Sting in the Tail: Discontented Capitalists (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discontented Capitalists

At present Lord Palumbo is facing a fierce legal battle with his son and daughter over his management of a £70 million trust fund. They reckon he should be replaced as trustee as they don't like some of the things he is doing with the money.

This wrangling over the loot produced by the working class amongst the families of the capitalists is no new thing, but what makes it interesting is some of the expenditure by Lord Palumbo that is revealed by the dispute.

"Among the transactions being questioned by the children are the purchase of a Scottish island and two houses in France worth £4.5 million; £9.5 m in directors' payments; charitable donations of £4.9m; and donations to Tory party funds of £263,000.

They also allege that £13m has been spent on works of art, £2.5m on wine and about £2m on assorted properties and vintage cars. Lord and Lady Palumbo deny any misuse of the trust fund."

(The Independent 6th August).

Managing a £70 million trust fund must be quite demanding, doing so while allegedly consuming about £7,000 a week, since 1987, on booze is mind blowing!

Would-be capitalists

Workers are forever dreaming of winning the football pools. Living, as they do, in poor housing and fearing the prospect of unemployment it is not difficult to see why.

If you live in a large city like Manchester or Glasgow, statistically you have a better chance of being murdered than winning a large prize on the pools.

Even if you should be one of the very lucky few it does not mean security for life as shown by a report in the Sunday Times (31 July)

"Stockbroker Peter Creegan, who advises Littlewoods winners, advises: no pools winner should give up work unless he is at least 40."

Certainly, if like Lord Palumbo, your wine bill is £7,000 a week, you should consider keeping on your day job.

Contented capitalists

Under the heading "City Warms to Tony Blair’s Labour", The Independent (6 August) in their View from City Road column recalled how pleasing past Labour governments have been to all those drones, hangers-on and speculators collectively known as "the City."

"During the first Wilson government of 1963 to 1970, shareholders saw a 100 percent return on shares, or 13 percent a year, and in the second period of Labour rule returns were nearly 200 per cent, or 40 per cent a year, according to figures prepared by BZW.

Gilt markets did not do so well in the first phase, returning only 5 per cent over the seven year period, but returns were over 100 per cent, or 20 per cent a year, under Labour in the seventies."

Remembering that the source of all rent, interest and profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, you can see that while some sections of the British capitalist class may rejoice at the return of a Labour government no member of the working class should.

Odious comparison

Some other shareholders are also upset. These are managers in British Telecom who are faced with redundancy. BT wants to get rid of 6,500 of them this year even if this means by compulsion.

As is usual in such cases, those faced with the sack argued that savings could be made elsewhere and pointed to the huge sums paid to BTs Board of Directors.

BTs Chairman, Sir Iain Vallance, had a predictable answer to that one:

". . . board decisions were more far-reaching in their impact and deserved a higher bonus level, while board salaries also had to reflect the level of pay at other top companies."

(Guardian 29 July)

That last bit is sheer humbug. What if BTs unions demanded a pay rise because "other top companies" were paying more than BT workers were getting? Vallance's answer to that would be equally predictable — that what other companies pay their employees in no business of BT.

Wrong union

In July we drew attention to some Buddhist monks in Japan who formed a trade union. Now we learn that the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF) has recruited a dozen Anglican clergy and hopes to enrol thousands more in a special clergy section.

Falling congregations and the loss of millions of pounds on the property market have forced the church into a major economy drive. "Livings" have been lost as parishes amalgamated and there is a proposal to abolish "the parson’s freehold" which has guaranteed free housing and job security until 70.

Faced with this twin threat, one union recruit said:

"On the whole, my background would not be particularly pro-union, but I'm in the process of being re-educated. We are being told bishops are man-managers, that they are adopting management structures. The logic is, if they want to adopt a more managerial stance, those at the coalface must adopt a more ’worker' stance."

(Guardian 3 August)

That clergymen should join a trade union is appropriate enough. What is not is joining one which has some connection with science.

God in retreat

Thirty-one years ago the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God, put the cat among the theological pigeons. In it he denied the existence of a supernatural God. Instead, God was love, tolerance and all that was best in mankind.

Now comes Anthony Freeman, the Sussex Gear, who has been sacked by the C of E for saying much the same. And he is not alone. He has the support of 22 vicars, non-conformist ministers and a Roman Catholic priest.

One of his supporters said: " . . . to hold to a traditional view of an external deity does not make sense" (Guardian 4 August), while Freeman claimed on TV that "a substantial number" of priests shared his views but are afraid to speak out in case they share his fate.

Islamic fundamentalism and crackpot evangelism may be temporarily on the rise elsewhere, but in this part of the world religious superstition is undeniably in headlong retreat.

Blogger's Note:

The August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article - written by Pieter Lawrence - which discussed the controversy surrounding the Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God.

How to end the rail strike (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A strike is not an act of nature, like a thunder storm or an earthquake. There were no strikes in the earliest human communities, when goods were held in common and no person worked as an employee of another. Fred Flintstone might have had trouble with his boss, but in the real Stone Age work was not conducted on the basis of exploiter and exploited, and the real Fred Flintstone would have been as baffled by such absurdities as working for wages as he would be by Hollywood cinematography. 

The strike is a result of an antagonism between two interests: employers and employees. The employer needs to pay the lowest wages or salaries possible in order to maximise profits. The employee, having no interest in the act of employment besides the money that can be obtained, seeks the highest wage or salary for the job.

The explanation of this antagonism lies in a brief examination of the nature of wages and salaries. These are, in fact, prices. They are the price paid by the employer for the labour power of the worker. A capitalist will only pay this price on one condition: that he expects the value of the worker's product to be greater than the wage or salary' paid. In short, capitalists only buy labour power if it will produce for them unearned income (surplus value) which is over and above its ow n value. So, contrary to the illusion that the boss gives his workers a wage or salary, the truth is that the workers give the capitalists a free gift (surplus value which is the basis of profit) and the wages/salaries paid are merely the part of what is created by the workers which is not stolen by the employer. To thank a boss for your wage is like sending a thank-you letter to a burglar who steals everything from your home and then leaves you a fiver to buy yourself a second-hand armchair.

Exploitation

Why do workers put up with this exploitative situation of constantly giving more to the employers than we are given back in the form of wages or salaries? The answer is simple: under capitalism we have no choice but to work for those who own the means of wealth production and distribution, i.e factories, farms, mines, railways, airlines, the media etc. The only productive resource workers own is our labour power, our mental and physical energies. Selling these for the best price we can obtain is our means of paying for the necessities, and occasionally luxuries, of life. Given that we cannot live on share interest or profits from employing others (because we lack capital), our only option is to try to sell our one possession of value: our labour power. We are wage slaves.

If the market creates a high demand for labour power workers are in a good bargaining position over wages and salaries. This is often so in a time of economic expansion, when both skilled and unskilled workers are scarce and capitalists, in order to receive their golden eggs, must pay the geese well. Often they will even seek to recruit labour power from overseas, as Enoch Powell did as Minister of Health when he urged West Indians to come to Britain and take low-paid jobs. Right now the market is far from expanding. There is an economic depression, millions are unemployed and the bosses have more supply of labour power available than they demand to make profits.

