Burned out and six feet under (1992)

From issue 8 of the World Socialist Review

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) discovered a while back that homicide tops the list of occupational hazards causing job-related deaths among women in the U.S. “Violence is a contagious disease,” as H.G. Wells once said. On average, 158 female wage-slaves in the U.S. lose their lives each year serving the capitalist class. The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health division chalks up this phenomenon to women working in retail sector jobs and to a lack of safety precautions like better lighting, safer cash handling, bulletproof barricades and the like. Despite their medical expertise, they are being most unscientific in distinguishing symptoms from causes in this morbidity. Even Mahatma Gandhi had a better grasp of cause and effect, as we can see from his diagnosis: “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

So long as we live in a society where one must buy life’s necessities, there will always be a desperate compulsion to acquire money by any means possible. Why are women in this dangerous position of confronting desperate robbers to begin with? The same reason. Like their killers, they too must make the acquisition of money a top priority to live in this capitalist set-up. For the ruling (capitalist) class will have it no other way. No reform or precaution will change this objective fact of competitive society. It can’t help but breed violence and death.

Dr. Catherine Bell, an epidemiologist with the CDC, alluded to the trends in the sexual division of labor as a contributing factor. She inadvertently indicted the conditions of labor in general as a systematic killer of the working class. “Part of it may be that women tend to be employed in places where the risk of homicide is elevated instead of places where they are likely to be electrocuted or crushed or killed in traffic accidents.”

Right to self-obliteration

Life’s little career trade-offs! You can risk being murdered at the cash register, or you can utilize your “right” to equal employment and increase your chances of being electrocuted, crushed or wiped out in a traffic accident! Only in a free (to exploit) society can such challenging choices of self-obliteration be put before us. The CDC report finds that most on-the-job fatalities involve male workers dying from the above-mentioned non-homicidal causes. Whether from a robber’s gun or a boss’s job requirement, the end result is the same.

Violence at the workplace is clearly a problem symptomatic of the class oppression of both sexes in general. It is the quest for profits that makes production (and work generally) a life-threatening activity. It is the artificially imposed poverty that compels the working class to run the gauntlet daily. Each day many are struck down. The hazardous conditions in which this takes place are only symptomatic of the disease, not the cause of it. The disease is capitalism.

Capitalism, with its parasitic ruling class that owns and controls the means and instruments of production: subjecting the overwhelming majority to inhuman conditions like violent competition, pay-as-you-go insecure housing, second-rate food, dangerous daily amounts of stress. The list of these symptoms could go on and on; capitalism creates countless avenues of misery for the human condition.

The cure for this ailment is socialism, and it begins with socialist consciousness. The administration of this cure includes you. Your clinic is the World Socialist movement. With enough house calls and mass innoculations, we can witness the eradication of this morbid scourge in our lifetimes!

W. J. Lawrimore

They're all Utopians now (1991)

Editorial from issue 7 of the World Socialist Review

The “failure of communism” has come to be peddled as the latest version of the usual ideological hamburger on the mass media’s instant menu. What has happened, however, is not that communism has failed but only that Leninism has collapsed. Right from the very beginning, in What is to be Done? Lenin had expressed the view that the working class was “exclusively by its own effort . . . able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc.” [1] This was the view adopted by the Bolshevik majority within the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (“the theoretical doctrine of Social Democracy”). Buttressing that, Lenin’s thesis on the origins of the theory of socialism was accepted as a good replacement for the Gospel: it “grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals.” [2]

For a very long time, this belief that revolutionary theory could arise “altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement” jammed the only channel by which workers could in fact formulate their protests against the ravages of capitalism. It made Bolshevism, as a chrysalis stage of Social Democracy, reinforced by the authority of the Soviet state, the dominant vehicle of working-class aspirations around the world. Any attempts at directly conceptualizing an alternative to capitalism out of the experience of the class struggle were thereby sentenced to exile. A smothering blanket of pseudo-communist legitimacy helped to choke off a burgeoning trend toward “raising hell” in the workplace.

Capitalist butterfly

With the opening movement of a Solidarity government in Poland, followed by a chain reaction of similar upsets throughout the Leninist countries, the Bolshevik chrysalis has at long last given way to a dazzling (capitalist) butterfly. The market system has made an ideological comeback in the state-capitalist countries in a big way—although, as socialists have been pointing out assiduously ever since the November Revolution, there never ceased to be a market system operating in those countries; it had simply transformed itself into a “central plan”. Thanks to the nomenklatura system (a system of patronage which assured the respective “Communist” parties a vice grip on the strategic economic and political positions), the well-protected capitalists who spent decades consolidating their vulnerable position behind the “iron curtain” now feel confident enough to “rise to full stature in all their giant strength,” to use Lenin’s phrase.

And now that the spectre of communism has finally melted away, some space has again opened up for the real thing to resume its interrupted trajectory. But it can always be interrupted again if we let our thoughts remain centered on the main institutions of class division—profits and wages—rather than on its replacement. For purely business reasons alone, a capitalist will always tend to be incapable of understanding socialism as a concept (as a system of society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production); doing so would require stepping outside the market frame of reference and looking at the world from the vantage point of a human being. This is not impossible; but it can obviously happen only rarely. Then there are, of course, the numerous supporting ideological arguments generated by the world of business as a secondary form of self-defense.

Alternatives to the system

Less obvious is the case of the worker/ professional who fails to grasp even the basics of socialism. What we fill our minds with forms a pattern of energy use which precludes the development of other patterns of thought, and filling our minds with thoughts of struggling to get by in the market leaves little room for choosing alternatives to the market system. Without being steeped in any direct form of pro-capitalist ideology—even being against capitalism in general but not specifically against the market system—millions of people can go on, year in and year out, remaining indifferent to the real possibilities life could hold for them in a system of wealth production which didn’t require them to be poor so it could function.

