Cooking the Books: Value, Creation and Extraction (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the Guardian (19 January) in an article subtitled ‘Talk of a fairer capitalism is just hot air unless we rehabilitate and reward the idea of value creation,’ economics professor Mariana Mazzucato quoted Big Bill Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners and later the IWW as saying: ‘The barbarous gold barons do not find the gold, they do not mine the gold, they do not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belongs to them.’

She used this as an introduction to her case that capitalism today is more concerned with ‘value extraction’ than ‘value creation’ and that this needs to be corrected to avoid further financial crises. ‘Restraining the power of value extraction,’ she wrote, ‘requires a theory of value – an area once hotly discussed in economics, but no longer,’ and went on:

‘This is because a century ago the notion that labour creates value (central to the work of classical’ economists like David Ricardo and Karl Marx, and measured by objective factors like productivity) was replaced by the ‘neo-classical’, subjective notion that satisfaction and ‘preferences’ create value.’

This is a valid point. In fact, modern bourgeois economics has gone further and dismisses the whole idea of ‘value’ as a useless concept, arguing that all you need is a theory of price. This enables it to obscure the obvious fact that wealth, as something useful to human life, can only be created by people working. In their theory labour becomes reduced to just one element, along with land and capital, of cost and so of price.

Marx’s theory of value was that a commodity (as a good or a service produced for sale) was determined by the amount of ‘socially necessary’ labour expended on its production from start to finish. By ‘socially necessary’ he meant the labour that had to be expended to produce it by an average worker of average skill working with average equipment; in other words, not necessarily the actual labour expended, otherwise a slower than average worker would create more value.

Marx was not talking just about the labour expended at the last stage of production of a good but of all the labour expended on it from start to finish.  That included labour expended on mining or growing the materials, constructing the machinery, supplying the energy, and making the semi-finished products, i.e. the past labour incorporated in the fixed and circulating capital.

According to Marx, ‘value creation,’ to use Mazzucato’s terminology, took place when workers produced a commodity. The workers transferred existing value from the raw materials, machinery, etc. to the product but at the same time created new value.  However, what they produced was not theirs but belonged to the capitalist owner who employed them. A part of this did go to them as their wages, but most went to the capitalist as ‘surplus value’. This legalised robbery (Haywood‘s ‘weird alchemy’) could well be described as ‘value extraction’.

But this is not what Mazzucato means by the term. She is not as radical as might at first seem. Her case is not against capitalism as such, but only against present-day capitalism which she sees as biased in favour of finance and against industry. Her ‘production theory of value’ is a plea for, as she put it, ‘reinvesting profits into areas that create goods and services’ instead of financial juggling.

But, as Marx explained, ‘value extraction’ occurs at the point of production. Financial juggling is not extracting value from the producers but from those who originally extracted it from them: the mining, manufacturing and service capitalists who employ them. Mazzucato is taking sides in a thieves’ quarrel.

Mixed Media: Hedda Gabler (2013)

Theatre Review from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ibsen's 1890 drama Hedda Gabler was recently staged at the Old Vic theatre in London starring Sheridan Smith as Hedda and Darrell D'Silva as Brack. The play is a plea for bourgeois liberal feminism but also a portrayal of a Nietzschean existential heroine. Hedda is in a lineage of strong women constrained by patriarchal society from Clytemnestra in Aeschylus to Medea by Euripides.

Ibsen dissects middle bourgeois family life, its morality, niceties, home, hearth and happiness which Nietzsche castigated as 'it is not your sin but your moderation that cries to heaven'. It is a place where women have a subordinate role to men and the expectation that Hedda become pregnant. In his preliminary notes Ibsen wrote 'women aren't all created to be mothers' but Marx saw that 'the bourgeois sees his wife as a mere instrument of production'. Hedda refers to 'love' as 'that glutinous word'. Alexandra Kollontai saw that 'the outward observance of decorum and the actual practice of depravity, and the double code, one code of behaviour for the man and another for the woman are the twin pillars of bourgeois morality'.

Hedda says to Brack 'I’m content so long as you don't have any sort of hold over me, subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! That's a thought that I'll never endure'. Emma Goldman wrote 'true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts. It begins in woman's soul' although Eleanor Marx wrote of women 'that the question is one of economics. The position of women rests, as everything in our complex modern society rests, on an economic basis'.

Hedda is an existential heroine in the sense of 'Vivre ? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous' ('Living? Our servants will do that for us') from Axël by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. Brack is enamoured of Hedda's feminine strength but fears her advocacy of what Nietzsche described as 'to live dangerously' and does not understand Hedda's views on Lovborg's suicide; 'there is beauty in this deed, an act of spontaneous courage to take his leave of life so early'. This is reminiscent of Nietzsche's dictum 'voluntary death that comes to me because I wish it'. However Hedda cannot meet Nietzsche's idea of 'amor fati', the ultimate affirmation of life and instead accepts a terrifying nihilism.

In socialism Engels wrote 'what will most definitely disappear from monogamy, first, the dominance of man, and secondly, the indissolubility of marriage'. Eleanor Marx concluded that 'the woman will no longer be the man's slave but his equal'.

Steve Clayton

The Spanish Civil War Revisited (1995)

Film Review from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ken Loach is a considerable film maker. He directed Cathy Come Home for BBC TV in 1966, and his credits also include the unforgettable Kes (1970), The Price of Coal (1977) and Hidden Agenda (1990) and Raining Stones (1993) - both winners of the Cannes Jury Prize. And now comes a film about the Spanish Civil War Land and Freedom (Curzon West End, Chelsea Cinema, Renoir, Screen on the Green and selected cinemas across the country from October) another Cannes winner and, by any standards, a major achievement.

Through an impressive flashback devise, Loach unifies life in contemporary Liverpool with Spain in the late 1930s. An old man collapses on a Liverpool housing estate. He has had a stroke and he dies on the way to hospital. His granddaughter, sorting out his things, finds an old suitcase with letters, clippings and photographs of the civil war. And as she reads them and reflects, her grandfather's story unfolds on the screen.

David leaves to fight fascism. He joins an international section of the Republican militia on the Aragon Front and is wounded. He is sent to hospital in Barcelona where he discovers that factions on his own side - the so-called communists - are more concerned with internal disputes than with fighting the war against fascism. david's war ends tragically. The Militia are disarmed by the Stalinist Popular Front (sic) and one of his comrades is killed.

The film works on many levels. As an attempt to tell a compelling story which captures something of the spirit of the times -  the revolutionary idealism of the Militia, the sickening poverty of Spanish peasants, the internal conflicts amongst the republicans, the unfolding story of David's love affair with Blanca and its tragic conclusion - this is a well crafted piece of film-making. But more than this Loach offers us a series of powerful political snapshots of Spain in the mid/late 1930s. He might have made an even more effective film if the dialogue had painted a clearer picture of the background to the war, but nevertheless this is a splendid film  - a substantial piece of political story telling which will have great interest for socialists.

There are perhaps three defining moments. First, a fascist-held village is captured and the villagers meet to discuss what to do with the land. Jim Allen's script and Barry Ackroyd's camera linger over the fascinating, heated discussion. The villagers are united only in their opposition to fascism. Some want to move towards common ownership of the land by collectivising farms. Others want to confiscate only fascist's land, and to divide this amongst the peasant community. Whilst a third group want largely to retain things as they are. The scene demonstrates what socialists already know: that there was no majority in favour of a socialist revolution in Spain in 1936, but rather the remnants of a coalition of anarchists, republicans, Stalinists and, so-called, revolutionaries.