In the current situation, not only in Britain but across the globe, the capitalists can afford to be very arrogant. They will shed jobs, force workers to accept worse conditions, longer hours, fewer safety regulations and, above all, lower wages and salaries. In a market which offers wage slaves the simple choice between low wages or no wages workers tend to knuckle under.

The best way for workers to defend themselves is to form trades unions. Originally these were seen by the bosses as a threat and those joining them were deported (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) or outlawed in other ways. By uniting workers in a particular place of work or type of occupation unions could say to the employers that either certain demands must be accepted or the workers would withdraw their labour — strike. This is the most powerful defensive weapon which workers have under a system of wage slavery. It will not stop us from being wage slaves, but it can improve our conditions of exploitation.

Class Struggle

In this century two false beliefs associated with trade unionism have emerged. The first is that strikes can somehow overthrow capitalism. This is all nonsense: when workers decide to get rid of capitalism we will not withdraw our labour, but withdraw the capitalists' right to buy it. Striking is not a revolutionary strategy. The second fallacy adopted by some trade unionists, especially those with jobs within the union hierarchy, is to accept that employers and employees have a common interest. British union leaders under Labour governments have been especially willing to accept this illusion, particularly when state-run industries meant that strike action would place their members in conflict with a Labour-run state. These leaders are usually rewarded with well-paid retirements in the House of Lords. But the fact is that workers and capitalists can have no common interest. We are class enemies.

A more recent fallacy is that the class struggle is all a thing of the past. Strikes were once useful, but now workers have been "tamed" and outgrown such disruptive practices. It is quite true that in a recession unions are limited in their capacity to obtain improved wages and conditions, and that after several years of sustained attacks on trade unionism (not just in Britain, but across the world) many unions are demoralised, depleted and legally weakened. But the class struggle has not gone away; the struggle of the RMT against RailTrack is clear proof that strikes can still be used as a powerful weapon to force the bosses to retreat. If the Railtrack employers had accepted the original pay settlement without a strike they would have lost hugely less profits than has since been the case. The more united striking workers are the greater the chance of victory. This is why strikes should always be conducted democratically, for willing strikers will fight longer and harder than workers pushed into a strike by union leaders. Working class unity is also important because the bosses will always seek to bribe scabs to fill in for union workers, so weakening the effects of the strike.

Socialists recognise the important need for workers to be in unions. Not just to be in them, but to participate democratically. The unions must not be hijacked by would be Lords who use them to create a spurious class unity or by muddled leftists who use workers' struggles for their own ends. When there is a strike which is on sound class lines and democratically organised, socialists are always on the side of the strikers and against the employers and their hirelings, the scabs.

End Wage-slavery

We do not leave the class struggle there. Unlike those leftist groups which imagine that fighting the class war is the be all and end all of working class action, socialists maintain that fighting over terms of wage slavery, while necessary, is ultimately futile. The aim to struggle for is to end wage slavery and with it the class struggle.

We have stated that in pre-property society there was common ownership of resources and no employment. Socialists are not calling for a return to those times, but for the creation of those social relationships in the setting of current technological development. In short, we are not opposed to modern production, which is now capable of producing enough for all, but to modern relations of production. The objective, then, is to abolish the minority class ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth and replace this with common ownership and democratic control on the basis of production solely for use, not for sale or profit.

Do socialists want more strikes? No, we do not. The strike is essentially a feature of the waste caused by capitalism. Who wants trains standing still when there are places for people to go and goods to be moved? In a socialist society, where wage labour will be a thing of the past, there will be no reason to strike, for each of us will work according to our abilities and take from the common store according to our needs.

There will be those who say that this is too much to hope for. But what is the alternative? Years of workers striking and struggling over crumbs from the cake which we have baked. Is it not time to seek more then crumbs or even a bigger slice of the cake and go for the bakery itself?

Steve Coleman

Learning for survival (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists tend to emphasize the humanitarian aspects of Socialism. Given that the problems people face are gross and immediate and that they are an endemic part of capitalism, this is not unreasonable. We quote the millions of deaths every year from hunger and its diseases, we spell out the facts of poverty and unemployment, slums and homelessness and the rape of the environment and we try to put into words the horror of unending war and violence that is an ever-present feature of capitalism.

Like other workers, socialists live within the system; we experience these problems but, of course, we are not in a position to quantify them. Ironically, the measures of these appalling miseries that we do use to support our contention that capitalism is a blight on humanity are almost always drawn from the agencies of capitalism itself.

What is not quantified, and cannot be measured (except, perhaps, in terms of crime and other forms of socially-alienated behaviour), is the complex conception of isolation, of not belonging, of being of little or no consequence within society, of not achieving, accepting society’s definition of failure, being socially, physically or financially inadequate. These are among the problems and inevitable uncertainties that, in a competitive world, feed anger, frustration and despair and, against the heightened profile of the “success" culture, increasingly transmute these emotions into forms of depravity that the great majority of people find confusing and frightening.

You do not have to be a psychologist to appreciate that it is these capitalist inputs that cause the myriad conflicts and divisions that categorize people, minimize expectation and induce loneliness and fear. What passes for education, rather than being concerned with the development of knowledge and personality in the individual, to allow him or her a meaningful role in society, is, certainly for the working class, a fear-ridden process of training designed to equip the recipient to sell a major portion of his or her life to an employer (another human being or group of human beings) simply in order to live. The price of failure can be grim and permanent.

Two facts stand out in relation to this usurpation of young lives into the relentless, pressurized process of training that presently masquerades as education. The first is that many of the alleged “educational” facets peculiar to most of capitalism’s specialized functions have little or no value outside the marketing needs of the present system. Most of the training that underpins the legal profession, accounting, financial management and many other of capitalism’s much-vaunted professions, has no educational value in the true sense of the term; their value is solely in the functions they perform within capitalism and, if that system ended tomorrow, the acquired skills of practitioners in these areas would be redundant.

The second point is that because education is budgeted largely against taxation and taxation is ultimately a charge on capital, it has to be cost-efficient. It is this that dictates most of the practices in the schools and it is this that to a large extent determines success or failure because these qualities are determined by time. For working-class children the school programme is scheduled to take place within a given period of years. Wisdom gained after term, after exams or assessments or following the end of schooling doesn’t earn a diploma.

The whole process, rather than being one that integrates the young as caring members of society, is an intensive survival course that engenders the primacy of self. This concept is, of course, in line with the flawed notions of “individualism” that capitalism promotes as an alibi for the ghastly social plunder of the many by the few — within which framework the great majority of individuals have their lives demeaned and circumscribed by the alien interests of those who live on the fruits of their labour. The idea of self is an essential prerequisite of a world of property values.

While these values are unlikely to achieve any great measure of realization or satisfaction for the great mass of people who have no stake in ownership outside that of a few personal effects and, perhaps, a mortgage, they are of use to capitalism because they are the foundation stone of working-class acceptance of that system. The whole structure of capitalism is based on the belief, inculcated from childhood and reinforced in the school system, that every man and woman has the right to accumulate individual wealth even though such wealth is the product of the labour of others. The numerous religions accept this, the educational system generally embodies it in academic studies and, of course, the achievement of wealth, however unscrupulously gained, is a passport to influence, power and esteem.

