The Socialist Party's Summer School on Technology (2020)

Party News from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party’s 2020 Summer School looks at technological progress and its application in the past, present and future. weekend of talks and discussion is an exciting opportunity to share and explore revolutionary ideas with others, through the SPGB’s Discord server. From the development of the first tools and the wheel through to the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, the microprocessor and beyond, technology has always shaped how we live. Scientific developments take place in the context of the social and economic conditions of the time. In capitalism, technological progress and how technology is used are driven by what is profitable and cost effective more than by what is really needed and wanted. This means that technology is often used in ways which go against our best interests, whether through environmental damage, the development of ever-more destructive weapons or the misuse of data gathered online and through social media. In a future socialist society based on common ownership and democratic organisation of industries and services, technology could really be used to benefit us, in harmony with the environment. To join in or for further information, e-mail spgbschool@yahoo.co.uk.

Friday 7th August 19:30

Is Marxism technological determinism? 

Speaker: Adam Buick

“In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.”

(Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847)

“It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men direct, which is the main cause, the propelling force of all social development. It is self-understood that the people are ever trying to improve these tools so that their labour be easier and more productive, and the practice they acquire in using these tools, leads their thoughts upon further improvements. Owing to this development, a slow or quick progress of technique takes place, which at the same time changes the social forms of labour. This leads to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes.”

(Anton Pannekoek, Marxism and Darwinism, 1912) 

To what extent, if at all, is this a theory of technological determinism? How do changes in technology lead to a change of society?

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 10:00

How the Socialist Party can use technology better.

Speaker: Jake AWOFA

Socialist Party sympathiser Jake AWOFA’s site ‘A World of Free Access’ has a following of 17,000 on Facebook, and he joins us from Western Australia to open a discussion on ideas about how the Socialist Party can make better use of technology. How can our online and social media presence be improved? Can technology help us be (even) more democratic? What are our views on Discord?

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 14:00

Ideology as technology.

Speaker: Bill Martin

This talk looks at how the way we think is a form of technology. Starting with mundane objects, like a bicycle, it looks at how the ideas behind inventions are not the outcomes of lone geniuses and inspiration, but are connected to social relations and practices. It discounts the idea that history is driven by simple technological changes, and looks back to the age of conquest to show it was how technology was applied, rather than the possession of technology itself, that was behind the establishment of the European empires. It concludes by looking at the implications for socialism and how a future society might use technology.

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 16:00

How we feel about technology – the views of Günther Anders and beyond.

Speaker: Mike Foster

‘Philosophical anthropologist’ Günther Anders’ theories about our attitudes towards technology were formed in the middle of the last century, when television and the nuclear bomb represented the latest in human achievements. He argued that technology makes us feel ashamed, not because of the impact of the mass media or the threat of nuclear war, but because we have become inferior to the technology we have created. Since Anders’ time, technological progress has given us smartphones, artificial intelligence and the world wide web, feats which he would argue further humanity’s obsolescence. This talk gives a Marxist perspective on Anders’ theories and their implications in today’s hi-tech world.

Part 1, Part 2.

Saturday 8th August 18:00

Quiz night

Saturday 8th August 19:00

Social

Sunday 9th August 10:00

Digital technologies as a core of social organisation of the future.

Speaker: Leon Rozanov

Direct democracy may have worked well in ancient Greek city-states with thousands of decision-makers. Now with most modern states having millions of citizens, the most widespread form of democracy is representative, and it is easily hijacked by the interests of capital owners or political figures who serve them. Even if socialist ideas were to become more widespread, it remains a question, how exactly would democratic principles that we all consider indispensable be put to work for a socialist society to function efficiently? One of the earliest markers of human societies differentiating themselves from other animals was language, and later its written form, text. We have learned to pass knowledge on to future generations, and the earliest texts are almost exclusively collections of rules and laws that helped organise societies according to their commonly shared values and beliefs. If we want to create a successful future society based on socialist principles, we need to cement these principles in the text of modern technologies – software code – that will have principles of equality, fairness and resource- and need-based economy built into the digital technologies specifically designed to help run this society.

Part 1, Part 2.

Sunday 9th August 11:30

The 4th Industrial Revolution, what it is, what it means, what capitalism is doing with it, and what socialism could do with it.

Speaker: Paddy Shannon

Just as people didn’t stop using stone as a material when they learned to use bronze, then iron, and then plastic, industrial revolutions have also overlapped, with first-generation steam turbines still producing second-generation electrical power, controlled by third-generation digital computer interfaces. Now a tsunami of new acronyms including AI, IoT and VR is breaking over the top of all that, the so-called 4th industrial revolution. If you’re still having trouble figuring out how to do online shopping on your home computer, you’d really better strap in and hold onto your hat, because capitalism is about to go to warp speed. From the development of the first tools and the wheel through to the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, the microprocessor and beyond, technology has always shaped how we live. Scientific developments take place in the context of the social and economic conditions of the time. In capitalism, technological progress and how technology is used are driven by what is profitable and cost effective more than by what is really needed and wanted. This means that technology is often used in ways which go against our best interests, whether through environmental damage, the development of ever-more destructive weapons or the misuse of data gathered online and through social media. In a future socialist society based on common ownership and democratic organisation of industries and services, technology could really be used to benefit us, in harmony with the environment.

Part 1, Part 2.

Proper Gander: Turning The Page (2020)

The Proper Gander Column from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In 1969, The Sun newspaper was a left-leaning broadsheet, believe it or not, and one which was running at a financial loss for its owners. This all changed when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch and relaunched as a more populist red-top tabloid to directly compete with the Daily Mirror. As part of this revamp, The Sun started to feature photos of topless women, and within 12 months its sales had doubled. Since the 1970s, ‘page three’ has been most associated with The Sun, although such photos have also appeared in other tabloids. A recent documentary on Channel 4, Page Three: The Naked Truth, told the story of this seedy tradition and how it has portrayed and affected women and girls. Unsurprisingly, it’s money which has driven the ‘page three’ industry. Lucrative contracts have drawn people in to being ‘glamour models’, there to make profits for publishers and promoters.