Second, in the streets of Barcelona, David becomes involved in fighting between anarchists, Stalinists and revolutionaries. Later he tears up his membership card of the British Communist Party and, voice over, writes witheringly in a letter home of the betrayal of the revolution by the Stalinists.

Third, as David's coffin is buried his granddaughter gives the clutched salute of the Spanish Militia. Loach seemingly wants us to draw parallels between the Spanish Civil War and relevant actions which the working class might take in contemporary Britain. We are presumably to conclude that the ideas and actions of latter-day Spanish-style militants are relevant. Not so. The only actions which are pertinent to the working class revolutionary are those which are concerned with the enlightenment and empowerment of the class to which they belong, and the collective transformation of capitalism into socialism. Not for us a re-run of anything akin to the Spanish Civil War, no matter how heroic and well-meaning many of those who fought on the republican side might have been. We have a different war to fight: to enfranchise a socialist majority and, by so doing, to end all wars.

Michael Gill

Saying Marx Is Right, Getting Him (And Capitalism) Wrong (2011)

From the December 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“God save me from my friends; I can protect myself from my enemies.”

Karl Marx’s circle of friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, has grown considerably since the financial crisis broke out in the autumn of 2008. Now, three years later and with many countries facing a double-dip recession or worse, articles titled “Was Marx Right?” (or even “Marx Was Right”) are a fairly common sight in the pages of the financial press.

Twenty years ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was so obvious to most that Marx had been wrong that he was subject to more ridicule than criticism—or simply ignored altogether. Followers of Marx may find it satisfying that he is now being taken seriously, but the standard used to conclude that he is “right” in 2011 is not much different from the one employed in 1991 to prove he was “wrong.”

Then as now Marx is often treated as a nineteenth-century Nostradamus, as if his main aim had been to predict the future course of capitalism or prophesize its end. Judged on this basis, Marx has been deemed right whenever capitalism is struggling or appears to be on its last legs, only to be proved wrong again during the next economic recovery or boom. (And since many assume that Marx sketched the blueprint for state capitalism, a system still commonly referred to as communism or socialism, his critics have pointed to false predictions about a future utopia as another reason he is wrong.)

Using the word “prediction” to describe the results of Marx’s investigation of capitalism is a bit off the mark. The term is only apt in the sense that his analysis of how capitalism functions, which reveals its limits or boundaries as a profit-driven system, can serve as a basis for “predicting” what sorts of problems will arise under it. But these are more general expectations than specific predictions, and from experience we already know what sort of trouble to expect from capitalism. The significance of Marx’s analysis is that it explains why those problems – such as unemployment, war, and poverty – are permanent fixtures of the capitalist social system.

Dr. Doom digs Marx

One of the most widely-quoted “Marx was right” comments in recent months was made by the economist Nouriel Roubini, who earned fame and the nickname “Dr. Doom” for correctly predicting a messy end to the housing bubble. In a videotaped interview with the Wall Street Journal in August, Roubini said: “Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That’s because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand.”

And Roubini repeated the same point in an article titled “Is Capitalism Doomed?” in which he wrote: “So Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right in arguing that globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct (though his view that socialism would be better has proven wrong). Firms are cutting jobs because there is not enough final demand. But cutting jobs reduces labor income, increases inequality and reduces final demand.”

Roubini’s praise for Marx gets his ideas on crisis wrong in two significant ways worth exploring: Marx certainly did not think that workers’ limited consumption is the real  cause of crises (or that increasing their consumption is a way out); nor did he think of a major crisis in terms of the potential “self-destruction” of capitalism.

Greedy but not stupid

The “underconsumption” theory of crisis that Roubini ascribes to Marx is in fact a position that he had harshly criticized. On just an empirical level, Marx thought it dubious to claim that “crises are caused by the scarcity of effective consumption” because experience shows that they are always directly preceded by “a period in which wages rise generally.” Thus, according to the underconsumption theory, “such a period should rather remove the crisis” (Capital vol. 2).

The more interesting rebuttal of the theory, however, can be found in Marx’s explanation of why capitalists, as Roubini laments, end up “cutting jobs [which] reduces labor income, increases inequality and reduces final demand.” Are they simply too stupid and greedy to know what’s good for them? Should they read Roubini’s latest book to figure it out?

Capitalists may indeed be greedy and short-sighted, but they are not stupid when it comes to their own interests. Unlike the advocates of the underconsumption theory, they are smart enough to remain focused on obtaining profit, knowing that to fall short of that goal can mean falling out of the capitalist class.

Raising the wages of their own workers may contribute to expanding the overall “final demand” but it cuts directly into their own individual profit. Moreover, the beneficiaries of a wage increase at one capitalist firm will be other capitalist firms, particularly those producing consumer goods. Such an act of self-sacrifice on the part of some capitalists is even less likely to occur in an economic crisis, when it is already difficult for many firms to secure a more or less average level of profit. Roubini should know that when the prospects for profit are dim, capitalists will prefer to curtail or even cease production altogether, not raise wages. He can lament the situation all he likes, but it is perfectly rational behaviour under the irrational capitalist system.

Yet the underconsumption theory of crisis, despite its inanity, has continued to seem attractive and plausible to some capitalists (and most Leftists). Marx explains how the theory reflects capitalists’ rather fond view of the workers of other capitalists: “Every capitalist knows this about his worker, that he does not relate to him as producer to consumer, and [he therefore] wishes to restrict his consumption, i.e. . . . his wage, as much as possible. Of course he would like the workers of other capitalists to be the greatest consumers possible of his own commodity” (Grundrisse).

Roubini sees that restricted consumption limits final demand, and fancies that the solution can be found in simply reversing the situation by increasing consumption to expand final demand. He never stops to think about why consumption must be limited in the first place. Roubini views restricted consumption as the cause of crisis when in fact it is the natural outcome and also the basis of a system designed to squeeze profit from workers’ labor.

Ignoring the profit motive and its relation to workers’ wages, Roubini feels free to dispense his wisdom on how the current crisis can be overcome by means of a “return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods” in order to “enable market-oriented economies to operate as they should and can.” Instead of imagining the “should and can,” however, Roubini would be better advised to consider the “how and why.”

A forcible solution

The other way Roubini gets Marx wrong is by saying that he envisaged the possibility that capitalism could “self-destruct” in a crisis. Alarming capitalists by pointing to this dire prediction may be part of Roubini’s shtick as Dr. Doom, but at the same time it is a fairly widespread assumption regarding what Marx thought.

Marx does describe the occurrence of a world crisis as an “explosion” or “eruption” of capitalist contradictions and antagonisms, or even as a “destructive process.” But far from viewing crisis as the potential end of capitalism, Marx describes it as a “forcible solution” or “forcible adjustment” that temporarily restores the disturbed equilibrium, and as a violent process involving the “real concentration and forcible adjustment of all the contradictions of bourgeois economy” (Theories of Surplus Value).

The capitalist contradictions or antagonisms Marx is alluding to concern things that are linked to, yet independent of, each other – such as the relation between sale and purchase, or between the production process and circulation process. These things are clearly connected and interrelated, yet they can diverge from each other. The potential for sale and purchase to diverge, for instance, is magnified greatly under our modern credit system, where an inability to conclude one transaction can unleash a chain reaction that disrupts other transactions.  