The “spark” of consciousness is always present, because the poverty enforced by capital is endlessly generating new discontents (and leaving old ones to fester). Capitalists have a built-in incentive to deny the very possibility of eliminating capital; wage-earners (including salaried professional workers), on the other hand, have a devil by the tail and are constantly compelled to find new ways to rationalize their exploitation. The mass media are there to help them in this—but even these are only a band-aid solution, and other machineries of repression either have already been deployed or are being researched. (The idea that wealth is something to be enjoyed simply as the outcome of human labor and that a whole system of society could operate worldwide without the use of money is in any case airily dismissed by the information commandos.)

Utopia now

Capitalists see no need for any system beyond capitalism because their utopia is already an historical fact. The abundance promised (eventually) by capitalism is everywhere; its delivery is nowhere in sight. Life in this utopia is so beautiful and so perfect that the happy workers could not rationally entertain thoughts of doing wealth production differently than on a profit basis—and now, even that paragon of communism, the international group of Leninist parties, has “failed” in its historic mission to take over the world and impoverish everyone. Yet people are starving on a scale as never before in world history while food surpluses are stockpiled or destroyed because their existence threatens profits; poverty is the lot of more human beings now than in any previous period; and even the environmental basis for conducting exploitation is in the process of breaking down under the pressure of continuing systematic abuse.

The time has never been better for junking a system that only works in the eyes of its advocates. Now that it has been shown that Leninism could be scrapped with impunity, why not take a much more productive step and move on to replacing capitalism itself? 

Footnotes:

[1] What is to be Done?, "The Beginning of the Spontaneous Upsurge".

[2] What is to be Done?, "Primitiveness and Economism".

Oscar Wilde on “Living for Others” (1988)

From issue 5 of the World Socialist Review

The following article is taken with permission from The Nation (2/20/88), where It appears as "Minority Report" (a feature column) . The writer— Christopher Hitchens— not only expresses an insight into the underlying realities of exploitation and social class but also reminds us of a few things about Oscar Wilde that the capitalist class would presumably prefer to play down as quaint or awkward.

 

That said, we do take exception to what seems to be the author's implied existence of a "middle class," since the liberal middle class of Wilde's time has itself become today's conservative "upper class", having changed only its ideological diapers in the process. Developed capitalism knows only two classes: those who own the means of production and those who work for them to produce and distribute wealth, either to the former's profit or to their minimum cost. A worker is anyone whose only source of income is the sale of their mental and physical abilities.

 

—The Editor

. . .  The salient point about (Oscar) Wilde was the economy and address of his wit. He did not froth with bons mots like some second-rate charmer. He was a tough and determined Irishman who more than once flattened bullies with his fist, and most of the time—if we exempt pardonable and tempting sallies about blue china and decorative screens—his drawling remarks were not snobbish or mannered. I suppose that people need to see him as a species of languid dandy, which is why The Soul of Man Under Socialism is almost never discussed when dear Oscar's name comes up.

Try to find that essay in any of the current anthologies of Wilde. First published in 1891, it was geldingly retitled The Soul of Man while Wilde was in prison. It expressed the sensibility that had impelled him to take the side of the Irish rebels and, in particular, to oppose the British government's attempted frame up of Charles Stewart Parnell, who, like Wilde, was destroyed on a charge of immorality when all else had failed. It gave Wilde the same distinction as that which he acquired by being the only writer in London to sign George Bernard Shaw's petition for the Haymarket martyrs. And it contains the following imperishable sentence:

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody.

This is not the flippant remark that philistlnes might take it to be. It is in fact what is truly meant by "compassion," a word now made to sound sickening in the mouths of Democratic hypocrites.

What those hypocrites mean when they intone the hack word "compassion" is that we should not forget the needy and the desperate as we pursue our glorious path of self-advancement. This is the rough equivalent of the older injunction that we should remember the wretched in our prayers. Wilde was proposing something infinitely more daring and intelligent—that we regard poverty, ugliness and the exploitation of others as something repulsive to ourselves. If we see a slum, a ghetto, a beggar, or an old person eating pet food, we should not waste pity on the victim. We should want the abolition of such conditions for our own sakes. The burden of enduring them is too much.

This is why early socialists were quite proud to be accused of spitting in the face of charity. The principle that an injury to one is an injury to all is not just talk; it is the expression of a solidarity that recognizes mutual interest. As Wilde also wrote, in his review of Edward Carpenter's Chants of Labour, "For to make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing." His appreciation of paradox here makes an excellent match with his rejection of sentimentality.

There is another sense in which it would be nice to think that Wilde intended his insight about "living for others." In the great working class novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists the laborer Robert Tressell describes the feelings of charity and gratitude that, overwhelm the credulous, patriotic men who worked alongside him. They were content to spend their entire lives living for others—their betters—each of them confident of his own sturdy independence. This type did not disappear with the waning of the Industrial Revolution. You can meet him today, the despair of "progressive" intellectuals, as he bellies up to the bar with his "can't fool me" talk and proceeds to speak, sometimes using the very same phrases, in the tones of the President's last lying paean to native virtues. Praise for these philanthropists, especially at times when they are needed to be expended in war, is the only official rhetoric you hear that mentions the word "class." Almost the only place that class distinctions are stressed these days is at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Class Factor Downplayed

They deserve to be stressed more often. Society labors on, supporting both an enormously wealthy upper class, whose corporate holdings are frequently tax free or even tax subsidized, and a growing underclass, which is sporadically and pathetically cited as a spur to conscience. Never is it asked, What are these classes for?

A sort of moral blackmail is exerted from both poles. The underclass, one gathers, should be dulled with charity and welfare provision lest it turn nasty. The upper class must likewise be conciliated by vast handouts, lest it lose the "incentive" to go on generating wealth. A rising tide, as we have recently learned, does not lift all boats, nor does a falling tide sink them all. If people were to recognize that they are all in the same boat, they would take better care of its furnishings, its comfort and its general decor. This is what Wilde meant by the importance of the aesthetic. 

