Where is Bevan Going? (1957)

From the January 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

A campaign is afoot outside Labour Party circles to build up Mr. Bevan. A typical comment on him was that of a political columnist of the Empire News on Sunday, December 9th.

“Nye was superb on Wednesday. The speech was witty, persuasive, colourful and trenchant. It held the House enthralled By comparison, Hugh Gaitskell sounded like a tired and irritable schoolmaster.”

Of course one reason for this boost of Bevan is to score off Gaitskell, and make trouble in the Labour Party—it takes attention off the Tories' troubles over Eden. But there is more to it than that. Some weeks ago, the Economist, which owes no particular allegiance to the Tory Party, being more concerned with the wider problem of keeping British Capitalism safe, wrote that Bevan "might be capable of being a very good Foreign Secretary indeed.” (Economist 6/10/56.)

A writer in the Tory Sunday Times (9/12/56) paid his tribute to the "sheer artistry” of Bevan’s speech on Suez and added the significant comment that Mr. Bevan “comes out of the crisis with a new stature, not only among his own party”

A day or two earlier the Daily Mail (7/12/56) had featured an article by Mr. Henry Fairlie in which he conceded to Bevan many qualities of a great Foreign Secretary and remarked that the idea of Bevan as Prime Minister in a Coalition Government had been publicly ventilated during the recent Suez crisis.

We can be sure that it is not only Bevan’s speeches and his enhanced authority in the Labour Party that have caused this speculation about his future as Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary; another factor must have been the Suez fiasco. It has long been appreciated by Britain’s rulers that it is very unwise, if not positively dangerous, to go to war without first securing a large measure of agreement and support, in the country as a whole if possible, and certainly at the too, either through a Coalition Government (as in the two world wars) or by consultation as in the Korean War. Sir Anthony Eden failed to get this and with the Labour Party working up opposition to the whole venture the Government’s chances of success in Suez were inevitably lessened. Bevan, as the Labour Party’s choice for future Foreign Secretary, thus becomes of increased importance—added to which is his undoubted ability to influence the workers in a way his leader Gaitskell cannot.

Bevan’s Labour admirers, and his virulent detractors in Tory ranks, may think it absurd that Bevan could be considered as a useful instrument for British Capitalism in the critical times it now faces, but this is only because they have failed to consider the facts of Labour Party history in war and crisis.

British Capitalism has been singularly lucky in its Labour Party over the years: though doubtless “luck ’ is not the proper word for the way in which a movement of rebellious discontent that was at first feared has been neutralised and tamed until it has become an indispensable prop for the existing social system. Through an astute use of flattery and honours, the appointment of trade unionists as Justices of the Peace and to innumerable official committees, the propertied class have been able to rely on the Labour Party in every big crisis. The first World War produced its Tory-Liberal-Labour Coalition Government with full Labour Party and trade union support for recruiting and the war effort—and this was repeated as a matter of course in the second war. The financial and commercial crisis of 1931 brought top Labour Leaders, including MacDonald, Snowden, and Thomas, into the “national” government though this time the Labour Party was split and the rest went into impotent opposition.

And through all the ups and downs of the past 40 years the propertied class have weathered the storms and kept their position far better than propertied groups in many other countries; escaping the violent upheavals of German Hitlerism, Italian Fascism, Franco’s civil war and Russian Stalinism and this comparatively peaceful passage of British Capitalism has been achieved with indispensable aid from men whose politically turbulent early careers gave them a hold on working class loyalty, men like Aneurin Bevan. It is often overlooked that the late Lloyd George (whom Lenin saw as a possible leader of revolution in Britain) was once more loathed and feared by the landed and monied men for his savage demagogic speeches and policies than ever Bevan has been. And MacDonald, Snowden, Cripps, Bevin and Attlee started their upward careers in the Labour movement preaching doctrines that induced detestation and apprehension in Capitalist circles.

How does Bevan shape up for such a role? He has most of the attributes—a brilliant speaker, able to arouse emotions, ambitious for the Premiership, unfettered by attachment to any rigid theory, and with the reputation (unmerited of course) of being a man of peace and friend of the workers. Though he supported the second world war and the Korean war, and was an active supporter of the Labour Government’s great re-armament programme and the Atom bomb, his followers can yet see him as a dependable enemy of war. Above all he has the asset of being more enthusiastically received by masses of workers than is any other figure in the Labour Party or trade union movement.

His potential usefulness to Capitalism does not rest on the unlikely supposition that he would desert the Labour Party, but on the recognition that in certain kinds of crisis a Labour Government alone or in Coalition is the best insurance Capitalism can have lest worse befall.

To keep its popularity with the members, the Labour Party would have to offer sops such as a few more schemes of nationalisation and some social reforms, but British Capitalism was long ago taught by experience that some price has to be paid for security.

And those who feared the early rebel Bevan have had plenty of assurances that he is not out to destroy Capitalism.

Speaking in the House of Commons on July 2, 1951, he put his view that “ if there is a social purpose to be accomplished of any importance, either the State should do it or the State should make it possible for private enterprise to do it; but what the State should not do is to be inert and to surround private enterprise with such inhibitions that private enterprise cannot do it.’’ (Hansard, July 2, 1951. Col. 1915).

He repeated it in an article in the Daily Express (16 and 17 February, 1956) in the form of an assurance that his conception (“dismiss it as Socialist if you like ”) comprises “a thorough-going programme of enlarged public ownership ” but “does not go on to say that private enterprise has no part to play in modern society.” In 1949 in a speech at Newport he made the claim that “Socialism” is good for business men.

“Even private enterprise works better under the beneficent guidance of a Socialist government. That proves that Socialism is a good thing and it is beginning to dawn on some business men." - (Daily Herald, 28th March, 1949.)

Of course Bevan’s mixture of State Capitalism, private Capitalism, and social reform, is nothing to do with Socialism. He is not a Socialist and never indicates in his speeches and writings that he ever clearly saw what it is all about. Like Lloyd George, whom he is said to take as a model, he is a nationalist, believing that British Capitalism can solve its problems and prosper under the right party and right Prime Minister—Bevan. He never thinks in terms of international action for Socialism by the working class, but always in terms of the place of Britain in the World: as he wrote in the Daily Express (February 17, 1956) “in the name of Britain and the hope that she will once more play a leading role in world history.”

Is this a Prophecy?

The reader may wonder and ask if we are forecasting what must be. The answer is No! Nothing like this has to happen. Capitalism does not have to continue and it does not have to happen that a Labour Party shall help to save it again as it has done before. There does not have to be a working class so enmeshed in leader worship that they can be counted on to follow. There can be instead a growing Socialist movement, destroying leader worship as it advances, working internationally against all Capitalist groups and their wars and working for Socialism. There will be no place in it for policies like those of Aneurin Bevan.