The 1980s was when ‘page three’ was most well-known, especially after Samantha Fox became a household name. When she was aged 16, her mother sent clothed photos of her to the Sunday People for its ‘Girl of the Year’ contest. This led to a photo-shoot, and Fox agreed to topless photos thinking they wouldn’t be published, as she was still at school. She and her family were shocked when they saw one of these pictures plastered on the Sunday People’s front page. Fox remembers being told by a photographer ‘you’ve got the face of a child but the body of a woman’, and only realised how sinister this was in hindsight. Some newspapers had sickening ‘countdowns’ to when their models reached 16 and they could be shown partially naked. All of this was somehow acceptable, or at least just something to put up with. It wasn’t until 2003 that legislation came in to make 18 the minimum age to appear unclothed in print.

The age of models wasn’t the focus of campaigns against ‘page three’ during the 1980s, when attempts were made to ban it entirely. In 1986, MP Clare Short introduced a Private Members Bill which proposed prohibiting newspapers from publishing sexualised pictures of naked or partially naked women. When she raised this in the House of Commons, many male MPs’ reaction was laughter, and presumably they were those whose votes made the bill fail. For The Sun, who branded Short a ‘killjoy’ and ‘fat and jealous’ when she renewed her campaign in 2004, this was decent publicity as much as anything.

As summed up by Clare Short, ‘what page three says is ‘take me, use me, throw me away’’. This isn’t only an attitude towards women which ‘page three’ photos encourage among the public, it also describes how models have been treated. Being groped (i.e. sexually assaulted) on a chat show or being preyed on by drunks at parties were seen as part of the job. A particularly sad example of how women have been treated is what happened to Emma Morgan. In the 1990s, her boyfriend sent a topless photo of her to the Sunday Sport, which printed it without her knowledge. That Morgan (like Fox) wasn’t considered important enough to even be asked if she minded having such an image published highlights the extent to which women have been demeaned. Morgan’s modelling career started by being used and it ended in a similar way, when she says she was set up by an undercover journalist who filmed her taking illegal drugs. The story appeared in the News of the World with the headline ‘Page 3 Girls’ Drugs And Vice Scandal’ and as a result Morgan lost her contracts, spat out by the same industry which had got her into the situation.

An argument in support of ‘page three’ is that women are free to choose their own roles, and if they enjoy being a model, then why not? Some of the models themselves would agree with this, but it rings hollow to those who were tricked into starting a modelling career, often when still a child, or who found this was their only opportunity to escape poverty. The wealth and the celebrity lifestyle came at a price for Emma Morgan and others. Debee Ashby, like Samantha Fox, first had topless pictures published without her consent at the age of 16, and later regretted her subsequent modelling career, as it led to her suffering from bulimia and undergoing therapy.

The decline of ‘page three’ came about not through changes to legislation, but following a grassroots campaign run by author and actor Lucy-Anne Holmes. Her ‘No More Page 3’ crusade began in 2012 when she noticed the disparity between how men and women were depicted in newspapers. She says that men were represented as active and industrious, but photos of women on page three were sending out the message that they have to be ‘pretty and passive’. Holmes said that the campaign wasn’t against pornography as such, just that a ‘family newspaper’ isn’t the place for it. Three years later, The Sun retired ‘page three’, although not on its website until 2017. The Daily Star didn’t stop printing photos of topless women until 2019, and the Sport newspapers still continue the degrading tradition.

Of course, it’s a step forward that fewer people now believe it’s acceptable for women – and girls – to be reduced to ‘page three’ fodder, but the feature’s demise doesn’t seem all that significant considering that far more extreme images can easily be found with a few clicks of a button. It’s likely that ‘page three’ has largely died out more because newspapers can no longer rely on softcore porn to sell copies than due to campaigns. What’s profitable has shifted away from print to online. So, rather than ‘page three’ being brought down, it’s instead been superseded. The market will find new ways to objectify women as long as there’s money to be made.

Mike Foster

Fairy Tales (2020)

Book Review from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales. By Hermynia Zur Mühlen. Edited and Translated by Jack Zipes for the series, Oddly Modern Fairy Tales. Princeton University Press, 2020.

Hermynia Zur Mühlen, born into the Austrian upper class in 1883, earned the sobriquet ‘The Red Countess’ by rebelling against her upbringing and embracing a left-wing outlook. She did, however, marry an Estonian/German baron and tried to convert his estates into a cooperative enterprise under the control of the workers. The project failed, but illustrates her acceptance, common amongst many left-wingers, that socialism is something brought to the workers.

A member of the German Communist Party, Zur Mühlen began to reflect on how children’s literature could change their socialisation. In 1921, her first book of radical fairy tales, What Little Peter’s Friends Told Him, was published. Many more followed, including the one that lends itself to the title of this collection, The Castle of Truth.

The first impression on reading these tales is the didactic nature of them. The rich are greedy and careless of the lives of their workers. Meanwhile, those workers are portrayed as being too dumb to see how they are being done down.

In The Carriage Horse (1924), militant unionism is expressed through the eponymous horse coming among the exploited farm horses and organising them to strike for better fodder. The strike is undermined by dumb oxen who take on the tasks of the horses, until they agree to stop doing so, but only through the threat of violence. The horses win their fodder rise, but remain essentially in the same situation they were at the beginning. The oxen remain dumb.

This theme runs through the stories. Even when a worker acquires the wherewithal to become a capitalist in Ali, the Carpet Weaver (1923), he quickly transforms into rapacious employer. The bloated plutocrat beloved of Bolshevik posters was an obvious model.

Another element becomes apparent when Ali gains that wherewithal through a good deed supernaturally rewarded. His eventual comeuppance also comes via the ‘Good Spirit’ who will return at some unspecified future point to judge all exploiters.

Although Zur Mühlen was a lapsed Catholic, perhaps, as is often claimed, Catholicism is never entirely set aside. Come the 1950s she was a lapsed communist, having parted company with the KPD during the rising Stalinism of the 1930s. She turned back to religion, if not Catholicism, which perhaps provides an alternative understanding of her tales.

Zur Mühlen does deal with a variety of political issues: the absence of concern for workers’ wellbeing (The Coals, 1921), critical thinking (Why, 1922), ideological myopia (The Glasses, 1923), technology (The Servant, 1923), nationalism (The Troublemakers, 1923), persistence of radical ideas (The Castle of Truth, 1924), religion (The Fence, 1924) and others exploring similar themes.