Radicals have been taught to distrust any too great display of individualism, and where they forget this lesson there are always conservatives to remind them (a madly sweet but slightly lugubrious example of this style appears In the current New Criterion, reprobating my good self). Wilde himself was haunted by a Podhoretz-like chaplain in prison, who reported that the cell reeked of semen. (How could he tell?) We are in the debt of the brave man who taught us to ask, of their majesties, whether they deserve us, or our continued amiable subservience.

Christopher Hitchens

Editorial: Of Contras, Pros . . . and Socialists (1987)

Editorial from issue 3 of the World Socialist Review

From the inordinate amount of attention being given to the Reagan Administration's double-dealing in the two affairs of arms to Iran and the diversion of funds to the contras, yon would think something really big was happening in US capitalism these days. For Irangate/contragate has become a major media event.

Despite the apparent ferocity of the clashes currently taking place between rival political factions within the capitalist class, from one angle they are actually beneficial to the capitalist class as a whole: they obscure from view the more basic scandal of the division of the world into political entities or nation-states; they deflect attention from the more insidious ongoing misappropriation constituted by the monopoly of the capitalist class of the means and instruments of wealth production.

Media-generated concern over the poor little Reagan Administration's predicament masks (or perpetuates) the working majority's confused identification of its interests with those of the "top ten" per cent of the population making up the owning class. And—every bit as much as the more flamboyant histrionics of Dallas or of Dynasty— this fondling of the rich and the powerful belies a pernicious cult of personality on the part of the media around the world (and one by no means limited to Russia and China).

The World Socialist Movement, for its part, does not find much of an issue in all of the hoopla. Its one and only reason for existence is to disseminate information relating to the functioning and foundations of capitalist society as well as to sow the seeds of socialism. The crises that shake our planet and even threaten the viability of life on it do not spring from the actions of conniving, dishonest politicians—though these latter certainly may help to trigger catastrophes.

The real problem is rather the continuation of the system of producing goods and services for sale on the market (ie, commodities) with a view to profit. The real solution is a socialist organiza­tion of society, the introduction of a worldwide society based on production for use.

So while we as socialists may derive some enjoyment from watching the capitalist class being forced to do its dirty laundry on TV (there is after all no reason why its own propaganda can't occasionally degenerate into farce), we ought not to imitate the reformists and ignore the real issue that we never find presented in the media: the urgency of common ownership.

Short of that, all that is really possible is the replacement of one governing party or regime by another. Socialism, or common ownership of the means of production, will on the contrary only come about through the conscious action of the working class around the world, aimed at replacing the entire system of exploitation, and it is only in helping to bring this about that socialists can ever hope to distinguish themselves from both the witting and the unwitting supporters of capitalism.

—Editorial Committee, WSP (US)

Editorial: Is there work after capitalism? (1987)

Editorial from issue 3 of the World Socialist Review

Under capitalism work is necessarily drudgery; and, though the production of commodities (on which capitalism is based) is not drudgery in itself, even the most gratifyingly direct forms of commodity production—that done by artisans, for example—rest on what is at the very least an emotionally repressive basis. A commodity is made to be exchanged: that is its purpose. Work as a human phenomenon, on the other hand, is carried out solely to satisfy human needs, and because people must work together to accomplish this, work is an inherently collective phenomenon as well.

A human community works to satisfy its needs, and that is what the genes and instincts of human beings are programmed to render gratifying about work. Consequently, we can consider only those labor processes which satisfy this condition as "gratifying." And obviously, the labor required to produce commodities does not satisfy it, since it is labor done not directly for purposes of satisfaction but indirectly, for purposes of exchange. Just because work is organized into complex production processes does not therefore make it "toil." And just because it is simple and psychologically stimulating is not enough to make it gratifying.

When capitalism, late in the period of commodity production, arrives on the scene and revolutionizes the production process from top to bottom, "socializing" it, pushing artisan labor to scattered points on its periphery, work has already been steeping in the brine of drudgery for several millennia. The universalization of wage labor (including its refinement, the professional salary) enforced by capital means the locking of the prison door for the "free laborers", the "working poor," who have been literally whipped, beaten and badgered into the condition of having no longer any commodities to exchange on the market (long since taken over by the capitalist class). All they have left is their ability to do work: and all the work they can find to do centers on profit.

Work done under such unnatural conditions cannot but be unpleasant. The worker has no control over any aspect of it, and industrial production in particular is a brutalizing torture. Not only that, but labor performed for the sake of profit itself becomes capital accumulated out of profit, causing the capital to grow in magnitude relative to the workers whose labor generates it.

The accumulation of capital, for its part, becomes a source of ever greater complexity in the production process, pushing workers further and further away from any ability to control the "world of work" in which they are trapped. To human beings it has every aspect of a process operating independently of human intelligence and defying society's best efforts to control it.

But (as the song goes), is that all there is? Supposing no one works for anyone else anymore and no one is forced to find a job to get the money to obtain the things they need: will society still be stuck with the kind of inhuman labor processes it has inherited from commodity production? The answer is quite simply, no.

The commodity, implying as it does the setting aside of wealth from the consumption needs of the community, contains the germ of discontent in its very being. Abandoning wage labor means eliminating commodity production: regaining control over wealth production. It also means deciding what kind of organized, coordinated efforts people will be prepared to make for the sake of obtaining satisfaction, and on what scale they will be willing to carry this out. But having done that, they will have created a society that runs on labor processes which are voluntary in nature and in which labor is no longer a chore—a socialist society.

—Editorial Committee, WSP (US)

Weirder than fiction (1986)

Book Review from issue 2 of the World Socialist Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ray Rawlings

Too Lazy To Work? (1989)

From issue 6 of the World Socialist Review

Everybody seems to be upset these days about welfare. The percentage of Americans who live— somehow—on welfare monies seems to be steadily mounting, and a rising outcry is heard against the imagined throng of lazy rascals among them who simply do not want to work but who would rather live off the backs of the taxpayers.

