At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

 

The big question raised by the OZ trial is of course: what is pornography? What is it in society that depraves and corrupts to such an extent that those responsible need to be punished and shut away where they can do no more damage? Any adult who has ever been a child, remembering their own sexual fantasies and confusions, must wonder whether they would be corrupted by the kind stuff in OZ and the rest of the underground press. It might even be argued that such matter, by its very blatancy, is the very opposite of corruptive. But what about other forces in society whose pernicious influence is undeniable? We are not discussing here anything which even appears in any magazines, but the real, everyday experiences of life under capitalism. How else can we describe the men responsible for incidents like the My Lai, if not corrupted by the war? What effects does poverty and repression have on our lives, if not to deprave us? Is bad housing the kind of environment calculated to solidify or to destroy human relationships? What has happened to the ‘morals’ of a man who debases himself to the boss for the sake of a bit of promotion or a pettyfogging rise? Capitalist society is essentially depraved and it corrupts everything in it, including its people. No court with the wigged judge will ever try the system but it has been examined, found wanting and condemned. We should lose no more time in locking it away into the prison of unpleasant memories.

One of the great tragedies of capitalism is in the fact that, again and again, workers are misled into believing that they are doing something to end the system when in reality they are doing nothing of the kind. Faced with the reality, the incident usually becomes written into historical myth, which dies very hard. Such were the Spanish Civil War, the General Strike, the successive Labour Governments. The latest candidate in this dismal line is the so-called workers’ take over of the Upper Clyde. Part of the delusion here is that the shipyards collapsed as a result of a Government failure to subsidise them, when in fact they collapsed because they could not live up to the basic capitalist requirements of making a profit. Whoever runs them will be faced with that reality. And if the ‘take-over’ fails the workers will also face the greater bitterness stemming from the promise and the delusion. Yet we know from experience that failure will only strengthen the myth; It will be explained in terms of accident or treachery or the like. The ‘take-over’ of Upper Clyde is tailor-made for the fairy tale story books of the left wing.

 

Abroad

 

President Nixon, it is reported, is disappointing many of the people who backed him in 1968 for the presidency by his policy of negotiations with China. It is no new thing for a politician to win power on promises, both explicitly and implied, which he goes back on after he has won. Very often the promises are easily seen, at the time of making them, to be impermanent and impractical. In the nature of the thing, we are more accustomed to leaders of the left being involved in this sort of double cross, but there have been notable exceptions from the other side. In this country, there was Macmillan after Suez and with his policy on Africa. Abroad there was the classic case of de Gaulle, who so outraged the people who helped him to power that they tried several times to kill him. And now Nixon is upsetting his friends by fashioning his policy to meet the real demands of capitalism rather than political theories. There is some amusement to be had from observing the reaction of the disappointed supporters, who in each case thought about betrayal and turned for salvation to another leader. The left wing are of course well familiar with this tactic. Nixon’s angry followers are now thinking about supporting Ronald Reagan for president in 1972, as if he would be able to run American capitalism on assumptions other than those applied by Nixon—and as if he is any more consistent and had in any case not already been straightened by the President. The search by capitalism’s supporters for the honest, consistent leader who will never go against his word is never ending—until capitalism itself ends.

 

Politics

 

As the months go by the government of Edward Heath is increasingly shown up as equally bankrupt and impotent as its predecessors. As each successive blow falls — Ulster, Upper Clyde, Unemployment, Rising prices to name only a few — the Labour Party’s excitement heightens, with its hunger at approaching power. One report has it that constituency parties have been alerted to face a general election in the near future. This may be wishful thinking, a generous dose of which is essential to keep any capitalist party ticking over. What can be said now is that any general election will be presented to us in familiar, lying terms. The Labour Party will claim to be able to make capitalism work in our interests when they can’t. And we will be told that the issue of the election is something like the Common Market or law and order or nationalisation versus free enterprise when it fact it is, as always, capitalism or Socialism.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Review December 1971

At Home

It is impossible to sympathise with the howls of frustrated rage over the cynical semantics of the Compton report on the interrogation methods of the British in Northern Ireland. The military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph pointed out that the methods employed were also used on some British shock troops, with the idea of training them to resist pressure if they were ever captured. This was of course a poor attempt at justifying the methods used by the British but it did underline the fact that brutal interrogation is widely used, on all sides, in war. And anyone who really expected the inquiry to come up with anything other than a whitewash themselves need some sort of interrogation but on a psychiatrist’s couch.

Cynical semantics have also been used by government spokesmen about two of their most pressing problems. When he addressed the well-fed Institute of Directors at their annual conference, Chancellor of the Exchequer Barber forgot all about the mounting unemployment and claimed that we are about to experience the biggest boom for years, that the economy is expanding and that price restraint is working. Perhaps he was drunk—the directors always enjoy a good lunch, with a small bottle of wine. Shortly afterwards Barber’s colleague Peter Walker, not to be outdone, was burbling out the same stale old promises about housing which we have been hearing for so long. His new Housing Bill, he said, is the most important reform in the field this century and then, like housing ministers before him, he made the ritual promise about slums. Walker, who lives in a posh house himself, reckons that he will have cleared the slums up in ten years. There is no mitigating evidence, that he was drunk.