Twenty years later Zur Mühlen was writing in a more traditional mode of fairy tale. The Crown of the King of Domnonee (1944) involves an innocent younger prince betrayed by malevolent elder siblings that all resolves to a happy, royal, ending. The Story of the Wise Judge (1944) revolves around a poor but wise young woman who solves a number of riddles to prosper. The radical tropes have largely disappeared.

The politics of the 1920s stories are those of idealised Bolshevism, liberation being brought to the working class by the enlightened, or a reformed, more benign capitalism. Society is still one in which money plays a crucial part, just more fairly. There is no sense that capitalism, state or moderated, remains capitalism.

These tales, illustrated by George Grosz, John Heartfield, Heinrich Vogeler and Karl Holtz in the spare pen and ink style of the 1920s, were written for children. It is difficult to see the appeal in them for the young who would have to be old enough to appreciate the language and concepts, making them too old to be interested in fairy tales. A story read to two children aged 7 and 9, voracious readers both, did not make it to the end. Different times maybe, but were children more receptive a century ago?

That this collection comes from the Princeton University Press declares its academic interest. This it has in abundance for the insights it gives into Communist political thinking of the time, the identification of state capitalism with Soviet Communism and the issues outlined above. It sits within the ‘Oddly Modern Fairy Tales’ series edited by Jack Zipes, who has done a commendable job of translating Zur Mühlen’s tales.

If you are looking for a collection of fairy tales for children, this is not it. Should your interest be in the literary expression of political and historical ideas, then it is.

Dave Alton

Right Direction (2020)

Pamphlet Review from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food, Health and Capitalism. Covid-19 and Beyond. Published by the Anarchist Communist Group, June 2020. 45 pages.

The Anarchist Communist Group (ACG), formed in 2018 by former members of the Anarchist Federation in Great Britain, states its aim as ‘a complete transformation of society’, explained as ‘the working class overthrowing capitalism, abolishing the State, getting rid of exploitation, hierarchies and oppressions, and halting the destruction of the environment’. Among the group’s activities is the production of pamphlets arguing their case, the latest of which looks at the way capitalism produces food and the part this has played in the Covid-19 virus.

Despite its limited length, this is a well-researched and highly informative publication which outlines very effectively how the profit system, the driving force of today’s world capitalist economy, dictates an increasingly intensive exploitation of land and animals, leading to a ‘perfect storm environment’ for diseases which are likely to be infectious. It outlines the conditions of industrial farming that, after causing previous virus epidemics such as MERS, Ebola and SARS, have now led to the current Covid-19 pandemic which in its indiscriminate worldwide spread is causing panic and threatening social and economic breakdown. It explains how these viruses stem from a form of intensive agriculture, in which ‘the more you can produce with fewer inputs, the greater the profit’, with the effect on human health (not to speak of the welfare of animals) always a secondary consideration.

So, for example, both intensive factory farming of domestic animals and the slaughter, preparation and sale of an increasing range of wildlife in the Far East in crowded and insanitary conditions provide an ideal breeding ground for deadly viruses to ‘jump’ from animals to humans and then spread indiscriminately. In addition, the quadrupling of global meat production in the last half century has resulted in most land resources being used to feed animals destined for slaughter rather than to grow food directly for human consumption. This has led to an epidemic of obesity among some populations, but at the same time, as the pamphlet points out, in many parts of the world people die of starvation and, even for example in the UK, it quotes estimates that, even before the present virus hit, at least 3 million were going hungry, while 14.6 million were suffering from food insecurity. The entirely irrefutable reason given for all this is that, while some people get obese because of the cheap, unhealthy food that they eat, others go hungry because they do not have the money to buy enough food of any description. This, the pamphlet insists – again irrefutably – is quite simply the outcome of a system that puts profit before need. As it says, ‘capitalism has penetrated everywhere on earth in its search for profits’.

What remedy then does the ACG propose to resolve deadly industrial farming practices, food produced for cheapness rather than quality, and, even in the more economically advanced parts of the world, poverty amid plenty? It advocates ‘the need to create an agriculture system which is not based on the need to compete in the market economy and in which human need and health is the main priority’ and goes on to say that ‘instead of tinkering with the system… we need to get rid of it altogether and replace it with a food system that can truly meet the needs of everyone… the aim is for food to be free’. So far so good. This seems to mirror the aim of the Socialist Party, ie a society of free access with production for need not for profit. But then, this pamphlet, in its final section entitled ‘Basic Principles of a Revolutionary New Food and Agriculture’, seems to water down this objective advocating not a free access society as such but rather single initiatives such as ‘land reform’ ‘collectivising agriculture’ and ‘developing co-operatives for distribution and consumption’. All it seems within the framework of the current overall capitalist system, this being implicit in the characteristically reformist call to ‘begin to transform our society now’. A pity, because the way to truly transform society is not for individuals or groups to fight capitalism’s imperatives within the current system but to band together to persuade the majority of wage and salary earners to take democratic revolutionary action to usher out the whole framework of capitalism (profit society) and bring in socialism (a free access society based on the satisfaction of human needs).

Howard Moss

Remembering Marx (2020)

Book Review from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx 200. The Significance of Marxism in the 21st Century. Edited by Mary Davis. Praxis Press. 2020. 120 pages.

This is a collection of the talks given at an international conference organised by the Marx Memorial Library to mark the bicentenary in 2018 of the birth of Marx.

The Marx Memorial Library was set up in 1933 by the Communist Party and fellow travellers and is still controlled by successors of that party. The contributions are a mixed bag. There are some interesting contributions on technology and on ecology. The political ones reflect the views of the organisers.

There are a couple of claims that need challenging. John McDonnell in the opening article makes the dubious statement that ‘from the earliest days the ideas of Karl Marx’ were part of the Labour tradition. This is not so. The Labour Party was set up as a trade union pressure group in the House of Commons. Most of its leaders were Liberals known as ‘Lib-Labs’. Even Keir Hardie explicitly rejected the class struggle.

The editor, Mary Davis, says in her contribution that, because women’s wages are on average lower than those of ‘white males’, ‘Women are clearly super-exploited, thus the increased surplus value yielded by their labour power greatly enriches the owners of the means of production.’ This is based on the widespread but un-Marxian misconception that the degree of exploitation is measured by the level of the wage a worker gets – if you get low wages that means that you are ‘super-exploited’ compared with those who get paid more.