Now, there are a couple of interesting oddities about this and about other conclusions, by many, on the issue of welfare. Take, for example, the case of the so-called lazy bums who do not work simply because they do not want to work. Nobody would argue that 100 per cent of the unemployed are simply too lazy to work. There are always a few, it is acknowledged, who are honest and industrious, but who cannot find jobs. The worst diehard enemy of welfare would admit to this.

But the strange thing about this assessment is the fact that immediately one wonders why those few honest and industrious among the welfare recipients cannot find jobs. If 90 per cent of the unemployed don’t work only because they do not want to work, it should follow, logically, that there must be a great number of jobs that are available. Why, then, would the 10 per cent find any difficulty in locating the anxious, would-be employers of their labor? Something funny about that argument, isn’t there?

What upsets socialists about welfare, is something altogether different than the usual complaint. We do think it is a shame, of course, that so many Americans must get by on the skimpy income allotted by welfare while it is continually drilled into their heads that they live in the richest country in the world. And yet this is not nearly so upsetting to us as is the knowledge that the real recipients of welfare are not at all those who make up the official roles. The one in seven or one in six, or whatever the figure may be, who wait from month to month for the welfare checks are working class people, even though they may be unemployed for reasons of physical disabilities or for any other reasons. The real recipients of welfare (and what welfare they receive!) are the members of the capitalist class. And here there is no one in seven or one in six figure, either. In this case the percentage is one in one, or 100 percent. Let’s look into this proposition.

There is only one way to create wealth. That is by applying physical and mental energy to raw materials. Now this sort of activity is the function of the working class, not the capitalists. The function of the capitalist class is to own the industries and to employ those who don’t own the means of wealth production to work in them. True, there are capitalists who work and who draw salaries. But they do not work for a living. They could, and in fact do, employ substitutes for themselves for less than their own salaries— substitutes who have degrees in Business from the finest schools in the world. The $50,000 (or whatever) per year they draw from their business as the salary of management would hardly pay their liquor bills. Any capitalist worth talking about can—and frequently does— spend far more on one social gathering than a welfare recipient could gross in an entire lifetime on welfare.

So what, you may ask, is the point? The point is that if people do not work—and most of the able- bodied adult members of the capitalist class either do not work at all or occupy some managerial function as a hobby—then somebody must be supporting them. They don’t eat their money or their certificates of wealth-ownership. They are supported, and in style, by those who do all the work—many of whom, from time to time, must hold out their hands for crumbs of tax money during periods of unemployment. Let’s straighten out our perspective. Let’s organize to abolish welfare for unemployed workers and for the permanently unemployed capitalist class. Let’s unite for world socialism.

Harmo.

Originally published as "Who's on Welfare?" in The Perspective for World Socialism (1974), a selection of WSP radio talks.

A Revolution Still to be Made (1987)

From Issue 4 of the World Socialist Review

Editor’s Note:  

The following text is taken from a letter issued at the close of a speaking tour of the United States last Spring by two comrades from Europe: Steve Coleman of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), and Richard Montague of the World Socialist Party of Ireland. It was written jointly for distribution to the general public, and we reproduce a section of it here because of its relevance to the cause of world socialism.

It is with great pleasure that we can report the success of our recent North American speaking tour, organized by the World Socialist Party of the United States. Activities ranged from debates against defenders of capitalism (in one of which an economics professor ran out of the hall rather than answer our case) to public meetings (some informal, others in large halls with audiences of over 100—all well received) to radio interviews (such as the Fred Fiske Show in Washington, DC, one of the most prestigious programs of its kind on which we were kept on for two hours rather than the one originally planned and succeeded in tearing Fiske’s apologies for capitalism to threads).

We are under no illusion that the tour was the beginning of a socialist revolution or that the many people who gave us a polite hearing all agreed with us. What the tour did show—and it demonstrated this emphatically—was that there is a wide body of people in North America who are receptive to genuine socialist ideas (as opposed to the Leninist defense of Russian state capitalism or left-wing reformism). Those of us who are part of that wide body have a duty to build upon what exists, expanding the world socialist movement into a known political force in this country.

Our Present Situation

The World Socialist Party of the United States is currently a very small political organization and we do not pretend for one moment that we have all the answers concerning the way to transform society from the insanity of capitalism to the socialist alternative embodied in our object and principles (see page 12). We do claim that the case for socialism is simple, logical and in urgent need of dissemination throughout the world.

What are the problems we face?

Firstly, the bosses own and control the institutions of education (indoctrination), the media and the big, well-funded political parties of capitalism.

Secondly, the concept of socialism has been systematically distorted over the past century, both by those who have a vested interest in opposing it and those who claim to be defending it.

Thirdly, many workers have been driven to cynicism by the history of capitalist politics and want nothing to do with any "isms” or political organization.

Fourthly, America is a vast country and the tyranny of distance makes it much harder for those of us who are not rich to organize than for our bosses who possess the technology of mass communication.

Barriers to a Socialist Movement

There is no point in ignoring these obstacles to the growth of a socialist movement in this country. Neither should the problems lead us to defeatism. History is the story of humankind overcoming its problems and, without exaggeration, if we are to survive at all it will only be by overcoming the mighty barriers before us and developing a World Socialist Party which can defeat capitalism.

It is instructive at this point to consider the position of our fellow socialists in Ireland, who are mainly based in Belfast: five years ago there were only two of them in the WSP there, fighting a lonely struggle against bigotry and violence. Today they are a party to be reckoned with—probably the most visible party in Belfast—with their own office, a printing press, a regular journal which is selling very well and a growing membership.

So what can be done?

We need a commitment from as many people as possible to join, or at least support, the WSP in its North American efforts. We do not want support from those who do not adhere to our principles, for only on the basis of common understanding can we be a movement of equality, without leaders or led.