Abroad

Never before have the protests about Bomb tests been taken as high as those about America’s latest one underneath the island of Amchitka. If this indicates a heightening of the energy of the protesters, it also hints that their unrealistic hysteria is becoming acute. Surely they didn’t expect the Supreme Court to rule that human interests should come before those of the American ruling class? To overturn every priority, every assumption, upon which capitalism everywhere works? Perhaps in future they will realise the order of things under capitalism and then begin working against the system instead of against one of its effects.

Meanwhile, another of the world’s nuclear powers—and one where there is no opportunity to protest against its Bomb tests—was finally allowed to join the club. China’s entry into the United Nations, although a big diplomatic defeat for Nixon, showed the contempt with which the UN (which, we may remember, was once going to be the means to a securely peaceful world) is treated by the world powers. In the old days America would never have allowed such a defeat. For after all the fine words and the lies about it, the United Nations is little more than an international gangsters’ club. It is fitting that the latest recruit to the top league of international capitalism should at last be welcomed into it—bombs and all.

Politics

Despite the recent upheaval in the Labour Party over the Common Market, it was a fairly safe bet that Jenkins would beat Foot for the Deputy Leadership. Most of the press applauded the vote, as a sign that Labour is still interested in men of principle and honesty. In its present depression, Labour could do with a new hope; even the problems which the Tories are finding in trying to run British capitalism have not yet erased the memories of those six gloomy years of Labour rule. So once again we have a rising star, who is going to lead us to yet another promised land. In this one incident we have all the history of capitalist politics; promise and disillusionment, confidence and panic, hope and despair. This wearying process goes on year in and year out, with each successive leader being hailed as the answer to our problems then quickly exposed for a futile trickster. And none of them, yet, has been honest enough to admit it.

Honesty is a word very foreign to the Communist Party, whose recent national congress came well up to the expectations of those who always look to the Communists to provide some hilarious political double acts. This year, of course, they had to talk about Northern Ireland, and to hammer out a typical reformist line. They showed a touching concern for the catholic minority, then took the line that the best thing to happen was for the British troops, whose methods have been under such fire, to stay there. This was typical of the confusion and the trickery of the Communist Party, who as usual are dabbling their hands in the blood of the workers in the hope of fishing up a few miserable scraps of ignorant support.

Blogger's Note:

See the article, 'Northern Ireland: The Gentle Art of Interrogation ', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Review November 1971

At Home

Emperor Hirohito of Japan has been in and out of favour with the British ruling class so much that his life has resembled that of the man and woman in the barometer. Before the last war he was awarded the Order of the Garter, which is supposed to be a recognition of a person’s “chivalry” but which is actually one of the gaudy medals our rulers exchange like little boys with cigarette cards. Then in 1941, as his country was fighting against the British ruling class, he was stripped of the order. In April he got it back—and the whole episode serves to underline the true purpose of these decorations and ceremonies which are thrown around and which the popular press make such a fuss about. Hirohito is now, of course, a friend of British capitalism, at any rate for the time being and his visit to this country was designed to ram the fact down the throats of the British workers. Some of them were unwise enough to protest, in memory of the atrocities which parts of the Japanese army were responsible for in the last war. Apart from the fact that these protests were not aimed at atrocities as such but only those committed by the enemy, there was also the fact that the protesters were acting in the customarily naive fashion of supporters of capitalism. The alliances of international capitalism change as the pattern of opposing interests change, so that yesterday’s enemy is the friend of today. It is not stretching matters too far to say that, had Hitler in some way survived the war and the trials which followed, he may have been paraded through the streets of London to display the new solidarity between the two capitalisms. For capitalism does not know principles other than its own sordid motives, which erect no obstacles in the way of one set of murdering bandits embracing another.

Abroad

A recent United Nations report has told us that unless a “mammoth” relief operation is mounted, there will be some 40 million starving in East Pakistan by Christmas. We have grown so familiar to this kind of warning that the report passed by almost unnoticed, as another example of the world’s inadequate resources or its inability to organise such an operation smoothly and in time. That has always been the official excuse, for tragedies such as in East Pakistan, or in natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, typhoons. Yet at the same time as the U.N. report came out, a comparatively short distance away from East Pakistan the evidence was accumulating, that the excuses for inaction are nothing more than lies. In the middle of a desert, among the ruins of the ancient city of Persepolis, the Shah of Persia briefly held court to a gathering of the representatives of world capitalism in conditions of unprecedented luxury. The assembled dignitaries camped out in tents as sumptuous as a palace. They ate food exotic into the realms of fantasy. The whole show, which lasted only a couple of days, cost some £40 million. To get all that stuff out to the ruins in the desert, convoys of lorries rolled out from the Continent every day for months. And the object of it all was simply to show the world that, among the minor powers of international capitalism, Persia has a place. Whether or not that point was made, what was clear was that it is possible to move vast amounts of supplies into difficult places—but that capitalism does not care to do so. When the deaths are counted up in East Pakistan, or in any other similarly needy place, nobody who remembers the junketings at Persepolis should be content with the excuse that it is all an unavoidable accident.