Such is the credit side, for capitalists. For capitalism, on the other hand, this ruthless conception of self is a basic cause of many problems, not simply among those scrambling for profit but among the masses of frustrated individuals who are wholly or partially denied the realization of even their modest hopes or who are alienated by the denial of hope itself. This frustration, this denial, and the anger, fear and lack of concern it breeds for other individuals is the source of most antisocial behaviour, of crime, aggression and jealousy as well as much of the neurosis affecting society today.

Socialists see the individual truly liberated when human personal attainment is fully separated from the task of procuring the material means of living. In Socialism individuals would act in voluntary co-operation to produce all the goods and services required to provide each individual with the material means of a full life. The cost-factor that plays such an essential part in determining “education”, training, working and planning in capitalist society would disappear, along with the old social relations.

Certainly Socialism will solve the economic problems of society but, in order to appreciate how it will radically change the role of the individual in society, we would contrast the role of the individual in a Socialist society with the cost-efficient wage-slave that is an essential requirement of capitalism.

Socialism will measure efficiency in terms of human happiness. Every single person will have a claim on society for the provision of his or her material needs. Education, in whatever form it takes, will be a process aimed at developing skills and abilities in line with the individual preferences of each person —and, for those who require it, it would be an ongoing process rather than a crammed apprenticeship for work. Primarily, the emphasis will be on the individual but rather than the competitive selfishness which capitalism must inculcate in the individual as survival training for a world that pits student against student, worker against worker and human against human. the student in Socialism will live and study in an ambience of social cooperation. The logic of that co-operation will be evident in every facet of life and it would be no exaggeration to say that many of the anti-social products of our cost-effective grading and assessment system of today would be regarded, in Socialism, as abnormalities that required help.

Of course, our current systems of education have evolved with the present economic system and just as they would be immediately abolished in a socialist world because of their anti-social, even anti-human, nature, so, too, would the values and concerns of socialist education be alien and harmful to capitalism. Imagine an educational establishment turning out individuals today who see their role as actively co-operating with their fellows in the pursuit of the interests of society as a whole. They would quickly be chewed up in the competition and conflict of capitalism, the educational system would have failed them by failing to make them selfish, contending fighters for survival. Imagine the more general application of such a system: capitalism's workforce would refuse to compete with one another; refuse to partake in the exploitation of their fellows; there would be few police and the judiciary would become socially inquisitive. And, of course, who would make munitions and do capitalism’s killing?

As we said at the outset, Socialists usually emphasize the material problems of capitalism and, perhaps, one of the reasons for this is that we feel poverty, world hunger, slums, unemployment etc., are more visual than the mental enslavement of our class. But that mental enslavement is a terrible reality, a reality designed by the political pundits of capitalism and serviced by its system of “education” and conditioning.

Richard Montague

Letter: Distortions of Private Property (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter was sent to one of our members by Dick Frost, who was the Green Party's candidate for Cumbria and North Lancashire in the recent Euro-elections. We publish it, with his permission, together with our comments. We have also received a letter from the Green Party Local Support Coordinator, to which we reply, too.

Distortions of Private Property

Dear Mr Cummings,

Thank you for your letter and the material with it. I have had a quick read (knowing something about the subject already) and it is clear that we have much in common. I fear you over estimate the degree of anarchism in the Green Party: I am one and I can assure you I belong to a very small minority.

I read the review of the Pepper book (Socialist Standard, September 1993) and the interview with Jonathon Porritt and both raised some valuable points. One area of dispute between us might well be on the appropriate level of political and administrative organisation for a good world: the reason I am now an extreme de-centralist (in fact, I advocate the autonomy of any group in any and every area in which it claims competence) is that every social organisation must be consciously and directly controlled by every person who belongs (by choice) to it and who is subject to its decisions. To my mind, that places a low maximum size on social organisation. I do not accept that politicians, bureaucrats or representatives have a place in democracy; once they exist, democracy is dead. Administration has to be equally democratic.

Of course, I envisage the cooperation and federation of small autonomous communities; I also envisage a statute of universal human rights to which all communities would have to subscribe and consequently, an enforcement agency. However, everything I suggest has to be placed in the context of economic adequacy (not mere subsistence) which I believe is the normal condition in which our species would live had the distortions of private property etc. not intruded (Rousseau. Marx etc) and that adequacy is available to us now; it requires us to bring it into reality. The ordering of economic life has to be in the hands of people in small communities, directly, to ensure that they know immediately the effects their actions have on their environment and on themselves, though I do not mean lots of tennis ball-type organisations, rather a complex of Russian dolls; or better, an eco-system.

I am not concerned with the existence or not of money, but cannot see why the communities I envisage would require it

I reject Marx's class analysis, not because I can’t see class differences in our society, but because I don't think people exist, existentially or subjectively. in classes and the proletariat is not. therefore, going to act as a class “for itself'. I do not agree with Marx's historical analysis of human life and do not consider it is important because I believe the objective conditions for human economic freedom have always existed and the need to realise that freedom by destroying oppression in all its forms has not varied significantly from epoch to epoch. It has not been necessary to wait for the triumph of capitalism.

I also reject revolution because revolution cannot but be autocratic and establish a new autocracy. From my understanding of sociology, I think you and Jonathon Porritt do not take into account the essential conservatism and conformity of our species, traits which lead to masses of people accepting dreadful repression, for which they find innumerable excuses. From Roemer's Law, however, change comes about by species attempting to maintain a given way of life in changed conditions; revolution is likely when the changes are frustrated by a powerful minority.

The point I make is Jonathon Porritt’s: there have to be interim steps which allow of interim achievement; hence I am odds with the Green Party because I believe it should be fighting for democratic advance at low levels of government now, as well as seeking elected power. It should be campaigning against loss of residual local democracy, both by working on elected authorities and in community groups.

Dick Frost, 

Orton, Cumbria

Reply:

Dick Frost and other members of the Green Party are quite right to emphasise the importance of local democracy. However, your idea that the modern world could be run on the basis of local production for local consumption by a collection of autonomous local communities is not only impractical, it is not even desirable.

For a decent quality of life we depend upon machinery, equipment, energy, goods and services which are produced throughout the world. This includes materials such as metals and oil which are found in particular locations and a wide range of foods which require different climates for their cultivation. The technical division of labour which makes up modern production extends throughout a world-wide network of links and can give us the benefits of consumer goods and the pleasures of leisure equipment. To give some examples, it would be impossible for every local community to produce its own refrigerators, televisions, radios or music equipment.

And how would they deal with facilities and services concerning regional populations such as airports, transport systems, universities, specialised health services, energy supply, use and development of land? On a bigger scale, surely it is vital that we establish a world energy authority and other world agencies to co-ordinate action on the threats to the planet from pollution, and to continue such things as the investigation of space, the running of world communications for telephone links, and the celebration of such festivals as the Olympic Games.

