trouble, they are hoping to recast their entire image.

Any artist thinking of entering a design faces some formidable problems. It would be difficult enough to symbolise any political party but for one like the CP it becomes almost impossible. To begin with, there are the embarrassments of the party's history, including so many twists and turns, so much compromise and backtracking. How could the slavish adherence to the policies and the interests of the Russian ruling class, involving those infamous overnight changes in policy over the 1939-45 war and the cynical justification of the Stalinist terror which wiped out tens of millions of Russian people, be encompassed in a mere badge?

Then what about the splits opened up in the CP by events like the Russian invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956? These were classic examples of a ruthless imperialist power crushing a threat to its dominance in its sphere of influence — although in these cases the suppression was called Saving Socialism. Such acts are normal in world capitalism but many members of the CP were shocked and outraged because they lacked an understanding of the realities of this system and so were blind to the fact that Russia is another capitalist state, competing against the rest in the deadly business of international conflict.

One example of these conflicts, which again caused much agonv and confusion in the CP, was the antagonism between Russia and China. Communist mythology at one time had it that both these stales were “socialist" and stood in ideological unity against the powers of western capitalism. This fallacy bolstered many delusions among CP members, who preferred romance to knowledge. When the conflict between Russia and China, over the usual issues of economic and political dominance, came into the open, it provoked much questioning and reassessment among CP members. The result was that many of them, unable to reconcile the irreconcilable, left the CP in despair. 

Any new badge for the CP must obviously make reference to the unsavoury tactics of reformist compromise, of which they have always been such enthusiastic exponents. No issue has been too big or too small, too lasting or too temporary, for them to have considered it unworthy of their shrill advice. They have flown banner headlines, organised indignant campaigns, long marches, heated protests . . .  In these campaigns the CP plumbed the depths of dishonesty in the hope of winning the support of workers who did not understand the futility of reformism. They have advised workers to vote for the Labour Party although they were aware that a Labour government would be in continual conflict with the very people who had voted for them. During the war the CP backed Conservative candidates in by-elections, provided they stood as supporters of the Churchill coalition, which oversaw the war effort of British capitalism in alliance with that of Russia. These characteristics are common in the political parties of capitalism so in the end any logo successfully designed for the CP would probably do equally well for the rest. It would need to symbolise ignorance, confusion, despair, cynicism and repression — the entire spectrum of misery which capitalism imposes on the majority of its people.

The alternative to this mess of cynicism and futility lies in political consciousness. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has no time for compromise; we stand entirely and singly for the establishment of a new social order. This order can be brought into being only through a social revolution which must be the outcome of a democratic act by the world working class. And the essential of that act is that it will he the work of politically aware socialists — of people throughout the world who understand that capitalism cannot operate in their interests and who have therefore resolved to sweep it away and replace it with socialism.

But conscious political action cannot result from confusion and deceit. A party which aims, as the SPGB aims, at the development and expansion of political awareness cannot achieve its object by spreading confusion and by wavering in its principles. Such a party must be based on its object of socialism; nothing else will do and nothing else will therefore be considered. From this basis the events of capitalism, and the actions of the parties which support capitalism, can be analysed and exposed.

Socialism will be a society based on the communal ownership of the means of production and distribution. It will be a democratically controlled society. Its wealth will be turned out to meet human needs and will therefore be freely available to everyone. It will be a system without classes and therefore without class conflict. Socialism's harmony of interests will remove war and poverty from human experience. That will be a very different social order from that which dominates us today and which is supported by parties like the CP. They may give themselves a smart new symbol but their tawdry reality remains.

Housing crisis (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why is there a housing crisis? How can there be a housing shortage with so many houses left empty and unused? Why, with stockpiles of bricks, cement, timber, and roofing-tiles are houses not being built in sufficient quantity? Why, after centuries of progress in construction and building technology and the passing of masses of housing legislation by successive governments do poor dwellings continue to be built and unhealthy, uninhabitable older buildings still stand?

It is important to understand — and this is equally true for housing as it is for the distribution of wealth generally — that progress is relative and must, as Marx argued, be judged in the light of the resources and wealth of a society at any one time:

A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But if a palace arises besides the little house, the little house shrinks into a hut. The little house now shows that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the dweller in the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.