Politics

That strange, light headed feeling we always get at this time of year is relief at the end of the boredom of the party conferences. This year’s were splendid examples of the art of conference trickery. Labour desperately tried to paper over its splits, revealed briefly the flash of knives in the shadows and ended with a marvellously unrealistic list of industries to be nationalised by a future Labour government. Sometimes they mentioned the word Socialism but for all they understood it, or mentioned it in correct context, they might as well have said rhubarb.

The Tories were also in excellent form. This year, remember, they are in power, so the speeches have to be rather different in tone if not in basic content. When they were in opposition we were all being threatened with imminent disasters; now we are all being threatened with imminent prosperity. Barber and Heath both told us all about the golden future which is about to be served up to us and the Chancellor dug up an explanation for unemployment which has been out of use for long enough to sound really fresh. It was all, he said, due to wage demands. The Tories also had their customary hunt for the blood of the criminal, and of course the hats made a wonderful showing.

When capitalism is no more, there will be a good case for keeping these conferences going, for how else will we know what cynicism meant to the people it now deceives and suppresses?

At Home and Abroad . . . (1972)

The Home and Abroad Column from the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Review September 72

At Home

There are signs that the government is preparing to retreat from its previous entrenched position on wages. If this happens it will need careful handling as far as publicity goes, which may explain the heavy caution with which the recent talks between the unions, employers and the government were treated. When they came into power Heath’s government were quite positive that they had the solution to the economic problems which have plagued British capitalism since the war. The unions, they said, must be brought to heel; in future they would be met head on in any industrial dispute. There would also be a special Act which would in effect weaken the unions’ bargaining powers. At the same time prices would, in some mysterious way which has eluded all other governments, be held in control. The promised result of this would be a steady rise in prosperity for everyone. In fact what the Tories were concerned about, as any capitalist government would be, was basically wages and the level of capital investment in British industry, which were affecting the competitive power of British goods on the world market. Every government since the war has come in with promises to tackle these problems and they have all had apparently simple solutions. Every one has had "new” ideas and policies; Wilson’s government, for example, had the Prices and Incomes Board and the Declaration of Intent from the employers and the unions. Who remembers them now? Every government, faced with the day to day realities of capitalism, has been compelled to change its line and to abandon the programme it put forward at the election, while the problem continued as bad as ever. Heath’s had the brief period of open conflict, as he promised and he has the Industrial Relations Act. Some workers have been gaoled, a union has had a massive fine. But British capitalism could not have carried on for long like that; it makes more sense, economically and politically, for the Tories to change their policy. To repeal the Industrial Relations Act would be too obvious a signal of defeat but there will probably be other signs in the near future of the government’s surrender to the intractability of capitalism’s chaos.

Abroad

Since it has never happened before, the killing of the Israeli Olympic athletes helped foster the idea that we are living in times of special cruelty and disarray, and that guerrilla tactics are something of an innovation. It needs only a little effort to recall many examples of similar tactics, sometimes by small bands of killers and sometimes by larger, more organised groups. If the Arabs showed great courage in their raid, it was not the first time that bravery has been used to murderous ends. Capitalist states are always organising the courage of their peoples in a massive effort of destruction. At such times they use any weapon they can, including that of the ultimatum. The famous demand for unconditional surrender in the last war was no more than a threat to murder and destroy on a savage scale, if the other side did not give way — and it was a threat which the Allies carried out. The men who plan and implement such ultimata are not called terrorists and murderers but there is nothing to choose between them and the men who did the killing at Munich, or indeed those Israeli nationalists who waged so ruthless a guerrilla campaign against British occupation in the years after the war. Capitalism is a mass of conflict, springing from the competing economic interests of many rival groups both national and international. In one way or another, force is always applied in these conflicts and capitalism continually conditions its people to accept the use of force, often of a terrifying scale and intensity. The Arabs at Munich acted as they have been conditioned to. The outcome of violence is never pleasant, whether it is eleven dead bodies at Munich or a hundred thousand at Hiroshima. But if the working class are not clear on the issue, if their ideas on it are confused by the illogicalities and the violence of nationalism, they can have no hope of ending a victory of which bloodshed is so integral a part.