We should certainly get rid of the State with its tentacles of power that keep us all in its centralised grip. But the answer is not to replace it with an idea of local autonomy which has no practical connection with the conditions of modern life.

What is needed is to replace the State with an integrated system of democratic organisation which would be adaptable for use at local, regional and world levels. Local communities, however we might define them, could be the basic unit of organisation but these should also be associated as regional populations which in their turn would be associated as the world community. Such a system of world democracy could be established, by a majority of socialists, from the existing structure of local and national government and such bodies as the United Nations Organisation.

You want to define the size of your autonomous local community by the maximum number who could consciously and directly control it. and say "that places a low maximum size on social organisation". Indeed it does and wouldn’t they all be busy! Even for a small community they would be so involved in day-to-day affairs they will hardly have time for their personal lives.

Fortunately, democracy does not require that every person should be directly involved in all decisions. The important thing is that every individual, institution, production unit or council should be accountable. The practice of delegated function would allow people to get on with their jobs. We do not anticipate that in a socialist society they would act against the policies laid down by the majority. Nevertheless, the community would retain procedures whereby the decisions and actions of people could be challenged and reversed if circumstances required it.

It is surprising that you say you are not concerned with the existence or not of money, even though you add that you cannot see why the communities you envisage would require it. In fact, the use of money or not is of fundamental importance. The use of money means the production of goods for exchange and this means the operation of the market. Production for sale on the markets inevitably sets up a range of constraints on social action because it limits what can be produced to what can be sold and puts profit before need as a motive of production. It also follows that all the corrupting features of property relations will operate.

Members of the Green Party seem to place too much emphasis on the scales of social organisation whilst neglecting the fundamentally important question of the kinds of productive relations we should have. If they think through how best to achieve the kind of better world they undoubtedly want, they will surely conclude that common ownership of the earth's natural and industrial resources is the key, together with democratic control at regional and world levels as well as at local level as appropriate.

Editors.

Letter: Talking About Greens (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Talking About Greens

Dear Editors,

Adam Buick ("Why the Greens are Wrong", June Socialist Standard) is not. in my opinion, correct about the Green’s analysis of contemporary society. He asserts that we are not against the market and not against profit-making, and that our political strategy begins and ends with the election of a Green government.

This is not the case. The paragraphs in which he says “businesses only take account of their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations . .. the result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision makers to plunder, pollute and waste" could come from any Green Party publication. As our political analysis deepens and matures (although the Green movement has deep roots, the Green Party’s history is rather briefer than your own 90 years) the thinking of Greens like Derek Wall (whom you quote approvingly) has become widely accepted. We know ourselves now to be anti-capitalist, and have long been anti-statist, seeking a shift to self-managing, self-reliant communities. Our vision of a green economy is one in which money is local and impossible to accumulate (witness our support for Local Exchange Trading Systems), in which all stakeholders and not just shareholders participate in the running of an enterprise, in which long-distance trade is regulated for fairness, sustainability and need and in which banking is democratic and community-based (note our participation in Credit Unions).

LETS and Credit Unions are only two ways in which we are putting this into practice directly. Our recently-adopted strategy was clear that elections are only one democratic opening available to us — Greens are active in community initiatives, nonviolent direct action and green economics. Our attitude to elections is clearly based on building local support first — earning the support of the community for Green action in local government, and seeking to build direct democracy through "town meetings" and referenda.

Of course, the Green Party has plenty of points of disagreement with the Socialist Party — we’d be discussing merger if we didn’t We do believe in a libertarian, rather than a planned economy — we believe that given control over their lives, people do act responsibly and morally. We believe that much of the “means of production" are not simply misused and monopolised, but destructive in their very design — we call for a retooling of society. We are not so certain that the working class will be the last to achieve emancipation — what about woman, subsistence farmers, the unemployed, or even other species? It is not your class background that determines your revolutionary potential, but your actual lifestyle or aspirations. And we do believe that important as community and workplace action is. change across the whole of society must be facilitated by Greens in every level of government

I hope these real points of difference will be dissected in your pages in the future — as the old saying goes, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Alex Begg, 

Green Party Local Support Coordinator, 

Leeds

Reply:

We’re sorry, but the Green Party does accept the market and it does accept profit-making. Not. it is true, in their present form but as modified by the legislation to be enacted by a Green government.

The “Green economy" that the Green Party wants seems to be a small-scale, localised economy but still one in which the market and profit-seeking firms have a place. You yourself mention that this will still involve money, banking and shareholders. But shareholders draw an unearned income from the firms they invest in, so these firms will have to make profits in order to be able to pay this out. Interest-free banking under capitalism is conceivable as a remote possibility, but not profit-free firms — even small ones.

If we had to put a name to it, we would say that this "Green economy" would be a small-scale, modified capitalist economy. The main objection to it is that it is never going to happen. Capitalism has a built-in tendency to the concentration and centralisation of industry and, with this, of government and the population as well.

Capitalism runs on profits. Under the competitive pressures of the market, most of these have to be re-invested in new and cheaper methods of production which are generally “capital intensive” and so large scale. This "accumulation of capital” (as Marx put it) is an economic law of the system which cannot be reversed by the action of any government. Still less by the sort of self-help action at local level (LETS, credit unions, housing associations, allotments, etc) that you say the Green Party is now into as well as trying to get a Green government elected.

We are not saying that a more decentralised decision-making and administrative structure with more local democracy is not desirable. What we are saying is that it is impossible to achieve within the context of capitalism. In fact the only framework within which it could be achieved is that provided by Socialism: a world in which the natural and industrial resources of the planet have ceased to be the private property of individuals, firms and states, and in which market forces have ceased to operate because production is carried on directly to meet needs.

The same goes for the problems faced by the groups you mention — women, subsistence farmers and the unemployed (most of whom, by the way, are members of the working class, properly understood as the vast majority in society who are excluded from the ownership and control of productive resources). Their problems, too, can only be solved within this framework.

Where this points is towards our policy of trying to get people to concentrate on working to establish this framework rather than diverting their energies into trying to get a few minor — and precarious —improvements within the present system. This is the real difference between the Socialist Party and the Green Party — and all other parties.

Editors.

Socialism on tape: A Novel Approach to History (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A number of these meetings are available in the audio file section of the SPGB website. Please be advised that the sound quality for many of these meetings are not the best.

MOBY DICK (51 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date 20th November 1993

Speaker: Ray Gibbon

Pt 2 (48 mins)

KIM (29 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 5th December 1993

Speaker: Kerima Mohideen

Pt 2 (55 mins)

Part Two is poor quality

HEART OF DARKNESS (31 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 19th December 1993

Speaker: Paul Clarke

Poor quality recording, especially for the floor contributions. The worst bits have been cut out and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

Pt 2 (40 mins)

THE JUNGLE (47 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Venue: PPU

Date: 23rd January 1994

Speaker: Richard Headicar

Pt 2 (48 mins)

KANGAROO (26 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: February 1994

Speaker: Ron Cook

Pt 2 (32 mins)

Pt 3 (42 mins)

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (39 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 20th February 1994

Speaker: Clifford Slapper

Pt 2 (21 mins)

Pt 3 (46 mins)

WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME (30 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 6th March 1994

Speaker: Emma Scarr

Poor quality recording in parts. The inaudible bits have been deleted and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

Pt 2 (28 mins)

Pt 3 (37 mins)

THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS (39 mins)

From the series A Novel Approach to History

Date: 15th March 1994

Speaker: Les Cox

The sound quality is poor in parts.

