Editorial: Socialist exclusive (1984)

Editorial from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September 1904 the Socialist Standard came alive and politically kicking: the first issue of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s journal declared:

. . . we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall at least endeavour to lay before you on every occasion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and the truth of our principles.

Today, we can look back on that promise and ask how it has stood up to the test of eighty years during which the events of capitalism have given many an opportunity for it to be kept or broken.

In the First World War we might have gone the way of a host of confused reformists and, telling ourselves that we were only postponing the revolution, given support to one or other of the rival capitalist groups who were in conflict. That would not have been a postponement of socialism; it would have been its abandonment as our policy. Instead our socialist principles demanded that we stood out against the slaughter of workers by each other; “. . .no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working class blood . . ." was how the Socialist Standard expressed our opposition to capitalism’s wars.

Before that war had run its course there was the Russian revolution, which offered false hope to many workers seeking for some relief from the miseries of capitalist society. These hopes, of course, persist to this day; it is still possible to find “communists" who argue that capitalism in Russia and its allied states is different in some basic way from capitalism elsewhere. The SPGB have never entertained such delusions and as early as 1918 the Socialist Standard exposed the undemocratic and anti-socialist actions of the Bolsheviks, pointing out that the new rulers in Russia would have no option but to organise the development of capitalism there with all that that meant in terms of the repression and exploitation of the Russian workers.

The twenties and thirties brought much questioning of capitalism, of whether the slump meant that as a social system it was about to collapse, of whether it would be better organised under a Labour government including an element of ex-trade unionists and the like. Such ideas could only originate in an ignorance of the true nature of capitalism, of how it operates and of what is needed to abolish it. Socialists knew that the system would not, could not, collapse of its own accord. We knew that organisations like the Labour Party, with their promises to run capitalism stealthily in the interests of the working class while they reformed it out of existence, were attempting the impossible. The Socialist Standard put these attitudes; we were not surprised when the two Labour governments failed and when capitalism ground on its repressive, destructive way. Neither, unlike so many people who had put their faith in such delusions, were we disillusioned. Socialist principles had shown that reformism is futile, a diversion of the energies which should be devoted to bringing about a social revolution. Labour government could be no more successful than any other in controlling the anarchies of capitalism. The society of class ownership could be ended only when the working class in the majority understood the need for this and how socialism would be the next stage in social development. Nothing less would do.

The confusion and the irrelevance of the reformists was exposed again by the Second World War, when they argued that democracy was at stake and that the defeat of Nazi Germany (with which they falsely equated the safeguarding of democracy) must take priority over all other objectives including, inevitably, the struggle for socialism. Socialists again opposed that war. arguing that democracy was not an issue in it and that in any case democracy could be defended only through the will of a consciously democratic working class — which meant, in fact, by socialists. The war would not, we argued, make the world safe for freedom nor for peace. Since 1945 dictatorships and repression of the most brutal and pitiless kind have flourished throughout the world and millions have died in wars during this time of “peace”. The socialist case, which the Standard stated with all the force promised in that first issue, has been fully justified.

Since 1945 there has been small reason to feel that there has been any decline in the adherents of the case for reformism. The problems of capitalism persist, indeed in many cases they can be said to worsen. This is the nuclear age, when war promises to be an instant, all-obliterating matter from which settled human life may not be able to recover. World-wide, famine regularly wipes out tens of millions of people.

In many countries there are clumps of refugees, homeless through the conflicts of capitalism and the system’s artificial, inhuman national barriers. Poverty in its simplest form, in which workers struggle day in and day out to make ends meet and to gain access to the most unremarkable of life’s needs, persists. In 1984 poverty has the added impetus of unemployment, to which government’s inevitable response is to tighten the screw on workers, to grind down their already perilous hold on adequacy. But to each of these problems the reformists have their apparent, seductive answer. War, they say, can be eliminated by the capitalist powers agreeing not to behave like capitalist powers. The same can be said about nuclear weapons; the mighty states which have made them should simply agree that it has all been a waste of time and throw them away. Famine can be solved through charity, poverty by an adjustment of state benefits. And so on.

The reality of capitalism is that such problems are endemic to the system. They flow directly from its basis and in one form or another they will endure for as long as capitalism lasts. The reformist case is that capitalism need not be abolished (although some reformists profess this to be their eventual, distant, objective) just yet because it can be modified so as to be acceptable to people. All the evidence destroys this myth and points to the conclusion that socialism cannot be delayed. It points to the conclusion that reformism is not only futile but reactionary, since it aims to postpone socialism when this in fact means the abandonment of the aim of social revolution and therefore the continuation of capitalism with all the problems which so concern the reformists.

The Socialist Standard has stated the socialist case on these issues because it is the official journal of the SPGB. We are an organisation of workers who are conscious socialists; we may ". . . lack refinement of style” but we offer an understanding of capitalism and of the need for socialism which amounts to no less than the only hope for a desperate world. Socialists are democrats; every member of the SPGB stands equally and we have no use for leaders, who exist to lay down policy for, and to instruct, those who are not clear about where they should be going. A democratic political party must control, in the majority, everything that is said in its name and that is what happens in the SPGB. The Socialist Standard, today and for the past 80 years, has stated a clear and uncompromising case for socialism.

Socialists are satisfied — but no more — that our case has stood the test of time and has been kept clear and forceful for all these years. But we are aware that progress towards socialism is desperately needed; we are not satisfied that the workers remain so wedded to capitalism, so susceptible to the specious propaganda for the social system which exploits and degrades them. If we look back, then, it is only to draw the lessons of the past and to apply them in the future. The years since 1904 have taught us of the need to refuse compromise, to stand for socialism and for that alone and to insist that the revolution is an immediate possibility; the working class can and must understand socialism and opt for it. That is the continuing task of socialists everywhere and the Socialist Standard, as their journal in this country, will carry on with it until socialism becomes reality.

When that happens, the role of the SPGB is at an end. A classless, united society will have no need for any expression of class-divided society; there will be no privileges, no coercive machinery, no medium through which ownership on the one hand, and denial of access on the other, are expressed. Neither will there be political parties, which exist as proponents of class interests. The socialist parties alone represent the interests of the working class; when that class is abolished with the establishment of socialism the socialist parties, along with all others, will cease to exist.

There are many ways in which the SPGB and the Socialist Standard are unique and one of them is the fact that we are busily working for our own extinction. That should not of course deter any worker who thinks that socialism is the answer to the problems of modern society. Eighty years of the Socialist Standard is enough and it is time we were able to use these columns to write, thankfully, our own obituary.

The Miner’s Strike – Why (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why did 120,000 miners join what has become the longest, bitterest and most controversial strike in the British coal industry since 1926? Clearly, it is no answer to say that they are motivated by subversive political aims or that they have all been hoodwinked by nasty Arthur Scargill and the NUM leaders. We can read this kind of facile substitute for an explanation in the propaganda press.

Economics under capitalism are concerned first and foremost with price and profit. Production is regarded as “uneconomic” when investment of capital shows little or no prospect of leading to profit for the investor. Being “uneconomic” is not at all the same as being “useless”. For example, dairy farming is currently “uneconomic” within the EEC countries because more milk is produced than can be sold profitably. However, milk is desperately needed by the 40,000 children who, according to UNICEF, die of starvation or malnutrition-caused diseases every single day. So, when the economic experts say that miners are producing too much coal, this excess relates to profit rather than need. Similarly, when they say that investment in certain miners is “uneconomic” this does not mean there is not plenty of coal in them, but that capital investment in mining such coal would be unprofitable.

Politicians like Thatcher have never forgiven the NUM for the success of their last strike. Responding to the feelings of many capitalists, her government wants to weaken the power of the miners. A leaked Cabinet Minute of 1979 explained that 

A nuclear programme would have the advantage of removing a substantial proportion of electricity from disruption by miners and transport workers.

