So They Say: Menu: Air Pie — (1974)

The So They Say Column from the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Menu: Air Pie —

Popular romantic writers have a stock of words and phrases for instant effect on their suggestible readers: tender, moonlight, yearning, heavenly vision, and so on. Similarly, Labour politicians rely on a small vocabulary designed to make their followers salivate like Pavlov’s dogs — “fair shares”, "equal opportunity”, “make the rich pay”, etc.

On 8th August Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the Labour Government’s plans for wealth and gift taxes. The proposed starting level for the wealth tax is £100,000. To the press, Healey “admitted . . . that the main reason for the taxes was to create a greater atmosphere of social justice in Britain” (Guardian). On television, asked specifically what benefit the working class would get, he said poorer-paid workers would feel better if they knew money was being taken from the rich.

Pavlov’s dogs, dribbling in response to stimuli, failed to notice that the bell ringing was not preliminary to but instead of dinner.

— and an Empty Cup

The real response should have come from the rich, if Healey was attacking them so violently. Hear how they complained:

No one in the City jumped from 20th storey windows, fled the country or even squealed very loudly yesterday on publication of the Government’s Green Paper thinking on a wealth tax. It has singularly little effect on share dealings on the Stock Exchange . . . About the harshest comments on the paper were that it was 'a time-consuming irrelevance’, by the Association of Chambers of Commerce.

But not only do they not mind. The view expressed to The Guardian's business editor was that

the City would not mind a wealth tax if it enabled the Labour or any other Government ‘to institute a meaningful wages policy’.

It is accepted both in the City and by many business men that the wealth tax proposal could be a psychological advantage to the Government in persuading trade unions to accept a nil growth, or even a cut, in living standards over the next year or so.

What Can't Happen Here ?

The history of the “Watergate scandal” and its consequences leading to Nixon’s downfall from the US presidency was a showpiece of hypocrisy — Nixon’s, his accusers’, and the righteous commentators’. Could such a thing happen in Britain? The New Law Journal on 2nd August had some interesting comments.

Watergate ought to provide the necessary impetus to the Government to get on with the task of rewriting

the Official Secrets legislation as recommended by the Franks Commission without further prevarication.

While retaining the strictest security over those matters which are matters of national security, there is an urgent need to remove ‘confidential’ and ‘secret’ classifications from all material which allows officialdom to maintain a cosy secrecy over matters which may merely embarrass, or be inconvenient to, slipshod or inefficient officials.

Which is saying, delicately, that the difference between America and Britain is not over what is likely to happen but over what is likely to be found out. Incidentally, there is a curious word misuse in the extract quoted. “Prevaricate” means go astray, transgress, be equivocal, deceive. The word for putting things off, which is what they mean, is “procrastinate”. A Freudian error?

Pass, Friend

Nixon’s successor, President Ford, is reported to be looked-on favourably by the Chinese government. They are pleased that he insists on military spending as a top priority, because of “their desire to see the strategic balance between the super Powers maintained in America’s favour to inhibit Soviet expansionism” (Guardian, 10th August).

The Chinese view is the one all capitalist statesmen must take — looking for advantage for their own trade and strategy, and never mind from whom. The report says:

Peking . . . will probably only devote a few delayed lines to Nixon’s departure. But the late President was, in any case, much less the architect of the new China policy than was Dr. Kissinger, and the latter’s presence on Mr. Ford’s Administration will certainly be welcome in Peking.

Blowing the Gaff

Fascists in Italy have been in the news with acts of terrorism. One would assume the Communists to be up in arms to extinguish fascism; and one would be wrong.

A State subsidy for all Italian political parties began operating in July; the Communists’ share is £7 millions. A veteran leader described the subsidizing of the fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano as “horrendous and ignoble, so bestial as to fill one with horror”. He was attacked by the party newspaper and his fellow leaders. Only the fascist movement was “horrendous” — but not the subsidy. The Guardian, 13th July, said :

Signor. Pajetta, and the Communists in general, also are opposed to Senator Terracini’s proposal that Parliament should vote for the disbanding of the MSI. The Communist line is that it can be defeated through the ballot box. Privately, they may also realize that a Fascist enemy is politically good to have around.

Plenty Amidst Poverty

There is a physical training game called "O’Grady’', in which the trainees have to do the opposite of what they hear. It must be like that in Communist countries, where equality and the expropriation of the expropriators are articles of faith — while inequality grows and the expropriators’ cigars get bigger.