(Wage Labour and Capital) 

But the housing market is so irrational and unplanned that even those who own and control the industry cannot now make a profit without the state helping them out. Subsidies, tax-relief and other forms of government inducements are all intended to make the housing market profitable enough for capitalists to invest in. At the general election the Conservatives said they would give more money to housing associations and strengthen the council tenant's “right" to buy. The Alliance said that they would retain the tenant’s “right” to buy and increase the amount of money housing Associations receive “by seeking to attract private finance”. Labour said that it would immediately increase by half the total housing investment programme for local authorities and promised a national action programme to repair, improve or replace run-down estates. But the electorate has heard these types of promises for decades: each successive government has said that it would solve the housing crisis. In 1933, the Minister of Health, Sir Hilton Young, thought “five years" sufficient. A similar view was taken in 1954 by the then Minister of Housing. Harold Macmillan. In 1971 it was to take the Conservative government ten years to get rid of all the slums.

Engels, writing in the nineteenth century, wrote of the housing crisis in these terms:

The so-called housing shortage which plays such a great role in the press nowadays, does not consist in the fact that the working-class generally lives in bad, overcrowded and unhealthy dwelling. This shortage is not something peculiar to the present, it is not even one of the sufferings peculiar to the modern proletariat in contradistinction to all earlier oppressed classes. On the contrary all oppressed classes in all periods suffered rather uniformly from it. To put an end to this housing shortage there is only one means: to abolish altogether the exploitation and oppression of the working class by the ruling class . . . The housing shortage from which the working class suffers today is one of the many evils which result from present-day capitalist production.

The problem remains the same today as it did for Engels. Yet, what has the injection of state finance into the housing market meant for the standards of the working class generally? For those living in council housing it has meant inhuman and insensitive high-rise units or other forms of high-density housing which have caused condensation, excessive heating-bills, violence, suicide and misery. For those members of the working-class forced to take out mortgages the situation is little better. Much of today's private sector housing is built at extremely high densities, often on poor land.

These houses are built neither to alleviate the very real problem of housing shortage nor to transform their “owners” into quasi-capitalists. They are built solely in order that the speculator and the house builder can squeeze the last penny-worth of profit out of a small site. Some rooms are so small as to be unusable for the routines of nuclear family life and bare fences box in tight, private patches of earth with little or no aspect.

Furthermore, due to the economic recession even the minimum of repairs can no longer be afforded. Paint flakes off badly fitted doors and windows, condensation and damp occur and noise transmission is universal. Thus the 1981 report of the English House Conditions Survey showed that there were 18.1 million homes in England but that 1.1 million were unfit to live in, another million lacked basic amenities, a million required repairs of more than £7,000 each and another 2.9 million needed repairs worth more than £2,500. The report went on to show that the total number of dwellings in serious disrepair increased by about 22 per cent between 1976 and 1981.

Recently, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities said that there were serious structural defects in 1.5 million council homes that would cost about £10 billion to repair. In building terms this means that a third of the entire public sector housing could start to deteriorate quickly during the next decade.

In contrast, the Observer magazine recently published an article on how the capitalist class were housed. Their main example was a Georgian house near Reading which was on the market for £2,000,000. It was, according to the estate agents, a little more than 35 minutes from Harrods with the additional advantage of being surrounded by 110 acres of its own land. A Mr Ramsey, of agents Kinnold, Franke and Rutely explained that capitalists like to see everything they control and control everything they can see. The owners have a gate-keeper to shut the gates behind them, eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms — obviously a result of Thatcher’s Victorian dictum that “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”. The house contains a “Complex" comprising the obligatory sauna and whirlpool bath, child's playroom, a billiard's room, a disco, and a tropically heated 40 foot swimming pool.

The working-class should not delude themselves in thinking that there is anything basically different between rented and mortgaged accommodation for the quality and quantity of both types are, in the end, determined by the very same market. Both depend on the conditions under which those with money, land and materials are prepared to lend, invest or build in the housing market. Those with capital to invest do not mind whether it is used to build council houses or houses in the private sector; they participate in the housing market to make a profit. The market determines what is available and at what price — which means that the capitalist class gets the housing they want and profits come before the housing needs of the community.

Richard Lloyd