Editorial: Join the protest (2001)

Editorial from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the electoral circus in full swing the parties have been competing with one another in a seemingly endless round of pledges, promises, scare stories and counter claims. And the longer this circus goes on, the less interest most voters show in it. The news media openly spends more time telling us about “the election” itself – its stratagems and ruses – than about the policies on offer from any of the parties. It is hardly surprising given the paucity of the products on show.

The election is carried out as if the two main protagonists are marketing agencies selling two superficially different (but nevertheless fundamentally identical) management teams. The tools of their trade are the typical marketing techniques employed by corporate business everywhere – “spin”, “positioning” in relation to key target sectors, junk mail and cold calling of those in a targeted market niche, all refracted through the magnifying glass of the “focus group”.

Is it any wonder the electorate react with a cold shrug of apathy? The only time the campaign thus far has come to life was when a manager from one of the competing teams hit an egg-wielding farmer’s boy on the campaign trail in North Wales. Nothing of any significance happened and no great issues were debated as a result but it provided a spectacle for a society that thrives on periodic spectacular events to relieve the boredom and passivity.

Who wants to endlessly discuss whether there’s a £20 billion hole in one of the team’s tax and spending plans or whether the other team will abolish the ceiling on the upper rate of National Insurance contributions when we can watch Thumper give the Yokel a left-arm jab on the nightly news? All the arguments are just froth, of course, anyway – how many can (hand on heart) say that they are definitely always better off under one type of management team rather than the other? Very few and they’re usually the ones with money enough not to care too much either way.

For the rest of us – the majority who struggle along from week to week while the people with real money in society get even more money and the politicians play their games to distract our attention from it – it’s one long yawn. A nagging irrelevance that won’t go away. An advertising war in which we are the collateral damage.

But something interesting is happening if you look hard enough. The serfs in this giant political soap suds war are revolting. Fewer than ever wish to take sides between the teams on offer and the near-identical brands they are promoting. In recent elections for the European parliament, local government and parliamentary by-elections increasing numbers of voters are signalling that they’ve had enough. They’re staying at home, sitting on their hands.

This is an encouraging sign, but is one which is of itself a reflection of the passive mentality today’s market-driven consumer society promotes and which the political process encourages. Far better would be a positive refusal to line up behind the teams on offer, a refusal to join in their pointless games. In other words, a protest.

As socialists, we write in this journal as people who wish to help change the world in a positive direction, not get our bums on seats of ministerial cars of play lap-dog to the rich (and getting richer). So in this election we call on the “silent majority”, unhappy – and even disgusted – by the performance of the clowns in this political circus, to protest by spoiling their ballot papers. In so doing they will be taking part in the democratic forum yet at the same time withdrawing their consent from those who would rule over them in the name of wealth for the few and tedium for the rest of us.

Where no candidate standing for the one genuine alternative to the present system – a world socialist society of free access to available wealth – is on offer in this election, socialists and those in general agreement with our cause will be writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across our ballot papers.

So our voice will be heard. We will not allow it to be stifled under a welter of mindless political psychobabble. And the more people who agree with us and do the same, the louder the voice and the more effective the protest against the whole ridiculous charade currently being played out before us in the name of our interests.

The big picture (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have a few friends who are politically active. One with the Green Party, another for Labour. A third is/was in the Jeremy Corbyn camp, though comes from a Trotskyist background. All three agreed the priority in the election was to get the Tories out.

I must confess to an emotional sympathy with this sentiment. The Tories seem to embody the worst political features of selfishness, virulent nationalism and an absence of empathy for the plight of others. Their appeal is to encourage such in others. However, the socialist knows no matter how accurate this view may be, the alternatives cannot offer policies of significant difference. They may well have varied and more humanely positive motives, but the practical outcomes of their governance would be so similar to a Tory administration as to be virtually indistinguishable.

This is because at root the political problem was not the Conservative Party, no matter how unpleasant it may be, but the economic system that drives all government policy, whatever party label it is enacted under, capitalism.

Billions of pounds required

It was instructive listening not to what the parties claim to be offering the electorate, but the advocates for various groups and sections of society. Child care, for instance, the expense or lack of it, inhibiting family incomes and, often, women’s career opportunities. Billions of pounds required.

Care for the elderly presents increased life expectancy as an ever burgeoning financial burden society must find billions for.

The National Health Service is unable to meet the demands made upon it. People in long term pain or dying prematurely for want of appointments, treatment and operations. Hospitals literally crumbling. Another pot of gold required.