Crises according to Marx are a forcible means of bringing such contradictory (semi-independent) elements back into some sort of alignment with each other so that the system can better function. This view of crises as a solution, albeit a crude and violent one, contrasts with the outlook of Roubini, who sees the destruction of a crisis as an avoidable problem rather than an unfolding solution.

Marx seemed to have economists like Roubini in mind when he wrote: “Instead of investigating the nature of the conflicting elements which erupt in the catastrophe, the apologists content themselves with denying the catastrophe itself and insisting, in the face of their regular and periodic recurrence, that if production were carried on according to the textbooks, crises would never occur” (Theories of Surplus Value).

The entire focus for an economist like Roubini is on coming up with practical solutions to crisis, not understanding why crisis occurs or what it tells us about the contradictions and limitations of capitalism. Marx thought of crisis as a phenomenon to be understood, not as a problem that could be solved. Even if we can manage to understand the exact causes of a specific crisis and fully examine all of the contradictions and antagonisms that are “strikingly revealed” (Theories of Surplus Value) in it, we are still not in a position to solve or prevent future crises. This is because the contradictions that explode in a crisis are all an integral part of the capitalist system.

What is clear from reading Marx is that the only way to get rid of crisis is to replace capitalism with a new system, free of capitalist barriers and antagonisms. This is not a “prediction” of the end of capitalism, but an explanation why workers must bring about its end.

In his analysis of crisis and other phenomena, Marx always seeks to understand why things are the way they are, not to predict when they might disappear or how the system might “self-destruct.” The defenders of capitalism are less interested in the why of things, than in making suggestions for how they should be, as if problems like crisis could be avoided if only capitalists followed the recommendations of economics textbooks. And this fosters the misguided hope that capitalism can (some day) be reformed. It’s natural for these economists to misinterpret Marx, even when praising him: they take capitalism completely for granted, and Marx didn’t.

Michael Schauerte

A tale of two schisms (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Communist Current, which has been waiting since its inception for the working class to arm themselves and "smash the state", has recently been troubled by some internal opposition - some members decided that in the absence of the long-awaited "revolutionary war" the next best thing to smash would be the ICC. In a letter to the Socialist Party of Great Britain these ex-ICC members accuse the ICC of being "a bureaucratic sect" which "cannot accept criticisms" and uses "methods worthy of Stalinism". The ex-members have formed a new group which is publishing a duplicated journal called News of War and Revolution. In it they make two criticisms of the ICC: firstly, that "it contained a permanent elite to run the organisation and take its decisions", and secondly, that most of its predictions about "events in the real world" have been proved wrong.

It is rather odd that the ICC's "permanent elite" and undemocratic structure should be a surprise to these ex-members. After all, the ICC is an avowedly Leninist organisation which claims to admire and base itself upon the Bolshevik party. Bolshevism made no claim to be a respecter of majority decisions, but is based on the principle of rule by the vanguard. Some time ago the writer was at an ICC meeting and suggested to the speaker that the only way to achieve real socialist democracy is by democratic political organisation. The speaker's reply was that the ICC is a Leninist organisation aiming for "proletarian dictatorship" and is not interested in the niceties of democracy. Those who show contempt for the democratic process - for whatever reason - will before long degenerate into the kind of "Stalinist methods" of which the ICC is now accused. The link between Leninism and Stalinism is not an accidental one. But despite the cries of indignation from those who have left the ICC, they are no more interested in real democracy that the ICC is. It is particularly pitiful that the ICC's romantic illusions about bombs and barricades have led to the traditional allegations about certain members being police agents. (This matter is dealt with in an article in News of War and Revolution entitled "ICC Uses State Terror".)

The second criticism by the ex-ICCers is that the ICC's predictions about society are wrong. Basically, the ICC believes that since 1914 capitalism has been collapsing, and that this collapse will soon lead either to world war or armed revolution. Repeating Leninist cliches about the imminent collapse of capitalism and the need to arm the proletariat, the ICC has completely failed to understand that the old insurrectionary tactics of France in 1789 and Russia in 1917 (which were capitalist revolutions) are not applicable in 1982. The pathetic fact about the ICC - and their counterparts in the other Leninist sects - is that they are preparing to fight a violent capitalist revolution which happened long ago. Those who have been wise enough to leave the ICC would do well to learn that Leninism is completely opposed to the present-day interest of the working class. But from their literature, we suspect that the ICC breakaway group are rather slow learners.

Blind Ali

Meanwhile, another Leninist sect - the International Marxist Group - is undergoing a rather traumatic experience: its shepherd has abandoned the flock and is trying to join the Labour Party. In the May 1981 Socialist Standard we reported a debate at the Central Hall, Westminster, in which Benn and Company put the case for the Labour Party and Leninist chiefs, Paul Foot and Tariq Ali put the case against. It is worth quoting the concluding words of Tariq Ali's speech in the debate:

. . . we are opposed to Labourism, that weak, sickly and pathetic political ideology which has dominated the British working class. It must be displaced if we are to move forward.

(The Crisis and the Future of the Left, p.74, Pluto Press.)

No sooner had the masses stopped applauding Tariq's rhetoric than he had filled out an application form to join the Labour Party. Explaining his decision to resign from the IMG and join Labour in an article in City Limits (27/11/81), Ali states: "I have joined the Labour Party without renouncing my political views". Now, what are his innocent followers in the IMG to make of that? At one moment they are told to oppose "the weak, sickly and pathetic ideology" of the Labour Party and then are informed that their leader has joined the Labour Party but still holds the same views. By the same logic, Tariq might tell his followers to oppose the Tories, but then to join the Tory Party in order to demonstrate such opposition. Not all members of the IMG are convinced by their ex-leader's "tactics" and rumour has it that some of them will be proving the truth of the old saying that one Leninist is "a militant", two "a faction" and three "a schism".

Steve Coleman

Beyond the fragments (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last March, at the Central Hall, Westminster, four left wing leaders took part in what they modestly describe as the Debate of the Decade (the debate of the decayed would have been more accurate). The purpose of the event was to try once again to unite the Left into big movement rather than its present factions, each ultimately loyal to the Labour Party, but each maintaining their own petty and obscure positions (one says that Russia is a 'deformed' workers' state, another insists that is is a 'degenerate' one and a third affirms that it has been a socialist state all the time).

Leftist followers paid up to £6 a ticket to listen to the nostalgic rhetoric of the platform poseurs. Tony Benn (Labour Party) urged the assembled to elect a future leader of the Labour Party who would be honest, principled, radical . . . had he said that the best man for the job must be a lapsed aristocrat and Minister of Industry in a government under which unemployment doubled the hint might have been a little too obvious. Then there was John Cleese of the Socialist Workers' Party who did a passable impersonation of Paul Foot, and Tariq Ali of the International Marxist Group who did an embarrassing impersonation of Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov. The Leninist followers loved it all. The fourth and final fragment to address the microphone was Hilary Wainwright, co-author of a book called Beyond the Fragments (Merlin Press).

The book presents a criticism of certain aspects of the Left which socialists would not wish to argue with. Wainwright, Segal and Rowbotham have discovered (through experience) that Leninist parties are repressive, authoritarian bodies. They pointed out that their arrogant leaderships see themselves as the personification of socialist wisdom and how this tends to reduce internal party freedom of thought or action. Rowbotham seems to understand that experience is the greatest leader and perhaps we are not being over-optimistic in suggesting that she implies Lenin was wrong when he wrote that "The working class, exclusively, by its own effort is able to develop only trade union consciousness". (What Is To Be Done?)