Above all, we need activity of a conscious kind so that we can build this movement on the basis of the strength of principled socialist knowledge.

Aaron Feldman (WSP-US) 

Steve Coleman 

Richard Montague

Editorial (1986)

Editorial from issue 1 of the World Socialist Review

To Our Readers,

In your hands is the first issue of the World Socialist Review.

The articles that appear in this journal have been written by members of the World Socialist Movement. Not all of the articles that appear, or that will be appearing in future issues, will be finely phrased. But, what we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by our deep sincerity and by the correctness and truthfulness of our principles.

We shall for the present, content ourselves with issuing the World Socialist Review four times a year. This could, however, change. We will notify our readers if we increase or decrease the number of issues we plan to put out each.year.

We do regret to inform our readers that if they want subscriptions, they will have to pay a slightly higher price of 30c per issue. We deeply regret this, but the high price of postage forces us to charge more to defray the cost of sending each issue to your home.

Finally, let us state that we would very much like to hear from you. We shall be pleased to consider any articles submitted to us for publication in this journal. However, please do not be disappointed if what you submit does not appear or if it gets slightly edited. We have a very hard job of deciding what is to appear and what is not to appear. Also, because this journal is an official voice of the WSP, all articles do have to represent the platform of the WSP. Hence, the need for editing. We also would like to encourage our readers to send us suggestions on how to improve our journal, to voice their criticisms of the journal or any of its articles, to comment on something they liked and to ask questions about the World Socialist Party and its principles.

Rich Foland

(co-editor.)

Reflections on Right Wing Talk Radio (2011)

From issue 22 of the World Socialist Review

Right-wing talk radio seems in search of a savior, at least those that broadcast the gospel as interpreted by the religious right who seek to impose a biblical order while abandoning the social aspects of traditional Christianity. The religious right holds a quasi-Calvinist view (with the terror of End Times thrown in), according to which God rewards those who outdo their brethren in cut-throat competition to earn the big bucks. So hold on to your job at all costs and climb the corporate ladder, stepping on the fingers of the guy on the rung below. This worship of cut-throat competition is naturally accompanied by cynical paranoia – heated exaggeration, a suspicious attitude, outright dishonesty, and conspiratorial fantasy. Paranoia is hard to confine to one part of the mind and expands into a worldview.

The function of paranoia

Right-wing talk radio is full of distrust and fear – fear of the unknown, fear of Moslems, fear of invasion – and this feeds the paranoia.

Paranoia actually performs an important social function. It’s one way of bringing order to a disorderly world. Seeing conspiracy everywhere you look at least makes sense of things beyond your understanding. The threat of climate change, financial collapse, nuclear weapons, terrorism – these are phenomena of such magnitude that any conceivable action feels like David versus Goliath.

The millions of Americans who listen to religious conservative talk radio are gradually bringing the United States closer to fascism. Is this because a growing number of them believe there is no alternative?

Twenty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale actually presented the U.S. electorate with real policy choices, even if they offered no alternative to the established system. Today, however, any differences are a mere matter of degree. The neoliberal stance is shared by both parties. Republicans rail against the Democrats’ bailouts, government takeovers, and budget deficits, hoping the populace forgets that all these things also occurred under George W. Bush. Meanwhile, almost every single concept in Obama’s health plan has been pushed by senior Republicans, from Bob Dole to Mitt Romney.

Farewell to Keynes

The Democrats once accepted Keynes’ approach to economic policy. Keynes concern was to ensure social stability by maintaining full employment at relatively high wages. His utopia was a society of leisure and prosperity, beauty, grace, and variety, where “love of money” would be regarded as an aberration. The new neoliberal paradigm sacrifices all social values – and is prepared if necessary to sacrifice democracy itself – on the altar of “sound finance.” Today’s spineless and stupid Democrats also kowtow to the neoliberal god.

Glen Beck bleats over the airwaves that the call of the “socialist” and “Moslem” Obama for voluntary national service is “something out of Maoist China.” But the “progressive” president of “change” and “hope” copied this idea from George W. Bush, and he in turn copied it from his father, George H.W. Bush, who first proposed it in 1989.

With names like “No Spin Zone,” “Nothing But Truth,” and “Steel on Steel,” right-wing talk radio programs appropriate the “news” format and masquerade as news broadcasts. Many liberals get their news from satirical programs like “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report.” The disinformation is so effective that all these people actually imagine that they are hearing the news!

Both political parties represent the same class interests and strive for the same class goals. The strident yap-yap-yap that endlessly streams forth from the radio talk shows does not express any significant policy differences, but is contrived as a substitute for them.

An objective critique must resist all attempts to manipulate its ideas for purposes opposed to its own. “Criticize all that is.”

Joe Hopkins

Prisoners of capital (2004)

Editorial from Issue 19 of the World Socialist Review

Millions of human beings around the world are forcibly detained, their liberties removed by governmental authorities. Anyone who takes seriously the immediate potential for replacing capitalism with a world of real abundance and freedom knows already that the great majority of crimes are either crimes against property or involve the illegal trafficking of property — or are the likely direct result of living the restricted and stressful life of a wage- slave.

While there are those who justify the existence of laws on moral and ideological grounds, the defenders of the status quo must always argue their case referring to a swashbuckler’s haven of spurious doctrines, some of them philosophical (“free will”), theological (“good and evil”), psychological (“mental illness”) or political (“justice”). And yet the wasting away of countless millions of human lives remains a potent critique of a society of private property, as much as the maltreatment and exploitation of animals or children in our society. The sheer hypocrisy and failure of the law is inevitably the feature subject of this issue.