Many incomes are below what workers and their families require simply to sustain themselves. Men and women often doing two, sometimes more, jobs and still not having enough money to afford rent, never mind buy, a home, or put adequate food on the table. Food banks and income credits/ benefits required: more billions of pounds.

The mantra of the anti-Tory parties was that all this, and more, was the result of 14 years of Conservative government. Which surely poses a question. Why would they intentionally govern to deprive the vast majority of what they need?

Perhaps it is because they are the nasty party. Yet, if this was the case they would be foolishly prioritising their visceral nastiness at the expense of their hold on government. Surely, if they could simply arrange the money transfers to meet all such urgent needs they’d garner the votes of the electorate for the foreseeable future.

The argument may well be made that the Conservative Party is in such collusion with the capitalists their priority is to protect capitalism’s profit-making at the expense of the workers, the great majority. This analysis is correct, as far as it goes.

Unfortunately, the Tory motivation, in this respect, is not unique to them, but fundamental to whichever party assumes government responsibilities. It is instructive to consider what occurred when a Tory administration acted against the interests of capital.

No one could accuse Liz Truss as being anything other than an archetypal Tory, other than she has blonde hair rather than a blue rinse. Yet her premiership was brief and quickly ended not via the ballot box, but the actions of the market. The leader of the democratically elected government was brought down because she was perceived to be a threat to the financial structure of capitalism. No secret cabal required, no illicit meeting of shadowy figures acting on behalf of capital. Merely the mechanisms of the market were enough to be self-protecting and dispense with the prime minister. What price democracy?

All this will have been, and still is, perfectly obvious to the now Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer even when they saw themselves as the government in waiting. The Labour Party campaign in this general election was founded on protestations of fiscal probity.

It’s time for a change, but without spending more. Or at least no increase in taxation. As taxation is the only source of government income, other than borrowing which is also being disavowed, the financial requirements just to sustain society, set out above, cannot be met.

Not created by governments

Unless, of course, there is the sharp upturn in the country’s economy that is being cited as a potential wellspring for meeting the increased and increasing demands. There is historical precedent. The post-Second World War boom did enable an expansion of government spending on social programmes by Labour and Conservative administrations.

But that financial boost was not created by governments. The recovery from the destruction of the war created the possibilities for capitalism to exploit and create the wealth. It was starting from the very low baseline of the economic depression preceding the war and ended rather abruptly in the 1970s.

Since when, governments have largely been managing greatly reduced financial resources. The Thatcher years saw manufacturing subordinated to finance capitalism and the supposed free market. That baton was then handed on, via John Major, to the Labour administration of Tony Blair. His government benefited from a financial uplift for a while, then in 2007-8 came the crash. By the 2010 general election the Conservative opposition was proclaiming 13 years of Labour misgovernment as being responsible for the general financial woes.

This was as an unjustified claim as is the present Labour one of 14 years of Conservative maladministration. The similarity of time periods is interesting. Governments create neither booms nor busts. Undoubtedly if they did there would only be booms.

So, voting Labour, whether of the present Starmer, or previous Corbyn, variety could not fundamentally change the economic situation. It matters little how good or bad their intentions are. The Green Party could, along with the Liberal Democrats (and even Reform), make whatever promises they wish as they won’t be in a position to realise them.

Even a proposal such as the basic income, advocated by the Greens, is really just another form of benefit that would have to be funded. Ultimately, that funding, via income tax, business tax or some sort of tax, would come from capital. However attractive that might seem initially, it is a subtraction from wealth creation that capitalism would be bound to react to. The markets would decide and an economic downturn would be of no benefit for workers.

International dimension

It always has to be kept in mind that capitalism, while it has national iterations, is an international system. A government policy, no matter how well intentioned, that was deemed adverse to capitalism would see its productive resources relocated elsewhere.

Presently some FTSE 100 companies are deserting the City to relocate in other stock exchanges. Their motivation is simply expectation of greater financial returns. The Henley Private Mitigation Report indicates that 2024 will see a net loss of approximately 9,500 of what the report terms high-net-worth individuals, compared with 4,200 the previous year. The Henley is a consultancy that monitors migration trends. It reported that between 1950 and the early 2000s Britain saw a continuous influx of millionaires. That trend has now been seriously reversed. This has been exacerbated more recently following Brexit with 16,500 leaving between 2017 and 2023.

