Fools learn by experience. And so do other people. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Have Left Behind.

It was the custom, but a short while ago, to attribute to savage life a setting of perennial violence and promiscuous murder. It was the custom, in days yet no further from us than their rose-scents endure, and their laurels keep their freshness, to acclaim our exalted civilisation, and to gasp at the completeness of our conquest of ourselves by ourselves, and our triumph over external conditions—with the aid of God, and of parson, and of men like Mr, Lloyd George, and Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Berry, the celebrated hangman, of course. It was the custom to search the world for the Molochs of other worships and the Juggernaut cars of other civilisations, and to use them as pin-flags to mark the course we have followed and the giddy heights we have achieved above them.

Who does not remember for what bloody butcheries and devastating conquests excuse has been found in the tyranny of native rulers and insecurity of native life ? The “poor black” could never be sure, when he put his head out of his kraal in search of his morning paper, that some earlybird with a highly developed sense of humour and a capacious knife was not going to tumble that head into the milk-can. And it was suspected that, hidden away in the fastnesses of primitive forests, woolly-headed, dusky Camp­bells and Booths and other bogey-men were mixing up the trade of restaurateur with that of juggler, and administering the Communion with such grim realism as rendered superfluous the pronouncement “This is His flesh.” Such offences against the nostrils of “our common humanity” invariably called aloud for expeditions composed mainly, after its human components, of those well-known civilising agents, bullets, bibles, and booze (three out of the famous “Four B’s” of Christian pioneering—the missionary was the fourth).

Love’s Labour Lost.

Many an expedition, armed to the teeth for butchery, has left our shores on the pretext that the barbarities of little-known people shock the world and are a danger to civilisation ; many an expedition, reddened to the ears with butchery, has justified its orgy of rape and murder by grim tales of mountains of skulls discovered in some dusky potentate’s backyard. Civilised ruling classes have been touched to the tenderest cores of their tender hearts by savage brutality, and have expended much blood and treasure to correct the idiosyncrisi.es of the Mahdis, and clear up the messes of the King Coffees,

And now what a spectacle the Christian rulers of Christian lands present to the astonished eyes of savagedom !

All former hates and blood-lusts pale into insignificance compared with the consuming passions that run riot through the breasts of “civilised” men ; all former wars become mere local disturbances by comparison with this ghastly struggle which is turning countries into cemeteries and civilisation into an instrument of bloodshed; all former barbarities, whether of African despot or Asiatic ravager or European money-hunter, are eclipsed by the callous brutality of the means by which all the combatants alike seek to put out the lifespark of men in this last great crime which reveals the true visage of capitalism.

What irony survives the shock of events ! It was the complaint of multitudes, when we Socialists delivered the Socialist message in the pre-war days, that any attempt to establish society upon a basis of common ownership must lead to bloodshed. The fear of such a contingency has closed to our message the ears of many whose logical faculties could permit no other escape from the general truth of our conclusions, but who had not yet appreciated the veracity of Mr. Churchill’s dictum : “There are worse things than bloodshed.”

If Blood be the Price—

But to those who feared so much the giant figure behind the Socialist banner what has capitalism presented—and what has it yet to present ? In the first year of war about 85,000 British lost their lives in operations by land and sea, and a month later a military member of the House of Commons told us that “we have hardly yet wet our shoes.” A Paris journal. “L’Oeuvre,” in an estimate widely quoted by the Press of this country, states that up to the end of last February, that is when the war had been in continuance only half the time that it has now. France had lost in killed alone 304,000 men, Russia 850,000, Germany 975,000. Austria 1,400,000, while the total losses in killed of all the belligerents exclusive of Turkey were 3,689,000.

If we had not wet our shoes in September we had not even soiled them in February. Since then there has been colossal fighting on the eastern front and terrible work and suffering in Gallipoli ; since then there has been a costly attack and advance in France, while in addition Italy has entered the arena and made some progress in running up a tragic bill. What, then, must be the appalling death-roll now, with this second seven month’s lighting added to the first ?

Nor is it only in this direction that the war is robbing Socialism of its terrors. Many people in the past have stumbled over the idea that it is only the free play of capitalist competition that makes the world go round, and that without this stimulus to endeavour the means of production, wonderful as they are, would not suffice to support the race, and chaos and ruin would at once overtake us. But what do we find ; where does the war demonstrate the truth to be ?

It is revealed in practice that military strength —which to-day more than ever resolves itself into the largest, and therefore the most econo­mical output of wealth—is in inverse ratio to the free play of capitalist competition. It is seen that, so far from true is it that the ordinary private enterprise of interested capitalists, spurred on as it is by an unparalleled opportunity for gain, means efficiency, that it means, on the contrary, misdirection, waste, and chaos which must prove fatal to those foolish enough to rely upon it.