The Observer had an item on 14th July headed HUNGARY'S PROPERTY BOOM. It was about the rise in house prices in Hungary following legislation to regularize the private ownership of property:

There has recently been a widespread move to acquire houses in the country, not only by the Communist élite, but also on a wide scale by the new managerial class.

Everything above the upper limit is classified as ‘luxury’. But such properties will not be confiscated, as they were when the Communists first took over.

Instead, the owners of ‘luxury’ residences will have to pay a special tax. This is levied on houses and apartments worth more than £20,000 at between ½ per cent and 1 per cent, depending on the number of rooms, and on holiday villas of the same value at between 1 per cent and 1½ per cent.

Getting Dark, Down Under

Our July issue had an article on conditions in Australia, where workers from Britain often go in the mistaken hope of shedding their problems. The unemployment figures released there on 12th August show 93,585 out of work, i.e. 1.90 per cent. of the estimated labour force. Vacancies fell by 21.3 per cent., from July, against the normal trend at this time of the year. The Parliamentary Opposition has predicted 100,000 unemployed by December, with inflation at 20 per cent.

The Guardian correspondent in Canberra wrote on 12th August that

the estimate could prove conservative. The Cabinet seems to have swung solidly against the Treasury argument for further deflationary action in the September 17 budget, for fear of union reaction against unemployment and the need to get voluntary wage and price restraints working.

United Fans Queue Here

The football season has begun; and its weekly accompaniment of numerous arrests and convictions as rabbles of "supporters” smash up everything and everybody they meet in the towns they are visiting.

When the epidemic was starting in 1969 the Notting Hill Anarchist Group issued a leaflet which really should not be left unnoticed. Extracts (our italics) as follows:

Football crowds have always been rough and managed to enjoy themselves. It’s part of the game. Things only turn really unpleasant when a large number of blue uniforms appear on the scene.

After alleging that the directors of football clubs pay the police to arrest “standing” spectators so that expensive seats can be put in the space they now occupy, the leaflet ends:

It’s good to know this anyway, and to get things straight in your own mind about what’s happening, but it’s not worth fighting it on your own . . But if you do get arrested, or anybody you know does, try and send somebody along to see us and we’ll see what we can do to help. The people who are giving out these leaflets will be standing in the same places after the game is over.

This inane truckling to (and half-incitement of) hooligans is supposed to represent a serious outlook on society. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Robert Barltrop

Impeach Capitalism (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

All over America and, indeed, throughout much of the world the question is being bruited about: To Impeach or not to Impeach, referring — of course — to President Nixon. If one were to measure importance by the quantity of coverage by the mass media there would be no doubt that the scandals generally listed under the heading Watergate are more important than any other problem existing today. Even, apparently, more of consequence than the Mideast War and certainly far more newsworthy than the Energy Crisis or the worsening economic conditions of those who depend upon wages and salaries for a living. And so, on the one hand, there are the politicians and pundits and leaders of Organized Labor who are mounting a clamor for Congress to impeach and try the President for high crimes and misdemeanors with a view to ousting him (unless he bows to the outcry and resigns), while, on the other, are the loud and sometimes strident voices of Mr. Nixon’s defenders, urging him to hang in there.

The Marxists of the World Socialist Party regard this sound and fury as much ado about nothing, insofar as working class interests are concerned We maintain that the high crimes and misdemeanors that Mr. Nixon might well be guilty of are crimes against his fellow capitalists. Given the premise that the arrangement of dividing society into economic classes is correct and fitting — a premise socialists do not hold — any added unpleasantness suffered by the working class is, generally incidental. Whether Mr. Nixon or any other Individual — regardless of political persuasion — occupies the White House and tends to the affairs of U. S. capitalism is six of one and half a dozen of the other. A glance at current and past history should make it apparent that the problems and miseries of most of us are due to something much more fundamental than any high crimes and misdemeanors of any President or government, present or past.

Even the Republican attempts to wipe out Constitutional freedoms are not that all-important to the working class as an Issue to get excited about The freedoms of the Bill of Rights were not designed to safeguard the rights of the masses of the poor, to begin with. The capitalist class, as a whole, will undoubtedly continue to defend whatever liberties are consistent with and beneficial to their system from the depredations of any section of the population. The task of the socialists is to use such freedoms to the fullest extent possible in order to spread the message of genuine freedom, world socialism. Which is why we insist that the important job ahead is not the impeachment of Nixon but the impeachment and ousting of capitalism.