Edgar Hardcastle

What a Conservative M.P. thought of the Labour Party and Sir Stafford Cripps (1941)

From the August 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the light of subsequent developments, it is interesting to recall what Captain Harold Macmillan, M.P., had to say about the Labour Party and Sir Stafford Cripps seven years ago. At that time they were political opponents. Now, Sir Stafford Cripps represents the British Government in Russia and Captain Harold Macmillan is a member of the Government, along with leaders of the Labour Party. In June, just before the German attack on Russia, The Times was urging that Cripps should be included in the Cabinet (News Chronicle, June 17th, 1941). 

Here are Captain Harold Macmillan’s views seven years ago : —

  Captain Harold Macmillan, Conservative M.P. for Stockton, speaking at a meeting of the English Review Luncheon Club, in London, yesterday, gave two views of the Labour Party as seen through the eyes of the Right-wing in politics.
  "One view is that the Labour Socialist Party is really a Socialist movement, and that if it got into power it might attempt to carry Socialist legislation and alter the economic structure in that direction," he said.
   "That is the view if Sir Stafford Cripps is to be taken seriously.
   "The other view is that the Labour Party is just a normal Radical movement—that Cripps is not to be regarded seriously as a danger, but should rather be carefully nursed as the greatest political asset we have at the present time. (Laughter.)
   "If anything were to happen to Sir Stafford Cripps it would be a serious disaster to us.—(Daily Herald, November 15th, 1934.)

Clifford Allen

Zeitgeist and ‘Marxism’ (2013)

From the February 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Zeitgeist Movement, founded in America in 2008 by Peter Joseph and Jacque Fresco, stands for a worldwide ‘resource-based economy, which in many respects resembles what we called ‘socialism’ (and, if pressed, ‘communism’): the Earth’s resources would become the common heritage of all humanity and be used in a rational way to provide what people need and to which they would have free access without money; and calculations concerning production would be done solely in units of resources and not duplicated by monetary calculation, as today.

The Movement’s opponents have also noticed a similarity and have denounced Zeitgeist for propagating ‘Marxist Communism’, still a powerful swear-word in the US. ZM’s response, in a new guide to their orientation just published on the internet, is to insist that they are not Marxists (see thezeitgeistmovement.com/orientation). This is true. They aren’t. While they are scientific materialists and do see humans as adapting their social arrangements in the light of changing economic and technological conditions, they do not see the agency for these adaptations as some class pursuing its material class interest.

Referencing the Communist Manifesto of 1848, they acknowledge that the goal it advocates is a ‘stateless and classless society’. (Curiously, they omit ‘moneyless’ even though the Manifesto speaks specifically of ‘the communist abolition of buying and selling’.) But they go on:

‘On the surface, reformations proposed in TZM’s promoted solutions might appear to mirror attributes of ‘Marxism’ if one was to completely ignore the underlying reasoning. The idea of a society ‘without classes’, ‘without universal property’, and the complete redefinition of what comprises the ‘State’ might, on the surface, show confluence by the mere gestures themselves …. However, the actual Train of Thought to support these seemingly similar conclusions is quite different. TZM’s advocated benchmark for decision making is not a Moral Philosophy, which, when examined at its root, is essentially what Marxist philosophy was a manifestation of.’

Continuing the same theme, they say ‘the Marxist notion of a “classless society” was to overcome the capitalist originating “inhumanity” imposed on the working class or “proletariat”.’

They then expound their own approach:

‘TZM’s advocated train of thought, on the other hand, sources advantages in human studies. It finds, for example, that social stratification, which is inherent to the capitalist/market model, to actually be a form of indirect violence against the vast majority as a result of the evolutionary psychology we humans naturally possess. It generates an unnecessary form of human suffering on many levels which is destabilizing and, by implication, technically unsustainable.’ (Their emphasis)

So, unless all they are concerned about is that capitalism is ‘technically unsustainable’, they too want to overcome the ‘indirect violence’ and unnecessary suffering that its ‘social stratification’ imposes on the ‘vast majority’. So let’s not argue about who is more scientific than thou.

Is ‘Marxism’ really a ‘moral philosophy’? What, in fact, is ‘Marxism’? Is it the views of Marx the individual or the system of thought that Engels called ‘Scientific Socialism’? It is true that in his earliest writings, just after becoming a socialist at the end of 1843, Marx’s approach was philosophical rather than scientific. He denounced ‘political economy’ and ‘private property’ for resulting in the treatment of the ‘proletariat’ in a way that was contrary to the ‘species-nature’ of humans. This could indeed be interpreted as basing the case for socialism on a ‘moral philosophy’ –a view of how humans should be treated but weren’t.

However, while Marx never abandoned his indignation at what the working class had to suffer under capitalism, he soon ceased to base the case for socialism on a philosophical theory of human nature. Already in the Communist Manifesto he was criticising other German Socialists for not seeing socialism as the movement and outcome of the struggle of ‘one class with another’ but as representing ‘not the interest of the proletariat, but the interest of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.’

As Engels was later to put it, in Socialism Scientific and Socialism, based on something he had written in 1875:

‘Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms, existing in the society of to-day, between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production.’

Socialism was a class issue, not a mere moral issue; it was when this was recognised that socialism ceased to be ‘utopian’ and became ‘scientific’.

Engels’s pamphlet was in effect the founding document (much more than the Communist Manifesto) of what has come to be called ‘Marxism’ – though not by Marx himself. Marx was right about this, as the term suggests that socialist theory was the product of ideas thought up by one man, whereas, in fact, being a reflection of an on-going struggle built-in to capitalist society, it would have developed even if Marx and Engels had never been born and stands independently of whatever they may or may not have said or done. But inadequate as the term is, we are lumbered with it.

So, when, in their criticism of what we will have to call ‘Marxism’, ZM go on to say the following, they are in fact expressing a view shared by Scientific Socialism:

‘TZM is not interested in the poetic, subjective & arbitrary notions of “a fair society”, “guaranteed freedom”, “world peace”, or “making a better world” simply because it sounds “right”, “humane” or “good”.’

They go on:

‘Rather, TZM is interested in Scientific Application, as applied to societal sustainability, both physical and cultural. …. The Method of Science is not restricted in its application to the “physical world” and hence the social system, infrastructure, educational relevance and even understanding human behavior itself, all exist within the confines of scientific causality. In turn, there is a natural feedback system built into physical reality which will express itself very clearly in the context of what ‘works’ and what doesn’t over time, guiding our conscious adaptation.’

Apart from the language, Marx had said something similar in 1859 in his well-known outline of the materialist conception of history in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in particular:

‘Humanity always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve: indeed, on closer examination, it will always be found that the task itself only arises when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.’