Such is surely a demonstration of how government policy, even if implementing the decision of the ballot box, can adversely affect capital decision making. No matter how determined a particular government might be to access the wealth of non-doms, for instance, those funds all too easily migrate.

This is how capitalism works, no matter how reformers wish it were otherwise. Consider what happened to British manufacturing in the Thatcher years. For example, it is still possible to buy the quintessential British motorcycle the Royal Enfield, but made in India.

Any short-term gain made by a basic income will be undone in the medium to long term. Just as has, and is, happening to the welfare state and National Health Service.

What’s the alternative?

Supporters of the ‘let’s get the Tories out’ parties asked what other alternative there was. Truth can be difficult, especially when it is inconvenient or not immediately helpful. The only truthful response is, look at the big picture.

There is indeed a better way. That is a worldwide commonwealth based on meeting people’s self-defined needs through production based on those same people contributing whatever they can. Then there will be no need for billions or even trillions of pounds or dollars or whatever as there’ll be no money.

Capitalism transcended by socialism is the only solution. Otherwise, the electorate are merely voting to maintain what presently is with all its ills unaddressed and beyond solution while things stay as they are. Every vote, for whichever party, is a vote for capitalism.

Voters can decide they will pursue real change, but they must act consciously together to achieve it. No party, including The Socialist Party, can deliver it for them. It is undoubtedly a tremendous task and responsibility. Although it does not address immediate concerns which are so very difficult for many, it is the only real alternative.

Capitalism has developed the technology and the means for the socialist change, but its own fundamental motivation of capital accumulation through profit-making will always prevent it from being generally beneficial.

So democracy will either continue to be the means of choosing governance on behalf of capitalism, or become part of the change to socialism. That is the big picture.

Dave Alton

The Socialist Versus the Vote Catcher. (1924)

A Short Story from the November 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some few years ago, in the suburb known as Battenham, there lived a poor workman . whose name was Hyam Eezi. He was poor in that his clothing was shoddy, his food coarse and adulterated, his habitation mean, inconvenient and hired by the week, his hold upon life so precarious that starvation or pauperism were ever on the horizon. He owned no land: nor anything beyond the rags upon his back and the few articles of utility with which he had furnished his hired house.

He himself lived by letting himself upon hire, the process being as follows. Being possessed of nothing material beyond the few poor articles mentioned, and driven by the stern goad of hunger, he found that he still possessed one saleable thing—his energy. He had read no history, so he did not know how he and those around him had become landless, propertyless outcasts in a land of plenty. He just took things as he found them, and imagined that thus they had ever been, and thus would remain. And so his main concern was to find some hirer of human labour, and lend his services to him for as long a time as possible and for as large a sum as possible. Unfortunately he found that so many hundreds of those around him were in like case, that the hirers were enabled to select those who would take the smallest sum, or alternatively those who could work the hardest or most skilfully. He, therefore, found that, no matter how hard he worked or at what occupation, the sum he received each week barely sufficed to keep him and his family in their poor standard of “comfort” and security. Security! Ever before him there loomed the prospect of finding in his pay envelope a little slip of paper, bearing the dread intimation that his services were no longer necessary. What puzzled him, when he really did sit down to think the matter out, was the undoubted fact that when he and his mates had worked so hard that the warehouses were overflowing with goods, then was the most likely time for the “sack,”'as they called it. Terms like "over-production,” “slump,” "glutted markets,” etc., filtered down to him, but he had but the haziest idea of what they all meant. The hunt for a master began anew. Presently he found one; or after an interval of semi-starvation the old one took him back again. The process is repeated, and so the years pass.

And then a great excitement stirs his drab life. There is an Election. Certain shiny-hatted, sleek, comfortable looking gentlemen appear, and profess to take an absorbing interest in his welfare. All his troubles, he is told, are directly traceable to Free Imports, lack of Preference, want of Stability, Foreign Competition, and the Crass Stupidity of the existing Government. The remedy is quite simple. Just put a little cross opposite the shiny-hatted gentleman’s name, and Prosperity will dawn upon all.