Now how does one go about working towards such a goal? It should be obvious by now, even though it doesn't seem to be, that the one essential need today is an awareness on the part of millions of working people that production for sale with view to profit is the root cause of problems such as poverty, war, chicanery and all high crimes and misdemeanors by elected officials. The only task that makes sense for socialists is to systematically attempt to raise the level of political understanding of the working class in whatever way and to whatever extent is possible. For, as we insist, there can be no impeachment and ousting of capitalism without millions and millions of working people who understand the basics of and are determined to institute socialism. This is the first and most important task of the socialist movement.

With an increasing political awareness and understanding will come a strong socialist political movement, made up of the overwhelming majority of the population, that will ultimately capture control of all central organs of political power — city, state and national — utilizing the only means possible, the ballot. Only when this has been done will capitalism be impeached and ousted. There are no short cuts to socialism.

Weirder than fiction (1986)

Book Review from issue 2 of the World Socialist Review

"Citizen Hughes" by Michael Drosnin, published by Bantam, $4.50, is a classic account of power gone mad.

The author deals mostly with the last decade of Hughes life most of which was spent as a recluse in a blacked-out penthouse in Las Vegas. Drosnin's work is detailed, readable and presents a graphic account of an emaciated, meglomaniac, junky using wealth and power to satisfy his personal whims (such as buying a TV station so he could watch whatever program he wanted, when he wanted) and petty malice; and does not, like some writers, lapse into snivelling, moralizing, suggestions about preventing such men using power recklessly. Drosnin does in fact, portray Hughes as very much a product and a symptom of his times.

From his penthouse lair, the crazy billionaire sought increasingly greater power. It wasn't enough to buy one Las Vegas hotel, he bought all Las Vegas — mafia? — small fry. It wasn't enough to buy Vegas, he bought Nevada; but, it still wasn't enough, the greedy bugger, wanted all 50 states.

There was one sure way to go about it, first — buy the president: however, here things didn't exactly go to plan. Poor old L.B.J., holed up in the White House, afraid to show his face on the street, in case it got shot off, had enough problems — no deal. Nixon took Hughes' money, and with immense gratitude repaid him by testing A Bombs in Nevada and by dumping hundreds of tonnes of nerve gas in the sea off Paradise, Bahamas, while Hughes was involved in negotiations with view to purchasing Paradise.

Dicky boy didn't have the last laugh: it is the author's contention that Watergate was a result of Hughes-Nixon machinations. Larry O'Brien, ex-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was an employee of Hughes, (how come, is a fascinating story, but I ain't telling you everything here) and as such, might know a heck of a lot about Nixon that he didn't want the whole world knowing. Hence, the screwball burglary aimed at getting info, to 'neutralize' O'Brien, and the whole colossal cock-up of a comic opera, called Watergate.

As symptomatic of Capitalism, Hughes is shown as a man of great contradictions. His company manufactured nuclear weapons, but he fought to prevent them being tested, because of his fear of contamination, even to the ludicrous extent of identifying himself with the peace movement.

His fear of contamination was so great that every document handed to him had to be sterilized first, and his aides, who handled it were required to wash their hands several times in a manner prescribed by him. Yet he never washed, cut his hair, and nails or had the bed sheets changed or washed. His room was never cleaned: there were mountains of dust and used Kleenex everywhere: his hair was lodgings for every flea in Vegas, but boy! gotta watch those germs!

Hughes considered himself anti-establishment, (don't get your eyes checked — you read it correctly), his image of himself was a corporate John Wayne cum Darryl Zanuck — a board room swashbuckler, bucking and swashling all politicians, executives, Capitalists etc., who stood in his way.

Like any Capitalist, he would have liked to have had everything his own way — subservient politicians, a docile working class and no government interference or taxation: and came as close as anyone can to achieving that unblessed state of affairs.

Details are given of which politicians he bought, how much they were paid and how they earned it, by killing or delaying certain bills in senate and congress and which legislation beneficial to Hughes they had forced through, and which illegal takeover deals they had turned a blind eye to.