Politics

When the Monday Club meet to protest against the Ugandan Asians, they thunder that the immigrants are being allowed in against the wishes of the people of this country. When Wedgewood Bonn talks about British capitalism’s entry of the Common Market, he whines that the voice of the people should be heard on the issue, in a referendum. We do not need to be too perceptive to realise that concern for a democratic society emerges only when policies are being pushed through which the speaker opposes. Tory M.P. Soref supports a government which, like the one of which Benn was a member, has imposed plenty of measures without asking what the majority of people thought or wanted. Democracy is a word for capitalist politicians to play with and to use if they see advantage in doing so. In fact capitalism cannot be a democratic society; it cannot take its people into its confidence, cannot make all its information freely available, cannot run itself as the majority wants, cannot involve everyone in the decision taking from top to bottom. Soref is no more interested in making available full information about race, about housing, population, social services and so on than Benn is in telling us everything about the economy of capitalism. Democracy needs knowledge and when the working class have that there will be no more capitalism with its irrelevant issues and politicians to exploit them.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the October 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

In the thirties (which were, of course, the bad old days which will never return) there was something called the intractable million. This was an economist’s phrase for the figure of a million unemployed which, no matter what the government or the experts did, would not be eliminated. Well now, in the good new days, the figure for the out-of-work is rising steadily towards the million and, when we make allowances for the defects of official statistics, has probably passed that ominous water mark. It is also clear that the politicians and the economists have no more idea of how to deal with this problem today than they had in the thirties, although now, as then, they do their best to sound confident when they produce their pet schemes. And this is what is called progress. Since the war, as unemployment has kept to a comparatively low level, working class poverty has taken some new, less traditional forms. It seems we are about to witness a return of the old, established forms of poverty as well.

And in case anyone thought that the old forms of poverty had completely disappeared. Shelter produced a report on slums which estimated that they will not be cleared in England and Wales for 204 years. At all events, this is a more realistic estimate than the drivel we get from Housing Ministers who promise to deal with the problem within the next few years. Yet perhaps even Shelter are being optimistic; they base their estimate on the present rate of clearance as against that of the decline of houses into slumdom. Capitalism has an established reputation for producing crises which destroy optimistic forecasts. So anyone who thinks that in the year 2176 they will be moving out of their slum had better not make any firm plans.

In any case by that time, if we are to believe some of the panic-stricken interpretations of the crime statistics and of recent events in the criminal scene, we shall all be murdered in our beds. The gunning down of the police inspector in Blackpool, with other highly-publicised cases and some angry statements by high ranking policemen, have fed the popular appetite for retribution against the criminal. Murder, indeed most violence, is an intensely emotional business so it is predictable, that there should be the same sort of reaction when a newsworthy killing happens. In this atmosphere there is little chance of the acceptance of a more rational approach; and certainly almost none of a hearing for the argument that it is capitalism, in one way or another and whatever other factors are influential, which makes our outlaws.

Politics

One of the peripheral battles about the Ulster situation has been on whether Parliament should be recalled. This is good stuff for all the comedians who thrive on apolitical jokes; what a shame to bring the M.P.s back from their labours on the Riviera, and so on and so on. Much more amusing is the notion that recalling Parliament would have any effect on the problem. It would be very difficult to prove from experience that this is likely to happen, since at present Parliament is an organ which administers the affairs of capitalism. As such it is impotent to get rid of the effects of the system; that can only come when Parliaments all over the world are composed of socialists with a mandate to abolish capitalism and with it all its inhumane and murderous offsprings. So as far as socialists are concerned (and if it's any consolation to them) the M.P.s can stay on the Riviera.

Abroad

When Khrushchev was deposed, on the day in 1964 that the British working class were returning the Labour Party to power (there were some theories that if Khrushchev had gone 24 hours earlier Wilson would not have won) a distinct chill of apprehension went around the world. In his years of power over Russian capitalism, Khrushchev had come to be accepted as a politician who was prepared to work towards a more comfortable phase in the Cold War and to ease the grip of the Russian dictatorship at home. One thing to be said about this is that none of this policy was a brilliant idea which sprang out of Khrushchev’s head. As he came to power there were changes in the world power structure of capitalism, with the rising threat of Chinese capitalism becoming ever more menacing. Within Russia, there had been signs of cracks in the dictatorship before Stalin died. As in other capitalist countries, Khrushchev was very much a man of his times, expressing and personalising the needs of his ruling class. It was clear at the time that he was under some political pressure at home, and that this went some way to explain such incidents as the Cuba missiles and Khrushchev’s apparent fondness for shoe-banging, raucous belligerence in public. What was happening was that he was saying one thing in.public while in fact doing the opposite — a common enough experience for capitalist leaders.

In Russia, we are told, we must expect barbarism and terror. But recent events in other countries have confirmed — if it were needed that this does not apply only to Russia. Events like the massacre at Attica prison, N.Y. Like the killings at the new airport in Tokyo. And so far we have not even mentioned Ulster. All the evidence points to the conclusion that capitalism is rotten and should be replaced by a society where people are precious.