She may well have quoted from Marx and Engels' circular letter of 1879 to the leaders of the German Socialist Workers' Party:

When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle-cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic leaders.

The fragment critics are right to reject the anti-democratic assumptions of Leninism, but we would be more convinced of their integrity had they stated at any point in their two hundred and fifty-three-page book that Lenin distorted Marx and that the place for socialists is outside the Leninist Left. Instead we get references to such enemies of the working class as the Socialist Workers' Party and the Communist Party as fellow socialists, comrades and good militants.

Secondly, the age-old Leftist of what they call 'utopianism', but which is in fact theoretical clarity, is rejected by Rowbotham:

In order to explore, we need good maps . . . We need to be able to take stock of the situation and communicate any general principles to other wanderers. We have to establish certain staging points to refuel and assess the journey. This means we have to sit back momentarily from our immediate response to the route and try to sum up the relationship of what we have travelled to the whole journey. Some of this will be from our experience, with information from other travellers' tales and from any existing maps. Some will be speculation about the way things will be likely to go. Our summation of the whole may be incomplete and imperfect, but we still need it in order to get our bearings. Even if we abandon this assessment subsequently, the attempt can still be decisive and the effort to be as accurate as we can is still vital if we are not to trundle down every dead end or take enormous detours. (pp. 54-5) 

In short, you cannot embark upon the path to socialism unless you know what socialism means. Rowbotham's discovery of this point makes it all the more disappointing that nowhere in the book is there a single definition of socialism.

Thirdly, it is argued in the book that the fragments of the Left-political factions, trade councils, tenants associations, the women's and gay movement, radical publishers - should unite. Certainly, they unite, for working class strength lies in unity. But what is to be the purpose? Once the fragments have become a patchwork what will they say, do or achieve? Beyond the fragments to where  . . . and why . . . and how . . . and when? Many questions, but our authors provide no answers which go beyond the sterile claim that we must unite to get rid of the Tory government. In December 1904 a Socialist Standard editorial applied itself to the question of 'Socialist Unity':

We are all for unity. We believe that unity of party organisation based upon unity of purpose, unity of principle and unity of method is the one thing desirable. But today we are only sure that such unity of party organisation, so far as the various groups of socialists in any country are concerned, would be at the expense of  unity of purpose, principle and method . . . Unity is an important factor in the growth of a party but it is not the most important. Better far to have a party, however small, with common principles and a common end, than a party, however large, which is bound by no tie save party interest. We, therefore, who differ from those other parties in essential principle - inasmuch as we accept the principle of class struggle while they do not - cannot consent to unite our forces with theirs. It would weaken both parties - and the weakening would be more disastrous to the uncompromising section than to the revisionist.

This is why the Socialist Party of Great Britain has preserved its independence since 1904 from all the fragments which working class discontent has thrown up. We are not hostile to them because we like being on our own or are temperamentally aggressive, but because we have a programme of uncompromising revolution which stands in total opposition to the piecemeal reform policies of the fragments. We have gone beyond the fragments. Wainwright, Segal and Rowbotham are to be applauded for having recognised the political rut which the Left is in, but the lesson which they and their fellow fragments must now learn is that until they climb out of the ditch of reformism they will never go beyond the muddy theory which obscures their political vision.

Steve Coleman

Action Replay: Close of Play (2013)

The Action Replay column from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

This summer’s Ashes series was a success financially, with matches sold out, and in media terms, with lots of interest in England’s victories and Australia’s relatively weak performance. But behind the scenes cricket at the top level is encountering plenty of problems.

Essentially, Test cricket, with five-day matches that often end in draws or are ruined by rain, is losing out in popularity to shorter versions, especially Twenty20 (T20), where each side bats for just twenty overs and a game generally takes about three hours. Matches can be played in the evening, increasing their attractiveness to live crowds and those watching on TV.

T20 is also popular with many players, who can earn far more from it than from Tests. The highest-paid cricketer last year was the Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni with income of $31.5m, the vast majority of which comes from product endorsements rather than directly from playing in Tests and the Indian Premier League. But he still got $3.5m from playing. Meanwhile, top England players get at most £400,000 a year on central contracts from the England and Wales Cricket Board. Up-and-coming young players may have to make a choice between Tests and T20, since rather different skill-sets are needed for both.

It is often claimed that T20 has led to cricketers becoming fitter and more agile. But it may also be behind poorer performances at Test level, particularly from Australian players. The Australian domestic competition is the subtly-named Big Bash, or, to give it its full name, the KFC T20 Big Bash League. Like all the shorter versions, it prioritises big hitting over patience and technique, so it is bound to undermine true Test quality. Also, pitches are prepared to increase the chances of a clear result.

According to Cricket Australia, ‘The league has been successful in attracting a new, diverse fan base in its first two years with its mix of big hits, great value and explosive action… If you look at the average crowds and TV audiences over the past two years, the league compares more than favourably with other sports and has claims to being the most popular summer sports league in the country’ (bigbash.com.au).

So competition is not just among teams but among sports and indeed different versions of the same sport.

Paul Bennett

Japan: the courage of a few (1983)

Book Review from the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Origins of Socialist Thought in Japan by John Crump (Croom Helm, 1983)

Yesterday the Japanese were the "Japs", sub-human orientals who specialised in war atrocities. Today they are a congenitally hard-working race who produce quality goods cheaply and efficiently. Which image is the true one? Doubtless neither, for popular images are rarely based on truth or direct experience. Although the Japanese people, as peoples everywhere in the world, have changed and developed by interaction with their environment and the circumstances of history, they have always been seen by outsiders through the distorting lens of the interests and propaganda of those with control over the means of information. The truth is something we have to find out for ourselves. And to help us find out the truth about Japan we now have an excellent new tool. John Crump's new book (1) looks at Japanese development between 1868 and 1918 but also sheds considerable light on the shaping of Japan and its people since then.

Even in terms of the period explicitly covered, the book's title understates its scope. For apart from describing vividly and authoritatively the events and personalities of the epoch and giving a coherent account of ideas about socialism which were then in circulation, it also paints a broad sweeping picture of the whole make up of Japanese society when different social and political forces at work after the Meiji restoration started the process of capitalist development.

Japan has had to telescope its industrialisation into a far shorter period than older established capitalist countries like Britain. Most of it has taken place in the last 30-40 years. But the foundation was laid in the slow accumulating of capital which began in the mid-nineteenth century. And slow it was, for in 1902 little over 1 per cent of Japan's 46m population were industrial workers and in 1918 the figure was still only 2.6 per cent in a population of 54.7m. The slowness of the process, however, did not stop it being extremely painful for those caught up in it. More painful in fact than it had been for workers in nineteenth century Europe. Crump quotes eye-witness accounts of children of six upwards working eight hours a day for the equivalent of a few pence and cites the admission of the then President of the Industrial Bank of Japan that "the condition of labourers is to be pitied by an impartial observer". Workplace conditions were hellish for both men and women. The women, many of them girls barely in their teens, constituted more than 50 per cent of the workforce. They could be paid less for their work than men. They would labour up to 18 hours a day in the mills, drenched in sweat, in temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. They suffered illness and premature death on a large scale. Such conditions led, as they have everywhere in developing capitalism, to protests which took the form of collective action by workers to try to force better pay and working conditions from their employers - nascent trade unionism. Official trade unionism remained illegal in Japan throughout this period, so workers had no choice but to take illegal action. When they did, they were sometimes successful in their demands, but more often were driven back to work by the forces of a state incomparably more repressive than any in nineteenth century Western Europe. The violent clashes that took place between protesting workers and the police and army occasionally resulted in widespread damage to property and heavy casualties on both sides, as for example in the copper miners' action of 1906-7 and the rice riots of 1918. Many of the copper workers had been soldiers in the mass slaughter of the 1905-6 Russo-Japanese war and, although now demobilised, used their training for violence to unbargained for effect against the forces of state repression.