All books on Hughes will necessarily have the same broad, general thrust — the power of money. It is clearly shown in this one how political office is bought and how Hubert Humphrey failed to become president because he didn't have the loot. The reader is treated to a tear-jerky scene of poor Huby sitting helpless in a stalled, rented bus, broke, weeping tears of anger and frustration as he hears the private Kennedy jet roar overhead, carrying his well-healed opponent to victory in the West Virginia primary in 1960. Humphrey eventually became a Hughes man because he needed — guess what? He didn't beat Nixon in 1968 because Nixon had a lot more of Hughes money.

How the richest man in America was able to evade paying personal income tax for seventeen years, makes fascinating reading, (no kidding), and that ain't all: Hughes Tool, the holding company for his entire empire, avoided corporate income tax for three years. Like other so-called philanthropists, Ford, Rockerfeller, Carnegie, Hughes discovered a way to get great acclaim from the working class for hoarding his wealth and evading taxes, he created a foundation — The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. When legislation was about to be introduced to tax medical foundations, Hughes paid so much in bribes to ensure they would be exempt, one wonders if it wouldn't be cheaper to pay the damn taxes in the first place.

Drosnin gives several examples of how Hughes would become caught in web of his own making, a typical one being when he tried to corner the market on helicopters during the Viet Nam war. He quoted the U.S. government a ridiculously low price to get their orders, which, not surprisingly, he did. He immediately tripled the price, but when various people from congress and senate started asking, "what's going on here?" Howie baby, just as quickly, went back to his original price and lost $90,000,000 dollars.

One event which is of no profound significance, but does underline the sheer lunacy of Capitalism is when Hughes chief gofer, Bob Mahew, was in Miami, planning with the Mafia and C.I.A. an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro. Mafia boss Sam Giancana, wanted to leave Miami for Las Vegas because he'd heard his girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire, was having an affair there with comedian Dan Rowan. To keep Giancana in Miami, Mayhew sent a C.I.A. operative to bug Rowan's room. A hotel maid caught the guy, playing with his wires, and called in the F.B.I.

Drosnin sometimes takes his reader along a certain line of thought, but stops short of drawing a conclusion, as if to invite each reader to draw his. Such a case is the killing of Bobby Kennedy: was there a connection with Hughes? One must figure it out for one's self.

Whatever the answer, one thing's for sure, Hughes, his henchmen, political joe-boys and other sundry partners in crime, saw the Kennedys exactly for what they are, (the same thing as most of our folk heroes), glorified hoodlums. It's too bad the working class, as a whole, can't see through them.

In his treatment of people working for him , Hughes was a jerk. He liked to create hostile situations where there was no premise for any and constantly feed his antagonists anger while he put on an innocent, hurt act. Too much space is given to this nonsensical drivel, but if you like listening to little old ladies argue you'll love it.

The author claims that much of his book is in fact, an autobiography because it was culled from Hughes secret papers, which were stolen from his Los Angeles headquarters in June, 1974.

It is the author's contention that either Hughes or his executives acting on their own volition, were responsible for the break-in, possibly because three days previously the Securities and Exchange Commission had subpoenaed all documents relating to Hughes take-over of Air West. Nothing was more threatening to the billionaire since it was one of his more illegal than usual business deals. The Hughes people, unlike Nixon's crowd, enlisted the aid of a guy who was no plumber (and is referred to only as the 'pro'), who, on completion of the job swiped the papers for himself and tried to sell them back to Hughes cronies. They tried to find the pro, but lost interest after they S.E.C. did. Our friend the pro, stuck with his papers, bricked them up in a wall for a few years before giving them to Drosnin.

The author, who I assume, is no socialist, (I'm sure the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, who he worked for, as a reporter, don't make a habit of employing socialists), does not draw socialist conclusions, but his epitaph for Hughes is deeper than he could have imagined, "he was an American folk hero, a man who lived first the dream, then the nightmare — in that sense, perhaps the single most representative American of the twentieth century."

Ray Rawlings

Low Life in High Places: The Political Scandals (1973)

From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our politicians have recently been looking rather like a man who has found the first flakes of dry rot in his house and who knows that as he crumbles away each piece of dead wood he will reveal more and more damage. The uncovering of scandalous goings on in high places has caused some excited voices to ask whether capitalism is being undermined by its own rottenness. Journalistic fashion, which at other times can be preoccupied with war, or crime, or economic crises, now luxuriates in stories of secret cameras and microphones and boardroom deals.