The Failure of Private Enterprise.

It is here that the scientific German has scored heavily over the short-sighted fools who have fondly imagined that private enterprise under the stimulus of competition would suffice for nearly all things in peace and in war. For years the German rulers have had arrangements made for a wide abandonment of the competitive processes of production in event of war. At the annual military manoeuvres a large number of German factories have been put under State control and run for a fortnight under war conditions. Whatever miscalculations the Germans made as to the requirements of modem warfare, they may, at all events, take credit for recognising from the first, and long before the outbreak of hostilities, the truth of the Socialist contention that the boasted private enterprise, under the stimulus of the competition generated by the lust for profit, is a drag upon production and a fertile source of chaos and inefficiency.

Germany acted upon this knowledge, and as a result our masters are forced to confess that, other things being equal, the only effective reply is to themselves abandon private enterprise for the time. In other words, they are forced to admit that capitalist production by private enterprise is a failure, and that only production organised on a basis from which the attributes of private enterprise are eliminated can enable them effectually to deal with a situation of their own making. To this extent, therefore, the evidence of the war is a triumph for Socialist theory which we shall know how to make good use of when the war has run its course.

Some further lessons.

But another aspect of the same question provides a useful lesson and further vindication of Socialist claims. When the war broke, out the financiers and capitalist economists showed that it could not last longer than a year. The upheaval of finance, the disturbance of trade, the disruption of production—these potent factors were to cool the ardour of the most warlike in a matter of nine to twelve months, and bring peace because the resources of mankind could not support war on the colossal scale for a longer time. By all the calculations of capitalist economists, based upon the soundest of capitalist theories, the Teutonic allies, with so much of their own manhood removed from the production of the necessaries of life, with their imports and exports almost completely cut off, should have reached bankruptcy and starvation and military paralysis long before this. Yet the prognostications of the wise men, who have imagined that the only possible basis for the activities of civilised man is money, and therefore solvency, and who have stoutly denied the Socialist assertion that an enormous proportion of the human energy under capitalism is run to waste these prognostications are pulverised by the peculiarly healthy vigour of the Austro-German entity.

Of course, the seers did not realise that a country organised for war could eliminate private enterprise and profit-hunting to any extent that its government thought necessary and its capitalist element was prepared to submit to, and thus organised on a temporary basis foreign and even antagonistic to capitalism, could go on with the war in defiance of financial dictums and capitalist economic theories, to the first of which the capitalists of that country are answerable only when the normal conditions of capitalism return, and the last of which they blast for ever.

But so it has been. The rulers of the German nation have found it possible to engage over ten millions of their seventy millions population in the direct prosecution of the war in the actual fighting forces, and in the production and transport of munitions and other requisites of war. We may put the ordinary working strength of Germany—the number, that is, following any occupation (the housewife’s duties excepted)—at from eighteen to twenty millions. We find, therefore, the remarkable spectacle in a capitalist country “organised for war,” of more than one half the working population (and the most physically efficient half at that) engaged in providing the forces and means for carrying on the conflict.

It is just this that has upset the calculations of the prophets. Plain soldiers, unhampered by economic theories and financial superstitions, knew that of the conditions essential to the carrying on of war, solvency was not one. Hence they made preparations “for three years or for the period of the war.” But the theorists have had a rude awakening. It comes as a surprise to them to find that while the ordinary processes of capitalism were suspended, and to the extent that they were suspended, bankruptcy was a word without significance. It comes as a shock to them to find that the country best organised for war is forced, when up against the military resources of the greater part of capitalist civilisation. can gain additional strength only by the wider abandonment of the principles of private enterprise, and the substitution therefor of organisation on a basis which, while far as the poles asunder from Socialism, contain this element in common with Socialism, that production for profit, with its wasteful competition, gives place to production for use, with its concomitant economical co-operation.

Thus is proved the Socialist contention that capitalist production, on normal capitalist lines, notwithstanding that such vast wealth results, is an insanely wasteful process. The very fact that the capitalists themselves are compelled at a time of stress to reject it in fields essential to the prosecution of the war speaks volumes. In this, when the war is finished, Socialist propagandists will find a powerful object-lesson to put before their fellow-workers.