When disturbances like these took place, many radical minds in Japan mistakenly thought that the workers' revolution had come. They failed to see that these were little more than expressions of despair devoid of ideological content. The radicals were rarely industrial workers themselves and shut their  eyes to the most important factor of all -  that the Japanese working class was still tiny in comparison to the overwhelmingly peasant-based population. For this reason the mass consciousness needed for a workers' socialist revolution was impossible in Japan at the time.

Any changes which promised to better workers' conditions, however, tended to be referred to as "socialist'. And indeed few of the early Japanese "socialists" saw socialism as anything more than trying to make the existing system more humane through social reforms or, at most, nationalising industry under centralised state control, as was to happen later in Russia and other countries. Their notion of socialism was based on the European conception coming mainly from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), seen as a "powerful older brother". The small groups of Japanese "socialists" that grew up even imitated the SPD in its rifts and controversies over reform or revolution - over whether to concentrate on getting into capitalist parliaments and implementing reforms or whether to go for an immediate and potentially violent revolution aimed at getting rid of parliament and private ownership of capital and establishing state control over the economy. Both these policies were, as in Europe, referred to as "socialism", whereas they were just different recipes for running capitalism. As the author of this book states: "Capital no more ceases to be an anarchic force outside of people's rational control on being collectivised than the state ceases to be an organ of repression on being given a socialist label".

The operating space allowed to these groups by the Japanese authorities was extremely limited and the state had frequent brutal recourse to the infamous "Public Peace Police Law". For the courageous few who dared to speak out, losing their jobs and social ostracism were the least penalties. For many it meant exile, imprisonment or even death. After a small street demonstration in june 1908, a number of the demonstrators were arrested. Among those taken to the police station, Crump says, "Arahata Kanson and Osugi Sakae were ruthlessly beaten up. Stripped naked, both men were dragged by their feet along the corridors, were kicked, beaten and stamped on, the police only ultimately relenting when Arahata had been beaten into unconsciousness . . . For the heinous crime of demonstrating with red flags, nine socialists received prison sentences of up to 2½ years." Particularly poignant is the case of Kotoku Shusui, one of the foremost activists and radical thinkers of the time, who died on the gallows in 1910 along with 10 other comrades for allegedly plotting to assassinate the emperor.

Kotoku was one of the few who came near to getting away from the SPD reformist-state control conception of socialism and to understanding the idea of socialism as conscious revolution to abolish the wages system by a class conscious majority of workers. But frustration led him, as it led other brave men and women, to contemplate terrorism as a means of revolution. As even the most law-abiding attempts to spread new ideas were met with rising terror by the state, so those who opposed the state became increasingly violent and anarchical in what they advocated. "The means whereby the revolution can be funded is the bomb. The means to destroy the bourgeois class is the bomb", said the journal Kakumei in 1906, and, addressing the Japanese capitalist class, it went on: "There may come a day very soon in which there will be built a large mountain of your bloody bodies". Their terrorism, it is true, was more in words than in actions, but it did not prevent the state from using its own institutionalised apparatus of terror to try to silence them. As Crump does not fail to point out, violent direct action was futile, not only in terms of its prospects of success, but also for the way it went against the fundamental idea of the need for mass public consciousness before socialist revolution could be on the agenda. So when, after the executions of 1910, Arahata Kanson, who had earlier called for the abolition of the wages system, conceived a plan for assassinating the Prime Minister and declared that "the overthrowing of the tyrants who set themselves up against civilisation and humanity is not a utopian illusion", he was succumbing to despair and forgetting that, in Crump's words, "terrorism by its very nature imposes a military disciple on those who resort to it, in place of the self-liberating and creative activity which socialism requires". Hopelessness had also made him forget that socialism could not come from "a conspiratorial minority acting in isolation from the workers whose interests they claimed to have at heart".

Crump, who is a lecturer in Japanese and whose knowledge of the language has enabled him to use original sources, has written a book which is refreshingly readable and contains none of the complicated specialist jargon often found in the work of academics. He acknowledges his debts too. In his introduction he says he "gained a great deal" from the men and women who have worked in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. "Political differences", he says, now separate him from us. Yet there is nothing in this book to indicate those differences. Crump's stated views in capitalism (2), state capitalism (3) and socialism (4) as well as his sound materialist account of the origins of radical thought in Japan all constitute a convincing advocacy of the position of the Socialist Party and its insistence on the urgent practical need for worldwide socialism. The book's dedication uncompromisingly proclaims that need: "This study is dedicated to the working class in Japan, in the hope that a day will come when (along with the workers throughout the rest of the world) they will decide to get up off their knees".

Howard Moss

References

1 The Origins of Socialist Thought in Japan, Croom Helm, 1983.

2 "By capitalism I mean a system of society where production is carried on for the purpose of sale on the market, where the majority of people  . . . are . . . forced to sell their ability to work for wages or salaries in order to survive, and where there are social classes, the state and money." (Introduction, p. 2.)

3 "Now, it is the fact that we do live in an age which has seen a succession of capitalist revolutions in Russia, China and elsewhere which explains why socialism should have come to be widely thought of as a policy of rapid capital accumulation carried out under the supervision of a strong, centralised state . . . What was more natural than that, in a world which has seen the drift towards state capitalism on all sides, socialism should have become a convenient ideological device for masking the ugliness of what has in reality been taking place?" (Introduction, p. 4.)

4 "Socialism is given the meaning of a society where production is for the direct satisfaction of human needs without the mediation of a process of buying and selling or exchange, where the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled, where there are neither social classes, the state, nor money." (Introduction, p. 3.)

Pathfinders: 'Smart' is the New Black (2013)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Put the word ‘smart’ in front of just about anything these days and you are describing the techno-savvy reality of the 20-teenies. We have, or will soon have, smart cars, smart traffic lights, smart houses and smart cities like Songdo, or maybe even the Venus Project (see ‘Tomorrow’s Cities’ ). Now schoolkids can dictate essay questions into Google on their smart phones (unless they’ve got strong regional accents which the speech algorithms can’t cope with). Pretty soon they’ll be dictating into their smart watches instead, and not long after that, via their smart Google Glass lenses. It surely won’t be long before the next horizon technology, wetware, creates reliable bio-interfaces to allow subcutaneous and perhaps even cranial smart implants, and who wouldn’t want the knowledge and communication power of biblical gods? The 20th century pioneered cyberspace, but the 21st century will pioneer cybernetics. Better, faster, smarter, cheaper, Human version 2.0, or rather Worker version 2.0 is set to superheat capitalist technological development, each individual cocooned inside an artificially-tailored personal reality, and each a uniform functioning component of the global hive.