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard, see 'The Death of Khrushchev'.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the August 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The latest, and most famous, example of a politician’s vote catching phrase rebounding back onto him is Edward Heath’s “at a stroke’’ promise to deal with rising prices at the last election. Of course nobody in their right mind took this seriously and the record on prices since the Tories took over proves the point. The Tories made a lot of noise about the promised effects of a reduction in SET and those who are mistakenly under the impression that such things determine prices may have believed it. Perhaps they have learnt better, now that SET has been cut in half and prices continue to climb. The Labour Party, as if they had never broken an election pledge in their life, overflow with false rage about Heath’s promise. Perhaps this rage acts as a sort of tranquiliser, stopping them from looking back at the record of their own government on prices. And finally the Tories, playing the honourable game of politics, keep passing the buck back; for example the confessed economic ignoramus Douglas-Home blaming the Wilson government for setting a “time bomb” of price rises which is now exploding under Heath’s men. This is all very well for the exponents of meaningless political shadow boxing but the working class, who send these people to Westminster, should realise how empty it all is. And if they don’t realise, a look at the shop price tickets should remind them.

One person who can be excused this exercise is Prince Edward, the queen’s youngest child. All workers who may have been worried about what would happen to the prince’s education when his private tutor left him to get married had their minds set at rest by the announcement that he would be going to Gibb’s preparatory school in Kensington where they charge £100 a term to teach the kids, among other things, “respect for property.” This may in fact be something of a waste of time; since these kids come from the class who own all the property, do they need to be taught to respect it? Wouldn’t that be more in line for working class kids who don’t have any property? Coincident with the prince being booked for Gibb’s school the memoirs of Lord Butler were published. He, we may remember, is the man who managed the Education Act of 1944 through Parliament. That was said to be a very daring Act, because it gave everyone equal rights to the best education.

Abroad

President Nixon said that his journey to China had been fixed because of his desire for peace, now and for generations to come. In view of this uncontrollable desire for peace, one wonders why the delay—and when did it come to Nixon, that he might get peace in talking with the Chinese government rather than in rattling nuclear weapons at them? At all events the visit will have the effect of upstaging the “peace” movement in America and it seems the Democrats will have to make some hard running now to have a chance against Nixon next year. It would be fascinating to sit in on the discussions between Nixon and the Chinese: one established, powerful capitalist state at last bargaining with another, new and rising and threatening. What betrayals, what carve-ups, what sharing of the spoils there will be! When the truth about it is known it may well turn out to have been one of the dirtiest episodes in the history of capitalist diplomacy.

One immediate effect of Nixon’s visit may be to end the present struggle in Vietnam, which otherwise threatens to go on for ever. A similar situation may be developing in Northern Ireland, where killings have now become almost accepted as the normal routine. How long ago was it, that the “progressives” in this country were demanding that the British government send in the troops so that the troubles could be ended with typical British fair play? In the event, as was clear all along, the troops have simply become the target of the opposing factions. We might hope that the “progressives” would recognise the struggle has roots deeper than they ever dreamed of, did we not know that fundamental thinking is foreign to their minds.

Politics

Has Wilson at last come down off the fence over the Common Market? In truth, he has never actually been on the fence, since even a master trickster like Wilson cannot entirely erase the fact that his government themselves tried to join the Six. What Wilson has done is to recognise the electoral possibilities of the Common Market issue and, like any good politician, to exploit them. The most popular pictures of the Common Market at present consists of rapidly rising prices in essential foodstuffs while hordes of foreign workers come freshly into England. Anyone with any experience of working class attitudes knows that that is not a vote-winning concept; the government will have to do some intensive propaganda if they are to convince the voters otherwise. Meanwhile, Wilson craftily has the best of both worlds. He still hangs on to his party’s policy of going into Europe but charges the Tories with accepting humiliating terms which would damage working class conditions and worsen international relations with the Eastern bloc. All of this, thrown in with some typical Wilson stuff about the Tories’ cynicism and privilege, may turn out to be a winning formula. If it is, we can depend on it that the doubting and opposing voices in the Labour ranks will be stilled, for they—just like the cynical Tories—will forgive a leader anything provided he brings home the electoral bacon. The fact is that there is nothing to choose between Labour and Tory on the Common Market, or on cynicism.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the July 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The crisis in the shipyards of the Upper Clyde group showed capitalism, and its apologists, at their most typical. The crisis came not for any lack of skill or materials or need; it came simply because the yards cannot fulfill the basic capitalist requirement that they operate at a profit. In that situation UCS may well have to shut down, no matter how many ships may be sailing which for one reason or another should be replaced—and no matter how much waste of resources a closure might represent. The Labour Party may howl with rage at the shut down, as they often do when the principles of capitalism which they uphold when in office come into operation when they are in opposition. The Tories say they are applying their policy of making all undertakings stand on their own feet. But if this were to be generally applied, what panic there would be among the parasites of the ruling class !