It is illegal to kill one’s fellows in a fit of rage but perfectly legal to kill fellow workers from other countries to satisfy the ruling class’s need to protect or assert its economic or political spheres of influence in another part of the world. One must not steal, say both the law and the Bible, and yet it is perfectly legal and morally acceptable to rob working people every day of the wealth they produce above their wages, distilling the high life for the greedy and lazy few out of the gradated deprivations visited on the majority, stymying people’s efforts to provide enough for themselves and their children. The subject of prisons goes to the very heart of our so-called civil society, putting to shame the naive suggestion that we live in a democratic society. The truth is that a society of privilege must be protected by the brute powers of the law. We are not allowed to enjoy more wealth than the crumbs we are permitted in our wages or welfare income, and anybody who attempts this in our society will be handcuffed and taken away.

Make no mistake about it, the lack of freedom inside the prison cells directly mirrors the lack of freedom for working people outside them. On the outside you will be forced to work, unless you want to live in a cardboard box and seek food in a garbage can; you will be forced to accept your wages or salary for the work you do, forced to accept the nature of the job, forced to spend vast hours of your life even outside work just preparing for it and getting to and from it. You will be forced to put up with the other side effects of capitalism — its pollution, its stress, its shoddy goods, its wars, and the fact that billions must starve to death, including tens of millions of children each year. Your “free” time itself will be carved up into the various consumer “entertainments” and “pleasures” available for the right price. What is truly yours in capitalism is debatable.

Your fate and that of the prisoners who languish behind bars every day are inseparably intertwined. Indeed, inside or outside prison, we will never be free until we establish a society in which humans come first and the production of wealth is oriented toward meeting our needs and those of our children — one in which we are no longer forced to work in order to be adequately fed, clothed and housed, and in which the economic priorities of the rich no longer send poor and uneducated youth to die abroad, or condemn the planet to a slow death by self-poisoning. When property is owned in common, we will find ways as a community to better meet our needs for wealth, creativity, decision-making, love, rest, productivity, and freedom.

We challenge the myth of the present era that some people are good and others evil, or that crime is an entirely moral issue. We maintain as scientific socialists that behavior must be understood in its social context: that of a society divided into two classes, one owning the vast proportion of wealth without working for it, and the other producing all the wealth while owning but a miniscule proportion of it.

Until the vast majority of us are liberated from the prison of being workers, we must denounce all the moralistic assumptions and shoddy social analyses of our public behaviors that lead so many of us to be locked away behind bars. We will on such a glorious day liberate our brothers and sisters in jail, and we urge them now to join us in the worldwide project of designing a system that promotes for real the enjoyment of the abundant wealth and freedom that are our birthright. 

Voice From The Back: Not too blessed (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not too blessed

From the pulpits at the Church of England, the passionate clergyman thunders on about the Sermon on the Mount. The hushed congregation hear the famous words “Blessed are the poor…" ; but not too blessed, apparently. “More than half of the Church of England clergy feel that they are not being paid enough, with one in ten demanding an increase in their stipend of up to 50 per cent according to an independent survey…" A spokesman for the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, which represents 1,500 clergy said: “We have never said that the majority of vicars are on the breadline or are having to sell the Big Issue. But they are not being remunerated according to their professional status…”, Times, 16 May. How far from selling the Big Issue can be gathered when the same report informs us that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a salary of £57,000 per annum.

Hit for six

In our youth we used to thrill to boys stories of “sizzling sixes over the tuck shop roof”. The game of cricket, we were led to believe, was the embodiment of sportsmanship and decency. Alas, like everything capitalism touches, cricket is prey to corruption and deceit “Lord Condon’s findings on corruption in cricket, published yesterday may come as a nasty shock to lovers of the game, but hardly a surprise. Ever since Hansie Cronje, the former South African captain, admitted taking money to fix matches, there has been a cloud over the game. Australia, Pakistan and India have had to deal with allegations touching some of their leading players. In asking a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner to look into this, the International Cricket Council took an unprecedented step, but it plainly had no choice. The findings, bluntly, are worse than most people expected. According to Lord Condon, allegations already in the public domain represent only “the tip of the iceberg”. He declares that some players are still acting dishonestly and to the orders of the bookmakers. He links a murder and a kidnapping to cricket corruption, and reports that some witnesses were evidently afraid to speak out. Daily Telegraph 24 May.

Filthy lucre

Socialists are always arguing that capitalism with its wars, poverty and insecurity has outlived its usefulness; but we’ve just found another reason to get rid of it. “US dollar bills are home to dozens of potentially dangerous pathogens. Most US dollar bills are bacteria farms, cultivating dozens of potentially dangerous pathogens, a study in Ohio has revealed. The findings raises the possibility that paper money could be transporting antibiotic resistant bacteria from one area to another, say the researchers.” New Scientist, 24 May.

What is socialism?

We thought our readers might be interested in our socialist email discussion forum, so here we give you a little taster It is from a comrade in New Zealand referring to a comrade’s ideas in the USA in reply to an enquirer in the UK. The American Harry Morrison, writing for the Western Socialist, explained some years ago what socialism is not. “If workers work for wages, it is not socialism. If goods are bought and sold in a market, it is not socialism. If the world is divided into countries, it’s not socialism. Unless every man, women and child has free access to the means of living, it is not socialism.” The comrade in New Zealand, Bob Malone, makes a good point, when he says, “Socialism will only be realised when the majority of people realise that our quality of life is not improved by just how much wealth can he consumed, and that collectively we can build a much better society based on co-operation within and between communities.” (See page two of this issue to get involved).

Soliciting solicitors

The heartfelt cry of the butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry VI — “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” — would seem somewhat severe, but maybe Old Will had a point when we read about the goings-on in modern Israel. “Israel brothel keepers have the right to buy and sell prostitutes in the same way that football clubs transfer players, a lawyer claimed last week. ‘There is no difference between trading football players, hi-tech programmers, or surgeons, and selling women for purposes of prostitution’, Yaacov Shklar, who specialises in defending pimps, told a Knesset committee.” Observer 10 June.