Economists are not paid to think about the devastation of the old mining communities which pit closures cause: destroying long-established ways of life does not appear on their balance sheets. Economists are not paid to register the harsh facts that more than half of the men attempting suicide are unemployed and that the rate of successful suicides in Britain has shot up during the present recession. Nor are they paid to bother themselves about the old workers who will die this winter because they are too poor to switch on a heater. Electricity output has been reduced because there is much less market demand for it by domestic consumers, while the non-recognition of real human demand leads to the totally unnecessary social disease of hypothermia. But none of these factors is of economic significance under capitalism: let communities be converted into industrial wastelands, let thousands of useful and energetic miners be forced into idleness, let thousands be cold for lack of coal-based heating.

Myths about the State

There was once a time when miners, in the company of many other workers, were easily persuaded that the solution to the problems of the profit system was nationalisation of industry. If only the mines were owned and controlled by the government rather than by private capitalists, it was asserted, the miners would have little to worry about. Forty years ago Will Lawther, the President of the Mineworkers’ Federation of Great Britain (the predecessor to the NUM), asked readers to imagine what could be achieved through nationalisation:

It would win the complete confidence of the miners and their families. Generations of suspicion and hatred would be wiped out, and an entirely new attitude developed towards the coal industry . . . Only through public ownership can you really plan the effective use of Britain’s coal resources, plan production on the basis of modernisation or mechanisation, and bring about complete unity between your export and domestic coalfields . . .” (Foreword to Britain’s Coal by Margot Heinemann, 1944).

Lawther goes on to predict that nationalisation would “enormously improve output and make use even of old coalfields that are looked upon as being worked out” and that “only the nationalisation of the mines can win the confidence of the miners”. One can forgive miners for having been taken in by these hopes for capitalism at the time, even if—it must be added—the Socialist Party of Great Britain was then pointing out to those who would listen that nationalisation offered no solution to the workers. But now, after decades of experience of state capitalism in action, it is politically inane for workers to imagine that nationalised industries are in any way immune from the economic laws of capitalism. The NCB, as the state employer, is just as exploitative and antagonistic to the workers’ interests as were the old mine owners.

The second myth which needs to be dispelled is that the state—the government, the law, the judges, the police commanders—is neutral. The state must be the political defender of the ruling class. When thousands of miners are stopped from picketing, when hundreds of miners are beaten by the police and when the funds of the South Wales NUM are stolen by the courts, it is clear that the state exists to reinforce the needs of capital. It would make no difference if the Labour Party was running the state instead of the Tories. That is why, when the Labour Party was in office between 1964 and 1970, they closed down 48 pits and made over 50,000 miners unemployed in the South Wales region alone.

In the first three months of the strike one miner was arrested every twenty minutes—3,282 arrests in all. Over 80 per cent of these arrests were for “breach of the peace” or “obstruction”. Obviously the government has instructed the police to use tough tactics in dealing with the strikers. The well-known television picture of a police officer beating a defenceless striker with a truncheon is but one of numerous examples of police brutality in a battle initiated by the state. But as ordinary workers, paid to do an unpleasant job, it is not the police workers on the picket lines who are to be blamed: the real culprits are the legally respectable and physically secure boot-boys who pull the strings of the state.

The NCB has increased its importation of cheap Polish coal which is one of the factors weakening the effects of the British miners’ strike. The NUM now has an official picket outside the Polish Embassy, calling on the Polish bosses to suspend imports in order to strengthen the effects of the British strike. But when Polish miners attempted to set up an independent union of their own the President of the NUM (writing in his personal capacity) argued that such action constituted “sabotage” and that the Polish miners should be loyal to their state bosses. The capitalists, who not for the first time are benefiting from the tactic of Divide and Rule, must be laughing all the way to the bank as they import cheap coal from their “Communist” enemies. Reproduced below is the full text of a resolution published by the underground Solidarity union in the Warsaw region, first published in their illegal journal, CDN. It shows that the writers and supporters of this Polish resolution are thinking along internationalist lines:

“For four months the British miners have been on strike against a programme of mass closures of mines for economic reasons. The miners are threatened with unemployment. The government has rejected compromise solutions and has resorted to severe police methods against the strikers. Thousands of miners have been arrested; hundreds have been hospitalised and one has been killed.

The government of the Polish People’s Republic, despite hypocritical condemnations of the activities of the British police in the columns of the regime press and by the regime’s pseudo-trade unionists, is profiting from the export of coal to Britain. It sells dirt cheap coal which has been mined in scandalously neglected working conditions and with reckless condemnation of the labour force and the coalfield. The slave labour of the Polish miner serves to break the resistance of the British miner.

British miners! The true sentiments of Polish trade unionists towards the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic and their practices was shown in the recent electoral farce which was boycotted by the workers. In the prevailing conditions of terror, the Polish workers’ movement is at present not in a position to undertake protest actions. But you may be certain that as you have supported and are supporting our struggle, so we are in solidarity with you. We strongly oppose every case where force is used against workers struggling for their rights and interests.” (Published in CDN, Mazowsze region, 26 June, 1984).

How painful it would be for the workers who produced the above resolution to know that the President, and several other key leaders, of the NUM believe that Solidarity should not exist.

What the miners struggle has shown

As the miners’ strike has not been organised by socialists, it is not surprising that tactics have been employed with which we disagree. It is possible that the division within the NUM could have been avoided; full, democratic decision-making within the workers’ movement is always the surest guarantee of strength.

But the miners’ struggle has shown the importance of solidarity between workers of one county and another one country and another. The sense of common purpose and dedication which thousands of miners have shown during the strike contrasts sharply with many previous struggles in trade union history, where workers have been conned into co-operating in their rulers’ interests. Let any miserable little cynic who says that workers are incapable of self-organised co-operation take a look at the tremendous achievements in communal self-help which strikers have set up.

Secondly, the strike has shown the Labour Party and its Leftist followers to be quite unable to point the miners in the direction of socialism. According to the theory, Leftists are supposed to wait for major struggles like this one in order to move in and tell the workers about the alternative to capitalism. In fact, the SWP, CP, WRP, RCP and numerous other inflatable vanguards have not produced a single leaflet between them urging the miners to transform their demands into the political aim of abolishing the wages system. As for the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock and his fellow mis-leaders have had little to offer but empty rhetoric. After all, every time the Labourites stand up in the House of Commons to tell the Tories how wicked they are, the Tories have been able to quote chapter and verse showing that previous Labour governments have run the mines in just the same way—to meet the demands of the profit system.

In any strike between robbers and robbed (with the exception of political strikes, such as when the dockers opposed immigration or the Labourites ran their phoney day of action) the Socialist Party is unequivocally on the side of the robbed. In the class war no worker and no political party can be neutral. But in expressing solidarity with workers in struggle, we point out that our sympathy and their temporary gains will be meaningless unless victory involves winning the war and not just one battle. To win the class war workers must organise as a class for the conquest of the earth and all its resources. No lesser victory is worth settling for.

Steve Coleman

Briefing: Sir Keith's education (1984)

The Briefing Column from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Joseph clashes on ‘Marxist slant' in Open University" was the arresting headline which the Sunday Times (1 July) gave to an article by their Education Correspondent, Peter Wilby. What is happening at the OU? The net contribution of my school and “higher" education towards my socialist knowledge was nil, and that goes for most socialists, I guess. The article just had to be compulsive reading.

Apparently Sir Keith has been taking a close personal interest in the University’s foundation course in social science, coded D102. Earlier this year he asked for copies of the 20 course booklets and commissioned a secret 17-page report, written, we are told, by "a number of professional economists", alleging serious bias.