However, a high or higher wage does not necessarily mean that less surplus value goes to the employer. It will if the job is the same; in that case an increase in wages would reduce the employer’s profits. A higher wage in a different job, on the other hand, generally reflects a higher grade of labour power as one that is more productive, both in the sense of producing more in a given period of time and of more new value created. In fact, it could be that the higher-paid worker’s wage is a smaller proportion of the greater surplus value produced than that of a lower-paid worker in another job, ie, that the rate of exploitation is higher.

Women workers (not female capitalists and so not women in general), like all wage workers, are exploited and ‘equal pay for equal work’ is a sound trade union demand but this does not mean that those on low pay are more exploited in the Marxian sense than the rest of the working class.

Adam Buick

SPGB Discord Meetings (2020)

Party News from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade Cyril May on New York Radio (1970)

From issue number 6 (1970) of The Western Socialist

During his recent visit to the United States as fraternal delegate of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the annual WSP conference in Boston, Comrade May, together with two other SPGB comrades, addressed a successful propaganda meeting conducted by New York Local. While in New York he was interviewed by Arlene Francis (well-known star of motion pictures and TV) on her radio program, on WOR-AM, September 29, 1970.

Inasmuch as the discussion ran about 40 minutes, we had to condense it because of space requirements of The Western Socialist. We take pleasure in presenting Comrade Cyril May’s effective presentation of the socialist case in this interview. Miss Francis asked meaningful and pertinent questions.

Arlene Francis: I would like to introduce Mr. Cyril May, party organizer of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who is visiting this country to give some lectures. And I'm happy that one of your lectures. Mr. May. is to be addressed to me because what I do not know about your subject is embarrassing to me. Among my few meager bits of knowledge is the fact that the socialist state that you envision does not presently exist nor has It ever existed. Am I right?

Cyril May: That is quite correct. In fact, the statement of a "socialist state” is not one that we would particularly like to go along with because the very word "state” itself has certain political connotations with which you and I would perhaps disagree at this juncture. But it is true that socialism is something that does not exist in any country throughout the world.

Arlene: And has it ever?

Cyril: And it hasn’t ever. No.

Arlene: Then you have come up with a brand new idea today. And . . .  sowhat we are talking about — is what? Ia it another movement toward features such as public control of all utilities? I don't know so I have to ask.

Cyril: OK. Well I’ll try to fill you in with the essentials on it. Socialism to the Socialist Party of Great Britain and to its companion parties in other parts of the world, including the World Socialist Party in the United States, is a system of society, or a way of living if we can put it that way, where the means of wealth production and distribution, the land, the mills, the mines, the minerals, the factories and workshops, the means of transportation will be owned by the whole of society, regardless of sex or race. In short, common ownership is the essential economic fundamental of a socialist society.

Arlene: How do you even begin that?

Cyril: Well, to begin that. It really involves a revolution In the idea process of people. They’ve got to change their ideas and concepts and the scales of social values, that they have today. In short, the establishment of a socialist society, from our point of view, rests upon a majority of people. It can’t be established by some dictatorship or some elitist group. It rests upon a majority of people understanding it and arising from that understanding taking the necessary political action to establish It. So first of all it’s a revolution in ideas.

Arlene: So that it’s a case for the psychotherapist really, before anything else.

Cyril: Well. I changed my ideas and I didn’t have a psychotherapist.

Arlene: What were your ideas?

Cyril: Well, my ideas when I was 14 or 15 were rather typical of most working class boys, I guess. I went to a Methodist Church. I thought at times, I guess, that it was a change of heart that was needed by people. And I looked at the hearts of a lot of people who had apparently changed, belonged to churches, and I found that they had no solution to what I considered to be the major problems then. This was In the middle of the 1930s when the Second World War was looming on the horizon. and after listening to a variety of different political speeches and reading books on it, I came to the conclusion that the ideas of the Socialist Party were the correct ones. But no psychotherapist entered into this. And If we’ve got to wait for psychotherapists to deal with this, then I don’t think It will ever come. It’s long enough to wait for it dealing with it in the normal way. But I think if we let the psychotherapists loose on it we really are in trouble.

Arlene: Yes, but still you’ve said yourself that we have to recondition our own thinking. That takes quite a lot of work to leave in the hands of the individual.

Cyril: No. It doesn't leave work on the part of the individual. But at least they are capable of doing it. The trouble as I see it and the Party sees it, they're not prepared to devote the amount of time to the world in which they live that they devote to football, perhaps. in England and in America to baseball and basketball.

Arlene: Then you don’t recognize natural greed?

Cyril: No, I don’t recognize natural greed, as such. I recognize people are greedy, including myself. But I don’t think that is any natural aspect of man. I rather think that’s more a feature of human behavior that’s determined by social conditions under which he finds himself. (Voice from background: Desperation?)

Arlene: Jeanie just said "desperation.”

Cyril: Well, not so much desperation, perhaps, apart from the way in which this world is organized—rather stupidly in my opinion. There are those who become desperate because on the one hand, the world can turn out sufficient food to feed the millions of the world, while on the other hand millions of people starve. That is a desperate situation, and one which will exist as long as this type of world operates where food isn’t grown primarily for people to eat. I mean, that is of secondary importance. In fact, a lot of food that is produced isn’t fit for humans to eat very often. But the prime reason it is produced, I would say, is for sale on the market with view to profit. No profit, no production, and the people can die of starvation. That’s desperate and I think we’ve got to do something about it.

Arlene: Why does, or does the Socialist Party of Great Britain feel that a gradual reform is impossible?

Cyril: Well, we’ve come up against this political question of reformism in Great Britain since around the turn of the century. Organizations like the Labour Party were formed on the old Social Democratic Federation lines and put out the view that they wanted a different type of society and envisaged that this society could be obtained by a series of political reforms. Well, in England — and obviously I talk out of a great deal of political experience after seventy years of political reforms since the first of the century, some of which have been quite fundamental in character — as for example the introduction of the National Health Service, the fact that certain industries were nationalized, all reforms advocated by the Labour Party, fundamentally these reforms haven’t patched any of the basic problems that confront mankind. And we think that all reforms, some of which may be good, some of which have a left-handed kick, as it were, if added up, do not even touch the ownership of society, which — to us — is the basis of the ills that confront mankind today. So this process of reformism doesn’t in any way bring us that much nearer to the fundamental change which we consider is necessary.