In other words, as long as a social and economic system is ‘working’ there will be no pressure to change it. Marx identified the pressure for change as arising when a contradiction developed between a newly emerging way of organising the production of the wealth of society and a social and political superstructure reflecting an earlier technico-economic basis; the agent for change was a class that organised and benefitted from the new method and which would engage in a struggle with the old ruling class for control of political power. Technico-economic changes made a change of society necessary but the agent of change would be a specific class rather than the members of society in general that Zeitgeist seem to be suggesting

The same applies to the change from capitalism to socialism where, according to Marx, the agent of change will be the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependents struggling against the entrenched minority capitalist class for control over the means of wealth production.

Insofar as ZM reject the class struggle they can be acquitted of the charge of ‘Marxism’. However, as they stand for the Earth’s resources becoming the common heritage of all, they must be found guilty of standing for ‘Communism.’

Adam Buick

Come to bury not to praise (1995)

Book Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lenin: Life and Legacy by Dmitri Volkogonov (Harper Collins 1994. £25.)

The author of this 500-page book is a high-level Soviet Army officer who from the mid- 80s held the post of Director of the Institute of Military History and in August 1991 became Defence Adviser to President Yeltsin. Initially trained as a philosopher and historian, he researched and wrote a biography of Stalin in 1985 which found some disfavour in the military hierarchy, reinforced in early 1991 by his "un-Soviet" views in a history of World War Two.

Despite his education and clear critical intelligence. Volkogonov accepted Lenin and Leninism as the pure foundation of the Russian Soviet State which had somehow become sullied and debased in its later progression to the horrors of Stalinism. As he writes: 

"For twenty-five years after the Twentieth Congress (1956) the Russian people asked themselves where Stalin had acquired the cruelty which he inflicted on his fellow countrymen. None of us—the present author included—could begin to imagine that the father of domestic Russian terrorism, merciless and totalitarian, was Lenin."

With the breakdown of the Soviet monolith in 1990 and its release from the Communist Party stranglehold, immense quantities of previously secret historical archive material became available for researchers. This has enabled authors like Volkogonov to produce more detailed and more fully documented biographies and other historical accounts than has been possible for the past seventy- five years. The result in this case is a devastatingly solid indictment of Lenin and Leninism.

With a wealth of detail the author describes the chilling and almost unbelievable fanaticism with which Lenin drove himself and his colleagues, firstly to seize state power and then to retain it at all costs. He traces the sources of this obsession with power and its unfettered and brutal use to three main factors. The execution of Lenin's elder brother, implicated in a political assassination plot, the influence of 19th century Russian revolutionary terrorist writers, and Lenin's totally lopsided grasp of Marxism from which he retained only those few aspects which appealed to him. Nothing of Marx's humanity nor of his writings on the future intellectual freedom of men and women; nothing except violence, force, and yet more force, including outright terror if that could serve a purpose. With this background firmly established. Volkogonov goes on to show how all the horrific and well-known features of the Stalinist period had their origins in Lenin; the fact that Stalin was personally vindictive whereas Lenin’s cruelties arose as impersonal expediencies is here irrelevant.

Two other interesting and informative sections of the book deal with Bolshevik finances in the early days and with the "sanctification" of Lenin after his death. Many potentially embarrassing records dealing with German financial support during the First World War were of course destroyed. but the author has collected sufficient evidence to give a clear picture of the very substantial support the German government gave the Bolsheviks to help them take Russia out of the war, thus freeing troops which could be switched to the western front. The Bolsheviks naturally did all they could to conceal this German link.

The second item, the mummification of Lenin's body and the parallel ossification and crystallisation of his thoughts and methods, forms a quite fascinating chapter. The painstaking trouble and enormous expense devoted over decades to the preservation of Lenin’s body in a “viewable condition" are positively mind-boggling in their mediaeval stupidity, except of course when viewed from the standpoint of the cynical hierarchy who manipulated the whole charade to maintain their political dominance.

For almost seventy years after his death the preservation of Leninism was the accepted and necessary mainstay of all who clambered to positions of power; and the careful use of selected phrases from his writings or speeches was the common tactic adopted to dethrone opponents or to entangle those accused of anti-Soviet activity in the endless treason trials of the 30sand 40s. It is ironic that in the very society which proclaimed that its Marxist theory was not a dogma but a living, flexible, "dialectical" guide to action, in reality the power elite set Leninism in concrete for the greater part of this century and defended its rigour with a devotion of which a mediaeval churchman could have been proud.

All this will, of course, come as little surprise to socialists who have from the outset recognised that Lenin’s 1917 Revolution, as an attempt to impose socialism by dictatorship and coercion, was doomed to fail. Utopia, unlike Mao’s political power, did not materialise from the muzzle of a gun. despite all Lenin’s cold-blooded steely determination and his party’s control and use of every weapon of coercion. Volkogonov does not indulge in any political theorising, but his book provides powerful support for the view that the building of a socialist society will be possible when the majority of the workers understand and desire such a change. All the guidance by"revolutionary vanguard" parties with "infallible” leaders like Lenin at their head can never be a substitute for a self-reliant working class.

Lenin: Life and Legacy should help those still blinded by the Soviet myth to follow the disturbing path of intellectual awakening already trodden by the author himself. In his own words :”As a former Stalinist who has made the painful transition to a total rejection of Bolshevik totalitarianism, I confess that Leninism was the last bastion to fall in my mind".

Cyril Oldfield

Cooking the Books: Footballers’ wages (2006)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

When last December Richard Caborn, the Minister for Sport, suggested that limits should be placed on the income of professional footballers, Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said that he wouldn’t be against a limit on all incomes but would be against applying this just to footballers:

“You can’t say that a sportsman should have a limited amount of income but a banker should get a £15 million bonus as he’s a stockbroker who make a lot of money . . . We live in a world where the richest 50 people own 48 per cent of the riches of the whole earth. But do we just limit the salaries of footballers who normally come out of poor backgrounds – and you normally need special qualities to be a strong footballer?” (Times, 31 December).

 It was a fair debating point, but economics is not about who is the most deserving of a high income. Bankers, stockbrokers and other fat cats who award themselves huge bonuses are indeed useless parasites. Because they control a capitalist business they are able to siphon off, at the expense of other shareholders, a part of the profits for their own personal benefit in the form of a bloated “salary”.

Footballers at least start from the same position as the rest of us: not owning any wealth from which to obtain an unearned income, to obtain what they need to live they have to go out on to the labour market and offer their mental and physical energies for sale. Most professional footballers, working for clubs in the lower divisions or for non-league clubs, never earn anything more than the average worker.

But some, those who play for the first teams of clubs (rather, businesses) in the Premier League, are paid fabulous amounts of money, by working class (if not capitalist class) standards. What is their income? Is it wages? Not really. It’s more like rent. Rent is paid whenever there is a natural monopoly in something that cannot be increased, normally land, mineral deposits, waterfalls and other natural features that can be employed in production. The rent of land and natural resources is essentially fixed by the paying demand for it. The higher the demand, the higher the rent.