Pt 2 (61 mins)

TV Review: Camping it up (1994)

Brookside

TV Review from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the history of British TV comedy there has been little to match the comic effect of an outrageously effeminate male camping it up with the best of them. Exaggerated mannerisms and affectations have delighted audiences for decades. Many of the popular sitcoms have had a camp figure of fun somewhere - Frank Williams as the overblown vicar in Dad's Army, the twinkly German Lieutenant in ‘Allo 'Allo, Melvyn Hayes in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and John Inman in everything he’s ever been in are among those that spring readily to mind.

As far as mainstream British comedy has been concerned, campness is the “acceptable” face of an unmentionable homosexuality to the viewers and actors alike, so much so that such a great actor as Kenneth Williams — as camp as a row of tents to the end — could barely admit his own homosexuality to himself let alone anybody else, as his Diaries testify. Williams was clearly aware that camp humour, in his day at least, hinted at homosexuality but rarely endorsed it in any way, being content to remain at the level of innuendo and whimsy. In recent years one or two comics have broken this unspoken rule, most clearly Julian Clary whose full frontal assaults on the sexual sensibilities of the audience have won him an army of gay supporters, but most homosexual actors have kept with the approach developed in the music halls and adapted for TV and film.

The British film and TV industries have been the masters of camp humour. It can still be seen in Coronation Street occasionally, though with the welcome twist that it emerges most notably of all in the affectedness of the definitely heterosexual Racquel. barmaid at the Rovers. More straightforwardly. Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard and Charles Hawtrey all became household names because of their ability to mince in front of the cameras. Did they do their sexuality a disservice? To the extent that they reinforced one of capitalist society’s most enduring stereotypes, probably, but those homosexuals in the acting profession and elsewhere who took an outwardly hostile stance towards homosexuality for the sake of their public image did a greater disservice still.

Innumerable actors have been paid to betray their own sexuality. A recent re-run on BBC2 of one of the classic Steptoe and Son episodes saw old Albert berating Harold for consorting with an antique dealer he considered to be "a bleeding poof’, in the true style of a working class Tory bigot. What many viewers wouldn’t have been aware of was that Wilfred Brambell, the actor who played Albert, was himself a homosexual convicted in the early 1960s under the British state's anti-gay sex laws. Watching this episode again, it was difficult to raise much of a laugh.

Prisoners all

The current cult TV show among the active gay lobby in Britain is the Australian import Prisoner Cell Block H, which is still showing on most ITV networks. This is strange, as Cell Block H is a programme transparently about Good and Evil, and the active lesbians have generally slotted into the latter category. The leading lesbian, a warder called Joan Ferguson, otherwise known as ‘The Freak", has a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp and the general manner of a woman whose role in life is to cause as much anguish for others as possible. Since Prisoner finished its turn in Australia several years ago. we can surmise that she can soon expect the call-up for EastEnders.

The only reason lesbians can find this show attractive, apart from its marvellously worked-out plots, is that it focuses on the lives of oppressed women. But with what is commonly considered to be a psychopathic "bull-dyke” as the chief character, it is not much of a blast forward for the gay counter-culture. In truth, for all her entertainment value, "The Freak" gives far more succour to the stereotypical image of homosexuals than Kenneth Williams or Larry Grayson ever did.

To find the most realistic treatment of homosexuality on TV we must turn, once again, to Channel Four's Brookside. Here, the unfolding of Beth Jordache’s lesbian sexuality has been tastefully and seriously portrayed, even if her lesbianism is a partial reaction against the sexual abuse meted out by her father. Most pleasing of all, the character of Beth is not stereotyped — on the contrary, she appears to be a normal intelligent teenager confronting bigotry and deceit, and winning support because of the strength of her arguments to live her life without the interference of those who want to impose their own norms on her.

Brookside could have gone for cheap laughs with this storyline, but it is to be congratulated on its approach. For the more the working class see their differences — of colour, gender and sexuality — eclipsed by their common bonds rather than highlighted through division, the easier it will be to achieve a society where stereotyping is remembered primarily as a feature of daft old films and peculiar Australian soap operas.

Dave Perrin

Russia: nationalism on the march (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years Russia has provided a continuous stream of surprises for many outsiders. The most recent was what happened at the last election in December, when the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party received a third of the vote. This party, under its leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky is actually a manifestation of fascism.

Zhirinovsky has an aspiration to be President of an enlarged Russia. He has made it plain that as President he would not only aim to control Russia as it is at present, but would extend his rule to include all lands of the former empire of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that Zhirinovsky’s empire would also include such territories as Finland and Alaska. When he says such things it is not just idle talk — it is all meant for the ears of the Russian military who have lost the glamour and prestige they enjoyed in the old USSR. Indeed, it is estimated that between 60 and 80 percent of the army voted for Zhirinovsky last December.

Nationalism and patriotism have a great influence on the sorrowful people of Russia. Economic conditions are worse then they were before the break-up of the Soviet Union and many now dream of the “good old days” — good old days, of course, that never were. The former “Communist” leaders — who are actually supporters of state capitalism, and like Zhirinovsky, extreme nationalists too — attempt to pep up the working class with patriotic talk and unrealistic reforms. They do not speak of genuine socialism or communism and give no hope to a largely helpless and apathetic working class. Across the political spectrum, nationalism and reformism are the vogue, a situation that can only help the likes of Zhirinovsky.

Military posturing

The present nationalist madness was reflected in a recent article by Andrei Kozyrev, Russian Foreign Minister, in the New York Times of 18 March. He stated that America and the West should not attempt to threaten Russia, claiming that no-one should forget that Russia was still a great military power with a huge nuclear arsenal. Aggressive-sounding noises from some in the West were inappropriate, he added, as Russia had a massive resource of conventional weapons and good strategic positions in many key areas. No-one should believe that American world hegemony was assured, he argued.

The more pro-US President Yeltsin finds himself in a relatively isolated position. He did nothing to prevent an amnesty being granted to those who took part in last October's nationalist and Communist revolt, and earlier all the Communist leaders were released who took part in the events to depose Gorbachev. Yeltsin has certainly lost much of his former confidence. Some say he is seriously ill, but whatever the truth of that matter, he is severely hindered in his fight against the more extreme nationalists due to the lack of a mass political party supporting him. Since December the fascists and Communists have had control of the Russian Parliament and Yeltsin’s influence is now weaker than ever. The so-called “experts” in the bureaucracy give him conflicting advice, and he seems unsure about precisely which course to take.