Among, for example, the royal family who, if required to stand alone on their own feet would quickly collapse into a heap. They have just decided that they can no longer stagger along on the pittance of the few hundred thousands they get each year, even if this does supplement the income from their massive private wealth. Workers whose lives are given up to the toil which produces all this opulence by the side of indescribable misery should not be deceived into thinking that what the press called the royal “wage” claim makes the queen and her hangers-on anything other than the highest, the most publicised and among the richest, of the capitalist class.

To the members of that class, problems like rising prices, for example, are seen as if through the other end of the telescope from the one to which workers’ eyes are glued. We do not need the Labour Party to remind us that the Tories promised to end this problem, as Labour themselves promised. Now, the election pledges are as usual being forgotten, if sometimes they are remembered when something happens like Minister of Agriculture Prior’s gaffe. Perhaps he was trying the unusual course of trying to be honest; or perhaps he is just a fool; or are the Tories playing the excessively simple game of admitting, quickly and in words which all can understand, that they cannot control capitalism? Whichever it is, the working class could do themselves a good turn by undestanding.

Politics

It seems that the government will not have an easy ride into the Common Market, whatever happens at the negotiations. In this country there is a strengthening lobby which is pledged to fight the British entry. One theme which this lobby is playing is the fact that the people have not been consulted on the issue. This is not, of course, entirely true; anyone who voted for either Labour or Tory in the last election thinking that he was opposing Britain joining the EEC must have a serious mental blockage. More to the point, when were the people ever consulted on this kind of issue? When was there a referendum on a declaration of war? When did we have the chance to vote on issues like racist immigration Bills? Anti-trade union laws? So why make an exception over the Common Market? Could it be that the Labour Party are seeing in the issue the chance to grab quite a few votes and know that a middle line policy will grab them all the more and all the quicker? It is not unknown for issues like the Common Market to be obscured by a propaganda smokescreen behind which a capitalist party makes its attack. And the talk about a referendum is no more than a smokescreen put out to hide the essential fact that worker have no interests in the issue; whether Britain goes in or not will have no fundamental effect on our standing as workers.

Abroad

How romantic, how thrilling, that the Russians have an orbiting space station where they can grow things and watch the weather and the vegetation and so on down on earth! What brave men are their astronauts, to whizz up into space and start crawling about from one ship to another just so that they can grow those things and watch all the others! What clever scientists, to think it all up and then design all the ships and the equipment! Perhaps there will still be some of the thrills and the romance left, when it becomes obvious that the stations (there will assuredly be more of them) are also being used, probably primarily, for purposes connected with the war machines of the space powers. The world was similarly thrilled when man first flew and we all know where that landed us. Space travel, and the courage and ability which goes into it, shows again what human beings could do to improve our environment —and how capitalism corrupts it all. 

What capitalism does is being witnessed in India and East Pakistan, where disease follows war follows flood and will probably be followed by yet more horrible disaster. It is now coming out, that places like East Pakistan have for a long time been in a turmoil of bloodshed, with political murders so frequent that they hardly make the news. Other murders, of course, are even less like to be noticed. Across the border in Calcutta there is a similar story. It is likely now that this already desperate situation will explode into something even more horrifying. The answer which capitalism has to this is to appeal for charity and to represent the affair as a regrettable accident. We should remember the original motives for conquering the Indian continent, and for keeping it in the economic state it was kept in for so long, and then for giving it its “independence” in the way it was. In this perspective the horror of East Pakistan becomes more logical—and even more horrible.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the June 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

One of the enduring fallacies of capitalism is that the troubles of the world can be attributed to overpopulation. There are plenty of statistics which give some superficial support to this notion, figures which show an increase in people and which the “experts” (and sometimes the not-so-expert) can use to prove that if something is not done soon we shall all be suffocated under one vast pile of squirming humanity.

The suggestion that a Ministry of Population be set up was tailored to play up to this fallacy. The leader writers had their fun, with predictable forecasts that we are drawing nearer 1984. They all missed the point, which is that the modern world is capable of supporting many times its present population but is prevented from doing so by the insane organisation of capitalism.

It is not overpopulation which destroys wealth while millions are starving; which stops the production of building materials while there is a desperate housing problem; which puts people out of employment while there is a crying need for more, not less, wealth. These contradictions arise directly from the basic nature of capitalist society; they conform to its essential needs.

A new, separate ministry will not affect those problems but it will probably persuade enough voters that solutions are in the offing to make it, from the point of view of the politicians, worth while.

Politics

Part of the massive swing of the electoral pendulum which gave the Labour Party so many seats in the local elections can be put down to the fact that they were reversing many of the freak results which came out of the lowest days of the Wilson government and which cost them councils they should never lose. This time, for good measure they had their freak wins—in London, for example, they won Merton and Bexley. These results indicate a heavy dissatisfaction with the Heath government and it is fair to wonder why this should have happened at this time.