Watergate, of course, is the hottest piece of scandal, with its insight into the muscle tactics of American politics. Over here we have no Watergate, only Lambton and Jellicoe who show how capitalism’s rulers do not always keep to the standards of conduct they like to lay down for the rest of us. The Poulson case has revealed something of how firms can win contracts and influence people. The News of the World’s tireless muckraking has helped in turning up the BBC payola case, which promises to let us in on the well-known secret that although we may pay our money we do not necessarily take our choice. (America also has a payola scandal, but to the relief of its participants it is crowded off the front pages by Watergate.) Lonrho will go down in the history of British boardrooms as an example of how to succeed in business without really trying.

A big tax evasion scandal is about to break in France, which may involve a couple of hundred companies in accusations of fraudulent operations. In Germany there are rumblings that the hero of the left, Chancellor Brandt, held on to his office last year only by bribing a deputy to change his vote in Brandt’s favour.

We Never Closed

Now the surprising thing about all of this is that it is so surprising. Scandals are exposed only intermittently but the evidence is that they are happening all the time; there is always some group or individual who is trying to steal a march on the rest of the ruling class by bending the rules.

As anyone who has heard of Mayor Daley knows, American politics are almost synonymous with corruption. It was never established whether Kennedy did get his microscopic majority over Nixon in 1960 by virtue of a bit of vote-fixing in Illinois. At any rate, the Kennedys were probably too smart to allow themselves to be connected with any such dealings. Kennedy’s successor Johnson came into power on a cloud of suspicion over his connection with Bobby Baker, whose career included manipulated government contracts, questionable bank deals, diversion of party funds and the employment of the services of call-girls as a gainful investment. Johnson denied any suggestions that he was involved and while his one time protégé floundered in miserable exposures the great wheel-and- dealer president lived to fight and win another day.

How is it with the Empire ?

Rumour has it that things are more gentlemanly in England; or is it that British workers suffer from a different strain of gullibility? Remember, for example, Horatio Bottomley, who swindled his way into and out of several fortunes before he overstepped even the bounds of working class hero-worship. Bottomley’s first swindle was pulled off in the 1890’s but during the 1914/18 war the workers queued in their thousands to join up after hearing one of his famous recruiting speeches. He carried on during the war, while the men he had recruited died in the trenches, and afterwards, rooking rich and poor until it all caught up with him and he went to prison in 1922. Bottomley’s fall was not quite the distressful event it might have been for his admirers, because he had already been through the courts many times. Indeed, it was his success in these cases which made his enemies wary of challenging him; he once tried to bribe someone into taking out a hopeless action against him, to reinforce his reputation for legal invincibility.

Perhaps Bottomley picked up some tips from that other great popular man of the people, Edward VII, who resembled him in many ways — gross, vulgar, audacious and with enough sensual fixations to satisfy the most fervent Freudian analyst. Edward, especially while he was Prince of Wales, gambled, ran up debts, ate massively and indulged a copious and wide ranging sexual appetite, which landed him in scandals in which his only protection was his eminence. On at least one occasion he was the subject of a successful blackmail. None of this prevented him, when he became king in 1902, assuming the leadership of a church which instructs workers that of all sins the deadliest is sexual deviance. It even gave him a mild popularity with some of the workers who suffered deprivation in such bitter contrast to Edward’s vulgar opulence; they thought well of him for his racehorses, for what they called his sportsmanship and — more incredible than all — for his common touch.

Spies and Ribaldry

Under the memory of Edward VII Lambton and Jellicoe are small fry. It was perhaps their misfortune that their exposure, coming just ten years after the Profumo affair, should revive that episode. Profumo, the War Minister who became involved with an expensive prostitute called Christine Keeler, committed his indiscretions at an especially unfavourable time. When Edward VII was stamping the brothels British capitalism was powerful, secure. In 1963 it was a different story and much of Prime Minister Macmillan’s time was taken up with trying to persuade his followers to accept the reality of the decline of British power. It was a popular fantasy, to which the Labour Party was as attached as were the Tories, that British capitalism had secrets which powerful rivals like Russia were itching to steal. That was partly why the Foreign Office spy Vassall got as much as 18 years for allowing himself to be blackmailed into passing information and why soon after there was such a wave of hysteria over Profumo who was said to be, among other things, a security risk.