The next few years are spent in continuing to hire himself out when fortunate enough to find a hirer, and in wondering when the promised Prosperity will arrive, or what form it was supposed to take. Suddenly the mystery is solved. He has been betrayed, swindled, duped. How does he know that? Another gentleman is good enough to devote much of his-spare time to patiently explaining what is wrong. A rash of handbills, cards, posters, etc., has broken out, and he gathers that another Election is arranged for him. The gentleman explains that the individual who cajoled his vote from him last time is one of an unscrupulous gang of self-seekers who are bent on ruining the country. They are hypocrites, liars and fools, their sole aim being the feathering of their own nests at the expense of the honest working man. "What have they done for you,” he asks searchingly. Hyam has no difficulty in replying, “Nothing.” Fortunately the remedy is simple. This gentleman stands for Peace, Retrenchment and Reform; Economy, Progress and a Free Breakfast Table; Justice, Liberty and No Tariffs. The mellifluous flow of high-sounding words leaves Hyam slightly dazed. They are not part of his everyday vocabulary and he cannot connect them with any article of use in his daily life, unless it be the Free Breakfast Table. That sounds promising, anyhow. He can’t do less than the previous blighter, thinks Hyam, so here goes my vote for the gent that has shown him up.

It is needless to recount how the ship of prosperity again seemed to have mistaken the harbour and put into some more distant haven. The cause of this was made clear as crystal to our friend Hyam Eezi by a simple working man. The occasion was another General Election, and this man proved in the most convincing manner that the previous two gentlemen were arrant swindlers, both of them employers of labour and consequently living upon the ill-gotten wealth they sweated from the honest workers. What we wanted was a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, also pensions for mothers, also no taxes on food, also better education. What we wanted was Peace in Europe; Houses to let at low Rents; No Profiteering; No Inhabited House Duty; No Entertainment Tax; Larger Unemployment Dole; More Scholarships; Cheap Electricity; Sugar Beet Factories, and, above all, No Unemployment.

Who could resist it? Not Hyam Eezi! Here was a man of his own class, who talked his own language. Here were thing he could understand. Houses at low rents! No Profiteering! No Unemployment! These were ideas he could handle. And the remedy was so exquisitely simple. Just put a little cross opposite this honest toiler’s name and the Dawn was guaranteed visible within a few short weeks. God!. would polling day never arrive?

Alas! The months have gone by with little to distinguish them from the drab years before. Hyam still hires himself out when he can find a hirer, and starves when he can’t. The honest working man of his last choice is painfully explaining to him how the main caravan missed its way, but how grateful he should be for what has been salvaged. The capitalists of France and of Germany are on much better terms; the capitalists of England and of France are happier together; the “socialist” capitalists of Russia and the ordinary capitalists of England are in a fair way to doing business; the low-rented houses are, er— on paper; the thirty million pounds (think of it, Hyam!) a year off food taxes has reduced the cost of living, except where it has gone up; the landlord has been freed of the irritating Inhabitated House Duty;, your seat at the ”pictures” has gone down a whole penny—in some places; we have increased the pittance to ex-Servicemen whom we sent to be butchered in the War; we have—, but Hyam is bewildered.. He asks himself what all this means to him. Receiving no answer, he seeks out one of those “extremist” fellows who works in the same shop, and inquires rather irrelevantly: “Where the devil are we, mate? ”

“Mate” replies : “Look here, Hyam boy, the main thing that’s wrong is yourself. All these loquacious gentlemen have had one thing in common. They have invited you to trust them. You have done so; that is why you now find yourself ‘trussed.’ Your trouble is glaringly thrust in your face every morning, but you are so used to it, you don’t notice it. You ‘book-on,’ or 'clock-on' at a definite time, and after some hours have gone, you 'book- off.’ But you feel different,  don’t you? Something has gone from you; you are tired; you have less energy. There you have it. The firm have had so many hours of your energy—and what have they given you in exchange? A wage. And what does a wage represent? The cost of replacing the energy, plus a bit to enable you to bring up kiddies to take your place. Many factors make wages vary, but the point round which they vary is the average cost of living. So you see, Hyam, you are a thing of hire, a piece of merchandise, a commodity. In selling your energy, you sell yourself, for you are inseparable. You sell yourself—a piece at a time; and when your energy thins off, you are scrapped. Foreign Agreements don’t help you; Russian and German Loans don’t help you. You still remain a worker. The whole collection of Pensions,' Insurances, Health Benefits, etc., do not really affect you. You remain a worker. Cheap rents, cheap food, low rents, low taxes, cheap everything, do not affect you. Cheap cost of living means cheap wages. With any wages, high or low, you remain a worker. And that is the whole trouble. Palliatives do not palliate; 'benefits' do not benefit; 'something now’ means next to nothing for ever.