The next Presidential election takes place in 1996. However, Zhirinovsky and the Communists are hoping to unseat Yeltsin well before then, and they will stop at nothing to do so. 'The two principal names that have been put forward as challengers to Yeltsin are Zhirinovsky himself and that of Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Prime Minister. Interestingly, no-one has mentioned reformers like Gaidar or Yavlinski, who at one time commanded quite some support among the working class. Evidently, few now have confidence in such people since the earlier reforms have not brought about the hoped-for prosperity.

Crime explosion

Undoubtedly, working class confidence is at a fairly low ebb. Living conditions are poor and organised crime has reached horrendous levels, affecting a great many workers. Poverty and the rise in nationalism have encouraged large numbers to emigrate, especially those of German origins, while those of Jewish origin emigrate to Israel, even though some have been sent back on the grounds that they are not Jewish enough.

There could yet, of course, be a backlash against the rising tide of nationalism. Parties to the left of the Communists in Russia are as yet relatively insignificant, but, as movements like the Black Hundreds reappear, so have small groups of Trotskyists and anarchists of various hues. What Russia needs most of all though is a strong, democratic socialist movement to consistently counter the increasing myths about nationalism and the old state-capitalist regime. Let us hope that there are some in Russia now emerging who see the importance of such a movement and have the courage and tenacity to bring it into being.

D. Szczescie

50 Years Ago: From the Cradle to the Grave (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Evening News of May 25, 1944, publishes an article by a staff reporter under the heading, “Control of Funerals, Unlikely.”

We are not here concerned with the question of price control, whether for ingress to or egress from “this sorry scherne of things entire”—that we can safely leave to those “financial wizards” and “price ceiling experts” whose job it is to “navigate” the “good ship Capitalism.”

The footnote to the above mentioned article is much more interesting and informative, and we quote it as follows :

“Prices at Southern Cemetery for Graves range from £3 4s. 6d. to £72 15s. More than 50 per cent. are buried in £3 4s. 6d. graves. Those at £72 15s. are double spaces in prominent positions on main drives. Single space in same position costs £30 1s. (Our italics.)

Human beings born into the working class are rocked in “shoddy” cradles, dressed in “shoddy” clothes, fed on “shoddy” food, housed in “jerry” buildings, and when their days of toil are over buried in “shoddy” graves. Worn out by a lifetime of toil and poverty midst plenty, the worker “giving up the ghost'” reaches his goal—a “£3 4s. 6d. grave.”

[From an article by G. R. Russell in the Socialist Standard, September 1944.]

SPGB Meetings (1994)

Party News from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British National Party: the symptom not the disease (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot has been said about the BNP in recent months, none of it good. Apart from calls to ban the BNP in the wake of a three-fold increase in racially-motivated attacks in the past year, there has been a lot of scaremongering. Newspaper columnists have put forward nightmare scenarios, prompted by Derek Beackon’s victory in Millwall last September. Earlier this year an Observer article began: “The Right-Wing British National Party is poised to win another two council seats in London’s Isle of Dogs, giving it control of a budget of about £23 million” (6 March). And, in the May council elections, no part of Britain received as much media scrutiny as the East End of London.

The original BNP victory, however, had less to do with the racist views of the average voter in Millwall and more to do with local voters protesting at the inertia of the mainstream parties on matters such as housing and unemployment. This must be coupled with the turn-out that day. This May, Beackon was defeated in spite of his tally increasing by 500. [561 votes, in fact] The turnout this time round was 30 percent up on last September’s by-election. Neither is the fact that racist parties in England polled 6.8 percent of the vote evidence of a new rising tide of fascism. As far as racism goes in Britain, the tide never went out.

To give the average workers their due, few really believe the clap-trap the BNP leader, John Tyndall, spouts. For one thing, the mainstream parties, Labour, Conservative and the Lib-Dems, have been giving the public the same cant for years, albeit a watered-down version.

All racists now
John Tyndall, for instance, believes we should buy British and stop foreign imports, but his ideology is imported from Nazi Germany. He believes in the death penalty, but so do most Tory MPs and the majority of the police force. He claims his is the only party that “puts British people first in jobs and housing”, but in the past year Liberal Democrat and Labour councils have been taken to the High Court for pursuing racist housing policies. Last November the Guardian ran a headline: “Labour councils face race bias allegations” (29 November). A UNISON branch secretary commented that in 50 “disciplinaries” he had attended in eighteen months, only two of the workers he had represented had been white.

The BNP oppose immigration, but Margaret Thatcher secured National Front sympathies in 1978 when she said, musing at the prospect of 4 million Britons of “New Commonwealth” origin by the year 2000: “Now that is an awful lot and I think it means people are rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people of a different culture.” Ten years earlier, a Labour government had rushed through the Commonwealth Immigration Act in three days, introducing the racist concept of patriality and excluding thousands of persecuted Kenyan Asians in the process. That Act, however, was one of only eight racist Acts passed this century to restrict the flow of immigrants.

The BNP are anti-Europe and believe in British independence. On April 24, the Times reported on John Major’s xenophobic ranting regarding Europe. Major feared that opposition parties would surrender Britain’s “sovereignty” to Brussels, that they were “diluting” our national identity. He went on to tell supporters that “we must never forget the traditions and inheritance of the past”.

One would have thought that Major would have learned from Michael Portillo’s media wrist-slapping a month earlier, when he told students at Southampton University that “outside this country the standards of public life are way below what goes on in this country . . . Go to any other country and when you have got an A level you have bought it or you were a friend of the minister” (Guardian, 4 February).

Tyndall, though, not only passes off the hackneyed sentiments of racialism as his own to would-be voters, he looks upon the average voter with contempt and is on record as saying: “What we oppose is the method whereby the man in the street is called upon to pass judgements on aspects of affairs of which he has no understanding.” Not only does the BNP have no elected leadership, there are no women with pivotal roles within the party.

In reality, Tyndall is little more than a poor man’s führer leading an intellectually bankrupt party of shorn-headed bigots.

Pointing the finger

Workers should be aware that the only way to confront such fascists is on the battlefield of ideas, not with clubs and boots. The fact that so many “left-wing” groups believe they should be banned is evidence that they have yet to come up with the arguments to discredit them. It does not say much for allegedly socialist movements (such as the SWP and Militant) to call upon the state to pass laws proscribing fascist activity. If they really had the interests of the working class at heart, they should be pointing the finger of blame at the real perpetrator of racism — the capitalist system.

For instance, an Oxford University report published in December 1992 found that 7 out of 18 judges sampled sentenced black defendants more harshly than whites. This February, the Guardian (18 February) reported on how elements within the judiciary (Circuit and High Court judges) were resisting moves to be trained in race awareness. Lincoln Crawford, a Bar Council member, commented on how it was the educational system the judiciary were brought up in that “produced people who were self-confident, proud of their heritage and history and deeply grounded in their society’s basic values, but without any knowledge of the ethnic minority communities, their culture, sensitivity and sentiments.”