Just what was the "serious bias” about which Sir Keith is complaining? Wilby’s article quotes some detailed complaints:

1) "The (course) authors are preoccupied ‘with depicting production as essentially a struggle between capital and labour’.” Now in our present-day society—capitalism—the working class, the overwhelming majority, have no other way to scratch a living than to sell their physical and mental energies (labour power). Capital and labour thus face each other as buyers and sellers, those interests a priori must be antagonistic. Another angle on this conflict is to see it as a struggle over the division of the product of labour. The higher the share taken by the non-producing capitalists, the less is the portion left for the producers of the whole wealth of society, the working class.

2) “Profit is seen purely in terms of the expropriation of a surplus created by labour; no mention is made of its possible role as a reward for risk-taking or for the stress and burdens of entrepreneurship.” This concedes that surplus wealth (above the worker’s pay) accounts for capitalist profits. We can concede that a capitalist investor is sometimes taking a calculated risk, with heavy losses on occasions taking the place of spectacular profits. But what have the capitalists as a class contributed to the actual productive process? In both cases, nothing. As for the stresses and strains of entrepreneurship, where they represent a real contribution they are now almost exclusively performed by salaried employees, members of the working class.

3) “The booklets are ‘at great pains to conclude that Britain is basically a capitalist economy’. The report says that ‘most professional economists' would not agree." Very unprofessional judgement, professional economists! It should be obvious from the definition of capitalism which we gave in 1). that the only area of the world to which it does not apply are those still at earlier stages of development (for example. New Guinea). What confuses these "professionals" and others is the position of nationalised industries, where a state-run body acts as employer. However workers in these enterprises are selling their labour power in exactly the same way as workers in "private" industry are to their bosses.

4) “Capitalists are viewed as having a desire to keep wages as low as possible.” We saw under 1) that all things being equal, the smaller the share of the total wealth accruing to the workers the greater the profits of the capitalist class. In some cases, by paying somewhat higher wages an employer may attract better workmen or women and so increase profits. Also, although it is difficult to express this in figures, a happier workforce on pay somewhat above the going rate may perform better and again produce more profits. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be “a desire to maximise profits”, but this is pretty well the same as minimising wages relative to profits.

5) “The ‘overthrow of capitalism’ is mentioned three times in half a page." We know that Sir Keith and his friends don’t want to overthrow capitalism, but here we are given no clue on the context of these remarks and what the OU authors understand by the term.

6) “Monetarist theory is described as ‘silly’ and attributed to ‘class interest’.” Definitely a sensitive point with Sir Keith. Monetarist theory is a totally inadequate model to describe the workings of the capitalist system, which is a long-winded way of saying that it is silly. As such its advocacy can only benefit the class in whose interest the capitalist system operates.

At this point the professional economists might as well give up. From their complaints you would think that course D102 had been prepared by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Alas, this is very far from being the case. In answer to the criticism from Sir Keith’s department. Peter Wilby quotes a spokesman for the University as saying “The booklets also describe Britain as a ‘mixed economy’ and add that they refer to it as capitalist ‘not in order to dismiss the importance of the state sector but to continue reminding ourselves of its dependence on the rest of the economy’.” This quote is enough to show what line the authors of D102 have really adopted. State ownership is socialism. Russia is socialist. The conflict between capital and labour can be regulated within the framework of the present social system, or at least this has to be the implication as the authors have no concept of how it can be transcended.

Having said that, we can afford a chuckle at the extreme sensitivity shown by Joseph and his allies to what is taken to be criticism of their capitalist system of society. Their intervention to try to alter the contents of this course is being undertaken because they believe they are suppressing socialist propaganda. But the contents of course D102 appear similar to the misconceptions propagated for many years now by the so-called left wing parties. These have led many workers, who realised that something is seriously wrong with capitalist society, to expend their energies along futile paths which have divided the working class. In contrast the anaemic, 100 per cent pro-capitalist course which Sir Keith would no doubt like to see substituted for D102 could well be seen by some students as so far removed from real life that the result may be to enhance their efforts to work out things for themselves. That road took me and many others into the Socialist Party.

E. C. Edge

Letter From Europe: Exit the "Communist" Ministers (1984)

The Letter From Europe Column from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

After three years of sharing responsibility for governing French capitalism (for two of which, beginning with the four-month wage freeze imposed in June 1982, the government pursued an openly anti-working class policy), the PCF has decided it has had enough. When Mitterrand changed his Prime Minister in July the PCF found an excuse not to participate in the new government of Laurent Fabius, a whizz-kid of bourgeois origin (his father is a rich art dealer) the successor of Pierre Mauroy.

Although Mitterrand did not insist that the PCF should be excluded he was probably satisfied that they decided to go of their own accord. He had after all changed his Prime Minister precisely to give the impression. in the run-up to the 1986 General Election, that he had broken with his failed past policies. He wanted to alter his government's image by having as Prime Minister a man who better incarnated the change of policy towards the crisis forced on the government by the operation of capitalism: the “modernisation” of industry.

His government had in fact been pursuing this policy for some time but the presence of Mauroy as Prime Minister — and of the PCF ministers — represented a visible link with the previous, failed policy (on which both Mitterrand and his parliamentary majority had been elected) of trying to make capitalism work in the interest of the working class. This policy had been abandoned as long ago as June 1982 when the wage freeze was imposed and a deliberate policy of helping enterprises to restore their profit margins was adopted. It was abandoned, we hasten to add, not because Mitterrand and his government had decided to betray the working class but because it was unrealistic, in fact impossible, since capitalism just cannot be made to work in the interest of the working class. That the previous policy was unrealistic in capitalist terms was explicitly recognised by Mitterrand who repeatedly declared, for the benefit of the PCF and certain members of his own party who wanted to continue the old policy, that the policy adopted in June 1982 was "the only one possible”.

During the presidential campaign in 1981 Mitterrand and his supporters had promised to end the crisis and reduce unemployment by increasing “popular consumption”, by giving people more money to spend as a way of stimulating production. This wouldn’t work as crises under capitalism are not caused by a lack of purchasing power but by a lack of prospects for profit-making.

But it is true that Mitterrand and Mauroy did begin by honouring their promise. The minimum wage was increased, social benefits were improved, more civil servants were taken on. This increase in “popular consumption" financed by the printing press led to prices rising in France faster than among its commercial rivals, bringing about an increase in imports and a drop in exports, a balance of payments crisis and as early as October 1981 a devaluation of the franc. From then on it was downhill all the way: June 1982: Second devaluation. First austerity package. March 1983: Third devaluation and second austerity package.

Meanwhile unemployment grew from the 1,630,700 it was when Mitterrand came into office to 2,147.700 in June 1984.

Parallel with this economic failure went a growing disaffection of those who had voted for Mitterrand and the Left in 1981. Local elections and by-elections all showed a steady swing to the rightwing opposition parties, including the National Front (basically the same as its British counterpart) which, in the recent European elections, polled nearly as many votes as the PCF and won itself 10 members in the 81-member French delegation to the European Parliament.

Here too Mitterrand and his party decided to operate a tactical turn. Instead of appealing to the working class — to whom they had now learned they had nothing to offer given the way the capitalist system operates — they decided to try to show that the Left was just as capable as the Right of managing capitalism—and of imposing the anti-working class decisions that this necessarily involves. If we are going to lose the 1986 General Election, the reasoning went, let us at least show that we are capable administrators of capitalism so that the charge of economic incompetence cannot be levelled against us in the 1991 elections.

Mitterrand began to adopt the language of his conservative predecessor. Giscard. The same terms — modernisation, enterprise, innovation, competitivity, risk, initiative. profit — rolled off his lips. Taxed about this in a newspaper interview on the third anniversary of his election as President. he replied:

What! The words modernisation, enterprise. innovation and the rest are rightwing? That’s an absurd assumption. (Liberation, 10 May 1984).

