Against all war, economic and military (2004)

From the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists appreciate that the war over Iraq has drawn many workers into a political arena hitherto seen as boring and as impossible to influence from the outside. Workers once apolitical have been stirred into action by the lies, the tricks to curtail the democratic process, and the acts of violence, murder and destruction from their leaders.  Where before, whether at breakfast, in the workplace, in a café at lunchtime or over dinner in the pub in an evening, we discussed our work, sport, TV, pop music, sex and the weather or our personal pursuits, over and above our everyday troubles in life, lately we’ve seen the war over Iraq come to figure in these discussions.  Not satisfied with these usual outlets for our feelings, many have been attending the numerous anti-war rallies around the world and writing into newspapers, radio and television.  Socialists expressed pleasure in seeing so many of our fellow workers in anti-war mood, and in such numbers. 

   

But socialists are aware that in the workplace workers, anti-war campaigners and not, are soldiers in an economic war on behalf of the generals who own the businesses where we work.  We thought it ironic that workers should be so strongly united in an anti-war outlook on a Saturday, and then, back at work on the Monday, would go to war with each other, united only in an effort to win the battle for production, sales or work over their anti-war friends engaged in a similar process for other generals. A common lament from the weary and dismayed proletarian soldiers in the American Civil War of the 19th century was, We are all Americans! We socialists have a similar cry to workers in both the commercial and military wars of today – We are all fellow workers! If non-socialist anti-war campaigners only knew it, the wars of commerce lie at the root of all the military wars.

   

Sadly not a common view among anti-war campaigners, but all the signs of war are readily available if one cares to look and reflect on our day-to-day activity for just a moment.  Do not most of us work for a business to produce or sell products or provide some type of service in competition with those produced by our fellow workers who work in other businesses in the same field of activity? The products from one worker look almost identical to products from another, are made in similar environments by similar processes by workers who perform similar tasks in similar numbers and using similar tools. These commodities, whether we make them, sell or deliver them as a service, perform the same function, serve the same need, and sell for almost the same price. It is made clear to us, no matter where we work, in a supermarket, in a car or clothing factory, in a bank or a TV station, for example, that the company we work for, and by implication ourselves, are engaged in national (and international) rivalry with similar businesses all across the world. Every one of these businesses would if they could keep the whole market to themselves, and they struggle to get as much of it as they can in a game of competition – war by another name.  And the obvious end result is that the task is overdone and thus a glut is produced. 

   

Commercial conflicts are like military ones, with resources being trashed in a war for survival.  And the ruin of products coincides with the dissipation of the human effort employed in their production as well as the squandering of the quantity of the Earth’s natural resources as ingredients for their production. Perishable commodities which cannot be sold at their intended price are jettisoned into the bargain basement saleroom and then, if necessary, churned back into the soil even before the needy workers, who produced them, are allowed to have them free. The owners of the businesses where we work care not a jot for the workers when their particular war is over and they are no longer needed, due to sickness, injury on the job, the employment of new technologies, improved methodology or bankruptcy, which brings on our redundancy and poverty.

   

War includes struggles between classes, class wars between capitalists and workers.  In 19th-century France, a short civil conflict was fought between the bourgeois French National Assembly, and Parisian workers as republicans, known in socialist annals as the Paris Commune. In Britain, a civil war was waged between a feudal class and the rising bourgeoisie in the 17th century.  A war can also involve rival sections within a particular class who compete for power, as in America, where a civil war was fought between rival members of the American bourgeois class in the 19th century. There is another type of civil war which socialists cite, where in the arena of commerce, battles are waged between corporations, assisted by their (home-based) state authorities, first within national borders then steadily growing in stature to a transnational arena.

   

The now universal culture of ‘market ideology’ is the primary influence on the behaviour of humans everywhere.  The more power or money an individual or group can secure for themselves, the better their quality of life.  To be effective in their pursuit of power and wealth, whether solely by the means of commerce, or upgrading their war to the military stage, they must be indifferent to the needs and plight of their competitors; otherwise, their ability to wage war is diminished.

   

Whether a war in society is within a nation or between nations, the causes of these wars between the protagonists are of a similar nature. While the circumstances surrounding each war may remain peculiar to the time and place (the extent of dictatorship/democracy, class structure, mode of production, laws, parochial cultures or ideas or religions etc), the pattern seems to be repeated all over the world.  The owning class of one nation possesses something which that of another nation, or groups within a nation would like to possess.  These could be land, foreign trade deals, cheap labour, talented labour and property (as businesses or complete/established industries), home markets, and a natural resource as marketable asset – oil, gas, coal, iron ore, gold, diamonds, water, etc.  These are all requirements for success in making money, and with money comes power and influence for businesses and individuals.  As no one country has been endowed with a complete set of resources, there will often be a need to plunder.

   

Wars in human society take place between nations when the dominant men and women within them (the capitalist class) pursue wealth or the means to create wealth in society, using the power of their state and their labour (workers) as battering rams to defeat their enemies, which are themselves comprised of their opponents’ state machinery and workers. And where a conflict occurs within the territory of one nation, outside influences are often brought to bear. If resources are up for grabs, the capitalist grabbing class join the fray to see what they can win.

   

Only socialists can claim to be the true anti-war campaigners. Fellow workers around the world participate in anti-war campaigns, which call for the end of military wars, but none that we know of make that connection, as socialists do, to the wider society and particularly, to its mode of production and guiding ideology which promote competition among all sections of society. In campaigning solely for an end to military wars, which are but a bloody climax to the wider commercial war, there can be no hope of addressing the problems of human society today as a whole.