Well, that’s one possible view of the near future. The technology news right now is breathless with excitement about smart watches, but Google Glass is just round the corner and third-party developers are secretly beavering away right now to come up with ‘killer apps’ which are supposedly going to persuade today’s young generation of early adopters to start wearing spectacles even though they have perfect vision. No more embarrassing encounters with people whose names you can’t remember – just silently run a facial recognition app while you’re standing there chatting. Can’t find that obscure little café? Pull up an on-lens GPS streetmap. Unimpressed with the forlorn pile of old stones in a famous historical site? Get an artist’s reconstruction superimposed over the real thing. Want to leave a message for your friends that that obscure little café was overpriced? Dictate a piece of rude graffiti and leave it on the front door of the café, invisible to anyone but your friends, similarly glassed-up.

Socialists and other people who are accustomed to reading beneath the hype will of course ask the obvious question: does all this smart stuff make us any cleverer? The answer is equally obvious:  no. The difference between smart and clever is the difference between technology and science. Smart is having good tools. Clever is knowing how to use them. Smart will win a war, but clever knows how to avoid the war.

There is no question that capitalism is smart, far smarter than any type of society that’s gone before. Classical antiquity was a time of remarkable sophistication in many ways, but it was rigidly obtuse in its slave-based economies and as a consequence never able to see the point of science or technology. But that doesn’t mean modern society is especially committed to science or that modern populations understand much about it or its methods. But they can appreciate the labour-saving devices and the toys. Where old societies were swamped in myth and the supernatural, we are swamped in gadgets and technobabble. We congratulate ourselves that we invented reason, and yet we’re probably no better at logical thinking than a Cro-Magnon cave painter, and probably significantly less artistically talented. But hell, we have smarts, so it doesn’t matter.

Smart is also an acronym, used a lot in businesses as a shorthand mnemonic for evaluating steps in a project. The letters are usually made to represent the following: S – Specific; M – Measurable; A – Achievable; R – Realistic; T – Time-delimited. If a step or course of action does not satisfy all these conditions, for example if it is too vague, or over-optimistic, or there is no failure condition or there’s no deadline, it is not ‘smart’ and therefore it is not worth doing (you could reverse the acronym and use ‘Trams’ instead, to stop your project going off the rails).

Capitalism is ‘smart’ in this sense as well. It doesn’t do things that don’t seem achievable within a short time period. It doesn’t do things that are not measurable with ‘hard outcomes’, which generally translates as money profit. It’s always specific in its boardrooms and vague in its parliaments. It’s realistic in its assessment of where the next profit is coming from. And its bottom line is always a deadline, the month-end, the quarterly profit statement, the annual report.

There is something fundamentally wrong with ‘smart’ targets. You can be perfectly smart and still do the stupid thing. Capitalism ‘smartly’ ignores the long term problems of climate change, resource-waste, war, global hunger and deprivation. Things that aren’t specific or measurable, like quality of life, fulfilment, self-realisation, democratic freedoms, simply don’t count. Pollution is not a measurable cost to anyone specifically, and there is no deadline to stop causing the damage.

Maybe this is why a lot of workers, forced to put up with managers at work wittering constantly about ‘smart’ targets, have learned to hate the very mention of the word. Not only are these smart targets invariably designed simply to extract more and more work out of the hard-pressed minions, suffering like crushed olives getting their third pressing, there is a strong sense that there is an overall dimension missing from the concept. If they were truly smart, these targets would make the workers happy too. And so with capitalism. If it’s so smart, why is everyone so miserable in it?

What the world needs is more swots.  SWOT is another of those acronyms, only it doesn’t evaluate a step, it sizes up an overall situation, assessing the pros and cons of a big picture. It stands for S – Strengths; W – Weaknesses; O – Opportunities; T – Threats. Before you get smart, you should be a swot. Socialists aren’t always smart, worse luck, but they are good at being swots. We recognise, sometimes better than capitalism’s own defenders, what its strengths are and have been, a global smart machine that has brought us almost to the point of expansion into space. We recognise its weaknesses better too, because we don’t dismiss them immediately as unavoidable. We see the enormous opportunity of a globally-connected, smart and (yes) clever working class to drive society forwards beyond class division, and we understand better than most what will happen to the world if we don’t. That’s why we would say, if you want to get smart, swot up on socialism.

Paddy Shannon

Back to the Future for Working Conditions (2013)

From the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Conditions for workers today in Britain are moving back towards those in Victorian Britain. The struggles of the working class in Britain in the nineteenth century to ensure better working conditions and humane working hours are documented by Marx in Chapter ten The Working Day in Capital Volume 1. With zero hours contracts we have gone 'back to the future'.

The capitalist class in the UK have about 1 million workers on zero-hours contracts. These contracts mean there is no guarantee of work and pay each week, no holiday or sick pay. The balance of power favours the employer and makes it hard for workers to complain. Workers are often only told how many hours they will work when weekly or monthly rotas are worked out, but are expected to be on call for extra work at short notice, like the day before. If you don't comply you don’t get any work. Cinema chain Cineworld, Buckingham Palace's 350 summer workers, retailer Sports Direct (20,000 of its 23,000 staff), Pub group JD Wetherspoon (24,000 of its staff  - 80 percent of its workforce), 1/3 of the voluntary sector, 1/4 of the public sector , McDonalds, Boots, Amazon, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Tate Galleries all use workers on zero hours contracts.

There are now fees for lodging claims at industrial tribunals. A worker has to pay a fee when a claim is lodged at the tribunal and another one at the hearing. Level 1 claims include those for unpaid wages, payment in lieu of notice and redundancy payments which cost £160 and a hearing fee of £230. Level 2 claims include unfair dismissal, discrimination, equal pay and whistle blowing which cost £250 and a hearing fee of £950. There will be higher fees for those cases where there are multiple claimants.

Currently an employer could discuss offers of settlement with a worker to terminate his or her employment on a 'without prejudice' basis, which means they could not be divulged in future tribunal proceedings as evidence against that employer. There would need to be a prior 'dispute' for an employer to take advantage of this protection. Under new rules, employers will now be able to engage in pre-termination negotiations/ early exit discussions with a worker even where no formal dispute has yet arisen. The new law allows employers a free reign at any time to enter termination discussions with their staff without fear of it being used against them.

The maximum compensation that could be awarded for routine unfair dismissal claims at an employment tribunal was £74,200. Now it will be the equivalent of 52 weeks' pay or £74,200, whichever is the lower. Average salary today is £26,500 for full time workers.

These changes prompted Elizabeth George, a barrister in the employment team at law firm Leigh Day to say:

'This sends a very dangerous message to employers who will be less inclined to abide by their legal obligations as the risk of being challenged will be much reduced, these fees will disproportionately hit those suffering discrimination because of their age, race, disability and gender, the disproportionate fees will mean many people having to put up with discrimination and unable to challenge unfair dismissals, however badly they had been treated. We have already seen guidance from lawyers advising employers to wait to fire people as it will be cheaper and the chances of being taken to tribunal will be less following the introduction of fees. Instead of standing up for people suffering unlawful discrimination in the workplace, the government is doing the exact opposite'. (Guardian, 29 July)

Online retailer Amazon opened a huge processing centre in Rugeley, Staffordshire in 2011. Arthur Valdez, vice-president operations Amazon said at the time: 'We look forward to assembling a team of talented people who will play their part in ensuring that customers receive the millions of items that will be ordered' (Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2011). Mike Dell, president of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce concurred: 'It's excellent news. It brings jobs to an area that desperately needs it'. Aidan Burley, local Tory MP put his tuppence in: 'It's absolutely fantastic news for Rugeley. People are crying out to get back into work'. (BBC News Stoke and Staffordshire online, 10  July 2011)

A recent Channel 4 investigation discovered at the Amazon factory in Rugeley timed toilet breaks, workers' movements were monitored by GPS trackers, workers given 30 minutes for lunch in a ten-hour shift, 20 minutes of which were spent walking to and from the canteen, workers were issued penalty points for talking to colleagues, taking sick leave, or even spending too long in the bathroom. This all on a 'three strikes and you're out' basis. Workers were searched for stolen goods at airport-style security checkpoints before going into the canteen, and temporary staff laid off to avoid giving them the same benefits and rights as permanent workers. Zero hours contracts were used extensively which meant those staff having no job security and were forced to make themselves available for work with no guarantee they will be offered a shift on a particular day. Also Amazon tried to avoid paying out hundreds of pounds in accrued holiday pay to agency staff by instructing agency representatives not to inform employees that it was owed to them.