What memorable summer days they were, with ministers each week awaiting with dread the latest instalment of Christine Keeler’s story, the endless jokes and with the Daily Mirror, feeding the notion that the scandal reached to the peaks of society, suggesting that Prince Philip was involved by the simple ruse of publishing an outraged denial. Somewhere there had to be a halt and in the end the British ruling class took their revenge upon Stephen Ward, the toady who had introduced Profumo to Keeler. Ward was abandoned, then destroyed, by his influential friends — an ending with its own tragic but typical irony.

Privilege

That dirty episode was representative of a social system which cannot come clean. Capitalism has rules which are moulded by the privileged interests of the property-owning minority. It is a society in which there can be no general harmony of interests, in which agreements are signified by the knife in the back, the foot on the neck. Within the privileged minority there are other minorities continually forming, attempting to seize extra privileges and to bend the rules in their own favour. To some extent these are accepted and contained by the rest of the ruling class; it is when they overstep the limits of prudence and become a threat to capitalism’s public face that they have to be dealt with.

Watergate, unsavoury as it is, is no worse than the everyday usage of capitalist politics, which could not continue without a succession of consciously formulated deceptions upon the working class. During the presidential election last year the American workers were aware of a lot of what was involved in the Watergate scandal, yet they gave Nixon an historical vote of confidence — because he promised them, if anything, a more controlled and repressive capitalism and wrapped it all up in the familiar smooth avowals of the used-car salesman.

The Lambton affair has demonstrated little beyond the fact that the privileges of the ruling class extend into all aspects of human life. Lambton himself (Daily Telegraph 21 June 1973) justified it in a predictably audacious way:

. . . men with great ambitions also had a strong sexual urge that was not satisfied easily.

If such men were limited and ordered to be irreproachable, there was a danger of the creation of the power élite. This would undermine the the fundamental purpose of democracy.

And he rubbed in his advantage, when the scandal broke, by holing up in an expensive hideaway. Workers who are caught in similar tangles have no such relief available to them; they have to sort out their personal and emotional difficulties at the same time as they cope with the drudgery of housework, of the office or the relentless production line.

Smoothing it Over

Heath tried to salvage something from the Lonrho affair, which showed up another aspect of privilege, by making his instantly famous remark about the "unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.” There are no reports of him choking on the words. The shareholders displayed their feelings by packing the company’s special general meeting and enthusiastically supporting the management policies, big handouts, tax avoidance and all, simply because they had produced big dividends. That is the normal face of capitalism, much more logical than Heath’s pathetic attempt to humbug his way out of the matter. The Tory leader, like any other politician, can accept any face of capitalism without a thought for the savagery of its exploitation. Beside that, there are no grounds for objecting to some company directors fiddling a few hundred thousand on the side.

In one way Heath was pointing to a danger in the present situation. The working class are continually allowing themselves to be diverted from attending to the essential matter of abolishing capitalism and replacing it with Socialism. They are diverted by the notion that capitalism would he more acceptable, were it organized by one bunch of tricksters rather than the other. They are diverted by the glamour of a princess marrying a man who is rich partly through a family interest in selling sub-standard food for working-class consumption. They are diverted by the idea that capitalism need not be run as a cut-throat, scandalous business, by this sort of assurance:

It was the Government’s prime concern to see that capitalism worked fairly and effectively because it was on that that our prosperity was established. (Geoffrey Howe, Minister for Trade, replying to questions in the Commons about Lonrho; Daily Telegraph 12 June 1973.)

It is instructive to observe how the ruling class as a whole unite in fostering these deceptions. Brezhnev’s visit last month to America signified another stage in the resolve of the Russian and American ruling classes to divide the spoils of world capitalism as peaceably as they can. Not so long ago, in the depths of the Cold War, the Russians could have been relied upon to make the most of something like Watergate. Yet there was Brezhnev, helping Nixon to divert attention from Watergate and look like the weighty statesman so beloved by all workers — and doing it with a deliberate measure of publicity-catching clowning. Seeing those two robbers at the White House, beaming and waving, who would have believed what they are both capable of, both responsible for?

The world working class should match this with a unity of their own. As the scandals put capitalism’s leaders under pressure, they respond in a familiar way. Nixon adopts the mask of a betrayed innocent, Heath of outraged decency. They are papering over the rot, trying to delay the awful moment when the leprous reality can no longer be hidden.

Ivan