William Dunn

Worse than thought: In the article on Terror last month we quoted a figure of 35,000 for the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the Anglo-American invasion. Since then the medical journal, The Lancet, has estimated the number as being more like 100,000.

Ideology and censorship in capitalist society (2003)

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas; i.e., the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force (Karl Marx).

Censors were magistrates in ancient Rome, usually two in number, who were elected every five years but held office for eighteen months only, in order to take the census of the official list of citizens and carry out the solemn lustrum (purification and protection from evil influences). The censors exercised a general supervision over the conduct of citizens, their power and prestige deriving from the senators, the ruling force in society. The censor worked to protect the Roman social order. In recent times, we have seen this tradition carry on in the commissar, McCarthy, and still today with the Pope and other Ayatollahs. Now this function has more or less been privatised to the media, editors of TV, radio and the national press, where authorities seem confident it will be administered sagaciously. Here the punishment and jailing, once frequent in a more ruthless age, has now been replaced by disregard, barring and ostracism—keeping the political airwaves sanitised from evil influences—though the Internet is beyond their ability to control easily.

The approach to censorship from media editors is two-fold. First, there might well be blatant political acts to censor alternatives to the present order of society which provides for them, and their masters, a comfortable life. Second, and much more common, there is a censorship of a more subtle kind. Gone are the days when the direct Victorian approach, “you are not allowed to have books to corrupt your mind”, would be acceptable for most. Editors themselves are a product of society, and, with others who would influence society, come to their work and their social gatherings with a worldview, a set of preconceptions that may provide the framework for their analysis of, and actions in, the world. A worldview constructed by influences gathered from a lifetime exposed to bourgeois ideology—this we can call their “ideological baggage”. This consists of anything from their views on genetics, abortion or testing on animals to the wider political scene, on economics, ethics etc. These preconceptions enter at both an explicit and implicit level, but even when they are invoked explicitly, unexamined and unexpected assumptions underlie them. Alternate opinions and philosophies lacking in popularity which seem at odds with general thinking are destined to remain off the mainstream media, for fear readers and viewers will either object or simply not understand the points being made—as might not the editors themselves. Where once conspiracy or direct force would be used to hold a political line, now “ideology” carries out the daily lustrum.

Unlike propaganda, ideologies are systems of thought and belief by which dominant classes explain “to themselves” how their social system operates and what principles it exemplifies. Ideology is the deeply and unselfconsciously held views of the dominant class in any social order. We distinguish these beliefs from views held in a more pietistic or even cynical fashion to manipulate or form the opinions of those who are not members of the ruling classes. Ideological systems therefore exist not as fictions but as “truths”, and not only evidential truths but moral truths.

A given society with a particular mode of production and accompanying social relations requires a certain mode of thought, leading to a certain conduct among individuals operating or living in that society if it is to function. Here in the struggle for our ear, the ruling authorities have an advantage in that they appeal to cultures and traditions, which since our earliest schooling have been put to work on us. Wherever we are in the world, we’ll hear the same old appeals to words and phrases from our leaders, and the rich and their media tools operating there. Appeals to nationalism—“win for your country”; law and order—“punish the criminals”; private property—“you can’t have…”; competition and contest—“the world would die without it”; foreigners—“asylum seekers go home”; work ethic—“no money no life”; leadership—“we’d be lost without the men of ideas”; etc, etc.

A Socialist Outlook

It is not the individuals who hold official power, or indeed those in whose interests they hold that power—their rich paymasters—but the overarching ideology of the bourgeois epoch that must be exposed and censured. Ideology here, like the rules of a game which all players must obey, or where in a drama production the storyline, script actors and costume, etc, must conform to the constraints of the theme, demands that we conform to its strictures, which are often also prescribed in law to ensure that we do.

The wings of the capitalist party, left, right and centre, take up various positions within a narrow spectrum of opinion and debate, giving a superficial appearance of differences, adding to the semblance of a thriving democracy in line with bourgeois ideology. So close are their remedies for society’s ills that they would be almost indistinguishable but for their talent for exposing the shortcomings of individuals. Indeed this has become the stock-in-trade of the body politic within the capitalist parties. “A very nice turns of events to blame individuals and let the system ideology off scot-free”, might say some.

Non-socialist readers will perhaps join socialists and feel “disgust” at the poverty, hunger and sickness and early death among us workers; “anger” at the strangeness, enmity, competition and violence between us; “sadness” with the coldness, childishness, wickedness, treachery and greed from many of us; and “apprehension” at the ignorance, hopelessness and ambivalence displayed by others. Then think nothing of a society split into, countries, races, cultures, religions, sexes, ages, classes, sectarianism and criminals; of human production organised around wage-labour, unions, bosses, money, trade and exchange commodities, and private property; of the need to protect society with law and order, punishmen, and war. Non-socialists think of all these “structures” with “elements”, “philosophies”, “standpoints”, “practices” as normal and necessary for humans in a modern society.

Socialists see that bourgeois ideology illustrates a characteristic where pictures of how things actually happen in society appear back to front. God creates Man instead of the reverse. In ethics, people are said to derive judgements from an absolute moral principle of some sort, whereas it is their judgements, reflecting their class conditions and interests that have constructed over time (and through generations) this principle. The belief that in politics the state grants its citizens certain rights, where in reality the people using their vote have abnegated their social power to the state. The view that the government represents the people, where actually it governs in the interest of our masters. In history, we are lead to believe that “great men” and ideas decide the course of events, where in reality, events, combined with their underlying conditions, establish the limitations and opportunities which determine in broad outline who shall be “great men” and which ideas will triumph.