"Modernisation” is a nice-sounding word, suggesting the building of new factories with robots, automation and the rest. In fact it is a euphemism to describe what always happens when capitalism is in one of its periodic depressions. The least productive enterprises go to the wall and are eliminated from the competitive struggle for profits. This results in a rise in the average productivity in particular industries and so in a fall in their average costs, this putting them in a better competitive position against the same industries in other countries. In other words, the rise in average productivity and so in competitivity comes about not so much through the introduction of modern machines as through the elimination of old-fashioned ones — and of the jobs of those who operate them.

This is what modernisation means in practice. So the workers of France have nothing to gain from the new government’s declared intention, expressed in the new Prime Minister’s first declaration on the very evening of the day he was appointed, to "modernise the country”. This inevitably means more closures, more sackings, more job losses, more unemployment. Fabius openly admitted this in the new government's policy declaration before the National Assembly on 24 July:

Modernisation — one must have the honesty to say so — may cost more jobs before creating them (Liberation, 25 July).

This argument that the way to full employment lies through letting unemployment grow in a depression through the elimination of inefficient firms is true to the extent that slump conditions, if allowed to work themselves through, do eventually prepare the ground for the subsequent period of boom (and vice versa of course, though capitalist politicians are not so keen on mentioning this, anxious as they are to maintain the illusion that a boom can be made to be permanent). But this represents a complete U-turn compared to the pre-1981 election promises of Mitterrand and his parliamentary majority. Not that there was really any choice in the matter: any government has to adopt this approach sooner or later, whether willingly (like Reagan and Thatcher) or reluctantly (like Mitterrand, perhaps), since it is dictated by the economic logic of the capitalist system within which they work.

Mitterrand himself, in his interview with Liberation on 10 May, had also been explicit enough about what modernisation would involve:

If you consider that being on the Left rules out modernising the country because of the suffering that all change causes, then I can't follow you. And yet I ask myself everyday about what I have the right to ask of the working class which has been the victim of so many injustices and so much oppression since the coming of the industrial era.

And two months later, on a visit to the Auvergne region of France, he told complaining trade unionists:

The state is not an industry, and the nationalised enterprises are not there to serve the state. Certainly, they have particular duties, but they must manage, invest, organise according to the idea which they form. If they were to be transformed into a government department, you would see the substitution of a bureaucracy for all the living forces. The idea that a nationalised enterprise can escape from the crisis and artificially create jobs? No, that would be to undermine a sector that I have extended (Le Monde, 8/9 July 1984).

Adding, as off-the-cuff remarks that might have come from Thatcher or Reagan (or Kinnock after he has had three years experience of administering capitalism — if he ever gets the chance, that is), “the state does not have the task of creating industries. of rushing to the aid of enterprises in danger" and “one cannot ask the state to be satisfied with covering losses. It must also make profits" (Liberation. 7/8 July).

In a sense, in belatedly withdrawing from the government the PCF has been more loyal to the promises on which Mitterrand and the PS/PCF parliamentary majority were elected than have Mitterrand and the PS. But what the PCF fails to realise is that these promises were quite unrealistic and could not have been honoured because of the very nature of the capitalist system within which they were to be implemented. Capitalism just cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary earners. It is a profit-making system that can only work in the interest of those who live off profits derived from exploiting wage-labour. Mitterrand and the PS learned this within a year of coming to power and then settled down to administering capitalism in the only way it can be: against the working class.

The PCF, even though it accepted for at least two years to go along with the anti-working class policy any government of capitalism is sooner or later obliged to adopt, still entertains the old illusions. But there's no particular merit in remaining loyal to promises that have been proved to be illusory.

The PCF will no doubt now go before the workers telling them that Mitterrand and his government have failed because they have deliberately chosen to pursue a pro-capitalist rather than a pro-working class policy, whereas this failure was not a question of intention or sincerity or determination but due to the nature of capitalism. Mitterrand, the PS and indeed the PCF failed because in the context of capitalism this was pre-programmed. No government can make capitalism serve the interest of the wage and salary earning majority.

Adam Buick

(Luxemburg)

Billion-dollar Games (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the biggest media and commercial binges in the last four years got under way at the end of July. We refer of course to the Los Angeles Olympics, rumoured by some simple souls to be a sporting festival but in fact an excuse for making money and reinforcing nationalist prejudices.

These were clearly the most commercialised Games ever held. The stages of carrying the Olympic torch across the United States were auctioned for three thousand dollars a kilometre and prominent alongside each runner was someone in a T-shirt advertising the telephone company, AT & T. Each sporting facility had its own sponsor; McDonalds, for instance, built the swimming pool, and Southlands Corporation the cycling velodrome. Fearing a repetition of the Montreal fiasco of 1976 (where the Games will not be paid for until the next century), Los Angeles only agreed to accept the Games if it could be guaranteed that the city would not lose money on them. This was assured when a consortium of businessmen accepted responsibility and set out to make as much money from the Games as they could.

The modern top-class sportsperson can hardly be other than a full-time athlete. Long gone are the days when it was possible to stay at the top by means of a couple of light training sessions a week. Training nowadays is highly scientific, with different emphases for different events, and a daily commitment is required. This is partly why Olympic eligibility is determined not by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) but by the international governing body of each sport. So runners are allowed to make a living from the sport, while swimmers are not. In 1988, when tennis is part of the Games, professionals will be openly allowed to compete — provided they are under twenty!

The American athlete Carl Lewis has openly stated that "the Olympics are about money and not much else”. And he should know: he calculated that every gold medal he won in the Games (and he won four) would be worth one and a half million pounds to him. There would be endorsements for sports products, of course, but also for clothes, deodorants, and the like. Coca-Cola are discussing an extra contract with Lewis worth over four million pounds. Even this will just keep him in the style to which he is accustomed. He maintains his “amateur” status by having his income paid into a trust from which he can draw generous “expenses”. Not surprisingly, he sees little point in formally turning professional.

It may be worth recalling that the original Olympics of Ancient Greece were not based on amateur ideals either. In addition to victory garlands, sizeable prize money was paid, and athletes eventually organised their own professional associations to negotiate with the promoters of games. It is probably not too far-fetched to discern a professional circuit of games which provided an income for highly-trained full-time athletes. There was no pretence that taking part was more important than winning: victory in competition was what mattered, and there were no records or personal bests.

According to the accepted mythology, the Olympics were revived in 1896 because of the heroic vision and single-minded energy of Baron de Coubertin. In fact, there had been plenty of earlier attempts to do so. In 1612, Robert Dover founded the Cotswold Olympics, which won royal approval from James I (they endured in some form till 1852, when they were discontinued because of “debauchery”). In 1862, some “Olympics” were held in Liverpool, but nothing further came of them. Basically, these were sports gatherings for ordinary people — it took an aristocratic movement to get the Olympics truly going again.

De Coubertin was much influenced by the ethos of the English public schools and sport’s role in them. Thus his list of proposed sports for the first Games included rowing and cricket. The early Games were very much for the rich — ordinary workers could not afford the cost of attending, and sporting organisations were too primitive to arrange and finance large teams. In fact it was not until 1908 that entries were made nationally rather than individually, a change which presaged the later jingoism and national rivalries. Many of the early competitors — especially those from the United States and Great Britain — were university athletes, as these institutions provided some of the best facilities for training and competition.

Ironically it was in 1936, the year of the Berlin Olympics, that de Coubertin died. The Olympics had been assigned to Berlin in 1931, before the Nazi takeover, and no had forseen what would happen. No expense was spared in providing superb stadia and other facilities, or in ensuring that the German squad was trained as well as was possible. In 1933 the American Amateur Athletic Union had voted to boycott the Games if German Jewish athletes were discriminated against: but in December 1935 the American Olympic Committee decided narrowly against a boycott. It is often said that the 1936 Games were the first overtly political ones, but a better candidate for this title is the 1920 Games, which were awarded to Antwerp (as an emotional consolation to Belgium after the war) and from which those countries defeated in the war were excluded.