"The system under which we live is called Capitalism. Under it the land, factories and means by which we all live are owned by small groups of people. The workers, the great mass of the people, hire themselves out to the capitalist at so much per day, per week or per month. The result of their toil goes to the owners of the tools of production; the workers get their hire. When the capitalists cannot make a profit out of the hire of labour they stop hiring it and the labourer starves. Starving men are desperate men, so good, kind capitalism arranges a scheme of Insurance, that just sufficiently dulls the edge of desperation to secure the continuance of the system of capitalism. Your Labour party has sounded the loud trumpet over their having increased this "benefit” You can read this little lesson for yourself, can’t you.

"The Socialist says there is one problem, and one problem only, before the worker: his wage-slavery. There is one solution and one solution only for his problem; that he and his fellows must own the means whereby they all live. To do this they must capture the political machinery of society—Parliament—not by trusting to any glib-tongued orator to do something for them, but by organising in the workers’ party, the Socialist Party, to capture and use the political machinery in the interests of the whole working class. That is a very brief outline of Socialism, and if it appeals to you, don't trust any more to people who are going to bring Utopia here without the least effort on your part, but come into the Socialist Party and work for Socialism. Socialism will come when enough of you want it. Why not begin to work now, Hyam? ”

W. T. Hopley

This Dishonest Election (1951)

Editorial from the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

This General Election will be remembered as one of the most dishonest of modern times. Elections are fought round two main issues, the past performance of the government that has given up office and the promises each party makes for future action if elected. Sometimes, though rarely, a newly elected government genuinely believes that its programme will bring great benefits to the workers who have elected it. That was true of the Labour Party in 1945, but it is not true to-day. The Labour Party and the Tory Party are fighting for power and in order to get votes both are making reckless promises of better times to come, though the leaders on both sides know full well that whichever government is elected the future holds in store nothing but a continuation, if not a worsening, of present hardships. The real reason why the election is being fought now is that British Capitalism needs a strong government to deal with the problems and discontents of the coming months and years. A government dependent on a parliamentary majority of a mere handful of M.P.s is in too weak a state to handle the crises that face British Capitalism at home and abroad. That this is the situation has been admitted by two capitalist journals that are sufficiently outside the election scramble to be able to afford candour. Both of them admit that the election promises of “better times” are fraudulent, and both take the line that it does not matter whether the new government is Labour or Tory provided that one or the other is elected with a substantial majority so that it can firmly carry through the anticipated unpopular measures. One of these is the Economist, and the other the Manchester Guardian.
The Economist (22 September, 1951) writes:—

   “Whether the Conservative or the Labour Party can provide the better political leadership for these times is by comparison a minor issue. It may be that in very quiet times the country could be well governed with as small a Parliamentary majority as Mr. Attlee has commanded for the past nineteen months. As things have in fact been, no party could have governed well. The difficulties facing the British people are now growing harsher. The firm and effective government required to meet them can come only from a party firmly established in power and able to look beyond immediate popularity when the need is for measures that will show their good results in two years' time rather than next month    “The economic situation . . . now makes it more unrealistic even than it was in 1950 for either side to promise better things soon."

The Manchester Guardian in an editorial (21 September, 1951) covers much the same ground, but with some additional remarks on the election promises:—

    “When the election results came out in 1950 everybody prophesied that a government with so narrow a majority must be impotent. Things have not been quite so bad as that; the Government has not been wholly ineffective. Now, however, it is entering a much more difficult period when some bold decisions and some unpopular economic measures are called for, decisions and measures which a weak Government could not carry through except with Opposition support, and that under the circumstances would not be forthcoming. . . .  But whether the next Government is a Labour or a Conservative one it is earnestly to be hoped that it will be one with a coherent working majority. That, even more than the complexion of the Government, is what is important."

On the election programmes the Guardian has this to say:—

  “The Labour Party has exhausted its inspiration and has not even the semblance of a body of Socialist doctrine to guide it. Its programme in 1950 was a collection of odds and ends, its pre-election statement of a few weeks ago a collection of vague platitudes. Even the Bevanites have nothing much—besides class bias—to throw into the pool. The Conservatives are not much better placed."
  “This barrenness of the political field is not surprising or really regrettable. . . . The next government will be concerned not with ideology but with grappling with economic difficulties. . . . The counter-measures against inflation and the organising of the country for defence call for decisions and teenniques which are not to be found in party programmes designed to attract and please the voter. But all the same it is to be feared that the stale programmes, such as they are, will be trotted out and the election will be fought on promises that are irredeemable and on diagnoses of our needs that are irrelevant. That, however, is the nature of elections."