As Arsène Wenger pointed out, “you normally need special qualities to be a strong footballer”. It is these “special qualities – which are a sort of natural resource that cannot be increased – that enable the best footballers to command so high an income, but as rent rather than as the price for the mere sale of their labour power. Their income is so high because the demand for their talents is so high, Premier League football being Big Business with, thanks to television, a huge market.

Wenger was right to draw attention to the fact that we live in a world of inequality. That is a natural consequence of the workings of capitalism. Socialists want a world of equality, but this is not one where everybody has an equal income. On the contrary, it would be a world where nobody had a monetary income, large, small or equal, but where everybody would have an equal say in the way things are run and an equal right to satisfy their needs. And one in which, while there would still be (amateur) footballers, there’d be no bankers or stockbrokers.

General Engels (2009)

Book Review from the February 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Green: Engels: a Revolutionary Life. Artery £10

Engels is often seen as playing very much second fiddle to Marx. But, as John Green points out, he brought to their partnership a greater first-hand familiarity with working-class life and capitalist production and commerce. While not as readable as Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx, this book is still both interesting and informative.

Before reading Green, I had not properly appreciated how much military experience Engels had. In 1848-9 he took part in the ‘revolutionary’ (in fact democratic and anti-Prussian) uprisings in the Rhineland, seeing action on several occasions. These events led to his long interest in military matters, to his being named as military adviser to the Paris Commune, and to his nickname (among Marx’s daughters, for instance) of ‘The General’. They also resulted in the Prussian government’s naming him as a wanted man, and eventually to his decision in 1850 to work in the Manchester office of the firm part-owned by his father.

From his previous time in England had come his famous work The Condition of the Working Class in England. Now Engels was forced to work in the company office, though he managed to live a double life, one as a businessman and one as an activist with his companions Mary and Lizzie Burns. While formally an employee, he received a share of the firm’s profits (over £1000 in 1859), much of which he forwarded to Marx, and on his death he left the then-tidy sum of £25,000.

Green makes an interesting observation to do with the German word wissenschaftlich. This is usually rendered in English as ‘scientific’, as in ‘scientific Socialism’, but it can equally well mean ‘theory-based’, which has fewer connotations than ‘scientific’.

This would have been a better book if Green had simply chronicled his subject’s life and ideas. Unfortunately, his Leninist sympathies have induced him to include some observations that are at best superfluous and at worst downright misleading. He starts off badly by comparing Engels to Che Guevara: two good-looking young men from well-off families who supposedly took the side of the oppressed.

Engels’ military ideas helped Trotsky, Mao and Che, it’s claimed, and the League of Communists, which he joined in 1847, worked on the basis of democratic centralism, which later became a cornerstone of Leninist parties. The Bolshevik concept was in fact far more centralist than democratic, and Green just ignores Marx’s and Engels’ insistence on workers liberating themselves, a principle rejected by Leninists and all would-be leaders.

So a mixture of a good biography and some dodgy political pleading.

Paul Bennett

A Bit Iffy . . . (1998)

TV Review from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Years ago Channel Four used to run a much acclaimed (and for that matter, much derided by some) late-night live discussion programme on Saturdays called After Dark. For those who didn't see it, it was an open-ended programme whereby seven or eight invited guests sat in comfy leather chairs discussing matters of grave importance or, sometimes, of the utmost triviality. It typically ran for three or four hours, until the guests started repeating themselves, somebody got upset or somebody else got drunk (in this respect at least it was just like real life).

On Saturday 29 November Channel Four began a new mini-series of studio discussions called the Big If . . . Discussing the same sort of topics as After Dark typically addressed, and in the same late Saturday night slot, it lasts only an hour and is heavily edited in parts. Given the contributions made in the first programme, however, this is entirely understandable.

The subject matter, interestingly enough; was What If Marx Was Right? Frankly, this is a topic which no TV programme can hope to cover adequately in an hour minus two advertising breaks, and needless to say, this programme did not cover it adequately at all.

It would seem a bit of a prerequisite that the studio guests should be familiar with the subject under discussion. Would they ask someone who knew nothing about religion to discuss ecumenical faith? Someone who hadn't been to school and couldn't read and write to discuss issues affecting modern education! Of course not. But that didn't stop them inviting a couple of guests onto this programme who had quite evidently never read a word of Karl Marx in them life.

Technocrap

One particular guest claimed that technology was solving most of capitalism's problems, even though he didn't seem to think there was such a thing as capitalism anyway and who didn't care much about its problems and those who suffered because of them. If he had read anything at all written by Marx he disguised it brilliantly. Another guest— an historian of sorts—was able to demonstrate that he knew lots about the old dictatorship in Soviet Russia but next to nothing about Marx or genuine socialism.

And then there was Paul Foot of the SWP. He is, as my mother would say, a nice man, but that alone does not make him a socialist, and his attempts to defend state planning and control through weasel words and euphemisms were transparent and reprehensible. For such a lucid writer and journalist he often demonstrated a peculiar inability to explain concepts basic to the Marxian position in clear, unambiguous terms, and this despite the fact that he has written some books on the subject which are at least in part, not all that bad. He had been little better on the previous week's Question Time.

Another guest on the panel was Susan George,, famous for her books on Third World poverty andl development politics. Her interventions criticising the market economy were more lucid and telling, but her prescription for its, supersession vague and inoffensive, about people alII over the planet already “doing things for themselves”, whatever that means. (For one thing it carries the unhelpfuI connotation that it stands opposed to the idea off people sometimes doing things for others).

The token neo-Marxist psychologist present provided a good coherent critique of the capitalist economy without suggesting anything nearly as coherent by way of replacement for it. It was left to journalist Charlotte Raven to hit the nail on the head, repeatedly. Raven took the closest thing on offer to a Marxist position and as a result was somewhat marginalised in the discussion. She was, nevertheless, the only guest to state openly that capitalism could not be reformed to work in the interests of the majority, that it was past its sell-by-date in all its various forms and incarnations and should be replaced by something which sounded fairly close to genuine socialism. We can only hope that her interventions are not going to harm her journalistic career with the Sunday newspapers.

Hopefully the programme might have given her a few ideas for articles. One could be on the same theme as the programme itself—was Marx right? Even more importantly, are those who stand in the Marxian tradition right today when we say along with him that capitalism is a system dependent for its survival on the exploitation of the many by the few, that it is a system which creates artificial scarcity, which is racked by periodic world crises and wars and which must be overthrown through democratic socialist revolution? And if Marx's prescription of a moneyless, stateless world community is not the way forward, what is? After she has written it she might post a copy of her article to the other panellists who will then be better informed in case they should be asked to appear on any such programme again.