The organisation of events so as to fit in with convenient television timings is a fairly recent innovation but their manipulation for non-sporting reasons is not. For instance, the marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards has no connection with Ancient Greek battles. The distance was fixed at the London Games of 1908. The race was run from Windsor to the White City, which turned out to be precisely 26 miles. But an extra 385 yards was added so that the finish could take place in front of the Royal Box.

Talking of royalty, the Games are fated to occur in the same years as American Presidential elections. But for this, there would hardly have been an American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. This year President Reagan has noted the potential for exploiting the Games as part of his re-election campaign. Having been thwarted by Olympic officials in his attempt to secure a more than purely formal role in the opening ceremony, he made the most of every American success. As far as the tame American media were concerned, there was certainly only one country competing.

Which brings us to the boycott on the part of Russia and other East European countries. This was ostensibly because of lack of guaranteed security in Los Angeles but is more likely to be at bottom another move in the lofty and lowly world of power politics. In view of the strength of some of the withdrawing countries, it inevitably means that the achievement of the winners will be devalued, thus reducing the capital that Reagan can make out of American medals. One side-effect of the boycott was the decision of the IOC to pay all the expenses of the Rumanian team, as a way of ensuring some East European presence.

With these the third Games in succession to suffer from a boycott, the IOC executive committee has proposed that attendance at future Games be made compulsory. Of course, the only way to punish infringements of such a rule would be suspension from the Olympic movement. Like truancy from school being punished by expulsion. It clearly takes an Olympic committee to dream up something like this.

The Olympics, then, were not a sporting festival designed to promote international peace and harmony, but a further example of the way capitalist rivalries and priorities pollute and distort every aspect of life under the present social system.

Paul Bennett

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: No More War? (1984)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago a war commenced of a nature more devastating than any that had occurred before. So great was the feeling of horror aroused by the carnage and the barbarities committed at the time that there was general assurance that "never again" would such a thing happen—and ever since the governments have been preparing for even worse wars.

At present, in Europe and the East, nations are watching each other on the verge of flying at each other’s throats, moved by economic motives similar to those which set guns belching death and destruction in those old unhappy years.

The hollow farce of the League of Nations still plays its expensive and idle part in the game. One of its principal supporters. Viscount Cecil, speaking at Windermere on August 11th, said that "No one could feel security for peace at present. Every day new disturbances arose, rumours of war got about, and countries ; were preparing for the worst." (The Observer, August 12th, 1934)

The way to prevent war is not by engaging in anti-war campaigns. These are quite useless, because they leave the causes of war untouched. The only preventative is to take away the urge to war: take away the profit motive. While private ownership of the means of existence remains, the making of profit is the object of the private owner. Abolish private ownership and substitute for it common ownership in the means of production and the profit motive disappears, taking with it the seeds of war, both internal and external.

Socialism is the only means to defeat the war-mongers.

(From an editorial, "No More War?”, Socialist Standard, September 1934.)

What is Capitalism? (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The wealth of capitalism takes the form of value. Everything has an exchange value which has nothing to do with its real utility as a means of satisfying some human want or need. The exchange value of a product depends not on its usefulness but on the amount of time taken under average conditions to produce it from start to finish; or, expressed in another way, on the amount of socially necessary labour incorporated in it. The aim of production under capitalism is to increase the amount of exchange value in existence, to accumulate capital — a sum of exchange values.

We are so used to wealth taking the form of value — to everything having an exchange value and a price — that this seems to be quite natural. It is only when you think about it a bit more deeply that you realise how strange this situation is. What human beings need to survive are specific, tangible things — food, clothing, housing and the like. This in fact is what wealth is: a product of nature or of human labour that is useful to human beings.

All societies previous to capitalism produced most wealth directly as useful things for consumption. This was so even in class-divided societies where the aim was indeed to produce more and better useful things for the ruling class than for the oppressed class, but where there was still production for use. When you think about it. producing wealth directly as useful things is the obvious, natural aim of production. But under capitalism this is not the case. Wealth now takes the form of value and the aim of production is continually to increase the amount of value in existence. It is completely mad and illogical from the point of view of satisfying human needs.

If you don't believe that the aim of production under capitalism is to increase abstract exchange value (to accumulate capital) rather than to produce concrete useful things to satisfy human needs, just turn to the business section of any newspaper and you’ll find them talking about the “Gross National Product” and saying what a tragedy it is that it has remained stagnant for a number of years now, and so on and so forth. But what precisely is the Gross National Product? How is it measured? From its name it should logically be a catalogue of all the various items of wealth produced in a particular part of the world over a given period. Since it is not possible to compare potatoes with slabs of steel, or tins of paint with wooden chairs, and so on, this would have to be a long list of items expressed in tonnes of this, yards of that, cubic metres of something else. But of course it isn't. The GNP is expressed in a single figure, as so many billions of pounds. How is this possible? How is it possible to compare potatoes, steel, paint, chairs and so on? Well, it isn't, but it is possible to compare the economic value which all these things have under capitalism and this is what the GNP is: an aggregate of the exchange values — prices — of all the items of wealth produced in a country in a year.

Wealth under capitalism is produced as value, in more or less autonomous economic units — enterprises — which employ wage-labour. For, under capitalism, labour power — the human ability to work, a person’s mental and physical energies — is also a commodity, an object of commerce, having an exchange value and a price, more commonly called a wage or a salary.

Basically, an enterprise is an economic institution controlling a sum of capital which, as we saw, is a sum of exchange values expressed as a sum of money. Its economic aim is to end up, after producing and selling its commodities, with a greater sum of exchange value (money) than it started with. Of course as exchange value is an abstraction it must be embodied in real concrete things and, since the things necessary to production are raw materials, machines and labour power, it is in these that exchange value (money) is embodied or invested.

The source of the increase in exchange value which enterprises seek and, generally, obtain is the unpaid labour of those who work in the enterprise. For labour power has the peculiar property of being able to create new value. This is a consequence in capitalism of the unvarying fact that wealth, as something useful to human life and survival, is produced by human labour applied to nature-given materials. But labour power produces not only new value but an amount over and above its own value which it is paid as wages. This extra value, or surplus value as Marx called it, belongs not to the workers but to the enterprise. At first it is embodied in concrete things, in the particular product that the enterprise produces, but when these have been sold it has been converted into money and becomes the monetary profit which is the practical aim of production under capitalism.

But enterprises are not free to do what they like with these profits. They are compelled by the economic forces which come into operation precisely when production is carried on for profit by more or less autonomous enterprises, to re-invest the greater part of it in expanding production. Thus capitalism is essentially an economic mechanism, that of the accumulation of capital out of the surplus value produced by wage-labour. It is an impersonal mechanism in the sense that it operates independently of human will. Those in charge of enterprises and those in charge of governments have to implement it: they are cogs in the mechanism. Who benefits from the process of capital accumulation, and how, is also irrelevant because everywhere a part of the surplus value is in practice consumed in good living by a privileged group instead of being re-invested. A whole range of different arrangements are possible here and exist in practice.

In other words, it is not legal property forms and the internal organisation of enterprises that define capitalism. Capitalism is not a particular form of property ownership nor a particular form of industrial control, but an economic mechanism. Where this mechanism exists and operates, there capitalism exists, irrespective of who controls enterprises or enjoys a privileged consumption. This is why neither the state ownership nor the workers’ control of industry nor even the abolition of legal private property incomes amounts to the abolition of capitalism. What must be ended to abolish capitalism is the production of wealth as value: production directly and solely for use must replace production for sale on a market with a view to profit — which can only be done on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Adam Buick

Obituary: Bob Carlton (1984)

Obituary from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with deep regret that we report the death of Comrade Bob Carlton of the Socialist Party of New Zealand.