In economics, people think that they decide where they work and what they buy, but really, the jobs and commodities available determine both. Also that businesses serve the community by their investment in the production and jobs where really it is the community which serves the businesses by giving them the lion’s share of what is produced, including the right to decide on questions of further investment into goods and jobs. Lastly and most crucial in the principles for this society, the most pernicious piece of ideology is where workers believe, with their “hourly rate” in their mind, that this represents payment for all the hour of their labour.

Capitalist ideas dominate the political economic and social scene for the capitalist own and control the means of propagation, education, information and news. Thus, all discussion and debate is undertaken on their terms. It should be clear, then, that bourgeois ideology serves capitalist interests not only when it provides pro-capitalist solutions to pressing social problems but also when it confuses people, or makes them overly pessimistic and resigned, or makes it difficult for them to formulate criticisms or imagine alternative systems.

William Dunn

Turning Left – or going round in circles? (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

We in the World Socialist Movement are very much a different breed from all those others who like to use the term “Socialist”. We have a highly original proposition among the political organisations world-wide seeking to bring sensible arrangements to human society, and, when we say we want to “change the world”, we really mean just that. We are not in any way attached to any in the huge array of lefty groups which together can produce a recipe book to remedy all society’s ills the size of which would put Culpeper’s Herbal in the shade. In reality, though, many of these are as suspiciously comparable to each other in content as Tesco and Sainsbury products and as BBC and ITN news bulletins. Moreover, all have a success rate as to make the practitioners of mountebankery honest and respectable professors.

It is unfortunately a fact that among the opinions of the various bourgeois media there too is confusion in the area of social studies and of the true identity of the particular players engaged in their respective activities. This confusion extends to including us in with groups such as Anti-Nazi League, the Anti-Capitalists or Anti-Globalisation movements, etc. The Anti-Globalisation groups may know what they are against, but regrettably they know not why nor what to replace world capitalism with and still call for modifications in existing society, reforms. In addition, they cannot yet distinguish between globalisation and capitalism. Many thus end up either supporting the deadbeats who only want to tinker with the capitalist economy, reformers, and who have all in the past failed miserably even with their limited demands – Benn, Scargill, Gorbachev, Fidel Castro, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao, to name just a few. While others, quite remarkably, take on a Luddite mentality and start smashing up the world.

However the latest publications from some Anti-Globalisation members look encouraging as the analysis of society worked out by Karl Marx is beginning to creep into the discussion within this movement and hopefully will bring some grounding to this confusing diversity of protesters. The conscious recognition in this movement of the international nature of the adversary; the awareness of the necessity of a global action against it; the extensive and intense use of the new means of global communication and the Internet developed by capitalist globalisation but in a spirit of digital counter-culture is itself a very significant development.

Now we have another lefty following the path of Benn etc who must now be regarded as a clown among clowns – Tommy Sheridan. This, not only because in the light of the failures of others he still presses on, but because of the laugh he raised among all political persuasions during the recent election when he raised the possibility that, in his little Scottish republic his government (and I mean “his”) could take over one Motorola plant and compete with Motorola and others world-wide to sell phones or components for phones. What a howler!

The left, despite referring to themselves as “socialists” have no confidence in Socialism, no confidence in the workers to win through. They tell us, your Socialism will come eventually someday – presumably, when we are all dead and gone. By this, they mean the job falls not to them but to others sometime in the future. There is no logic to this whatsoever. For the world is ready now and painfully waiting – how is Socialism to ever come in the future when we are never to explain it to people here now, for it takes a while? What will happen that might cause this future embrace of Socialism, we are not told. The truth for Benn and co is “do what you want after my career, my shot at being the leader, my time in the limelight is over”. The left like to act themselves as though they are Jesus or Moses, and lay down the commandments in stone for ignorant followers to obey. Some of us however, are not so easily taken in.

How sum up the differences between us and the lefty heroes above?

Where these leftwingers call for more wages, we socialists call for no wages; where they call for the right to work, we call for the right not to work; where they call for the Rights of Nations, we say Nations should have no Rights to exist; where they call for Leadership, we call for no Leadership. And though we both agree that money is a problem, they call for a more “fair” distribution of it; we say if it’s a problem let’s live our lives without it; they call for the exchange in the means of life with other exactly or at least comparably valued means of life; we say no to exchange, except for in the free exchange of ideas and the exchange of raw Nature into the means of life.

William Dunn

Terror: the students ape their masters (2004)

From the November 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a University Challenge for thugs, students confront their teachers, from the world’s top school for terrorism, run by the CIA – the masters of their craft.

American capitalists and their puppet regime in the White House, world satellite states, proxies and missionaries, toadies in the media – all those who go to fill up the ranks of the ‘coalition of the willing’ – conduct a war in Iraq to liberate the country for free expression and sound political activity, for the continuous spreading of the ‘American dream’ with lashings of apple-pie. 

    

Well, that is what they’ve been telling us ever since the first tall story for the war, to clear out Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, blew up in their face. Now other lies are meeting the same fate, with the recent publishing of evidence of systematic programmes of torture meted out by the military and secret agents of the ‘liberating forces’ against their former detractors in Iraq. Not to mention the continuous bombing and murder of innocent Iraqis on a daily basis which could run as high to 35,000 deaths to date, and the kidnapping of thousands of foreign nationals (Arab,  Asian and North African) to be held at Guantanamo Bay and numerous jails throughout the world. This exposes the sham claims that this war is to liberate the country for free political activity.