Dave Perrin

The Passing Show: Magic of the New Year (1964)

The Passing Show column from the February 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Magic of the New Year

The beginning of last month was the signal for church bells to ring out, for everyone to wish everyone else a happy new year (probably few believing that they would achieve it), and for silly people to risk a chill and throw themselves into the fountains at Trafalgar Square. Every year it happens with monotonous regularity—every year it is just as futile and stupid.

It all stems, of course, from the time-honoured illusion that somehow the advent of a new year automatically wipes out the mistakes, horrors and heartbreaks of the last 365 days. A sort of magic aura surrounds this arbitrary dividing line, with the old year depicted as a very old man plodding wearily to his grave, and the new year as a lovable little baby—as if youth itself were any guarantor of our fortunes. A new leaf has been well and truly turned, and the way ahead is clear.

What a false idea, but it is one to which most people cling and to which politicians, press and pulpit all pander, although it depends on whether you are a member of the government or opposition party, just what sort of new years message you utter. For instance, Prime Minister Douglas-Home thinks that we are in for a year of "splendid opportunity . . .  five years of exciting progress . . .  prosperity widely shared . . . etc. But Liberal Leader Grimond talks of increased inflation and " . . . a decisive year for Great Britain . . .”

Further afield the new U.S. President Lyndon Johnson tells Mr. Khrushchev of his confidence that “peace on earth, goodwill towards men . . .  we can make it a reality," at the same time as his French opposite number de Gaulle is announcing his determination that France shall have the H-Bomb as quickly as possible. You see what a silly season it is? A time, in fact, when anything can be said and excused, no matter how senseless, because nobody really means what he says then, anyway.

And what, belatedly, do we think of the prospects for 1964? Why, the same as for any other year or at any point in any year. It doesn’t take an Old Moore's Almanack to tell us that capitalism will continue, and its problems with it. For most of us it means a drab and insecure life, and as much as ever the threat of war hanging over us like an angry black cloud. Nothing very magic in that.

Profit trends in 1963

For most of us drabness and insecurity, but for a minority just the opposite. This is the standard condition of capitalism with which we are so familiar, but now and again it is thrown into relief by a news item such as the Guardian report of January 1st. This tells us that 1963 was a good year for company profits with a net rise of over 12 per cent, in the case of 199 firms listed in Exchange Telegraph’s statistics service during December last.

The total for almost 4,000 companies exceeds £1,450 millions and is over three per cent. higher than 1962. Just shows, doesn’t it, the exploitability of the working class—and this in the year of the great freeze-up and close on a million unemployed earlier on.

But not for them

There is one thing (among many others) on which all the capitalist parties agree, and that is the need for “wage restraint.” They have all said it—in fact Mr. Grimond is in favour of a national maximum and of sanctions against firms who “grossly exceed what is justified.” All sorts of arguments are used to try and persuade workers that the less they have, the better off they will be.

But when it comes to M.P.s’ salaries, we hear a very different story. It was not long after the last war that they voted themselves a rise of £400 a year, and now a three-man committee is going to look into the whole question of M.P.s’ and Ministers’ pay, with the promise of an early report. This has the support of all parties in the Commons. What is the betting that: (a) the committee will recommend an increase, and (b) it will be speedily voted into existence by the grateful members? And will you hear then of any argument about restraint? Not very likely.

Colonial “Freedom"!

The oppression in Ghana worsens almost daily. A judge there has been dismissed for bringing in a verdict which displeased President Nkrumah, and the acquitted prisoner has been re-arrested under the Preventive Detention Acts. He’ll be lucky to get out in ten years.

The president is not resting there, however. He is seeking by referendum to confirm his dismissal powers, and it’s a fair bet he will get his way because opposition to his wishes is a punishable offence. Then one more nail will have been driven into the coffin of whatever limited political democracy once existed.

We cannot help remembering at a time like this that we were urged to support the struggle for the establishment of Ghanaian independence, and it was the Movement for Colonial Freedom who assured us that it would hasten the removal of the old colonial yoke and the birth of democracy. The Socialist Party was not popular because we refused our support, but our arguments are the same now as then, and subsequent developments have proved the soundness of our stand.

So let us repeat that colonial freedom means freedom for the rising native ruling class. The workers in Ghana and elsewhere are becoming painfully aware that they have changed their white bosses for ones with darker skins, that is all. It is no part of our job to encourage the establishment of capitalism, whether democratic or dictatorial. Our aim is a world of Socialism, and then democracy in the fullest sense of the word will be a reality.

The Movement for Colonial Freedom is obviously not a Socialist body, but even the limited freedom which they hoped for in Ghana has not emerged. It is a time for them to eat their words. But more than that, it is a time for them to seriously consider the case for Socialism.

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: Death of a President (1964)

The Passing Show column from the January 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death of a President

Who would have dreamt, on the morning of that fateful November day, that within a matter of hours, the thirty-fifth U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, would be dead, as well as his assassin and a Texas policeman? Yet this was the news which burst upon an astounded world, and sent all the capitalist politicians into huddles.

Kennedy's death was a tragedy for his family and friends, but at times like these it is as well to get the whole business into some sort of perspective and try to dispel some of the concentrated nonsense to which we have been subjected since the event. It was The Observer for December 1st which said that the shot which killed Kennedy ". . . must change the course of the world." But this is really just another repetition of the “great men make history" theory, and has precious little evidence to support it.

The more sensible remark was that overheard between two young men in a London street the following morning. “Assassinations don’t really make a lot of difference," said one. “Things go on pretty much the same as before." Probably he was not a Socialist, but he certainly hit the nail on the head, for this is precisely what the newspapers were hastening to tell us a few days later. President Johnson would continue the Kennedy policies, said Richard Scott in The Guardian of November 28th. He could have added (but of course he didn't) that these would as usual be a reflection of the needs of contemporary American capitalism. They were ably expounded by the new President thus:

. . . the unswerving support of the United Nations . . . the honourable and determined execution of our commitments to our allies . . .  the maintenance of military strength second to none . . .  the defence of the strength and stability of the dollar . . .  the expansion of our foreign trade . . .  our programme of assistance and cooperation in Asia and Africa . . . 

There have been two Democrats and one Republican at the White House since Roosevelt and any one of them could have uttered those words. For American capitalism has become a giant in world affairs; its days of isolationism are well and truly over.

Rush to Pay Homage 

This point was effectively, but probably not intentionally, underlined by Alistair Cooke when mentioning the huge number of foreign dignitaries at the Kennedy funeral. Reporting in The Guardian he said:

It now appears that no comparable gathering in one place of the great of so many nations has been since the royal trek to London for the funeral of King Edward VII.

In King Edward VII's time, Britain was still just about the most powerful capitalist nation in the world, although her position was soon to be challenged. She had a large empire for which the might of her navy afforded protection. There were also considerable investments abroad which brought in a handsome income. Not surprising, is it, that so many came to bow and scrape at the monarch’s funeral?