Arlene: Could your ideals be expressed in the ballot?

Cyril: Yes, that is the idea of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Companion Parties, that the capture of political control, political power, to introduce a new way of life can only be done through peaceful means. We do not envisage a revolution on the streets behind barricades, lynching people, that does not give rise to a sane order of society. So It has got to be done through the ballot box.

Arlene: Were the socialist ideals of George Bernard Shaw any closer to your way of thinking?

Cyril: I like George Bernard Shaw as a dramatist. As a political commentator he was not particularly on the beam. He was a member of the Fabian Society which is an offshoot of the Labour Party. He was interested firstly in what the Labour Party stood for, namely, to try and reform, shall we say, rub the raw edges off the capitalist system but really to keep it in being with its ownership basis.

Arlene: Doesn’t it strike you that your goals are so enormous that they are virtually impossible?

Cyril: Uuhm . . .

Arlene: Of course you wouldn't be working for anything that you thought was impossible . . .

Cyril: Yes. If I thought it was impossible I wouldn't be devoting my time. We do realize it is an enormous task. But we have a number of features which are working for us, in many ways. If the introduction of the new system rested upon the mere handful of socialists, relatively speaking, in this and other parts of the country then you could say, why worry? But the way the system operates and organizes itself throws up such a series of problems which man has got to grapple with one way or another, otherwise he's a dead one, that this in itself, acts very much on happy hearts, and people begin to start thinking of things along lines of dealing with them from a worldwide basis without necessarily being socialists. There are a number of agencies, today, which are certainly not socialist — in fact, very much capitalist — in character but they are beginning to appreciate, and realize that the problems today are no longer confined to one geographical unit, but are world-wide in character.

Arlene: Can you mention what some are?

Cyril: Yes. I should think the Food and Agricultural Organization attached to the United Nations Organization has done an enormous amount of research work and printed a considerable amount of literature which is not socialist, but which in many ways has pin-pointed the problem as being one of a social nature and one of a world-wide character. They stop short there, of course, and here, I think, is their fundamental failing. They are dealing with these evils through the eyeglass of capitalism and as long as they wear that eyeglass they will not go any further than that.

Arlene: What about the abolition of money, which was suggested on this microphone some months back by Alan Watts. It is an interesting idea and it still haunts me — all the ramifications of it. Will you please develop that a little for us?

Cyril: Yes. This is one of the points that the socialist mentions — that they envisage a society without money, that at this juncture most people do think that we are cracked (laughter from the hostess). They've got so used to money that they can't envisage anything except money with which to obtain articles. But if you look back over history money wasn't always in existence, certainly not in primitive times and it only came into existence with the development of private property and became the complex money system that we know today as capitalism has become more and more complex . . . In London, recently, due to the fact that our transport system, much like yours in New York, is run down and doesn't pay its way the suggestion’s been made that it is not worthwhile collecting all of these silly coins and silly pieces of paper; let's ride for free. Well, this isn’t socialism, of course, but it shows the way in which people’s minds are working. To us, money is only a means of exchange in order that if I was in a bar instead of your radio studio and wanted a cup of coffee, I’d have to give fifteen cents for it because somebody owns that cup of coffee and if I want it I've got to pay them for it. But this presupposes ownership all away along the line. But if you have a world based on common ownership, where the coffee, the cocoa and all the thousand and one different things that men need in order to live are owned by the whole of society, then what would we have money for? It's no use paying ourselves money in order to obtain these things. And we envisage this socialist society as being one in which people will give according to their abilities and take according to their need. And we will not need money in order to do that.

Arlene: Isn’t that also Communist theory?

Cyril: Strictly speaking the words “socialism” and "communism” are synonomous terms. Marx, a hundred years ago wrote this in many of the political books and pamphlets he was writing at the time and it’s largely in the 20th century, particularly from the dating of the Russian Revolution of 1917, that the words "communism” and "socialism” seem to have taken on a different meaning. In short, some people look upon "socialism” as being parlor pink and "communism” as the deepest of red. But to us they are, indeed, identical terms.

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

From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

We Never Closed

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

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

How is it with the Empire ?

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

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

Spies and Ribaldry

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

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

Privilege

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smoothing it Over

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

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

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

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

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

Ivan

The Myth of Scotland's Oil (1973)

From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the victory of the Dundee by-election was regarded as a triumph by the Labour Party, the Scottish National Party must also have been elated by the large number of votes secured by their candidate who ran a close second. This would suggest that the Nats are making a comeback after a period in the doldrums following the party’s zenith in 1968, after Winifred Ewing’s election at Hamilton, when membership was claimed to be in excess of 90,000 with some 500 branches. At present members total some 60,000, with branches around 440.

Why the revival? Undoubtedly the rejuvenating shot in the arm came in the form of North Sea oil. The recent successes of the oil consortiums couldn’t have happened at a better time for the SNP, for two reasons. First—and this is the kernel of the Nationalist argument — the SNP have always asserted that the problems confronting Scotland resulted from the channelling of Scottish revenue directly into the coffers of the “English government’’ thereby preventing the Scottish worker from deriving any benefit from it (despite the obvious fact that his English counterpart doesn’t do too well either!). The advent of the Nats’ new sacred cow, oil, greatly strengthens this argument and has the added bonus of promising such offshoot titbits as rig-building, construction and service industries.

Second, the Nats had previously conceded (surprisingly) that in the early days of home-rule the standard of living would actually be lowered. The wealth they claim oil would bring to an independent Scotland allows them to discard this vote-loser, and the result is that many workers who were previously sceptical of home-rule are now expressing concern over “Scottish Oil” which goes, according to the SNP poster, “To London with Love”.

Who owns North Sea Oil ?