    

Socialists were never in any doubt that this war more than just being ‘in’ Iraq was ‘over’ Iraq. The business of the war is neither ethical, nor cultural, but based on commerce and the advancement of the American economy in its quest for worldwide dominion, as the conqueror takes the spoils. It is not just the oil that is at stake here. That is a major prize, but also there are the extremely lucrative contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq itself, both civilian ($100 billion says the Economist) and military, Iraqi and regional trade, cultural and social influences across the region, property and cheap labour for American corporations, as well as the theatre testing of weapons of small, medium and mass destruction. We are just as sure of this fact as we are of another: that the  tune to which Bush and Blair and world leaders dance is nothing other than that of capital.

    

The bourgeois media, as they monitor the progress of the war, marked the first day of August with the milestone of one thousand US soldiers being killed since the invasion of Iraq eighteen months or so ago and the news that the situation there has deteriorated sharply in recent months. We are all familiar with the daily news headlines depicting another US campaign in trouble. We hear that there is an average of 87 attacks on coalition forces per day, up from 40 in August; there are 25 car bombs a month on average; we have seen 120 kidnappings of civilian workers; the rate of US personnel now being injured stands at 1000 per month and unofficially at 20,000 in all. Both Bush and Colin Powell now admit that they misjudged the post-war state of Iraq. Powell also admits there are no-go-areas in Iraq for coalition forces (termed: “areas we avoid”).

    

The situation developing in Iraq is similar to that in Afghanistan, where the US now controls less of the country than did the Soviet regime under its client Najibullah. The CIA reports that in Iraq the insurgency forces, which have come from all over the Muslim world could number as much as 50,000 at one time, and total of possible recruits could be unlimited. It is becoming clear that planned elections due for Iraq in January 2005 are being called into question. The funds for the reconstruction of Iraq presently standing at $18 billion dollars have hardly been spent. Indeed, a substantial amount of this money ($4 billion) has been diverted to security budgets as the situation deteriorates. Over in Afghanistan, Taliban forces are now regrouping and gaining in strength. Back in Iraq the US, which shunned the United Nations in its invasion is now, in an attempt to maximize the rewards for American big business, desperate to extricate itself from the worsening conditions there. Body bags of homecoming dead are kept off camera, and official injured lists for soldiers in both Afghanistan and Iraq have still not been published.

    

Now, all this talk of failure, particularly in Iraq, has led to the linking of this looming disaster to that dreaded word, that highly sensitive word, that word that hurts so bad in the US as it portrays one of the biggest foreign policy failures in US history to date – ‘Vietnam’. The word which sounded like a whisper before, is gradually becoming louder and louder as the winter draws in and Iraq spirals out of control.

    

The Vietcong, who saw off the US in the jungles of Asia, were trained and supplied by a highly respected enemy of the time, the Soviet Union. Now in the desert of Iraq, the US is up against Iraqi Sunnis, Al-Qaeda, and Moqtada al Sadar’s Shi’ite Mahdi Army forces. These disparate groups may appear like the colourful mix of the ragtag and bobtail militias of the region, and not the highly disciplined army of the Vietcong, but they have all been to school and have been taught well by the CIA, the masters of the craft of covert terrorism. The US taught and supplied these forces for foreign policy missions thought too dangerous for US professional forces in the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviets against the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan.

    

As we said after 9/11 in the article ‘Terrorism versus terrorism’ in the October 2001 Socialist Standard:

“The US is now reaping the bitter harvest of its foreign policy which used Islamic fundamentalism as a puppet in its perennial game of globo-political profit-making. For years it courted some of the most dangerous, conservative and fanatical followers of Islam, but the capitalist globalisation process, which the US has pursued obsessively, has served to make political Islam more reactionary in defence of its own culture and strategic interests.”

One is led into the impression that we are spectators in a University Challenge for thugs, where students confront their teachers from the world’s top American school for terrorism, run by the CIA in a bloody trial to the death with thousands on each side being killed. In addition, as is the way with all wars, innocents who have got in the line of fire are indiscriminately killed.

Similar tactics

The American secret services and their students are using similar tactics in these wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Are the insurgent students’ actions just copycats or is it all in the training? The US has kidnapped Arab, Asian and North African nationals and held them at Guantanamo Bay and numerous jails throughout the world, dressed them in orange suits and abused them, shown them on camera and on occasions have killed them – so too have the students. The US has used a policy of indiscriminate bombing to take out their enemies where innocents are killed – so too have the students. The US hand out leaflets, use video and TV and the Internet to persuade their enemies and supporters to change their mind or to surrender – so too have the students. The Taliban have mass leafleted in the coming Afghanistan elections.

    

Most decent humans, socialists and not, will be sickened by all this death and destruction reported daily on our TVs and in our newspapers. However, as socialists have been reporting to you in the Socialist Standard for 100 years, war and terrorism are simply bloody extensions to the everyday activities in capitalist society, whether for outdated concepts of national and cultural determinations of peoples, or the covert civil war in society – the battle for profits among companies, individuals and states. This brings into play labour, technology, cunning and deceit in a “commercial war” with others in the same business both within and beyond national borders, and may lead on to open military conflict using all the resources of a state. Not on every occasion does commercial war lead to military war, only when a vital interest is at stake (such as oil for the USA). Military war may proceed from a “trade war” where government-activated subsidy (to help their own side compete) and tariffs (to encumber their foreign competition) have failed to impress.

    

The eventual winners of this tussle in Iraq will do nothing for the workers there, or anywhere else. No matter the nationality of both the exploiter and the exploited, the result is the same. Iraqi Sunnis, Al-Qaeda, and the Mahdi Army forces, are capitalists in their world outlook and will just as willingly and as easily, as the US, employ violence against their own “cultural peoples” when profits and the very economic system is threatened by workers erroneously using violence. Workers cannot hope to win anything from war, commercial and military, or terrorism, and should organise themselves to disengage from these injurious capitalist activities. We should answer this university challenge for thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq which is played out daily on our TV, with a democratic and universal challenge to the backers of terrorism and their armies with our demands and campaign for the abolition of the wages system!