Newspapers last year reported several cases of racism within the army (in 1992 only 0.6 percent of recruits were non-whites) and the police force. In May this year, a black detective, DC Barry Thompson, won compensation and an apology from the police for racial abuse and discrimination he suffered while on a training course. In March an industrial tribunal ruled that black lecturer Stanley Jenkins had been subjected to “institutional discrimination and victimisation”. For eight years he had endured taunts of “wog”, “sambo" and “nigger” from students, while the governing body of Thanet College, Broadstairs, Kent, failed to take action to stop it. A report published the same month found that “solicitors are actually discriminating against blacks in recruiting trainees” (Guardian, 21 April). A survey of 4,000 law students found that white students had a 47 percent chance of getting articles with law firms, compared to 7 percent blacks.

In government, racism is just as rife. In December 1993, the Home Office attempted to pass legislation authorising the fire service to record the ethnic origins of fire victims. This was rightfully attacked by the firefighters’ union as an “outrageous monitoring service for racial purposes” (Guardian, 17 December). When it comes to immigration, the Home Office is a law unto itself. It believes it is entitled to detain asylum-seekers under the 1971 Immigration Act without giving reasons — a belief that does not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, which states:

"Everyone who is arrested shall he informed, in a language which he understands, of the reason for his arrest and of any charges against him. ”

A few months after the death of Joy Gardner at the hands of immigration officers and the police, because she had overstayed a six-month visitor’s permit, immigration officers at Gatwick detained 190 Jamaicans off one flight who were visiting relatives in Britain. Two days later, on Christmas Day, 27 were put back on board a plane for Kingston.

Politicians, however, appear to be the most vociferous in their nationalistic and racial rantings.

In 1964, the incoming Labour Foreign Secretary lost his Smethwick seat to a Tory who had used the slogan “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

Two days before the 1992 General Election, the Daily Express ran the headline: “BAKER’S MIGRANT FLOOD WARNING — LABOUR SET TO OPEN DOORS” (7 April 1992).

Likewise, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn pointed out a few days before the same election that a Labour victory would result in Britain being “swamped by immigrants of every colour and race and on any excuse of asylum or bogus marriage, or just plain deception”. (Runnymede Trust Bulletin, May 1992).

Racism, then, is not the poorly-thought-out doctrine of a few hundred bonehead supporters of the BNP. Neither will a ban on the BNP eradicate racist sentiments.

Scapegoats

Claire Dissington of the Anti-Nazi League recently remarked uncharacteristically, that “if you ban the BNP it does not eliminate the reason for racism. Racist groups have become popular because of the recession and people want to find a scapegoat” (Guardian, 28 September 1993).

William Rees-Mogg takes this a little further when he says “the essence of their propaganda [the Nazis] was to speak to the emotions and not to the reason of the people” (Times, 19 May 1993). Fascism, he asserts, “is always fuelled by the anger of the dispossessed”.

Workers will indeed feel more alienated during recession, more so in run-down areas like Tower Hamlets, where unemployment is high and housing policy a shambles. In 1992, Tower Hamlets had a housing stock of 67,000 houses, 45,000 of which were considered in desperate need of repair or unfit to live in.

Dispossessed, frustrated and alienated workers will always look for a short-cut to even up the imbalance between themselves and their masters. One only has to look at crime statistics. Is it any wonder workers are hoodwinked into believing ethnic communities are the cause of their misfortune, and so must bear the brunt of their frustration

In the past thirty years a host of racist organisations have sprouted up with the same utterings (League of Empire Loyalists, BNP, Racial Preservation Society, Greater Britain Movement, National Front, SS Wotan 88, Blood and Honour, Combat 18). Their impact on the political scene has been as insignificant as calls for direct action to confront them has been myopic.

Racism will only be destroyed through a change in society, not with physical force, nor with laws. The Prevention of Terrorism Act has done little to prevent the continuance of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. At the most, a ban on extreme-right groups will only make them martyrs in the cause of free speech and bring right-wing thugs flocking in to swell their ranks.

Racism has to be seen for what it is — a parasite on the back of nationalism, which is itself a disease of world capitalism. 

Bernard Crick puts forward the view that:

“racialism is not necessarily connected with nationalism, they are indeed formally opposed. Racialism is a myth of the body whose mode of expression is pseudo-scientific, nationalism is a myth of the mind whose mode of expression is cultural and historical” (In Defence of Politics, 1992, p.83).

It is a truism that not all nationalists are racists, and a paradox that xenophobia can exist without nationalism, as Crick points out. The task for socialists in their argument with racists is to convince them that workers have no nation and that there is more that unites the exploited members of the human race, all of whom have the same basic needs, than can ever divide us culturally or historically.

Racist ideas are a manifestation of capitalism in crisis, and will only be eradicated when the capitalist system itself is expunged — not through physical violence or laws, but by workers taking control of their own destiny, becoming conscious of their position in the relations of production and by democratically establishing a socialist society.

John Bissett

Obituary: Jimmy Doherty (1994)

Obituary from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are sorry to learn of the death of our old comrade, Jimmy Doherty. Born in Ireland, Jimmy became a merchant seaman in the last world war and left the navy a political convert — not as a socialist, but as a member of the now defunct Commonwealth Party. Realising the futility of that particular path, Jimmy joined the Socialist Party in 1954, becoming an active member of the old Hackney branch. Jimmy's main area of activity was Islington and it was there that he was active through to the end, distributing literature and supporting meetings.

Jimmy was quite a character. He had a stammer which never stood in the way of his tireless efforts to collar workers and tell them the basics of socialism; indeed, if a non-socialist could not be collared Jimmy would find himself a Party member and make it his business to take him through the ABC of socialist principles. Hard as nails on the importance of principles, Jimmy was no dogmatist, always stressing that socialists would only ever make an impact by relating to the day-to-day events of the capitalist world. Jimmy's own involvements took him into the world of alternative health treatments; woe betide any unsuspecting comrade who complained of so much as a headache or a twinge in a muscle within Jimmy's hearing, for quick as a flash he would be examining them and prescribing herbal concoctions and ancient Chinese remedies which would either kill or cure them. Jimmy was also a relentless book collector (he had worked for a year in the Library of the British Museum as a messenger) and the present writer's book collection owes no small debt to Jimmy's discerning sense of what every socialist ought to know. Next time I look at that old book on women in Irish history or the herbal recipe collection from Tibet I shall remember a friend and comrade whose commitment to fundamental socialist principles should be an example to us all.

Steve Coleman

Racism - the myths that kill (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racists see race as one of the central factors in human society and history, playing an important role in how people behave, and explaining why many kinds of social unrest occur or why certain countries are more developed than others. The socialist response to racist arguments is not just to point out their nastiness and the fact that they serve to divide people and to justify discrimination and worse. Rather, we argue also that the whole concept of “race” is a nonsense, and that it has no part in accounting for any aspect of human life.

The racist claim is that a race (and we shan’t keep using the inverted commas, even though it is a non-category) is an identifiable subgroup of human beings, and that (to use their terminology) so-called half-castes apart everybody can be assigned to one of several classifications — usually on the basis of their physical appearance, taking account of such features as skin colour, type of hair or shape of head. The various races, it is argued, have innate hereditary characteristics, which will turn up in all those who belong to that race. Besides physical features such as those just mentioned, racists point to behavioural or intellectual attributes, describing races as inherently more or less intelligent, or more or less hard-working. Some then go on to argue that members of different races cannot, or should not, live in the same community, on the grounds that racial tensions are inevitable. Racist views and policies need not go to the extremes of Nazi genocide, but are still utterly repulsive, condemning some people to poverty and oppression simply on the ground of their supposed racial origin.