We should always remember that the capitalist class demand the free exploitation of working class labour-power. Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 and Marx's Capital came out in 1867. There are differences between life today and life then but fundamentally there is no change as the capitalist mode of production grinds relentlessly on, a person has to 'sell their labour or starve'. Capitalism can never operate in the interests of the working class.

Steve Clayton

Waging the Class Struggle (1968)

From the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thousands of workers know from personal experience that members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are involved in supporting and encouraging industrial organisation and action to improve wages and working conditions. Socialists are active at all levels of the trade union movement - branch officers, shop stewards, works convenors, organisers, committee men, conference delegates, regular branch attenders - and in many unions and industries. Socialists are active unionists because they are class conscious workers; they know that there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest between workers and capitalists and  that all governments have to act as agents of the capitalists.

Briefly, the policy Socialists advocate is democratic action to improve or maintain wages and working conditions and they emphasise that this policy should be pursued whatever party forms the government. We do not soft-peddle the class struggle because there is a Labour government or because capitalism has started a war. Socialists are opposed to unions being linked to the Labour Party and refuse to pay the political levy. Beyond this, we say it is up to the workers involved to work out the details of their demands and how to get them. As it is the workers in an industry or factory or office who have to take part in the struggle, and suffer the consequences of any defeat, it is clear that they alone should decide what to do and how to do it. We do not tell workers what to do, except of course for general advice on the importance of democracy and the class struggle. We do not fancy ourselves as leaders.

The Socialist Party, as a party, does not intervene in the affairs of trade unions. It is merely that we, as class conscious workers share a broad conception of what sound industrial action is. As far as details are concerned we can, and do, find ourselves reaching different conclusions; some favour the closed shop, others say it's undemocratic. We have members in rival unions. Some support ginger groups; some have joined breakaway unions while others have stayed in, and so on.

Socialist Party members have always been active unionists. In the early days many were members of craft unions, particularly in the building industry. One of these was perhaps our most "illustrious" ex-member George Hicks, CBE, one-time TUC President, Labour MP and Junior Minister who died in 1954. One member who knew him says:

George Hicks, after leaving the SPGB became an official of a building workers union and was President of the TUC in 1927. He also joined the Labour Party and remained in it for the rest of his life. In spite of this he continued to take an interest in the SPGB and on occasions declared that he still agreed with the SPGB case. Early in the 1920's he debated with Palme Dutt and not only put the SPGB case against the Communist Party but frankly stated that it was the SPGB case he was putting.

Today the composition is rather different though. M. Harrison in his Trade Unions and the Labour Party since 1945 remarks that in the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers  several branches "are influenced by minority Socialist groups like the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain". Not that the ILP is socialist, mind you, or that we are out to influence the ASW. It is true, however, that there are socialists active in this union. Between the wars, with the bulk of the members in London, socialists were active in unions like the Union of Postal Workers and the busmen's section of the TGWU. During the war members formed branches of the National Union of Agricultural Workers. At first this might seem odd but the explanation lies in the fact that many Socialists were working on the land after refusing to do military service. There are Socialists active in the printing unions, in the seamen's union, AEU and ETU, and in white collar unions covering civil servants, teachers and technical workers. As Socialists are recruited from all sections of the working class, so there are Socialists active throughout the trade union movement.

To illustrate how Socialist Party members are active in trade unions it will be useful to take the cases of two who have been particularly so - one in the TGWU and the other in DATA.

The TGWU, with over a million members, is the largest genuine trade union in the world. Perhaps this is its drawback as it seems to make for bureaucratic rule. And the TGWU must hold the record for giving birth to breakaway unions. Socialists, as we said, were active on the buses just before and during the last war. The busmen, then, were a highly regarded section of the working class. It was a secure job that carried with it some prestige and this encouraged militancy. The union was at that time dominated by Ernest Bevin with Arthur Deakin as his deputy. After the failure of the negotiations for a shorter working day for London busmen an official strike began on May Day 1937. The Central Bus Committee was given full powers to conduct the strike. This six-man committee included one Socialist and four members of the so-called Communist Party. The CP also ran the London Busmen's Rank and File Movement. Although the TGWU executive had given the busmen full powers to conduct the strike, on 28 May Bevin issued over the radio an order to return to work. To preserve their industrial strength the busmen returned to work in an orderly fashion. The executive, however, then moved against the militants. As one of our members involved described it:

The Union instituted an enquiry into the strike. The Central Bus Committeemen and many local branch members were summoned to Transport House to answer for their actions. I was included. Despite my protest and the production of my SPGB membership card and badge, I was accused of being a Communist by Arthur Deakin who acted as a prosecutor. 

As a result of the inquiry all but one of the Central Bus Committee, together with a few others, were dismissed from union office. In 1938 some busmen, including a few Socialists, set up the National Passenger Workers' Union as a rival to the TGWU. Other Socialists, and this well shows how we can come to different conclusions on trade union tactics, opposed this move "on the ground that a new union could do no more than the existing one till members were class conscious and that the effect would be to divide the busmen and thus weaken them". The NPWU did not really stand a chance. It did carry on till after the war when the TGWU, by signing a closed shop agreement with London Transport, was able to squeeze it out. In 1943 the CP declared that as the NPWU was "a hotbed of every kind of anti-working class politics - SPGB members, ILPers and Trotskyists" no member of it could join the CP. The Socialist Standard of 1943 commented: 

With the issues involved in the dispute between the rival unions we need not here concern ourselves except to say that members of the SPGB are to be found in both unions.

The union's national organiser was in fact a Socialist. The same man was later to national organiser of another breakaway from the TGWU, this time in the docks, the National Union of Port Workers. The Socialist Standard had to make the same point again in October 1946 when a pro-Labour paper tried to discredit a strike in which this Socialist was active on the grounds that he was an opponent of the Labour government.

After the war the TGWU brought in a rule that barred members of Fascist and Communist parties from holding office (this rule still applies, but may be relaxed soon for the Communists). All candidates for union office had to sign a document saying that they were not members of these parties. Socialist in the union were quite opposed to this because they

objected to political discrimination in a trade union, claiming that members had the right to nominate any other member they wished irrespective of politics, race, religion, etc.

When later one Socialist did sign the document "the better to fight against political discrimination and other objectionable union policies", he found himself with the unwelcome support of the Communists (our members in the ETU have experienced the same thing since that union too barred Communists from holding office). Our member, who had been elected to committees at all levels of the union, was very active in the 1958 London bus strike. Socialists contributed regularly to The Platform, the unofficial busmen's journal, which ceased publication in 1967 after some seventeen years on the retirement of its editor (a sympathiser of the Socialist Party). "When Frank Cousins came on the scene", one says, "the CP heralded him as a Trade Union Messiah and carefully abstained from saying a word against him". Other socialists have had similar experience of CP tactics in other unions. At present the CP are trying to channel industrial discontent behind men like Cousins and Scanlon and the leftwing of the anti-working class Labour Party.