Auckland branch members will remember Bob mainly for his work as Treasurer, both for the Auckland branch initially, and then General Treasurer for the SPNZ. He carried out this task with complete honesty and integrity. His books were always immaculate and no auditor could ever fault them.

Bob was a tireless worker for socialism. Any project the party undertook, Bob was always willing to take on more than his share of the work. He was a quiet man. but possessed ironclad principles which he would not compromise for anyone or anything. So much so that in World War II, Bob chose imprisonment rather than take part in the horror of slaughtering his fellow workers.

Bob's great love was fishing and the writer spent many a pleasurable hour on the harbour with him, catching fish and talking socialism. His comrades will miss his warm friendly smile. He had a generous sense of humour and a dry wit that made being in his company a real pleasure. Our sympathy goes to his family, who we know will feel a sadness that will remain always.

SPNZ

Obituary: Howard Grew (1984)

Obituary from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Members and friends will be extremely sorry to learn of the death of Howard Grew on 16 July. He and Helen his wife joined the Party in 1947 and 1949 and were very active members for many years.

Howard did long stints for Birmingham Branch as Secretary and Literature Secretary; and he was an active propagandist, particularly on the outdoor platform in the Bull Ring. His smart appearance, in a suit with a collar and tie and often a flower in his button hole, made nonsense of the idea that all workers wear overalls. As a local government officer and an energetic member of his local branch of NALGO he was well fitted to explain their class position to his fellow workers. His sense of humour and his powerful voice carried socialist ideas to them in a way that they could not ignore.

Eight years ago, just before he retired. Howard became critically ill. When he eventually did recover he had to adopt a much less active life. Instead of joining the re-formed Birmingham Branch, they both remained Central Branch members. We extend to Helen at this painful time our sympathy and our comradeship.

Ron Cook

Obituary: Florrie Evans (1984)

Obituary from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Florrie Evans, who died recently in her eighties, was best known for her work behind the scenes at Head Office. Under the Rules of the Party, all branches must receive written reports of the weekly proceedings of the Executive Committee. They also receive Agendas and reports of Annual Conference and Delegate Meetings. This facility has been extended to members of Central Branch, Groups and Parties overseas. In addition there are many special reports and other documents to be typed and circulated. It could not be otherwise in a democratic organisation such as the SPGB, where the fullest information about all aspects of the Party's work must be readily available to the membership. This entails a tremendous amount of clerical work which is not very glamorous, perhaps even dull. Unlike speakers or writers, such clerical labours go largely unnoticed, and if anything are taken for granted.

Until recently Florrie, among others, devoted herself to this work with faultless efficiency. Among other jobs she was assistant General Secretary, and held the post for some years. She was also secretary of the Camden branch until a few months before her death, typing and duplicating the numerous statements, some of them quite lengthy, which the branch circulated throughout the Party.

The Party simply could not function efficiently without comrades such as Florrie. We owe her a debt of gratitude for her 50 years of total dedication to our Movement. We can only repay her by working harder to achieve our objective—socialism.

Jim D'Arcy

The Democratic Way? (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

When stripped of its showbiz trimmings the 1984 American Presidential Election is looking more and more like a rerun of last year's British counterpart. In both cases the incumbent governments have presided over very large increases in unemployment, with all this means in terms of working class misery and have responded by reducing rather than increasing the scale of welfare benefits. At one time the Labour Party in Great Britain had high hopes that this would lead to the Tories' defeat, but bitter disillusionment awaited them in 1983. They failed then basically because they were unable to convince workers that they had alternative policies to reverse the downward slide. Views expressed by embittered lefties like Alec Kitson, that Labour's 1983 Manifesto was effective but that defeat came about through misrepresentation by the Tory press, are not supported by the facts. If the American Democrats harboured similar illusions about an easy return to power they will long since have abandoned them in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. They have however made a start, choosing their candidates for the Presidency and producing an election programme. It has to be remembered that it is the party which wins the race to the White House which forms the next government irrespective of the results of the elections to the two Houses of Congress.

Walter Mondale went into the Democrats' July convention in San Francisco in an apparently impregnable position. The only way he could be thwarted would be by application of a new rule under which delegates can switch their vote before the first ballot. This is however designed to unite the party behind an obvious front runner and avoid prolonged balloting, not to block a candidate who is the clear choice of party workers. The only way such a tactic could have been employed in Mondale’s case was if the convention had considered that someone else (which could really only mean his main rival Gary Hart) had a better chance of defeating Ronald Reagan.

The primary campaign can be divided into three phases. At first Mondale appeared to have a clear run. After Hart's victory in New Hampshire in early March it was suggested that Hart’s “new ideas” might sweep him to the nomination. In the context of trying to obtain a better deal for the working class under capitalism, any claims by Hart to have new ideas merely revealed his political cynicism and his failure to maintain his momentum during the final phase of the primaries may well have partly resulted from this point having sunk home. However in the field of the Democrats' 1984 chances of success, Hart’s complaint that the pro-Mondale forces represented the old alignment of Democrat supporters had some basis, in as much as Mondale’s biggest wins came in traditional strongholds and relied heavily on his following in inner city areas, the trade unions and so-called ethnic minorities. In contrast Hart’s successes came mainly in areas where the Republicans were successful in 1980, some of which the Democrats must win back in November.

The effect of the often bitter primary campaign on the Democrats' chance was summed up in The Times (7 June 1984):

According to Mr Mondale, who is trying to assure himself of the nomination by acting as though he is already the Democratic choice, the bruising primary battle has not caused irreparable damage to the party. Opinion polls tell a different story, however. When he opened the primary campaign as the Democratic front-runner polls showed him leading Mr Reagan by more than two points. Today, after 57 Democratic primaries and caucuses involving 15 million voters and $45m (£32m) in campaign spending. Mr Mondale is trailing Mr Reagan by eight points.

The gap then widened further and the Sunday Times (1 July 1984) indicated that Reagan led Mondale by 19 per cent and Hart by 12 per cent. There were however then still four months to go to polling day. If Hart had been chosen as candidate for the vice-presidency his apparent pull outside the traditional areas of Democratic support might have helped Mondale. However the low rating that Reagan has among women voters (according to The Times of 9 June 1984 Mondale leads him by 16 percent in this category) probably had much to do with a woman being chosen as Mondale's running mate. Ronald Reagan is said to hold old fashioned biblical views on the role of women in society. The Times (7 July 1984) reported that the National Organisation of Women (NOW) passed a resolution last weekend warning Mondale that they might initiate a potentially embarrassing fight at the Democratic Party convention . . .  if he fails to nominate a woman.” These campaigners should have realised from the experience with Margaret Thatcher. Indira Gandhi and earlier examples that electing a woman into a traditionally male post will do nothing to promote equality between the sexes nor to alleviate the problems of capitalist society.

The Democrats’ election platform was not finally hammered out until the convention met, when a 100-page document drawn up after much horsetrading by a 184-member platform committee was presented at San Francisco. This gives at least some idea of the stance likely to be adopted by the Democrats in November; for example, it calls for annual summit meetings with Russia starting next year. The Times (25 June 1984) reported that:

Attacking President Reagan as dangerous, reckless and out of touch with reality, it says the next President should update and resubmit to the Senate the unratified Salt 2 arms reduction treaty. On domestic issues, the document calls for new or enhanced government assistance for the various constituencies that form the party's backbone — the poor, elderly, blacks and other minorities. It also proposes tax increases for the wealthy and big companies to help pay for these programmes.

All this has a familiar ring to British ears. Although the Democratic Party has never claimed and is not likely ever to claim, to be a socialist party, here we have a programme that could easily have been put out by the Labour Party in Britain, perhaps accompanied by fanfares heralding a “new socialist dawn”. The only thing missing is any mention of a cosmetic nationalising of "the commanding heights". What is more, the Times report went on to say that "the document is more conservative than in recent years”. Coupled with the observation that the Democrats draw their main support from the same sections of the working class as do the Labour Party, this similarity of platforms intensifies the thought that the 1984 Presidential election is like a rerun of June 1983 in Britain. And it seems unlikely that the Democrats will be any more successful than Labour were then.. Which need not trouble anyone who is aware that Labour or Tory, Republican or Democrat, make no difference to the capitalist system.