But how times have changed. The mighty of yesterday are the minnows of today, and the rush to pay homage is away from British shores, across the Atlantic.

Both Mr. Khrushchev and General Franco are reported to have condemned the murder of the U.S. president. Both these gentlemen are past masters in the art of bumping off their opponents, and are not really in a position to attack anyone else for the same thing. But as we said in a previous issue, humbug is nothing unusual for capitalist politicians, and anyway, both Russia and Spain are  at pains to keep in with the U.S. at present, although for different reasons. The Soviet Union has a growing threat from China to worry about. Spain is an important area strategically, and lots of American capital is invested there.

More Promises 

You can tell there's an election on the way. The promises are falling thick and fast from the lips of the various party spokesmen. At the beginning of November, the Prime Minister promised British youth nothing but the best. In his words: “Education, prosperity, opportunity, leading always to wider horizons . . . ” A month later, Sir Keith Joseph made yet another promise to solve the housing problem, this time to the electors of Marylebone. Speaking in support of the Conservative Quintin Hogg, he pledged that every bit of available and suitable railway land in London would be used for houses. He held out the prospect, for example, of a housing estate on the site of the present Marylebone goods yard.

The Labour Party is not far behind with its promises to end Rachmanism and the land prices racket, and, of course, to build houses fast. And up and down the country the big poster adverts are appearing again asking for your support, urging you to place your trust in these parties once again, despite the fact that they have failed to solve your problems in the past. Alone at the next election the S.P.G.B. will put the sole proposition—“Capitalism or Socialism?" Why not give it some consideration for a change?

Eddie Critchfield

The Passing Show: Lesson in Democracy from Moscow (1967)

The Passing Show column from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lesson in Democracy from Moscow 

Radio Moscow may fairly be described as the mouthpiece of the Russian Government. At times in the recent past, I have tuned in and listened to the ‘news’ bulletins in English, being a mixture of talk about Soviet achievements and abuse hurled at the Western Powers, particularly the ‘American Beasts’. Now because of a new threat in the shape of China, there has been a bit of a thaw in the cold war, and if Mao and his boys got really troublesome, we could well see the ‘Soviet Bear’ doing a deal with the ‘American Beasts’ to defeat the ‘Yellow Hordes’. Then, no doubt, the programmes from Radio Moscow would assume a more dulcet tone.

For the time being, however (and until told to do otherwise), the station beams its propaganda westwards, although perhaps there is a little more restraint in the presentation of the programmes. One of our members has been having a bit of an argument with the station over its misuse of words like ‘Socialism’, ‘democracy’ etc., and has sent me a copy script of one of their programmes called ‘Let’s Talk it Over’, which was broadcast towards the end of last year.

This is a discussion between two men, Kuprianov and Martynov, on the vexed question of democracy, and contains the usual platitudes such as: ‘All men are born with the right to have their own thoughts and to express those thoughts’ or . . . ‘Democracy implies power.’ It adds nothing to our knowledge of the subject and in fact contains suggestions fraught with danger to the working class. For instance, there is a sneer about the traditional right of assembly in Hyde Park with the words: ‘Such Freedom of speech can change nothing’. Which leads Kuprianov to say that Hitler rose to power ' . . .  not because he succeeded in persuading anyone in his street corner harangues but because he was spotted by such men as the Ruhr magnates.’

Now it is true that Hitler made a bid for the support of powerful German industrialists, but it is equally true that he would have been nowhere without millions of workers’ votes in his pocket. This was the lesson he learned well when his earlier attempts to seize power landed him in gaol. And after he was safely in the saddle, he made sure that he had a powerful propaganda machine working day and night to bolster him; he also took good care to suppress democratic institutions, free speech, and so on. Why bother to do this if they did not represent a threat to his position, if in fact they ‘can change nothing’?

And for the same reason, although it is true there have been some relaxations, why does the Soviet political set-up still forbid the existence of more than one party, and make it pretty hot for those who do not toe the line? The speakers do not attempt to pose or answer either of these questions. They are too busy telling lies about Russia being a democracy and talking of the ‘real freedom’ of the Soviet workers (whatever that may mean). According to Kuprianov and Martynov, Russia is the ‘youngest (democracy) in existence’. What a sickly child it must be. then.

Racial Prejudice Society

The Racial Preservation Society (or ’Society for the Preservation of all Races’, to give its revised name), looks like getting itself into legal trouble, according to The Times of 6.3.67. Copies of one of its papers Southern News have been sent to the Attorney General for possible prosecution under the Race Relations Act 1966—that pathetic attempt by the Labour Government to illegalise the very prejudices to which they themselves had pandered only a few months before. Copies of another of the Society’s papers The British Independent have reached us recently. They are more subtle in their arguments than those of some of the other racialists.

Not for them the crudeness of the ‘nigger hater’. They are concerned to preserve the races as God created them ‘in all their infinite variety and beauty’ —whatever that may mean. To back up their argument, they reproduce front page pictures of two beautiful children, one English and the other Nigerian. ‘The need for racial preservation’, they say. ‘can best be illustrated by the fact that one cannot un-mongrelise a mongrel race.’ Now the precise point of that escapes us at the moment but we do know that if they want to preserve the purity of the ‘English Race’, they’ve got just about the most crazy mixed-up mongrel of the lot.

They deny they are racially prejudiced, yet go to some length to blame coloured people for almost every social evil under the sun. Their issue No. 1 of Spring last year for instance, lists such problems as murder, rape, prostitution and vice, robbery, bad housing and venereal diseases. At that time also they were running an opinion poll on their ideas, with a loaded questionnaire.

Racial prejudice still does not seem to have got more than a large toe-hold in Britain, and therefore the RPS is regarded generally as something of a bad joke. However, the danger lies not only in the ideas it propagates, but also in the simulated respectability and humaneness with which it clothes them (‘repatriation on generous terms’ is one of their slogans), so that usually quite tolerant workers could be persuaded at least that there is no harm in supporting them. And so long as that is happening, the growth of Socialist ideas will be severely hampered.

Eddie Critchfield

Rough Winds and Rattling Knockers (1956)

Party News from the May 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Rough winds,” sang the bard, “do shake the darling buds of May." Many party members are hoping that during this May in particular the winds will blow a little more kindly, because for the first time we are making a combined effort to increase sales of the Socialist Standard by widespread canvassing. A number of branches in London and elsewhere are taking part and have sent representatives to a meeting at Head Office to set up a co-ordinating committee, with the general object of doubling their usual monthly Standard sales. If everything goes to plan, a great many knockers will be rattling during this month.