The territorial control of the world’s continental shelf areas was settled by the United Nations Continental Shelf Convention of 1958 when, by an agreement binding after 1969, countries bordering any particular section of continental shelf were given sovereign rights to explore and exploit the natural resources of the shelf. The North Sea continental shelf has since been divided up between Norway, Germany, Denmark, Holland and Britain. The first British round of licences for oil exploration was granted in 1964, several more having been made since, the latest in March 1972. By the end of 1972 at least six commercial-sized oil fields had been discovered in the Scottish sector together with other recent strikes (whose potential is still being assessed). They are:

• Forties Field which was the first and one of the biggest. Discovered by British Petroleum about a hundred miles east of Aberdeen. Eventual peak production will be in excess of 400,000 barrels per day (20 million tons per year).
• Montrose Field discovered about 30 miles south-east of the Forties Field by Amoco and thought to be capable of producing 100,000 barrels per day.
• Auk Field being brought by Shell into production at a rate of 40,000 barrels/day.
• Argyll Field is reckoned by Hamilton’s to be possibly in the 200,000 barrels/day range.
• Brent Field has Shell/Esso anticipating an eventual rate of over 300,000 barrels/day.
• Beryl Field Mobil are looking for a possible 300,000 barrels/day here.

The Face of Prosperity

Under London rule, argue the Nationalists in a new pamphlet The Reality of Scotland’s Oil by Nicholas Dekker, only 9 per cent of the taxes and royalties from this oil will go to Scotland. Under home-rule, however, the Nats claim that by 1980 (assuming that it will take five years to develop an oilfield in the North Sea) new fields discovered during 1973, 1974 and 1975 could bring production up to 150 million tons per year with an estimated gross value of £2,250 million, of which something like £1,400 million or over per annum could tumble into a Scottish exchequer. Coupled with an assumed 50 per cent of “Scottish participation” (investment of capital) in production and of 40 per cent or 60 per cent in ancillary costs (based on above figures), total potential worth to a Scottish economy would be 85 per cent or 90 per cent of gross value—£1,900 million to £2,000 [million] per annum.

This money can, insist the SNP, “be used to secure for all time, prosperity, security, and a satisfying life style for all the people of Scotland”. Among the many promises (play it again, Sam!) would be vastly improved provision for the old, the sick and needy, and the wiping out of the chronic housing problem. Thus armed, the SNP are preparing to contest every Scottish scat at the next General Election.

. . . and its Reverse

Socialists constantly expose the fallacy of home-rule, pointing as examples to other self-governed countries such as Libya, Venezuela, Russia, and even America, where workers derive little if any benefit from oil produced locally. Indeed the opposite can result as is the case in Aberdeen where the oil boom has resulted in a property price-spiral far surpassing anything in Scotland (in fact reaching parity with English property prices) with such bizarre examples as the two-apartment tenement flat which fetched a price of over £4,000!

Equally unsound is the argument that the oil industry must inevitably produce an increase in the number of jobs available. For it could also mean a drop in the demand for other fuels, notably coal, with redundancies in those industries and their offshoots. Not only that, but many of the “new” jobs will, if the SNP have their way, simply have been taken from workers already doing them in England, so it’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Jock, a situation which in no way benefits the workers as a class.

Who Benefits ?

Perhaps the biggest fallacy of all is the Nats’ vision of the anticipated wealth from oil being used exclusively to provide a heaven on earth for Scottish workers. Of course, as the Nats themselves admit, the oil companies will have to have it made worth their while if they are to put up the “vast sums of risk capital to finance search and exploration” and so will the “private and semi-private Scottish capital” they talk about. Also, the cost of government, including the armies of civil servants which any modern capitalist nation must have to administer its affairs, will have to be paid for, and obviously no government can afford to neglect to defend such a valuable property as its oil fields so it will have to provide for defence either independently or through NATO. So, one way and another, there can be little left with which to fulfil the grandiose promises being made. We can confidently assert that the benefit of oil in Scotland will go, as elsewhere in the world, to the owners and the most that Scottish workers can expect from the oil boom is . . . work and wages!

Finally, it’s worth considering that if the North Sea does produce a supply of oil of any significance in relation to world fuel supplies, and bearing in mind the recent panic measures taken by President Nixon, the scramble for oil could become intensified (rapidly expanding Japan, already using 50,000 million gallons a year, estimates treble consumption by the 1980’s). And as trade war sometimes develops into armed war, the tragic result could be that workers living in Scotland could well find themselves, like those in Iceland, being called upon to take up arms to defend “their” oil.

A. McNeill

Labour's Futile Housing Reform (1973)

From the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour’s promise to take over all privately rented accommodation in London is a confession of the failure of its previous policies of rent control and improvement grams to solve the housing problem. And it too will fail.

Rent control had eventually led to housing conditions getting worse. Many landlords neglected to maintain their houses properly since the low rents they received didn’t make it worth their while. Faced with this problem the last Labour government came to accept the Tories’ policy of allowing rents to rise to enable landlords to make bigger profits. True, they did introduce a measure of re-control of rents. But this very same Act set up the now notorious “fair rents” machinery which the Tories had merely to extend to council tenants. It wasn’t long before people were complaining that this was benefiting landlords more than tenants — but then it had to if landlords were to make more profit.

Then in 1969 Labour introduced another Housing Act whose effect has nearly been as disastrous as what labour politicians used to call the “wicked Tory Rent Act” of 1957. This Act extended the so-called fair rents formula to some previously controlled tenancies, but it also provided for local councils to make “improvement grants” to landlords. The intention no doubt was that the sitting tenants would benefit in terms of better housing, even if they did have to pay more rent. But it has not worked like this at all. Property companies have bought houses off smaller landlords, obtained a grant to convert them into flats — and then let them off at much higher rents. Far from the sitting tenants’ benefiting they have had to find alternative accommodation. Whole communities of lower-paid workers, as in parts of Islington, have been driven out of their traditional homes by these “improvement” grants, swelling the number of homeless and aggravating the housing shortage.

The whole business illustrates the futility of piecemeal reform as a solution to the housing problem. It proves the soundness of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s contention that the housing problem can never be solved as long as capitalism lasts. What is required is a complete change in the basis of society which will bring the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of all the people. Only on this basis can production be planned with a view to satisfying people’s needs. Housing would then be no problem. The resources, human and material, to build enough decent homes for everybody have long been in existence. In Socialism there will be no class privileges or profit motive to prevent them being used to do this, as there is under capitalism.

Letter: “Democracy” in Greece (1973)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

In your April issue, commenting on Andreas Papandreou’s Democracy at Gunpoint, you said that the situation in pre-1967 Greece was different from that in other places with “a workable, though limited, political democracy” because ‘‘parliament in Greece did not control the coercive side of the state machine”. This is so, but there are one or two other points which I think should be stressed.