Heath won power (and there is nothing new in this) on the discrediting of the Labour Party and some empty promises to tackle the problems which capitalism is currently visiting upon the British worker. Of course they are failing in this aim—did any government ever succeed? Yet so far the government have followed their stated intentions fairly closely and, politicians though they are, they might be feeling aggrieved at the speed with which the voters have turned upon them. Or did they too fall for their own propaganda and believe that they would end up governing for ever ?

Meanwhile, across the benches, there were more stories of plots to unseat Wilson as Labour’s leader. These intrigues are never ending in their fatuity but are the stuff of politics, especially left wing politics. The plotters are angry at Wilson’s handling of the party’s affairs, particularly of his timing of the election. That, of course, is the nub of the matter; they judge their leader in terms of how successful they are at the polls, how successful he is at deceiving the working class and gathering in the votes.

If they win and the leader is thrown out, what happens? another takes his place and the whole wearisome business must start again—the deception, the promises, the tactics, all with the object of perpetuating the capitalist system on the uninformed votes of the workers.

Perhaps the plotters, who must get a lot of excitement from their dramatic comings and goings, think that all of this is worthwhile. If so, they might spare time to look around at the world, at the poverty, the fear, the destruction, and congratulate themselves at playing a part in keeping the whole sordid mess going.

Abroad

The negotiations for Britain’s entry into the Common Market were said to be going well. After “our” representatives had nobly exhausted themselves in a bargaining battle which had gone on into the small hours they emerged proclaiming success. By that they meant that the many conflicting interests of the powers involved had been managed into a compromise. The underlying conflicts are still there and will not be removed by joining the Common Market, which is itself full of disputes between the member capitalist nations. That is the extent of the “success” of Rippon and his team.

Any worker who takes sides in the great Common Market controversy should ask himself what it matters to him and to other members of his class. Such trading arrangements are only an attempt to mollify — in other words an expression of — the basic anarchic conflicts of capitalism. Workers’ problems will only end when the cause of these conflicts ends; to solve the anarchy of capitalism we must abolish the system itself and entire.

Any doubts on the conflicts, or on their craziness, must have been dented by the news of Europe’s latest currency crisis, this time involving the German Mark. This time, the financial experts told us, the trouble was that the Mark was too strong; it used to be that the pound was too weak. We were all invited to take an interest in the price movements of the currency, as if such events had ever had the slightest effect upon working class fortunes. The German workers were told that they must suffer for this "strong” currency and tighten their belts. As the song says, it’s the poor what gets the pain.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the May 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

In Britain the chaos of capitalism continues, with the Tories’ election promises to control the economy rapidly turning sour. Prices are streaking upwards so that wage claims, far from the three per cent to which the Wilson government tried to restrict them, are now being made for rises of up to thirty per cent. Unemployment, not to be left out of the act, is also on the up—814,000, the highest since May 1940 — and likely to reach a million before the end of the year. Heath, rather than confess that his policies are bankrupt and his pledges lies, blamed the jobless total onto "inflationary” wage claims, another issue on which he differs from Enoch Powell, who continues to insist (correctly) that inflation has other causes. The fact is that this particular crisis has lasted since 1963, which is a pretty good record for a social system which claims to be orderly and efficient. With a crisis like that, who needs a slump?

On the subject of statistics, the 1971 Census provoked the sort of indignation which would be better reserved for the real degradations of capitalism. A lot of the protests were the result of the sort of neurosis about "privacy” which capitalism fosters in workers who have little else to protect themselves with. This, does not, of course, gloss over the fears about other aspects of the Census; this government now says that the information would not be used against the people who give it, but governments have been known to break their word . . . And the whole exercise was designed to suit capitalism, to help its governments plan the system more efficiently and its industries to operate more effectively. The gathering of such information will be a necessary part of socialist society; capitalism misuses and corrupts everything it touches. 

Politics

A deposed politician, like a spanked child with its thumb in its mouth, has his consolations. Often it’s a place on a lucrative board; sometimes (Robens, Marsh) it’s a well paid job as boss of a state industry. Or it can be selling one’s memoirs. George Brown’s have come out, very much in the style we might have expected, and launched at a luncheon where the modern Jimmy Thomas treated his audience to a speech freely sprinkled with swear words. We might have guessed that Wilson would have upstaged his old rival, by not only getting his memoirs out at record speed but also by stealing the headlines, with a legal battle over who had the publishing rights. It seems that these men are going to have sharply differing recollections of the same events. It also seems that the version of each will tend to favour himself against the other. This is no mere bickering but the deadly business of political infighting in which truth usually becomes lost in the fogs of battle. It will be a fruitful beld for the political historian of the future; everyone seems to be getting something out of it except the workers, who were tricked by the Labour leaders, then exploited and repressed by them. 