These are difficult times for Socialist propaganda, when workers are more inclined to stay in for television soap operas than come out to listen to a speaker on a windy platform. To this problem canvassing is part, at any rate, of an answer—if people will not come to us, then we must go to them. And there is no need to be hesitant about knocking them up—a surprising number are quite willing to leave even Miss Shirley Abicair to talk about the problems of the live-a-day world. Apart from that, canvassing has its exhilaration of hard work and its fun—one comrade who disappeared from a Sunday morning expedition came puffing up half an hour later to explain that a housewife had mistaken him for the rent collector and he had drunk three cups of tea and promised to mend her drainpipes before she had realised her mistake.

At all events it is worthy activity which over the years can build up a solidly regular readership for our journal. We hope to publish the results of the drive in our July issue. Meanwhile, there is a lot of work to be done.

Ivan

African Atlas (1962)

Book Review from the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Atlas of African Affairs by Andrew Boyd and Patrick van Rensburg. Methuen, 14s

Maps are fascinating things and most of us enjoy browsing over them. Andrew Boyd, in this book and in his Atlas of World Affairs, exploits the technique of selectively drawing maps so that they reveal not only the geography, but also the history, of a continent.

This atlas has about 50 maps backed up by a potted history of Africa. Here we can see where the European traders, uninterested in the continents rich interior, set up their coastal colonies. Here, too, are shown the ancient states of Africa: where in 5.000 B.C. one of the worlds first agricultural systems was developed: where in 300 A.D. the Soninke created Ghana, which throve on the export of slaves and gold to Morocco. The great tribes of modern Ghana claim descent from the inhabitants of the ancient state -  hence the revival of the country's name.

The maps show up the growing European interest in the African hinterland and the scramble for colonies in the late nineteenth century. It is easy enough to appreciate the author’s contention that Africa’s map of frontiers was drawn by Europeans, whose rule lasted for a bare seventy years.

But Africa is more than a bloody history of slavers and colonisers. It is a dark, brooding continent with enormous wealth and great natural barriers of desert and jungle and disease. These are the physical conditions in which the natives and the colonisers must go about their business and which has such a definite effect on that business. The Atlas does not forget this.

A small book, but full of interest and information.

Ivan

Apologies to Karl Marx (1963)

Editorial from the August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Future historians interpreting our eventful epoch will note outstanding happenings like the two world wars, the overthrow of Czarism in Russia, the rise of independent countries in Asia and Africa, the decline of the British and other Colonial empires, and so on. Possibly the single event that will loom the largest will be the rise of Russia as a world power under the half century of government by a party calling itself Communist.

And if the historians have any insight at all they will be astonished to discover the almost total failure of politicians, economists and other so-called leaders of thought in our age to understand what has been going on before their eyes. And they may well comment that, if there can be degrees of ignorance, the products of the public schools and universities seem, if anything, to have been even more remote from reality than the rest.

So for over forty years, apart from the Socialist few who recognised from the outset that Socialism (Communism) was out of the question in Russia and that that country was ripe for the building of a modern capitalist state, we have had the endless stream of alleged information about Russia describing it in terms of “Communism” or “Socialism” or “Marxism,” all three of which are completely inapplicable.

It is hardly possible to open a newspaper or political journal without meeting this nonsense. Three recent examples within a week were “Does Marxist Economy Work?” in the New Daily, “Communist Economy Under Change” (title of a book published in June), and the following from the Financial Times: “ The Russians have lived through 45 years of Communism.”

Translating these statements into real terms, the first is an argument to the effect that centralised planning in Russia is not the success it is claimed to be; the second and third likewise refer to Russian State Capitalism.

What then would the writers offer as their defence for such misdescription? The fact that the Russian leaders call themselves Communists or Marxists? But this has about as much relevance as to describe British capitalism as a Christian economy because Macmillan goes to Church, or to say that the British lived for a number of years under vegetarianism because the late Stafford Cripps did not eat meat.

Of course, as the years have passed by and the nature of the Russian economy has been seen more clearly through the mists of propaganda and prejudice, some of the Western politicians have grasped the truth.of the matter. Two examples are the late John Foster Dulles telling the Russian Minister of Trade, Mikoyan, that Eisenhower and he recognised that Russia is a State capitalist economy: and an article in the 75th Anniversary number of the Financial Times last February saying that what Lenin and his party did in Russia in the name of Marxism seemed at least to some Marxists “to be standing Marx on his head.”

But time really does have its revenges. The book referred to above was reviewed by the New Daily, which draws the moral that the deficiencies of the centralised planning in Russia, Poland and Yugoslavia are the failures of “Marxism as an economic system.” The same book, reviewed in the Economist (June 29th) induces the reviewer to admit that the failures described in the book are not the result of Marxism but of Keynesian doctrines:

With all due apologies to Karl Marx, the economic experiments now being carried on in his name are really mainly experiments in Keynesianism à outrance. They have the virtues of Keynesianism (full employment of resources; and thus construction of productive power) and the vices of à outrance (maldistribution of resources and thus a lower standard of living than those nations' massed productive power should warrant). If there were any justice in idolatry, Soviet economists would soon be taking down Marx's statues for replacement by Keynes’s; but should then hold interesting dialectical debates on the respects in which Keynesianism is being deviationistically applied.”

The Economist writer stops too soon. When the Russian Keynesians have finished arguing about Keynes among themselves they could discuss with the Economist the respective merits of carrots and big sticks for keeping the workers under control and then continue to discover some defence of Russian, British, American, Chinese, etc. capitalism against the Marxian criticism advanced by Socialists.

Pathfinders: The Mismanagement of Measuring (2016)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

See what you think of this recent statement by a genetics researcher, commenting on the long-running political war over IQ testing: “The left-wing view is that everyone’s born the same and you can make everyone achieve the same way. From genetics research, we’ve shown that’s not true” (Link).

Chances are you’ll first bridle at the phrase ‘the left-wing view’, this being the sort of careless and sweeping precursor to some equally careless right-wing prejudice. Then you’ll try to recall if you’ve ever heard anyone, regardless of political orientation, come up with the fundamentalist view that ‘everyone’s born the same’. You’ll probably decide that you haven’t, because in your experience nobody really buys this ‘blank slate’ argument. Your conclusion? That the above statement is a pretty vacuous straw man argument which reflects badly on its owner and indeed invites some suspicion over the ‘genetics research’ being thus promoted.

Research into human intelligence, what it is and how to measure it has made great strides since the days of the craniologists and their tape measures, but the debate is as plagued now as it was then by political bias, and by the tendency of both sides to dig trenches and fire heavy caricatures at each other. The ‘left’ trench had a big hitter in the form of palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who launched a flamethrower with his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man, which set out to savage the ‘genetic determinists’ and their class-based obsession with rankings, reification and hierarchies. But opponents responded angrily that Gould had missed the point by attacking largely out-of-date research and methodologies and ignoring new research, and that ultimately his argument assumed what he set out to prove. Richard Dawkins, with whom Gould had a famous spat over the question of ‘adaptations’ in evolutionary theory, would likely agree that Gould was not above caricaturising the views of his opponents for the sake of a good polemic. But Gould was also the subject of savage caricature, notably by the philosopher of science Daniel Dennett, known by certain wags as Dawkins’ bulldog.