The two journals from which we have quoted are undoubtedly correct in their estimate of the present position of British Capitalism, but when they talk of the needs of the situation they are completely wrong. What the working class of Britain and of the whole world need is the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. They need it but do not yet understand their need. We are therefore faced with the tragedy that millions of workers in Britain will, during the coming weeks, listen to and accept the wilful lies of their political leaders. The best indication of growing understanding that we can hope for at this juncture is that large numbers of voters, seeing through the election lies, may, in disgust, abstain from voting.

For those workers who in the past have voted for the Labour Party in the mistaken belief that it was in some way moving towards a new form of society, this election is tragic indeed, for the leaders of the Labour Party have now ceased to have faith in anything except the cynical belief that they do the day-to-day job of running Capitalism no worse than the Conservatives. In the past the Labour leaders believed in State Capitalism or nationalisation, but now this has proved to be so unpopular with the workers that the leaders are soliciting votes by letting it be known that there are to be no new nationalisation schemes in the near future. Among bread-and-butter questions they laid great emphasis on being able to raise wages and reduce the cost of living, but the steady rise of prices and the lagging behind of wages during the past few years has reduced them to the petty manoeuvre of juggling with the facts to deceive the electors. At one time the Labour Party would have been the first to insist on comparing the movement of the cost of living with the movement of wage rates for a normal week’s work, but in recent Labour Party publications “wage-rates” have been quietly dropped and in their place use is made of earnings figures which include additional payments for overtime, night work, and piece-work, etc. One of several publications in which this trick has been worked is “Fifty Facts on Prices” (Labour Party), which says: “Compared with the rise of about 85 per cent, in the cost of living since 1938, the earnings of workers in industry went up by 133 per cent, between October, 1938, and April, 1950.” (“Fifty Facts,” page 17.)

The Government’s own official indices of the cost of living and of wage-rates show that since June, 1947. the cost of living has increased by 27 per cent., while wage-rates have gone up by only 20 per cent., leaving the workers much worse off.

This election, which follows six years of Labour government, should mark the end of the myth that Labourism has something to offer to the working class that is different from having Capitalism administered by a Tory Government.

Socialists can agree with those capitalist spokesmen who say that there is little to choose between Labour Government and Tory Government, but unlike them we have a message of hope and action to give to the working class. In their own interests the working class should choose neither Labour nor Tory. Labourism has failed as Toryism failed. The urgent need of the working class is to establish Socialism.

False Distinctions (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma by Samuel Brittan (Secker and Warburg, 25s.)

For quite different reasons, Samuel Brittan, Economic Editor of the Financial Times, argues two points we have been making for years. First, that the left/right distinction is virtually useless for analysing political views. Second, that the Labour/Tory struggle is, in his own words, 'shadow boxing' and a ‘sham party war' in which differences are exaggerated or manufactured while what they agree on is obscured. Labour and Tory are Tweedledum and Tweedledee and ought, says Brittan, to recognise this.

The terms ‘left' and ‘right' go back to the meetings of the States-General in France in 1789. The nobles sat on the king’s right while the commoners sat on his left. The two sides were divided on the issue of the powers of the king. Throughout the nineteenth century in France and some other European states the left/right distinction was that between republicans and monarchists. Only later did it acquire its present vague meaning as a distinction between the opponents and supporters of capitalism, and it is only since the 1920’s that the terms have been used with reference to politics in Britain.

Confusion has arisen because most of those who claimed to be socialists in fact stood either for reformed capitalism or for state capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always refused to be tagged “leftwing” because of the term’s links with reformism and state capitalist Russia. We are socialists and opposed to those who call themselves the Left. Now others too are realising that the view of the British political scene as the forward line of a soccer team—with the Communists on the Left Wing, Labour at Inside Left, the Liberals at Centre Forward, the Tories at Inside Right, and the fascists on the Right Wing—is irrelevant and silly.

Brittan is concerned that this confusion helps obscure the real issues facing British capitalism. He lists a number of trivial matters like devaluation, the Common Market, East of Suez and planning on which, in his opinion, party shadow boxing delayed the necessary action. He reveals himself as a floating voter unable to choose between Labour and the Tories (though he has probably always voted Labour). We are concerned that this confusion helps obscure the real issue facing the workers: capitalism or Socialism?

Adam Buick