William Dunn

Same Old Answers (2004)

From the September 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday 3 July, the lunchtime edition of ‘Any Questions’ on BBC Radio 4, that doyen of the Left Arthur Scargill made a return appearance onto the national stage. In the light of the recent experiences of the Left here and around the world, might he have revised his world outlook? Would the failure of Keynes, the rise of Thatcher and Reagan, the defeat of the miners’ strike, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of New Labour and numerous attempts to get his Socialist Labour Party elected, cause this once colossus of the Left to think a little wider about society?

Arthur’s lack of an understanding of our capitalist world was displayed when he called for Mr Bush and Mr Blair to be in the dock with the tyrant Saddam. He imagines that workers could, under his leadership, provide enough pressure to force capitalists in the USA to put their own man, Bush, on trial for dancing to their own tune.

Next, in answer to a question posed on the ex-Sainsbury Boss, Peter Davis’ £2m bonus that forced him out, Arthur declared he would, presumably if he were to become Prime Minister, nationalise Sainsbury’s, Tesco M & S and all the banks etc, etc and use the profits for the good of the workers and pensioners.

Here Arthur, like Tony Benn, George Galloway, Tommy Sheridan and the rest of the left, has learned nothing from the failures of both Keynes in the West and the Bolsheviks in the East.  Both groups in a similar way, the latter, slightly more extreme than the former, thought that they could make capitalism work in a national-centric arena for the workers and call the result: ‘Socialism In One Country’.

The left work to accomplish a compromise, as proposed by Keynes, with the ideology of the wages system which exploits human labour for profit and places a monetary value on that labour and its products (as commodities).  An ideology which fosters the creed of competition and contest, which leads to human estrangement, brings first squabbles among us then violence and ends with war and death.  An ideology which will deny the human race the talents of all the humans as many are blighted and stunted by a life of miserable wage labour producing useless and cheating products for market and in duplication 100 times over.  An ideology which will preserve the existing partition of humans into economic units (countries or regions) governed by leaders who will seek to protect their power and interests, which are different from the workers, through the rule of law and factitious process of parliamentary democracy.

Finally, Arthur called for more financial investment into the process where we, in Britain, could produce winners for the world sporting arenas.  Not just one Henman, but many many Henmans, across all the sports.

I guess old king coal is still a merry old soul, in his little world of grand delusions.

William Dunn

Background to terrorism (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jenny Tonge MP, of the Liberal Democrats, was sacked from her front bench position for claiming she understood why militant Palestinians were carrying out suicide attacks against Israel, and for further suggesting she might have become a suicide bomber if she had been living for decades in a refugee camp. The Prime Minster’s wife, Cherie Blair, over a year ago, made a similar attempt to understand Palestinians, to equal outrage from the capitalist authorities and media here and in Israel. It was said Tonge’s comments were unacceptable and incompatible with liberal principles. Capitalists who support, or at the least are silent on, the terrorism of the CIA and the Israeli State were delighted she was disciplined. Tonge’s attempt to understand, we were told, amounted to tacit support for suicide bombers, which would also encourage them to continue or even step up their campaigns of terror. It seems therefore that people are not to understand the ugly side of our world or try to explain why humans behave as they do within the capitalist mode of production, for fear they might be seen as an apologist or even as encouraging the ugliness to continue. To explain and understand our world is a vital process to the progression of human society, a custom that socialists practice constantly and encourage fellow-workers to do too.

Right now the world is suffering from international acts of terrorism at a level unprecedented in recent times; hardly a day goes by without an act of terrorism – or certainly the threat that one might occur. Of course, there might well have been an overwhelming focus on terrorism by the media here since ‘9/11’ and in response to the campaign against terrorism feigned by both the US and Britain. One may observe, though, that threats of terrorism are more often reported than actual acts committed. We also observe, that the notorious three B’s (Bush, Blair and Bin Laden) are on a tirade of death and destruction the world over in their pursuit of power and wealth.

Now, a one-sided view of terrorism would suggest that terrorism is perpetrated by small groups in the shadows of society who make strange and uncompromising political or religious demands of the world, demands which “we” – the civilised and satisfied members of society – could not possibly meet and continue our present lifestyles. A more complete view might reveal that as well as the above groups, the uncivilised, terrorism itself is carried out by other groups in society who might be considered civilised. There are in society non-violent as well as violent forms of terrorism. In a sectarian society such as capitalism we have a variety of groups with specific interests to defend and promote: capitalists, gangsters, governments – chiefly among the latter, the United States of America through its international agent the Criminal Intelligence Agency. In addition, workers on a “work-to-rule” or out on “strike” might be viewed by capitalists as conducting terrorism, as would anti-Globalisation anarchists who are good at wrecking the world and building nothing.

The workers can however hit back even harder in their criticism of the capitalists. Over and above the terrorism conducted at home and abroad by their various State agencies and proxies, we can point to the various acts of terrorism which are the everyday activities of capitalists and which they undertake with the same vigour and coldness as Osama bin Laden for his cause. The pitiless use of unemployment; the reckless trashing of means of production and finished products (commodities) in times of economic crises; the callous wrecking of the environment; and the dumping of chemicals onto land, into the sea and the air. Furthermore, we can see the destruction of the human frame with use by the capitalists of cheap and inferior quality (junk) foods which are also full of chemicals unnecessary for human nutrition. We are witness to the decimation of wild life for their skins, tusks and other body parts for erroneous medicines and freakish commodities to eat, to wear and to embellish our homes and workplaces with. Finally, we can further elucidate the stinting of human emotions and potentials for creativity, leisure and happiness among workers in general by the relations provoked by the capitalist mode of production and the deleterious affects that it has on all aspects of our lives. Indeed, here we get to the crux of the matter – the actual cause operating in given circumstances to produce all the terrorism in human society – an economic system of society based on perpetual war and competition between individuals, businesses and countries – capitalism.