Intensive mortality

“Thousands of people are dying because they are being moved out of intensive care too quickly, according to a study by two London hospitals. Just two more days in intensive care would be enough to save many seriously ill patients, researchers from St. Thomas’s and St. George’s found after analysing the cases of almost 14,000 patients from across Britain". Times 25 May. So, next time that you hear that a friend or a relative is being moved from intensive care into the general ward, don’t heave a sigh of relief, be worried — very, very worried Unless of course your friend or relative happens to be a millionaire receiving the best medical care that money can buy; in that case the move has been dictated by best medical practice and not, as the report says, for purely economic reasons. “One in four of the patients identified as being at greatest risk died on the ward after being released from intensive care. Using a computer, the research team concluded that 39 per cent of these would have survived had they been given two more days special care. But that would require a 16 per cent increase in intensive care beds, which would cost more than £100 million a year.

Editorial: Apathy rules the waves (2001)

Editorial from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the weeks and weeks of posing, posturing and politicking are over. The endless hours of TV reporting and radio coverage and the thousands of miles of newspaper column inches have resulted in just one notable thing: not the return of another Labour government, but the lowest voter turnout since universal suffrage.

What a triumph for the assembled ranks of politicians and pundits! The biggest turn-off in political history and yet no one can say they are truly surprised. After the politicians had spent the previous month stomping up and down the country stirring up apathy wherever they went, the voters turned away in their droves. And then sighed a huge collective yawn as the moment of irrelevance passed.

Out of the barrage of opinion polls to hit the headlines during the election the most interesting was the BBC exit poll conducted on the day itself. Not because of its (fairly accurate) prediction of a Labour landslide, but because it dared to ask a cross-section of non-voters, excluded from the headline figures of voting intent, why they hadn’t bothered. The results were fascinating.

The poll showed that a significant proportion of voters hadn’t bothered to trouble the tellers because they thought the result to be a foregone conclusion. This is obvious enough, as turnout fell most in safe Labour seats and least in Labour-held marginals where there was a real chance of the Tory Party making a gain. Nevertheless, this is enough to account for only a fraction of the mammoth drop in turnout from the fairly dismal 71.4 percent in 1997 down to the record low 59 percent this time around.

The main reason for the drop in turnout is evidenced in the fact that 77 percent of respondents in the BBC survey said that they wouldn’t be voting because they viewed the parties to be essentially “the same”. Allied with this was the supporting view that politicians of all persuasions “couldn’t be trusted”.

Herein lies the reality of the situation, something that socialists have been arguing for many years and which now appears to be the established perspective held by a very sizeable sector of the working class of wage and salary earners. The fact that it appears to be held particularly strongly by former Labour voters too is significant. A 34 percent turnout in a Labour heartland constituency like Liverpool Riverside is evidence enough that Labour can no longer rely on a solid working-class vote, for in areas of previously bedrock support it is viewed as being essentially no different to the Tories.

There are still many who argue that Labour is “the lesser evil” but their numbers are dwindling – literally, in fact, as there were nearly three million fewer Labour voters this time round compared with when Blair first got in. Ten and a half million votes, in fact, would have been a humiliation for Labour years ago – as was the case when Neil Kinnock got just short of this for Labour in the Thatcher landslide of 1987. In 2001 it is enough to be heralded a landslide.

In reality, of course, it was a landslide in name only and Blair knew that only too well. It was etched on his face at his count in Sedgefield as he heard his personal vote drop by several thousand. There is clearly now a large chink in the armour of New Labour and it is only the ineptness of the opposition provided by the other mainstream parties that has stopped Labour from becoming a true laughing stock, most of all among the Party’s most “natural” supporters.

In the months to come we promise that we shall be monitoring the continued progress of New Labour – if progress is the right term – and subjecting them to the closest scrutiny from a socialist perspective. For the Labour Party has tricked and bamboozled the working class for too long. Now that the trick is wearing thin, we will do all we can to expose what Labour is really about and the interests Labour is keen to defend. We do this in the hope that next time the refusal by millions of voters to back the bamboozlers of the working class will turn into something more positive and pro-active than mere abstention.

In the News: No breakthrough for Trotskyism (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

“One of the few exciting stories of this election, largely untold, is the emergence of the Socialist Alliance/Scottish Socialist Party as a credible alternative to Labour,” wrote Mark Steel, expressing the hopes of a section of the London leftwing intelligentsia, in an election day article in the Independent. If he really believed this, when the results came in he must have been as gutted as the Tories.

The SA put up 92 candidates. They got in total around 57,500 votes (i.e. about 625 per candidate). Rather than becoming the fourth party in England, as they intended, they ended up 8th, after the Greens, the UKIP and the BNP. Their only consolation was to have done better than Arthur Scargill’s SLP which put up 114 candidates and only got around 55,000 votes (or about 480 per candidate). It is true that in Scotland the SSP did rather better, with its 72 candidates totalling some 73,000 votes, or 3 percent of the total vote in Scotland.

We are not rejoicing over this failure since we know that it is also a reflection of the popular reception to the word “socialism” which rubs off on us. Of course neither the SA/SSP nor the SLP stood for socialism. Indeed, it was their traditions – respectively, Trotskyism and Stalinism – that have done so much to discredit the idea of socialism by associating it with a state-run economy run by a vanguard party.

The other tradition responsible for discrediting the word “socialism” is Old Labour, but it was precisely as a revival of this that the SA set out to pass itself off as. The SA was an electoral coalition of normally warring (and still mutually suspicious) Trotskyist sects which had come together to create a front organisation which, if it got off the ground, would become a new Labour party which they could then all infiltrate as they did Labour in the good old days. The SA programme was thus consciously constructed to be openly reformist so as to appeal to Old Labourites. In this it succeeded remarkably.

The title of its manifesto People Before Profit encapsulated the reformist illusion perfectly. Just as their other slogan of “Tax the Rich” assumes the continued existence of the rich, so “People before Profit” assumes the continued existence of the profit system but where the government would intervene to try to make it work in the interest of wage and salary workers. As we know from the experience of Labour governments, this can never work.