Complex and heated as the arguments are, the basics of the IQ question are simple enough. Modern computing power combined with big data and meta-analyses (discipline-wide reviews of all relevant studies), together with a torrent of new knowledge from MRI scans of the working brain, present a forceful case that genetics has a clear role in human intelligence, almost regardless of how you care to define that word. To put it bluntly, everyone can’t be Einstein, even given all the opportunities in the world.

On the other side of the scale sits the ponderous and imponderable combined weight of social, environmental and other factors. Nobody argues that these don’t exist, but nobody knows how to control for these factors in testing, so no scientific test can realistically be pronounced conclusive or even fair. To be sure, studies of twins, raised separately yet exhibiting identical IQ scores, mannerisms or other habits, are powerful genetic evidence that lead some researchers to claim that the genetic component of intelligence is anything up to 70 percent. But while these twin studies seem to remove much of the common environmental background noise, nobody can say what other factors might have been introduced instead. You can’t control for coincidence. If you meet and talk to 10 random people at a bus stop, the chances are you’ll share certain behavioural, emotional or intellectual tics with at least some of them. Thus the interpretations based on twin studies may look strong without necessarily being so.

The well-known Flynn Effect, named for the observation that IQ scores have increased on average by three points per decade for a century, also throws a hefty spanner in the genetic works. If IQ really is genetic, how can it keep getting better at a rate far in excess of the glacial pace of natural evolution? James Flynn himself thinks he has the answer, in short that people are drawn to environments that suit their genes, thus creating intellectual feedback loops that amplify their genetic differences (New Scientist 30 July) This is similar to Dawkins’ idea of the extended phenotype, which sees not just your physical body as a uniquely identifiable genome, but extends the idea to include your house, shoes and career choices too.

What do socialists say? Obviously, that we don’t know any better than scientists, and await their further research with interest. We are committed to the view that humans should be able to live in an equitable world in which they can give to the community what they are able and willing to give, whatever the practical limitations on that may be, while at the same time being entitled to receive whatever it is that they need, with similar provisos, and crucially, without the one in any sense entailing the other.

But we might also say that capitalist society is a terrible test bed on which to study intelligence or any other human quality because being in no sense a ‘fair’ system it can therefore in no sense deliver a fair test. Riddled with bias and rigged by the rich, it can never be the definitive authority on who we are as humans or what we’re really capable of.

The real ‘mismeasure of man’ that blights the human condition is not some reductionist mission to isolate, count, measure and label every atom of what it means to be a sentient human. It is the fact that all this science is done in the interest of the plundering of our bodies and minds and abilities by the rich elite. The ugliness behind the façade isn’t the feuding partisanship of the technical arguments, it’s the fact that the rich elite who ultimately bankroll the debate don’t look upon us, the vast majority of humanity, as people or even as workers, they look on us as a natural resource, a money-generating human ‘ore’ with the magical ability to mine itself and refine itself and then grade and polish and put itself to use for life until it wears out and discards itself, but not before helpfully providing its own replacement. The IQ debate isn’t really about science, it’s about quality control on the capitalist production line, and that’s why socialists should refuse to get drawn into it, either on the nature or the nurture side.

In socialism, in most normal circumstances where risk to others is low or zero, the real arbiter of a person’s ability should, like that person’s needs and that person’s interests, be that same person and nobody else. Whether objective estimations of IQ continue to be seen as valid or relevant may be a moot point. After all, it was people with such objective expertise who told Einstein he would never amount to anything.

Paddy Shannon

The Tyneside Communist Collapse. (1931)

From the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is common knowledge that the membership of the Communist Party in this country has for a long time been on the downward grade. At one time it could boast of a membership of over ten thousand, but to-day its enrolled adherents number only two or three thousand at most. One of the distinguishing features of this self-styled "revolutionary" party is the violent revolutions which have occurred in both its membership and its policy.

The large industrial area of the North-East, known as Tyneside, has experienced a deluge of Communist activity second to none in the whole country. Huge quantities of literature, dozens of full-time organisers, and demonstrations by the score have been utilised in an endeavour to create on Tyneside what the Communists term a "revolutionary mass movement."

According to Communist reasoning, the workers of this country are "waiting for a lead.” This is a phrase which they have reiterated again and again.

After ten years of feverish and often farcical activity, they have succeeded only in leading their dupes either to gaol, victimisation or despair. The collapse of their organisation on Tyneside, where they were relatively strong, marks another stage in the general disintegration which has been sapping their strength for a considerable period.

This latest disaster is the expulsion of all but three members of the Newcastle City local, simultaneously with wholesale defections from the other locals in Tyneside.

The bitter disappointment which has been engendered by the utter failure of the Communists to produce the mass movement which they have aspired to lead, and for which they alternatively supported and then opposed the Labour Party; fraternised with the leaders of the T.U.C. and then denounced them in the strongest terms; allied themselves with Cook and Maxton, whom they now brand as tricksters and betrayers, is a complete vindication of the position taken up by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. That position, in brief, is that the workers can only advance towards Socialism in the light of Socialist knowledge.

A class-conscious Socialist working class presupposes the acceptance and understanding of the essentials of Socialist principles by a majority of the exploited class.

To the Communist, this is a process either impossible of achievement or too long to work for. A "proletarian dictatorship”—whatever that may mean—must be set up; and, in pursuance of this somewhat hazy objective,, the most startling and bewildering political somersaults have occurred.

Even in the initial task of attracting a considerable amount of support from a minority of the workers in this mad and dangerous undertaking, the Communists have signally and miserably failed.

It is hardly necessary to point out now to the Tyneside ex-Communists that their mistaken policy resulting from the non-acceptance of sound Socialist principles, the policy of political shuffling, compromise and expediency, leads not to Socialism, but to the shambles.

The realisation of the futility and incorrectness Of Communist methods is being forced upon them more and more.

In a debate with the writer, held in Newcastle some months ago, the Communist Party representative, T. Aisbitt, was compelled to defend and endeavour to explain the tortuous path of Communist policy. It is now admitted that it was known all along that this policy was dangerous and unsound. The truth, evidently, had to be hidden because "loyalty” to the party demanded it!

The Daily Worker, once held up as the organ of the 44 militant workers,” is now frankly described as the organ of the Communist Bureaucracy.

It is asserted that corruption and autocracy are rife amongst the officials, who resist any attempt to cleanse the organisation of these evils.

The path to Socialism is clear. It entails the acceptance of the principles and policy of the S.P.G.B. as laid down clearly and simply in the Declaration of Principles of the Party.

The Tyneside Secessionists would do well to study these principles attentively. They will then recognise that the Socialist Party is the only party worthy of the workers' support.

Edmund Howarth