The groups contemplating acts of terrorism of the violent kind generally take their cue from the tactics of their State enemy who have engaged in acts of terrorism against them or their people. In the case of Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden his enemy trained and set him up in business.

Acts of terrorism by small groups like Al-Qaeda are in response to their warped rationale. This unfortunately suggests to these groups that the only way they can place their arguments for discussion onto the local or world agenda is to kill people and destroy property. Here the media, who love to shock and scare us, duly aid the rise of the political/religious thug. Can anyone, even among the keenest political minds, truthfully say that they had ever heard of Osama bin Laden and his demands before 9/11? Now thanks to his outrages and as a result, his western notoriety – indeed, his world fame – his views of the world are truly worldly in the sense that there is hardly anyone on the planet who has not heard of him – he has his public voice. ‘Oh yes, I love it, when a plan comes together’, says Osama.

To promote violence and war in bourgeois society, a society based on perpetual war, is not too difficult for it is a violent society by its nature. Governments, religious authorities, most political parties, businesses and media institutions, all accept the need for violence in society to settle or solve particular problems, which our chaotic capitalist world throws up as the various protagonists go about their daily business of making a killing. Here the resulting relations suggest to humans that fighting and violence is a legitimate way to settle disputes. In the United States, eleven thousand individuals are killed every year, and that is just with firearms; the country promotes the death penalty at home and funds generously organisations that promote violence worldwide and act as their proxies in particular battlefields too dangerous for American soldiers for particular causes and interests dear to them.

Not all minorities with strange or unusual demands who are denied what might ideally be considered fair treatment by the media resort to violence. We in the Socialist Party, ready to celebrate our 100 years as a party in relative obscurity, know all too well about media attention – or precisely, the lack of it. While socialists have no time for terrorism or violence, and maintain that there will always be violence in a society founded on violence, we can understand the frustrations of political groups who cannot get access to the mainstream debate. Those who live in the US or Europe are told they are lucky to live in a democracy and are able to speak out against the excess of governments and private enterprise. We remember, though, top American news anchor Dan Rather complaining that one could not speak out against American foreign policy in the days, weeks and months after 9/11, and we further remember a majority of people in Britain being against the war over Iraq and it still going ahead.

The aim of Al-Qaeda has nothing to do with a “clash of civilisations”, as some have suggested. Instead, it is merely a tactic to force members of the “host country” (the country they seek to influence by acts of terrorism) to listen to their demands and to pressurize their governments not to do what irks them and to leave them be to set their own standard of life, in the part of the world where they live. Others have also suggested that the West gets only what it has asked for by interfering in other countries: why, so the logic continues, can we not accept the fact that a nation or people are likely to defend “their” country when we are supposed to stand up and defend “ours”? Well, welcome to capitalism. The capitalists who have something to gain (oil and huge reconstruction contracts in Iraq) do not take the risk and are generally protected against acts of terrorism, and do not fight on the battlefield. Unhappily, on all occasions, we the proletariat are the class who fight and die for others’ profits.

As long as we have capitalism, that is, competition and contest between capitalists and capitalist states, buying and selling, land grabbing for profits and other gains, which leads to bulling, threatening, spying, open hostility, conflict, terrorism and open military war, we will never be free of violence and terrorism.

William Dunn

Goodwill to all . . . ? Well, just now and again (2005)

From the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Well did we Standard readers?  Show goodwill to all or at least to some of our fellows during the Christmas and the New Year break and, was it a good feeling?  Was it good to give as well as to receive – was it better to give or better to receive?  Now that we are all back nose to the grindstone, the conflict going on in our heads between the drudgery of factory, the office or the shop, or wherever it is that we find ourselves tied to again, and with the frolics of the holiday extant in our memories.  That song still in our heads which occasionally finds its way to our lips, constantly interrupted and usually ceased, by the numbing thoughts, the bland conversation and presence of that cold relation between the product and its maker.  Just some of the elements of the workplace which seem to demand for themselves all the space in our heads.  We are quickly reminded what a misery and a waste of our lives is this daily drudge.  ‘Oh!  I wish it could be Christmas everyday…’  

Socialist readers say that the only aspects of any value worth considering about this holiday break are that we proles get some time off the drudgery of everyday work and get time with our families and friends.  Also, we can pig-out on all the good food, if we are so inclined, enjoy the special TV programmes and have at least one chance in the year to give some kindness, affection and love to our fellows and hopefully, to receive like in return.  Readers north of the border enjoy a little extra indulge on Hogmanay. . .

Otherwise, that whole charade has very negative feelings for us.  All the money and debt required, the huckstering, the pretence, and the religious connotation and, that feeling that all the kindness, affection and love is primarily expressed in a material form — that sort of love that I can only describe as counterfeit — material love (gifts) to satisfy some fetish with the must-have commodity.  We know too that unless we give a gift, a card or a calendar to another we are unlikely to receive like from them in return — a sort of coercive love.

Our children are deceived and urged to request gifts from a fictional figure called all the way up from the 4th century Bishop of Mrya re-branded by Coca Cola and renamed Santa Claus and, unless they behave themselves, he will not deliver — more coercion.