The profit system can only ever operate in the interest of the class of profit-takers, and any party which takes on the responsibility for managing its political side will inevitably end up doing this on its terms, finding itself obliged by economic circumstances precisely to put profits before people. In the end such a party, far from transforming capitalism into a new society, itself becomes transformed into an ordinary pro-capitalist party. That’s the explanation of the repeated failure of the Labour Party in government and of its eventual transformation into New Labour.

The Trotskyists who drew up the SA’s detailed programme of promised reforms of capitalism showed no imagination. They weren’t even promising anything new, but largely the restoration of reforms that had once existed but had been whittled away by the workings of capitalism since the 1970s. Thus their manifesto of “pledges” (they played the promise game just like any party of conventional politicians) consisted of “say no” to this and “bring back” that. But perhaps, when you’re pretending to be something you’re not, the tendency will always be to overdo it.

There is another possible explanation. That the SA’s reformist programme wasn’t a cynical ploy, but that they genuinely believed in it. In that case they would be genuinely Old Labour reformists. This could be the case but the arguments socialists had with them on the streets and at meetings suggest that they did indeed have a hidden Leninist agenda of violent insurrection led by a vanguard party (but that they couldn’t agree which one of them it should be). So perhaps after all it is reassuring that they did not emerge as a credible, reformist alternative to New Labour.

Adam Buick

In the News: Oldham (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The workers of Oldham were battling in the streets, against each other and against the police, for three days from the 25 to 28 May this year. The poisonous despair, powerless and poverty of the area, caused in large part by the decline of the town’s traditional textile manufacturing industry, lead to workers turning upon one another. Differences in skin colour and culture became the focus for the pent-up energies and frustrations engendered by these social conditions.

The spark was, apparently, the provocative actions of followers of the British National Party and their ilk, who damaged property and harassed and attacked brown skinned workers, seemingly without reprisal from the police or authorities. Their targets eventually responded to the provocation, coming out onto the streets to fight them. As a part of the conflict, the unfortunately named Live and Let Live pub was attacked, and windows in the area were bricked. The police turned out in force, and a series of running battles ensued, leaving some 25 workers (including police officers) injured.

The centre of the trouble was the Glodwick area, with groups of up to 500 workers throwing petrol bombs and firecrackers at the police lines. Over the three nights of clashes a post-office was looted and the offices of the local newspaper became the target for firebomb attacks.

It has been suggested that the trouble was stirred up by the British National Party, as a part of their election campaign in the area. The BNP advocates divisive confusionist policies, based upon the scientifically absurd idea of racial differences. Its leader Nick Griffin, their candidate in Oldham West & Royton, advocates communal separation, along the lines of the so-called “Peace Wall” in Londonderry/Derry. This is supposed to be the only way of ending the allegedly irreconcilable differences between people of different “races”.

Their campaign turned out to be highly successful, with workers continually let down by the promises of reformism and the lack of any prospect for change from any other parties, being attracted to the radical posturings of Griffin’s band of would-be leaders. Their promises, geared toward insularism, putting a mysterious group called “The British” first, by protecting their “homeland” and ending their unemployment by prohibiting “foreign” products, attracted a high number of votes for such a small party. In Oldham West and Royton the BNP recorded 6,552 votes (16.4 percent) and in Oldham East and Saddleworth they scored 5,091 votes (11.21 percent). Each total is almost twice the entire number of anti-capitalists who turned up to the London Mayday event.

Naturally, the left is outraged. One commentator in Socialist Worker expressed shock that police refused to prevent the BNP members canvassing for their candidates, stating it was “perfectly legitimate election activity”. Presumably, the SWP must believe that the state should be allowed to vet and permit candidates’ campaigns.

They and other groups blame the failure of leaders, Socialist Worker observed that Oldham workers couldn’t identify with Many-Homes Meacher (their MP), and no-one in power listens to them but instead neglects them; while Militant noted that “the community leaders should be fired” for being out of touch. The problem, apparently, lies with the leaders and not the social system. Michael Meacher himself blamed William Hague and his “foreign land” speech for stoking up xenophobia.

Of course, the leftists see the fascists as rivals for leadership, and are thus happy to join with liberals in relying on emotive tactics and censorship to impede them. Such tactics back-fired badly at the announcement of the vote, because the local council forbade any candidates from speaking. This allowed the fascists to pose before the television cameras, wearing t-shirts proclaiming “Gagged for telling the truth”, and sporting large and visible gags in their mouths. This played into their victim posture, along with their attempts to claim they were trying to defend “whites from racism”. It also effectively prevented anyone from being able to hear how ridiculous their policies really are.

Liberals and leftists alike will not debate fascists, because they have no real answers to their arguments. They both support nationalism and its logic, albeit qualifiedly. Their differences with the fascists are those of degree not of quality. After all, the SWP has unfurled openly reactionary banners by merging with the Scottish Socialist Party whose slogan is “for a Scottish Socialist Republic”, the capitalist politics of national self-determination. What is the differences between “moderate nationalism” and “moderate racism”? Both are absurd creeds used to mystify and divide the workers.

The SWP calls upon workers to “turn anger on the real enemy”, by which they mean not the capitalist system, but the fascists. It means a futile programme of continually trying to suppress the manifestations of fascism, without destroying its root cause: the fallacy that workers share in some national interest. Without that understanding then the privations of capitalism will always lead to workers misidentifying the cause of their problems as not the capitalist system, but other workers.

Dividing the workers against the fascists will not ultimately bring the resolution of these problems, nor will simply appointing a different set of leaders to save us. Only the clear understanding that workers of all types share a common interest against the capitalist system, and that its replacement with socialism will end the social conditions that breed such violence will be of any use to us. That understanding will only come about through trusting the workers to think for themselves, instead of trying to crush the fascists with state power or street politics.

Pik Smeet