Abroad

Who, or what, is to blame for the massacre of My Lai? The trial and conviction of William Calley has stimulated interest in the notion that people should not be held entirely responsible for their actions and that it might be more instructive to examine the society in which they developed. (This notion does not, apparently, extend to Charles Manson, who seems to be clearly mad; perhaps because there is no political capital to be made out of doing so.) The important question is, how far are we going to take this notion? As far as to argue that all eccentricity, crime, deviance, has its roots in society? That it would be better to do something about war itself, and the social system which produces it, than about the frail individuals who are caught up in it? We need not delude ourselves, that anything like this sort of questioning will be allowed. It is too pointed, too rational, too threatening to capitalism.

The Calley case illuminated the fact that atrocity comes naturally with war. If we needed more evidence, the flare up in East Pakistan supplied it. Here is another example of a part of what is called the Third World, the newly independent nations which were going to be such a force for peace, drowning itself in blood. The division between India and Pakistan was largely drawn to satisfy religious prejudices, yet here we have people of the same religion freely slaughtering each other. Religion was not the issue in this war, but an economic clash. Just like in the old days, before national independence was even a possibility.

One of the emerging capitalist nations which will be interested in the events in East Pakistan is China, whose relationships with the West have changed so dramatically. This was an example of trade following not the sword but the ping-pong bat, or rather the other way round. We can be sure that many firms are licking their lips at the chance of getting in on the massive market of China, getting a share of what has so far been reserved for those companies prepared to risk American displeasure. Travel firms will try to open up the country with their package tours and hotels. And spare a thought, amid all the rejoicing, for the poor deprived holders of Chinese government stock, who have not had a dividend for so long and who now sniff some money in the air. Wonder what happened to all that talk about Socialism in one country?

At Home . . . and Abroad (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the February 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

Is inflation a real issue, or something blown up by the politicians? The Tories, just like every other government since the war, came bustling into power with assurances that they had the answer to it. And, as Heath has said more than once, there are votes to be won (and lost, although no politician likes to mention such a terrible prospect) by the party which can convincingly claim that they have done something effective about it.

They would probably feel safer if the people who are really supposed to know what to do—the financial experts, the economists and so on—did not look quite so much like blind men trying to find their way through a fog. If a few of them could at least agree on a solution it would be comforting to Westminster. But some want “cheaper’' money, others “dearer” money; some want lower, some higher, taxes; some see the solution in a statutory wages policy, others in a voluntary one; and so on. These, let it be remembered, are the men who say that capitalism can be controlled and organised to operate in the majority interest.

There are in fact many signs that British capitalism is under great pressure and that some sort of a crunch is not far off. December saw some spectacular failures in profits, with British Leyland and ICI showing the way and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board in really deep water. Despite all the claptrap about “our” interests, this is what the crisis is all about—the prospect that British industry is not meeting the first requirement of capitalism that it makes money.

The government’s first remedy for this is an anti-trade union Bill (just as the Wilson’s government was). A great deal of nonsense gushed forth when the Bill was debated, from both the “left” who completely forgot what Wilson tried to do and from the “right” who professed to see in this master stroke from the Tories the first signs of everlasting peace on the union/employer field. The fact is that whether there is a Bill or not, indeed whether there are unions or not, the class struggle is an unavoidable fact of capitalist life and will go on in some shape or form. One explanation for the confusion on both wings is that neither of them understand that fact.

For a time, despite the Bill, the government’s policies seemed to be in disarray but they pulled back some ground over what looked like a minor victory in the power dispute. (It was in fact a relative victory, depending on where you chose to say the battle started; in terms of wage restriction the workers can be said to have gained something.) Everyone who sat in the gloom, cooking their sausages over a candle, during the power cuts probably experienced some anger, although it may not always have been directed against the workers. Strikes and other industrial action is bound to affect people’s lives and if the power workers are so vital then why do they have to fight so hard to get their rise? Why aren’t they living like stockbrokers, who could go on strike tomorrow without putting anyone's life or comfort in danger?

Abroad

It has rather slipped out of the headlines recently, but there was a mammoth disaster in East Pakistan, not so long ago and it was still there, despite all the sacrifices on the Stock Exchange. It was a classic of capitalism’s simple inability to deal with its problems. The basin of the River Ganges is an area noted for its disastrous storms. So why do people live there? Simply, because they are too poor to move—and too poor to get out of the way when trouble approaches and when the disaster is there they are too poor to get help. It was a typical inglorious, inhuman muddle of a system which claims to be the most efficient possible.

To the east of this particular disaster, the war in Vietnam raged on, with the resumption of bombing of the North. In America the Calley trial lifted the veil on what it is like to be engaged in the war. Vietnam is sickening and it raises sickening passions. Yet here again a politician won votes on the promise that he would do something about it. In reality Nixon has been as helpless as his predecessors and, as the electoral return and the anxieties of the Republican governors show, his importance may cost him the votes he won. Meanwhile, the blood still flows.