Finally, the ideology or culture demands of us that we all undertake the same ritual every year.  Go out and spend as much money as we’ve got and more that we haven’t got, on gifts, cards and calendars as well as buy the same fattening foodstuff, stuffing the turkeys with sausage and the capitalists with profit.  And on Hogmanay we are to praise the last year as well as the New Year as though they were something special.  Perhaps last year was, if we’ve survived. Unless we follow this line we will not enjoy ourselves and we might be seen as outcasts or spoilsports. In no time at all it seems we are back again in the world we know (but don’t love) where other rituals dominate the scene and here its not “goodwill and love” we hear, but, “go on, stick one on him and then wrestle him to the ground”.

At this time of the year are these feelings of goodwill — kindness, affection and love between fellows — , an ideological or cultural thing or are they symptomatic of deep longing for another world where humans could be free to behave with kindness, affection and love as a matter of course all the year round? We are also to wish each other well for the coming New Year, and hope our luck will bring us a better life despite the cruel truth that our material conditions are likely to remain the same.  In the cold miserable light of a capitalist day, nothing much has changed by the notching up of another year since the supposed birth of the fantasy Jesus Christ.  Sure, one or two of us might in a New Year win the lottery — and then we can begin to live a little easier, if you can square you conscience with a world of haves and have-nots.

In socialist society, not only will we have free access to the products and services of human production and to life itself, too we’ll get free access to all the human support, kindness, affection and love from all our fellows all year round, instead of for just a mean two weeks.  In free society this behaviour will become the norm in our human world.  Why would you want to pay, when you can have free access?  In addition, we will be free of the drudgery and stressful life that is our everyday experience now, that which we are glad to see the back of for a skimpy two weeks of partying at the end of the year.

William Dunn

Letter: Is Marx’s Analysis of Capitalism Relevant Today? (2017)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is Marx’s Analysis of Capitalism Relevant Today?

Dear Editors

The article ‘Analysing an economic system’ (Socialist Standard, September) closes with the words: [today] Marx’s Capital remains valid and relevant. Well sure as his analysis is valid—correct, and Wall Street spivs confirm this, but as a political weapon for workers . . . well, increasing less so. The irony is that perhaps Marx’s Capital is more relevant to ‘city types’ than to workers. Marx’s illuminations to workers (and ‘city types’) on capitalism: its exploitation, surplus value, its transitory existence, its contradictions—and your point on behalf of Marx, that it’s iron-clad rules (economic laws) a have not changed over time…etc., etc., are interesting to academics and economists, but for workers today—h’mmm?

Has Marx’s analysis in Capital, as a value to workers for change, been surpassed by the actual practical workers experience of capitalism today in that today there is increasingly developing an impossibilist situation reality for most workers in the West that cannot be turned around or alleviated by social reformers or by capitalists themselves wishing to preserve their society in a Keynes moment? This to be quickly followed by others in China and India and emerging Africa and is this a development which Marx himself would have relished? Practical experience over theory and idea.

So who cares how it works, knowing that it doesn’t work and it cannot be made to work by ‘romantic fixers’ is knowing enough, the experienced reality that it does not work is by far the better educator for workers. Therefore, should SPGB and World Socialist Movement workers and Trade Unionists etc., etc., speak less of Marx and more point out the fact that it cannot be made to work and what it might be replaced with? To highlight how we might do things differently post capitalism is not to become the little cook in his/her cookshop churning out blueprints for some far-off future—the future is here and now. It’s time to start cooking! Let us all set out our vision of Socialist Society—free society and let us set in motion an on-line discussion and the World Socialist Movement set up another website for this very purpose; you don’t have to insist on party membership to participate—being a member of the working class ought to be sufficient.

In the West jobs are disappearing to Far East workers and technology and never to come back, wages are sinking never to come up, pensions are a pittance and State benefits practically non-existent—certainly diminishing rapidly, and bills for food, rent, clothing and childcare and leisure etc., etc., keep rising and more and more we work longer and longer hours and many in more than one job. The global capitalist economy has created too many workers needing to earn a living—and increasing that number by hundreds of thousands if not millions daily and capitalists cannot meet that need for employment and on wages adequate for everyday bills never mind descent living. Life is no fun for capitalists themselves, they cannot in general make an acceptable profit (acceptable to them) hence more and more tax dodging (legal, illegal and with permission), calls for set-up and maintenance grants, thus they can no longer afford to maintain their States, thus cuts (or austerity) in health, education and council spending and no way can any of these trends be halted never mind reversed. Two cases in point: UK trains and main energy supplier corporations for their size, customer base and capital input cannot make acceptable profits for dividend expectations and this with UK government subsidies for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.  Even the mighty Apple Corporation is fast losing ground to Samsung and Huawei and up-and-coming others.

With the present state of technological development maximised by capitalists this perilous state of Western workers will soon befall those in China and India, and thus well over have the globe’s workers will be effected and feel threatened and angry—out of a job and their only source of income.

Endless talk about Marx and his illuminations are not going to get the job done.

Of course Marx and his dialectical method is invaluable for moving forward and we should be applying this method to everyday problems facing the globe as examples. Brush-up here: www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/books/index.php

William Dunn, 

Glasgow

Reply:

So you like the dialectic but not the much simpler theory of surplus value!

Certainly the evidence of the experience has shown more than any book that capitalism can’t work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. And you are right that in the end, as long as people realise this, they don’t really need to know exactly why – though having some idea why would avoid the risk of being misled by radical-sounding reformists. As you say, understanding this is the basis of the case for socialism. The deduction from ‘capitalism can’t be reformed to work for the majority’ is that the majority needs to consider what different system of society would work in their interest. Which is where socialists come in. Experience does not automatically lead to understanding; reflection has to intervene whether this involves talking to others or reading.