Mr. Papandreou's party was not a Socialist party as we understand it, and although they used the usual slogans of the Left never intended to establish Socialist Democracy in Greece. The Centre Union was very authoritarian in its structure and its policies were by far more conservative than those of the Labour Party here.

The trouble with Greece is that all those who pose now as “liberators”, “democrats” and God knows what (including Mr. Papandreou) failed to realize or did not want to realise that you cannot hope for Socialism unless you have the conscious consent of the majority.

Greek society is a non-democratic one. This is apparent not only in the structure of its political but also of its educational and religious institutions and the family.

That is not to say that I accept the colonels’ argument that they will teach the Greek people democracy(!). Their régime is a ruthless dictatorship and democratic principles can only be learnt by living in a democracy and perhaps making the inevitable mistakes. What I mean is that Greece does not need failed bourgeois opportunists, but Socialists who will work seriously for Socialism.

D. M., Swansea.

Reply: 

In general terms we would agree with the views expressed by our correspondent, providing it is understood that Socialism — a democratic society based on the common ownership of the means of life with production solely for use not sale or profit — could not be established in a single country like Greece but must be world-wide. And of course our review of Papandreou’s book did make it clear that his Centre Union party was the party for modern capitalism in Greece. We would agree that what the workers of Greece need is Socialism, not a government under such “failed bourgeois opportunists” as Papandreou.

Editorial Committee.

A Wet Old Season (1973)

Book Review from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kicking against the Education System

Fifteen years ago the answer to all the deficiencies in working-class education was to have comprehensive schools. This was to be the mid-century’s great reform, comparable with the Welfare State in its hoped-for transforming and equalizing effect. So comprehensive schools were established, and a steep-stepped gradation among them sprang up immediately. Some became the Etons and Gordonstouns of this plastic brave new world; others produced associations of well-heeled parents fighting to keep their children out of them. Inside the schools all the inequalities of the old system were repeated and all the problems recurred. What change?

Without relish, we can say that we told you so. Our 1959 pamphlet Schools Today predicted precisely those outcomes from making State education "comprehensive”. Reformers are painfully slow to learn, however. That is why we are out of sympathy for the agonized cries of Christopher Searle’s book This New Season (Calder & Boyars, £2.60). Alternating presentations of children’s poems with his own bitter attacks on the education system, the writer calls for "rank and file control of the schools” and "democratizing the schools as a fundamental part of society”. Yet we have just been watching a reorganization with those claims and supported by the entire Left fall flat on its face, demonstrating that within capitalism schools are what they have to be.

Contradictory Anger

Christopher Searle’s account of what they are is a wide-eyed one, full of astonished indignation at discoveries that the teacher is a wage-slave, that “the child is . . . raw material to fill up the functions for making profit”, that the education system is “divided and hierarchical”. The reactions are those of the student who has believed in the idealism of training-college discussions, then gone to his first teaching post and been told to forget that nonsense and get on with the job as it really is (which is what most young teachers are told as soon as they start). Of course the statements are true, but the truth is not very profound. In all epochs, education aims to fit the young to live in and maintain their society — not as a rulers’ conspiracy, but as a necessary function. Education in capitalism has no alternative to being education for capitalism.

It has to be said that contradictions and sloppy thinking abound in This New Season. You cannot slate Stepney, where Searle’s school is, as “a decaying, violent neighbourhood”, “claustrophobic”, etc., and then berate teachers for not choosing to live there: on his own evidence, who would? Teachers are “underpaid, confused, frightened”, but also guilty of “cosy, middle-class” existence. The most absurd and prejudicial item in the book is a photograph of the headmaster and the vice-chairman of the Governors, obviously intended to condemn by itself. They look unappetizing, certainly. But would a candid-camera snap of, say, Cliff and Healy be more attractive? And, to turn the thing inside-out, would State education become acceptable if Mrs. Thatcher were a dolly-bird? What nonsense is this !

Blind Alleys

The question is what schools are all about. Searle is correct in saying they exist “to prepare a child for his future employers”, mistaken in thinking this primary function can be stopped as immoral and a worthier one substituted under capitalism. The example given of an alternative is the Scotland Road Free School where it is said “The whole of Liverpool is our classroom”. No doubt the Free School is an enjoyable place, but the truth is that it is as irrelevant as A. S. Neill’s Summerhill. On one hand, its material is children in a social section the State can afford, at least up to a point, not to bother about. On the other, most educational innovations are picked up from experimental and minority schools, and their methods put to use for “the enemy culture”. The poacher finds he was only a trainee gamekeeper, after all.

Beyond reiterating the value of poetry as a liberating activity, and the importance of the English teacher, the book has nothing whatever about the content of education. Searle says:

. . .  we need more schools, more teachers, more books, more facilities for our working-class children, more concentration to develop their frustrated and insulted potential. The more economic and educational demands we make for our class, the more we threaten the prevailing standards peddled in the schools.

It might be remarked that this has happened. Since the 1944 Education Act there have been more schools, books, teachers, etc., and “the prevailing standards” have apparently been reinforced not threatened by them. But what is the desired “more” to consist of? Only hints are given when Searle talks of “the wastage”, lack of “any social opportunity”, “an inequitable and divided society”. One has to infer that he believes there is a superior kind of education given to the well-to-do that should be shared equally by working-class children.

Marketing Goods

There are dreadful fallacies here. To give the most handsome schooling to every child would not alter anything in economic life. An adolescent’s poem in the book asks:

Now will a college be my fate?

Or National Assistance?

The answer is: quite likely, both. Not long ago attention was drawn to the number of science graduates — chemistry in particular — who could not get jobs.

Searle writes of “a choice” offered to the working-class child: “be consumed, move upwards, away from your origins and join the middle class, or fall back and join the labour market”. This is abysmal rubbish. The “middle class” of professional and managerial people are in the labour market with all the rest. And what emerges is that Searle sees himself, for all the talk about “identity” and “class allegiances”, as coming down from the middle class to give a helping hand to the proles:

The teacher, society’s agent in the schools, is like the lonely dustman. Dependent on the children for both his raison d’etre and his raw material, he takes them from the dark world of the school to the darker world of the dead-end job or the dole, and yet his liberalism still likes to make him see them as friends . . . The fact is that we are all workers: teachers, children, parents, and children themselves can soon identify with oppressed and exploited adults.