E. C. Edge

Unemployment (1984)

Book Review from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment by Kevin Hawkins (Penguin. 1984)

It may be one of life's sick jokes to explain to the unemployed why unemployment exists; and to show how one form of poverty can more effectively be replaced by another. Hawkins begins his work by dismissing some of the myths as to why there is unemployment. It does not occur as a result of "the provision of generous welfare payments nor any other such diversionary nonsense" (p. 5). He points out that labour shortages can exist alongside unemployment. This is not because generous welfare payments make the unemployed too clumsy but often because there is a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and the requirements of labour. Similarly. the existence of "scroungers" does not explain current high levels of unemployment. This myth can be exploded by examination of the levels of benefit which are supposedly being "scrounged”. Between 1971 and 1980, levels of unemployment benefit "fell from 70 per cent to 46 per cent . . .  of average earnings" (p. 26). Without earnings related supplement the figure dropped from 45 per cent to 33 per cent of average earnings.

Hawkins, as Director of the West Midlands CBI, views the problem of unemployment from the standpoint of the industrialist. He talks of the necessary "professional approach to the use of resources, especially manpower" (p. 78) that has arisen out of the current recession. Manpower is simply a resource that must be manipulated for the prime good of a social ethos whose only consideration is profit and “efficiency".

Hawkins accepts unemployment as a prominent feature of British society for the rest of the decade. This may seem to offer little comfort to the long-term unemployed but he does suggest some measures which he believes will alleviate the problem. He claims that his strategy to reduce unemployment is based on principles that are “humanitarian, economic and political in character" (p. 107), yet the humanitarian approach takes a nose dive two pages later when we are told that the rationale must be assessed “not by their effect on the unemployment figures but by the contribution they make towards improving the supply-side performance of the economy” (p. 109).

Hawkins' plan for the future lies in reducing business costs not generated by market forces, and by these he means taxes on employment. He argues that government must stimulate employment in roads and railways and that it should cease subsidising specific firms and increase the supply of highly-skilled manpower. His big plan for the future is to reduce the costs of labour — the main ingredient in this economic soup. He argues that wage costs must be adjusted to the current level, a sufficiently vague phrase which he explains “in more common language, until workers ‘price themselves back into jobs'” (p. 115). This is the old old story of when in doubt blame the workers. We are expected to accept the old adage of what is good for industry is good for the people.

Hawkins calls for an immediate wage freeze that will shock workers into a new sense of realism and keep them in their place. His alternative strategy is to further weaken the power of the unions, presumably to enable industry to dictate all conditions of service and levels of pay. He also advocates the subsidising of employment by central government and applauds the Community Programme Scheme. It is interesting to note the extent to which the humanitarian approach has given way to economic and political considerations when he says:

It has also been argued that the financial incentive to apply for a CPS place is inadequate insofar as the average wage of £60 a week on the scheme is less than the benefit income which a married man with several children can draw. Rather than increase the average wage to take it above the benefit ceiling, thereby increasing the gross cost of the scheme, the remedy may well be to expand the number of places available at the current wage and simultaneously reduce the benefit income. (P 124)

This is allied to such schemes as job-sharing in which the wage is split between two persons, supposedly to ensure a statistical reduction in unemployment but more realistically a statistical increase in poverty. To ensure that even this does not burden the employer by increased paperwork it is suggested that a grant be made available to implement the scheme. Hawkins recognises that his policies may well increase inequalities and social division but “no apology is made on this account", for he has already explained that he is concerned with “the importance of wealth-creation, as distinct from wealth-distribution” (p. 132). In this the book reads like some latter-day Capitalist Manifesto. The working class are punished for the inefficiencies of capitalism and its inability to satisfy the needs of society's members. To cling in desperation to such a system seems absurd. To justify that system by a more systematic exploitation of the working class is contemptible.

Philip Bentley

Running Commentary: Foul play (1984)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Foul play

This month there will be a vast sigh of relief throughout the land. It will affect thousands of small boys ruining their shoes kicking a ball about school playgrounds. It will come to thousands of people whose working week has stretched like a desert before them with no oasis at the end of it. It will be heard by not a few journalists who will be searching their dictionary for cliches to describe goals, fouls, deficient referees . . .

The sigh of relief will mean that the football season has come round again.

In remoter places it may still be possible to find people who think that professional football is a game and who therefore expect it to be conducted on the basis of something called “sportsmanship”. Sportsmanship entails not throwing the ball away from your opponent after you have put it into touch, it means refusing to kick members of the other team when they approach (whether they have the ball or not), it means suppressing the urge to fist away a certain goal if you are on the goal line in the hope that the other side may miss the inevitable penalty . . .

But professional football can have little time for such niceties for there is a lot of money in the . . . we were going to say game but perhaps business is more accurate. Not that many clubs make a profit on the books — it is more often a matter of wealthy capitalists disbursing some of the proceeds of workers' exploitation in prestige ventures and so helping their other enterprises to be more profitable.

The keen competition in football has led to the enormous transfer fees, now commonly at the £1 million mark, and to the unimaginable pressures which this exerts on the footballer who carries the tag of the price they paid for him onto the field before the expectant thousands, each Saturday.

Little wonder that football stadia are now places of such tension, where it is fairly easy to get involved in a fight, where opposing tribes gather to match their chants and their physical prowess and where myths about all these things abound. There is now, as we all know, a thing called football hooliganism — an offence against popular order which has a special flavour, its own presumptions and battlefields, its own vocabulary of combat. It is also an opportunity for frustrated youth to give vent, by adopting certain uniforms like a shaven head and seeking consolation and security as part of the hooligan tribe.

It is all a part of this, that the National Front should find fertile ground on the terraces. For some years now this odious bunch have confessedly carried their propaganda to the young football “fans”, so that racist abuse against coloured players is now a commonplace and racist slogans share walls in some football-devoted areas with those which support the local team.

This is not a pleasant picture but it is real. Capitalism's priority is the making of profit and in that cause, directly and indirectly, all other things are repressed and distorted. Beside the needs of the balance sheet, what we are encouraged to regard as the better elements of human behaviour must take a back seat. “Sportsmanship” (if there is such a thing and if it is anyway valid or desirable) implies a readiness to concede to an opponent, to play by agreed rules even when it would be easy to break them, above all to keep things in perspective. It would be laughable, to suggest to any top soccer club that they treat such things as their first concern.

Capitalism is a competitive system which distorts all it comes into contact with. The noble aspirations of “sport” have no chance in this situation. A society based on majority interests, in which competition will be unknown and even not understood, will take a very different view of such things; what we call sport may not exist in a co-operating humane system.

Meanwhile, the cruel reality of September 1984 sighs its welcome to the new football season and the distractions it offers, like an opiate, to the suffering, frustrated, aimless people.

Order, order!

His unrelenting left-wingery has been responsible for Dennis Skinner’s reputation as the Beast of. rather than the Honourable Member of Parliament for, Bolsover in the County of Derbyshire. Skinner is an undiscriminating enthusiast for almost every protest movement to cross his path; he is quite capable of attending a rally, on some issue or other, uninvited and then to steal the show with a hyperbolically rousing speech. He views Parliament as a place remotely populated by beings unaware of the reality culture of working class poverty (in which he may have a point). No wonder he entertains, or outrages, regular listeners to the broadcast proceedings of Parliament with his ceaseless barrage of quips and jeers. No wonder he managed recently to get himself suspended from the Commons for suggesting that Margaret Thatcher would try to bribe judges into doing as she wants. This was of course a slur on the judges who, when it suits them, insist that they can operate without any interference or protection from MPs. But even worse it was an attack on the integrity of another Member, and while the Commons will stomach all sorts of things — declarations of war, laws to intensify working class exploitation, archaic rituals to celebrate the dominance of the ruling class — they will not endure any suggestion that they are not all unwaveringly honest and dependable.