Marx’s analysis – whether in his own words or in popularisations – is a key weapon in the socialist arsenal in the battle of ideas against capitalism. Agreed, we also need to present the alternative, which the second article in the same issue, ‘A World Without Commodities’, did. The discussion forum you call for already exists and can be found at: worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum.

Capitalism, at least in the West, is in a bad state compared to in some earlier periods, but whether we can conclude that ‘wages are shrinking never to come up again’ or that unemployment is to go on growing and growing is another matter. Of course, even if wages do go up again and unemployment goes down the case against capitalism remains valid. Capitalism will still be based on the exploitation of wage-labour for surplus value (as Marx explained in detail) and it will still be impossible to make it work in the interests of the majority – Editors.

Letters: 'Corbyn for Leader?' (2015)

Letters to the Editors from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corbyn for Leader?

Dear Editors,

There are several good reasons why World Socialists should welcome the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the role of Labour Party Leader or Her Majesty’s Opposition Leader in the UK, if in indeed he makes it beyond any dirty tricks from his opponents in the party. Corbyn win or lose, his success now marks the end of the long ‘politically repressive’ Thatcher period.

Bill Martin’s little piece on Corbyn (Socialist Standard, August) rather missed the points, unfortunately!  Sure, Corbyn’s socialism is not our Socialism and that’s not the point either.

In the USA Obama was called a socialist (laughingly!) and now there is a candidate Bernie Sanders, A self-described ‘democratic socialist’ on a Corbyn-like ticket doing well so far in the US Presidential Election Party Primaries. If he doesn’t win the Democratic nomination he’ll force Hillary Clinton leftwards to beat him, much as Corbyn here has done with both Burnham and Copper. Most would agree that for a person in the USA (of all places) to be doing well in a national poll and openly calling himself a ‘socialist’, of any kind, is pretty good progress for politics there. Not since Upton Sinclair in the 1930’s.

What has that got to do with Corbyn?

Well ‘Socialist Standard’ regulars (World Socialists) know that Corbyn’s socialism is not ours, but his popularity and success and should he win here will definitely (no doubts about it) legitimize and popularize the word ‘socialism’ again in the UK politics. This word since Thatcher has all but been banned and junked by the media (TV, radio and newspapers) and these outlets are where most of the public/voters still get their politics. Also junked by Labour Leaders.

Therefore, the same effect as with Sanders in the USA will likely happen here in the UK. But more again will happen here as it will likely happen in the USA. What? The word ‘socialism’ being currency again (sorry for the association) will lead some to research socialism and they’ll come up with the SPGB & WSPUSA (World Socialist Party of the United States) in their results page!

There is another reason in that World Socialists welcome working people getting a better share of the wealth in the meantime and Corbyn as British Prime Minister will achieve this for workers.

A third reason will prove that the left cannot solve the problem of the disintegrating capitalist society - a society to which the term ‘impossibilism’ is better now applied to than to World Socialism. Thus Corbyn is merely a prelude to much more meaningful discussions about capitalism and socialism.

Finally, Bill Martin, a more positive outlook is required from you sir, and not to stick to ‘political elitism’ which is exactly the outlook of British Labour Party leaders now in their tirade against Corbyn!

William Dunn, 

Glasgow

Reply:

We were careful in choosing our description of Jeremy Corbyn as being 'Harold Wilson' warmed up.' In the 1960s policies very like the ones Corbyn is advocating were tried. They didn't aid the course of socialism; they led to disillusionment and workers voting for Margaret Thatcher.

It is no good getting the word socialism back on the political agenda if it is again to be associated with statism, taxation and nationalisation. If there has been one consistent theme to the Socialist Party's campaigning it has been that we need to be clear about what socialism is and what is needed to achieve it, and we cannot welcome anything that will create confusion and muddle, however well intentioned.

We recognised that much of the ‘Corbynmania’ phenomenon is that 'the desires of workers (however misinformed and locked into the logic of markets) will have forced their way into the halls of power.' What that means, though, is that we have to continue to work hard to put forward and explain the socialist case to dispel the misinformation. There are no short cuts, and whether the workers support Thatcher or Corbyn doesn't change the need for clear socialist agitation.

That is not elitist at all, it is the democratic approach. – Editors.

************************************************************

Blacklisted

Dear Editors,

In the mid-1970s the Mail and the Sun attacked the ‘left’ in my union branch of the CPSA (now PCS), Department of Environment and Transport HQ, for 'concealing' their political views before standing for election to the Branch Committee. They could not charge me with dissembling' – because I was an open Communist and the papers' report noted this, without naming me. In fact, against trusted and CPSA ‘Moderators’, Janet Daly of the Tory Party, and Militant Tendency, I won three successive elections for Branch Secretary.

In 1984 Gordon Leake of the Express (a self-confessed ex-BOSS member-turned-journalist) claimed that the CPSA branch at GCHQ did not exist. In fact, Diane Green, its branch secretary, a member of the BL84 faction (the one in which Communists and Socialist caucuses and non-Militant members participated) was elected to CPSA’s National Executive.

In 1996, the GCHQ Staff Association (formed after Thatcher had barred GCHQ unions), lost its appeal to the Certification Officer (a Thatcherite creation), for funds from the Thatcher fund for union postal ballots. The reason was the heavy dependence of the 'union' on Peter Marychurch, the GCHQ director, for facility time, accommodation and telephone.

D. Shepherd, 

London NW4