What needs to be remembered also is that the subject-content of education is itself a collection of marketed products. The “better” the education, the more this applies. A great deal of what is taught in schools, halo-surrounded, is practically worthless either in getting-a-job terms or for personal satisfaction. The biggest educational growth industry of the present time is modern languages — formerly Spanish and German, now Russian, with Chinese on the horizon (in America the upsurge is in Japanese). Not to learn at least one such language is taken as a deprivation, but the fact is that the likelihood of using it for any reason at all is microscopic. The use of mathematics above office-boy or workshop level is so rare as to make its universal teaching absurd. That is not to denigrate any branch of study, but to point out that behind every subject is the sale of books, equipment and buildings. If you don’t believe it, go to an “education exhibition”. Is this the “opportunity” that must be won by struggle?

Attitudes

Searle’s most persistent attack is on the attitudes imparted in schools, summarized by him as “white middle class consciousness”. Its other side is shown by citing a survey made recently by the Medical Research Council’s Social Medicine Unit, where

it was revealed that in the East End of London, the single most important factor in determining whether a child becomes a ‘delinquent’ and appears before the courts, is the school he attends. Their research completely reversed the majority view very widely and conveniently held in the schools that the home environment and lack of parental control is the determining factor in whether a child becomes a ‘delinquent’.

That is all true, as far as it goes. The dividing and streaming of schoolchildren is undoubtedly a catalyst to delinquency: those labelled “reject” get the message and, often, react accordingly. The trouble is that different factors are confused here. Basically, the school and a child’s place in it are likely to reflect his family’s income and circumstances. In the days of the eleven-plus it was commonly said among teachers that the scholarships might as well be given in relation to the parents’ income because that was what school prowess at that age amounted to; and this fact of capitalist life has transferred itself to the comprehensive system.

But delinquents, whatever else is said concerning them, have plainly rejected “white middle class consciousness”. (They have also been rejected by it; and in the quotation above it is hard to see any other kind of consciousness at work.) It remains to be shown that attitudes presented in schools do carry and have a decisive effect. A report in The Times on 19th December 1972 summarized four recent studies on whether education can change people or society. All conclude that it cannot. Thus, the Jencks report from the United States:

To improve schools would not eliminate inequality in cognitive skills or poverty and economic inequalities between adults . . . According to the Jencks arguments, schools are at best only marginal institutions.

Prisons and Freedom

To speak of schools as prisons will not do, despite examples to be found. “Factories” would be nearer the mark. However, in any society there is a minimum of skills and knowledge which must be acquired if the individual and the community are not to be at disadvantages: literacy, proficiency with numbers, the use of tools and means of expression and enquiry. Ideally, what happens beyond that is a matter of individual inclination matched to social needs. Nevertheless, it is mistaken to think that all learning must be fun and wherever it is not is a prison. Much learning, at both child and adult levels, has to be unpalatable grind with satisfaction only at later stages. What is wrong with capitalism’s education is that the satisfactions are rarely one’s own and principally realized in profit-making for others; but to seek to trivialize and gift-wrap learning is to underwrite the Woolworth mentality of capitalism.

Schools cannot be treated as if they were separable from society, capable of being re-directed in isolation. It is always possible for a teacher to have his own attitudes reproduced, particularly in writing and art, by the suggestibility of children and be elated by these signs of a new outlook. Unfortunately, the effect does not last because it cannot be based on understanding. Bernard Shaw said in 1914 that the people who became emotionally excited over peace were the same ones who became emotionally excited over war; and he was speaking of adults. Of course it is desirable that education should aim at “control of our own lives”, and “reciprocity, comradeship and shared experience”. But to obtain that, we must first create a society to which such purposes will be functional — not the other way round.

Socialists working for that society have a special interest in everyone’s education. It is ex ducere to bring forth, “educe” to draw out: not the stuffing-in of school education or the parrot-unison of ideologies, but the joining of knowledge to experience from which the conception of and the resolve for a different world must arise.

Robert Barltrop

50 Years Ago: The Capital Levy (1973)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the “Forward” (Saturday, May 5th, 1923), Mr. F. W. Pethick Lawrence, a Labour candidate and prominent advocate, sets out what he calls “The Case for the Capital Levy,” with the sub-title, “Lift the Burden of Debt from Industry and Labour.”

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If the burden rested on the backs of the workers it might be worth while trying to throw it off. But if the workers have no surplus, then they cannot be robbed of what they don’t possess; and, in spite of apparent objections, the workers as a whole do not suffer from high, nor benefit from low taxation. They suffer because they are robbed, and they are robbed whether taxes are high or low, and the degree of the robbery has, over a period, no direct or indirect relation to taxation. As we have seen, the workers receive all the wealth they possess from the capitalist owners, and, further, these owners control at present the machinery by means of which taxes are levied.

Now, the workers either receive a surplus over their minimum needs or they do not. If they don’t, then they cannot be robbed of that non-existent surplus afterwards. If they do, then the capitalists will have given the surplus either because they are philanthropists or because they are compelled by economic forces. If they are philanthropists, then they will not take back the gift they gave; and if they were compelled to give, then the same forces will prevent them from taking it back.

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The pertinent question Lawrence might answer is this : Would the capitalists, if there were no taxation at all, give the workers a larger share of the wealth produced, and, if so, why?

Mr. Lawrence says : “The main principle of the levy is simplicity itself. It is to pay off debt out of wealth. The wealth of the country as a whole is the wealth of its citizens.” This, as I have already explained, is quite untrue. The wealth of the country as a whole is the private property of the capitalist class. Only the owners of property can suffer the burden of taxation, and only the owners do suffer. Some of them want you, the propertyless workers, to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, and Mr. Lawrence and the Labour Party are making a bid for office on the strength of offering to do the necessary publicity work.

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While the capitalists will on the one hand be relieved from the burden of paying the debt interest, they will also, on the other hand, be deprived of the present means of paying that interest. Some will gain by reduced taxation what others lose by the paying off by the State of their quota of the debt and their consequent loss of interest on their bonds. The money paid out will, in its turn, be reinvested in industry, and we shall be as we were.

(From an article by E. Hardy in the Socialist Standard for August 1923.)