Skinner's suspension was quickly followed by that of Martin Flannery, another left winger, for making a similar comment. Any excitement at these outrages was muted by the expectation that left wing MPs are bound to get impatient with the established niceties of Parliament — after all they are there to hustle in the revolution — and so will sometimes get themselves thrown out of the place for a while. There are many precedents for this, for example the much-feared Clydesiders who came roaring down to Parliament in the twenties promising to tear capitalism down with their bare order papers: “When we come back," one of them assured the ecstatic crowd seeing them off at St. Enoch's Station, “this station, this railway, will belong to the people".

That kind of verbal excess was all very well; it was another thing entirely when another of the Clydesiders, James Maxton, accused the Conservatives of being murderers. Maxton complained, in a debate in June 1923, that cutting grants to child welfare centres in Scotland would lead to an increase in the death rates among children: "I call it murder ... a cold, callous, deliberate crime in order to save money . . .” As a notably crusty Tory defended the cuts, Maxton and three other Clydesiders were suspended. There was prolonged uproar in the House; Honourable Members, after all, did not expect their complacency to be disturbed so abruptly. Macdonald, the Labour leader, sat pale with anger at the outrage — not at the suspensions nor the protest nor even the cuts which were depriving the needy children but at the misbehaviour of the Clydesiders who were his supporters and who needed to learn how to behave among their betters.

Well, that was over 60 years ago and almost all the Clydesiders are dead now, with little to remember them by apart from their protests. Capitalism has weathered their disruptions, their impatience, their demands. The railways and the stations, like the rest of the means of wealth production and distribution, do not belong to the people.

None of this may impress Skinner or Flannery but it should have an effect on the workers who give them support. There is no point in going to Parliament with a mandate to administer capitalism and then using the place to protest about the effects of the system. Throughout the modern world parliament is the seat of power, where the coercive state machine is controlled. If workers are to bring about the revolution for socialism they must organise democratically for the capture of such places, to change them from agents of their suppression to those of their emancipation.

Free the airwaves! (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rapid development of the technology of communications makes present social relations more and more outdated with every day. The obstacle to a more free use of these exciting new channels is the same as that which has held back the spreading of knowledge for hundreds of years: the fact that a minority class possess and control the means of communication just as they do the means of production in general.

In 1637, under a decree of the Star Chamber, whipping, the pillory and imprisonment were to be the penalties for publishing without the consent of the licensers, who were headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In later years, an invidious “tax on knowledge" known as the Stamp Duty was the slightly more subtle method used to prevent the majority of the population making "subversive" use of their growing literacy. In 1831, however, and in defiance of the Stamp Duty laws. Henry Hetherington brought out the Poor Man's Guardian, a "weekly newspaper for the people, established contrary to law, to try the power of ‘Might’ against ‘Right', price Id”. On the front page, in place of the official government red stamp was a black one inscribed “Knowledge is Power", with a drawing of a printing press and the words "Liberty of the Press”. The first paragraph of this journal is worth quoting from, if only to demonstrate the difference between this early working-class paper, and its latter-day name-sake, the Liberal Man’s Guardian:

No more evasion; we will rot trespass, but deny the authority of our "lords" to enclose the common against us; we will demand our right, nor treat but with contempt the despotic "law" which would deprive us of it.

The Stamp Duty was finally abolished in 1855, but not before Hetherington had served a prison sentence for his pains.

The capitalist state is a coercive machine and overcomes the sporadic resistance of individuals and groups by resorting to force or the threat of it. But it could not survive for long if it had constantly to use such brutal (and costly) methods. In the course of the nineteenth century in Europe there gradually evolved an ideology of reformism, the intention of which was to replace repression with placatory gestures to accommodate the working class into the administration of their own exploitation. This presented the ruling class with a dilemma on the question of working-class literacy. As a Justice of the Peace was quoted as saying in 1807:

It is doubtless desirable that the poor should be instructed in reading, if it were only for the best of purposes — that they may read the scriptures. As to writing and arithmetic, it may be apprehended that such a degree of knowledge would produce in them a derelish for the laborious occupations of life.

 In 1870, this dilemma was solved through the enactment of the Education Act. which provided for a standard system of state-controlled schooling, capable of manufacturing the raw material for modern industry: literate, numerate and disciplined wage-slaves. The tradition of independent working-class self-education continued to flourish, however, in Mechanics Institutes, in bodies such as the Workers Educational Association, and through the carefully preserved bookshelves of knowledge passed down from one generation of workers to another, cherished for the relevance of their contents to the problems which confront workers: the works of Marx and Engels, of William Morris and Robert Tressell.

The early twentieth century witnessed an explosion of large-scale communication technologies, once again under the strict and stifling control of the state or of private business interests. In 1984, more than one hundred and fifty years after the publication of the Poor Man's Guardian, it is still illegal for anyone to broadcast publicly over the airwaves to others, without the (unlikely) approval of the BBC or IBA. The 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act allows the Home Office almost total power to control and regulate the use of the frequency spectrum. The capitalist class monopolise the land and factories across the world (including the state capitalist Russian empire); the air itself, however, is no more immune from this tragic abdication of responsibility for our world and lives which we make by allowing a minority to possess that world.

The 1930s saw the evolution of the new culture industry, with an increasingly uniform state-regulated leisure entering the sway of the world market. In marketing communications as a commodity in itself, huge profits were accumulated. The big telecommunications multinationals such as IBM. ITT, Western Electric and AT & T are usually to be found on the list of top ten US companies today.

Of course, there have continually been attempts at various levels to evade this monopoly. In 1962 a young Irish businessman. Ronan O’Rahilly, tried to promote a recording of Georgie Fame and came up against the power of EMI, Decca, Pye and Philips, who between them cornered 99 per cent of the market. All the radio stations, including Radio Luxembourg, were working hand in glove with these companies, so O’Rahilly founded Radio Caroline. In 1967, however, the Labour government’s Marine Broadcasting Offences Bill outlawed all the pirate stations and later that year the BBC’s new 4-channel radio service came into operation with Radio One as a pop channel, all safely under the control of the (Labour administered) capitalist state.

Communications technology in the twentieth century has been developed according to the needs of profit and, as a corollary to this, according to military needs. By the mid-seventies there were, according to NASA, about 3,700 satellites in space. Of these, only a handful were communications satellites; the vast majority served the military establishments of the superpowers, in command and message systems, logistics, interception and surveillance.

Under capitalism, the latest advances in communication technology will be used to improve the efficiency of profit accumulation while dividing people more and more from one another and from their own self- determined needs. For example an advertisement for one of the home microcomputers on the market speaks of the delights of "balancing the family budget" (working out what you can no longer afford after splashing out on the computer) and of "the fascination of controlling your own private little world" as being "addictive".

With the advent of socialist democracy, there could be a great proliferation of multilateral communications systems. We must forget the false division between the passive entertainment of the media and the active process of education. In the words of Brecht, “Radio must be changed from a means of distribution to a means of communication". But for the devices at the disposal of humanity to be used to enhance, rather than obstruct, the democratic control of society, we must replace the social relationship of employers and employed which permeates the world today with social relationships of equality and co-operation:

A microphone is not an car, a camera is not an eye and a computer is not a brain . . . as we design technological systems, we are in fact designing sets of social relationships. (Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee?)

The forms which communication takes will be directly related, in other words, to the form which society takes. If we are to start communicating with one another globally on the sophisticated level which modern technology has made possible it is a social revolution, rather than a technological revolution, which is urgently needed.

Clifford Slapper