Impossible to categorise

One immediate difficulty with this conception is that proponents of the idea of race can never agree among themselves which races should be distinguished, or even how many races there are. Terms such as Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid have often been used, but none of these categories covers a group of people with a single set of physical features. Some schemes devised by anthropologists have identified up to sixty races, while still having to admit many intermediate and unclassified groups. Simplistic references to “blacks” and “whites" gloss over the tremendous variety, in skin colour and much else, of members of both these categories. The simple fact is that everyday assignments of individuals to racial groups are based on social, not physical, classifications, which may vary from place to place and from time to time. In the United States, for instance, any child with one white and one black parent is described as “black”, whatever their skin colour. In Brazil there is an incredibly complex terminology of race, with a person’s classification often being unrelated to that of their parents and sometimes being determined in part by their class position. In these and other cases, people are simply pigeon-holed according to whatever system of stereotyping dominates in the society they live in.

In addition, the way people are grouped together will differ greatly depending on which trait is chosen for the comparison, since different features vary independently of each other (dark brown skin and wiry hair need not occur together, for instance). Skin colour has the “advantage” of being immediately visible, but many other bases for classification are possible Many racists, for example, will talk about “British blood” flowing in their veins, but in fact there is no such thing. Blood groups cut right across all proposed racial divisions, having different rates of occurrence in different parts of the world. Categorising people by blood group makes as much sense as doing so by skin colour — in fact, it makes more sense, since blood group membership is objective, and is relevant medically in a way that skin colour is not. But of course racial prejudice aimed at, say, those of blood group A would be pointless, since you cannot tell a person’s blood group just by looking at them.

It is undeniably true that people differ a lot from each other in physical appearance. Yet, from a biological point of view, the significant aspect of humans is not our differences but our similarities: we are a single species, all sharing the great bulk of characteristics. In fact, over 98 percent of human genes are identical to those of our nearest animal relatives, the chimpanzee. All the differences in terms of behaviour and life-style between humans and chimps is due to that tiny contrast in genes. It follows, then, that the differences among all humans can be traced to an infinitesimal part of our genetic make-up. Racists magnify beyond all reason the genetic differences among people.

The variation among humans is mostly due to differing adaptations to the environments in which we live. On the whole, for instance, the darkest skins are found among those living closest to the equator. Though there are a number of theories that attempt to account for this distribution, it is most likely that dark-coloured skin is advantageous for survival in tropical areas because it reduces the risk of sunburn and skin cancer. In contrast, lighter skin is more suited to cooler areas, in that it enables greater production of vitamin D and so prevents diseases such as rickets. Over the millennia there must have been gradual selection in favour of darker and lighter skin in different regions, eventually giving rise to the current distribution. Equally, people in colder areas tend to have stockier builds, as a smaller body surface means less loss of heat. If modem humans originated in Africa, probably with brown skins, expansion into cooler areas such as northern Europe must have involved selection for traits such as paler skin and also the ability for adults to digest milk (milk is a good source of calcium, which is also needed to prevent rickets).

Variation is good

From this point of view, variation can be seen as an undoubted good thing, since it enables humans to survive in a wide range of climates and environments, a range far greater than that for any other animal. And it is precisely because variation is due to adaptation to our surroundings that the variation is almost entirely confined to our physical appearance, which is where we interact most closely with our environment. Thus human differences are confined to such utterly superficial matters as build and skin colour. Moreover, even simple scientific knowledge can nowadays overcome any disadvantages that may exist. When black children began to live in northern US cities, many suffered at first from bone diseases on account of the relative lack of sunlight and hence insufficient vitamin D. But dietary supplements such as cod liver oil were quickly able to make good the deficiency.

Ever since the evolution of the first humans, members of our species have wandered into virtually every comer of the globe. The first way of life — hunting - gathering — involved moving around to find new sources of meat, vegetables and fruits. This inevitably meant encountering other bands, and reproducing with them. Even after the rise of agriculture and the growth of more settled lifestyles, people continued to travel (forcibly or otherwise) to various parts of the earth, and to mix with people of a variety of origins. The slave trades of the ancient world and of more recent times caused enormous population upheavals, just as did wars and crusades. The expansion of capitalism into a world-wide system has likewise caused people to interact and reproduce on a global basis. The upshot of all this is that everyone has a mixed background, with genes from various parts of the world. American "blacks” for instance, have not just Africans but also Europeans and American Indians among their ancestors. All human beings are hybrids, not members of some pure race or inbred local population.

Race, then, is a concept with no scientific validity whatever. Humans simply cannot be characterised or stereotyped on the basis of their supposed innately determined membership of some racial grouping. Humanity is a single species, divided not along biological lines but by the artificial barriers of class and nation. Unlike race, these are not determined by unchanging properties. Rather, they are imposed by a particular social system. Class and national divisions can therefore be done away with — and they will indeed be abolished by the Socialist revolution.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Are we all "middle class" now? (1994)

Editorial from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the past couple of decades (especially since 1979) many commentators have argued that the working class is a “dying" class. The general argument goes along these lines: "manufacturing is in terminal decline and being superseded by the service sector of the economy. The result is an occupational shift that now sees the majority of people working in white-collar as opposed to blue collar jobs.

This process of “de-industrialisation", they argue, means that because the majority of people now work in offices they are no longer working class but "middle class". These people predominantly "feel" middle class, identify with their bosses and are living proof that capitalism has changed for the "better".

The corollary of this, is that there cannot be a socialist revolution because capitalism has sorted itself out. Society is becoming increasingly more affluent and we now live in a "property-owning, share-buying democracy". John Major believes that this provides the basis to his vision of a “classless society".

Socialists oppose this superficial analysis.

All that’s happened is that the nature of wage-slavery has changed. Instead of standing on a production line it is now common practice to sit in front of a VDU.

Although many workers have gained from this occupational shift and have done reasonably well out of the “affluent" eighties, another phenomenon has occurred — the underclass.

We are all very familiar with the statistics that show the poorest section of our society has become poorer in real terms since 1979. With high unemployment, welfare cuts and regressive taxation policies, the not-so-fortunate of society have become a mass of low-skilled, low-waged, desperate people. This has lead to even reactionary commentators regarding this as a potentially volatile situation.

It is the task of socialists to arm themselves with a view of class which is correct and up-to-date. The idea of the "middle classes" should be knocked on the head.

If you have to work for a living because you do not own the means of production, you are a member of the working class. This includes teachers, doctors and lawyers. Far from becoming “ middle class” the vast majority of the population who make all wealth under capitalism, remain working class by definition and will continue to be whilst the wages/salary and profit system exists.

Talking about the “middle class” merely divides the working class and weakens our class analysis. We should oppose it at all costs.