The first white collar strike in Bristol Siddeley Engines factory took place in February 1961. It was staged by sixty members of the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (now DATA) in support of their "collecting member" (or shop steward) who was the only one in the office not to get a pay rise. The one week strike became official and was successful. The victimised man, a member of the Socialist Party, got his rise. A couple of years later this Socialist was elected chairman of the local DATA branch and as such played an important organising role in a strike over pay that began in the same factory in June 1963. The Bristol Evening Post described our member as "leader of the 1,000 Bristol Siddeley workers who are on strike". This of course was not so as Socialists are opposed to all leadership, on the industrial as well as on the political front. Our member's protest was published in the paper on 16 July:

May I, as chairman of Bristol No. 2 branch of DATA, thank you for the way in which you have to date, covered our dispute with BSE Ltd. But as an individual member I wish to deny that in any way am I the Leader of the 1,000 members who are now on strike. I am their elected Representative and as such, with the rest of the annually elected branch, try to carry out, to the best of one's ability, their wishes which are decided in a democratic way, either by secret ballot, or by show of hands at a general meeting. I regard this as a very important distinction.

The same member (who as branch chairman again had an important role to play in 1965 in the struggle against redundancy following the cancellation of the TSR 2,) described the six week's strike, which was controlled by the strikers and successful, as "the best organised and successful ever. It was a show down between DATA and the employers nationally and cost DATA £180,000. The members levied themselves towards local costs and paid 5% of their salaries back to DATA". DATA in fact is one of the most successful unions in Britain, consistently pursuing an aggressive wages policy.

These, then, are two examples of how Socialists are involved, in a democratic way, in waging the class struggle  on the industrial front. We could have quoted more examples but we think these suffice to nail the lie spread by those would-be leaders, the CP and the trotskyists that the Socialist Party is anti-union.

Adam Buick

Diminishing our view of the world (1995)

Theatre Review from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey 

Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing is a success. Starting life at the Bush Theatre it has subsequently played in Leeds (at the West Yorkshire playhouse), and in London (at the Donmar Warehouse), before finally making it into the West End.

Critics have been enthusiastic, using words like "honest" and "vivid" to describe plot and dialogue. When I attended recently an uncharacteristically young (for the West End) audience showed similar enthusiasm and delight. Yet as laughter rumbled round the elegant theatre I felt initial surprise, then disappointment and, finally, anger.

Beautiful Thing is packed with characters straight out of Eastenders. The action may take place in a scruffy block of high-rise flats in south London, but those familiar with the antics of the residents of Albert Square will quickly be reminded of the ugliness, the meanness of character and aspiration, the sordid pointlessness of it all. "This is how life is", the author seems to be saying; "this is what life must be like", he seems to be suggesting by implication. If people are selfish and unknowing, out of touch both with themselves and the larger world of which they are a part, this is to be expected; it is "natural". The possibility that people might have learned to be selfish, acquisitive and repressed -  that they might even have learnt how to remain ignorant - is not considered.

True, in the maelstrom of indifference, stupidity and no little malevolence which Harvey describes, there grows a loving relationship between two young men - presumably the Beautiful Thing referred to in the title. But this is no metaphor pointing to the possibility of larger transformations. The world continues as before: the other characters make no significant discoveries; and even for the loving couple the rest of life remains insufferably the same.

Although the play is described as a modern fairy story Harvey sells us short. The little love affair he describes could have offered a pointer to the redemption and liberation of others; of changes and transformations at many levels. By eschewing such possibilities the play, perhaps unwittingly, reinforces the perception that such things are impossible. Our vision of the world is thus diminished rather than expanded, and we are imprisoned rather than set free. Not so much a fairy story as a nightmare.

Michael Gill

Pies in the sky (1986)

Book Review from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marie Louise Berneri, Journey through Utopia (Freedom Press)

Journey through Utopia is Marie Louise Berneri's classic study of the most important utopian writings from Plato to Huxley. The book was first published in 1950, a year after the author's untimely death at the age of thirty-one, and recently re-issued. It is a scholarly work (Berneri used her fluent knowledge of four languages to make her own translations in the absence of English versions) but the author's journalistic experience ensures that the text remains very readable.

An examination of the utopias of antiquity shows Aristophanes satirical utopias to be more pleasant than Plutarch's "most perfect example of a totalitarian state" or the slavery, despotism and elitism in Plato's Republic. As Berneri points out: "It is rather puzzling that Plato's Republic should have aroused such admiration and, paradoxically, it has been chiefly admired by men whose principles were completely opposed to those of Plato".

The chapter dealing with the utopias of the Renaissance is the most interesting. Sir Thomas More's Utopia calls for the abolition of the death penalty for theft, and puts forward one of the earliest arguments for free access to wealth, pointing out that it is economic insecurity which makes people greedy. However, far from being a perfect society, crimes and adultery are punished by slavery and imperialist wars are waged against weaker states. Berneri points out: "In a society which admits of slavery even the 'free citizen' is not free; his chain is no longer than that of the slave".

Campanella's City of the Sun is the first utopia to abolish slavery: property is abolished for the whole community and a leading role is given to natural sciences. Campanella was tortured and imprisoned by the Inquisition and because of the risk of confiscation, several versions of his works exist. Torture and prisons are banned from Campanella's utopia - probably influenced by his own ordeal - but there is little individual freedom: women can be condemned to death for using make-up or wearing high heels.

Francis Bacon anticipated modern trends by placing faith in technological changes, departing from the idealistic utopias of his predecessors, while Andreae, although deploring the death penalty and the "wickedness of men who punish rather than reform", displays the intolerance of the religious reformer. By contrast, Rabelais did not propose a remedy for the evils of the time. His utopia is more of an individual rebellion with only one rule: "Do What Thou Wilt", and probably all the more readable because of it.

The first utopian to believe that society could only be changed by the people as a whole was Winstanley, who wrote The Law of Freedom in 1652. However, paradoxically, slavery is the punishment for lesser crimes while for more serious ones Winstanley's ideas are barbaric: "He who strikes his neighbour shall be struck himself by the executioner blow for blow, and shall lose eye for eye, tooth for tooth, limb for limb, life for life".

The nineteenth century utopias are considered boring, reflecting the conceit of the authors. A notable exception to the authoritarian, centralised control of Cabet or Bellamy and the curious attempt by Lord Lytton to reconcile certain socialist ideas with laissez-faire capitalism is News from Nowhere by William Morris, which appeared in serial form in Commonweal in 1890. Morris "realised that the manner of life of a community cannot be artificially arranged in the mind of an individual, but must be spontaneously created by all the members of the community". Berneri praises this charming vision of an ideal society and it is one of the few utopias with which socialists could sympathise.

The final chapter deals with modern utopias. Bureaucracy, coercion and moral compulsions are used by H. G. Wells in A Modern Utopia in 1905, although he altered his views in Men Like Gods in 1923. Berneri considers Wells to be the last utopian writer in the classical tradition; modern writers such as Zamyatin and Huxley have written dystopias in which the central characters rebel against the authoritarianism, regimentation and enforced happiness of their societies.

Journey through Utopia is a comprehensive guide to the utopias of the past and a warning of the dangers of permitting others, however well intentioned, to plan our future for us. The emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the workers themselves.

Carl Pinel