It is more than possible that the war will provide even more important lessons for the working class than any here outlined so far. We all know how much the governments of the “quadruple entente” are building upon a revolt among the working class of the “enemy” countries. The contingency is not by any means remote, since it might suit the book of the Teuton mili­tarists, should they be unable to stave off defeat in the field, as well as it would suit the purpose of our own masters and their allies. We should then probably see the erstwhile capitalist foes united in a bloody suppression having for its object the striking with terror anew the working class of the world.

But for the moment the lessons of the war are these: Firstly, that the evolution of capitalism, so far from freeing us from the bloody violence alleged to attach to savage existence, tends to make wars more colossal as the improvement in the means of production sets free a larger proportion of the workers for war, and more cruel as the conquests of science place new means of butchery at the disposal of our respective masters. Secondly, the war demonstrates how small a proportion of the energy of any community, with modern instrument of labour, suffices to supply the necessaries of life for the whole. Thirdly, the war reveals that private enterprise and production for profit, so long and so sternly condemned by all Socialists, is not good enough even for the capitalists when the exigencies of a vital war make it imperative for them to make the most of their resources.

These lessons of the war will go far in the hands of those who have taken up the Socialist position, when the butchers shall have decided their quarrel by the old test seeing who can pour out working-class blood the longest. They will, added to the grudging return which the capitalists of this country are already preparing for their disabled warriors, open eyes even that German bullets have rendered sightless forever. Then, with the utter wantonness of this colossal destruction of life revealed in the worsened conditions of those who are everywhere bearing the brunt of the fighting and the bulk of the suffering the working class—and with the many false friends of labour exposed and discredited for all time by their attitude during this crisis, the cause of the working class will flourish with vigour that will relieve and compensate for this dark and savage outrage upon our class.

A. E. Jacomb

Our case in brief. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

At such a time of appalling misery and waste of human life as the present, it may be useful to review again the claims of the Socialists, and to set out once more the means by which they propose to reach their goal. The writer has nothing new to tell—nothing at all that he has not said many times over in these columns. Nor can he hope to say it in a different way from which he has said it all before. But the message must be repeated again and yet again, though the messenger grows sick at heart. Conditions are always changing, if the message is not, and therein lies hope sufficient for the day.

Socialists claim that human happiness rests primarily upon the security and sufficiency of the necessaries of life—food, clothing, and shelter They do not say that there are no other sources of happiness, or that security and plenitude in these things must necessarily banish all unhappiness. What they contend is that these material things are the basis of human happiness viewed generally, just as they are the basis of human life itself.

Socialists maintain that the wealth produced at the present day is sufficient to afford ample of the necessaries of life to every man, woman, and child in the community, while the means at the command of society are sufficient to enable that wealth to be produced by the expenditure of a comparatively small amount of the time and effort by which the working class gain their meagre livelihood to-day.

The first of these contentious, namely, that human happiness depends primarily upon the means of living, hardly needs any enlarging upon at this time of day. Everybody understands, even if he had never thought seriously about it before, that before one can have any experience at all, happy or otherwise ; before one can think or act or desire, one must eat—for the simple reason that every organic activity results from the consumption of food, from this to the proposition, that lack of the means of subsistence is bound to cause physical distress and, in highly sentient beings such as man, mental distress also, is a logical step. This physical and mental distress, which, where it exists and in proportion as it exists inevitably undermine all happiness, can only be banished by giving sufficiency of and security in the means of subsistence.

Now as to the amount of wealth which is produced today, let us take the evidence of the opponents of Socialism. Mr. Chiozza Money, the Liberal M.P., an accredited capitalist statisti­cian, estimated the national income in the year 1904 at £1,710,000,000. and he says in his book “Riches and Poverty” (page 29), “if the income the nation were equally distributed amongst its inhabitants a family of five persons would enjoy an income of about £200 per annum.” It is seen, then, that sufficient wealth is produced to afford ample means of subsistence to all.

It must, of course, be granted that much of the wealth produced to-day takes a form which would be useless in a society where the products of labour were equally enjoyed by all, but as all this wealth is simply nature-given material to which human labour has been applied, either to change its from (as in the case of cannon) or to change its position (as in the case of coal), or to change both form and position, as in the case of most things, it would be the simplest of matters to direct all labour into channels, and turn all useful materials into forms, which would contribute to the end in view.

Is it true that the means which we possess for producing wealth to-day are sufficiently developed to enable us to maintain the present output of wealth with the expenditure of far less time and energy per head of the able-bodied population than the working-class bread-winner of to-day has to give, on the average, to the gaining of his livelihood ? To commence with, think what happens to every commodity which is produced before it becomes available to fulfil the function for which human toil has fitted it— that is, before it can be consumed. It has to be sold, and perhaps sold several times. It is, in fact, produced in order be sold, not in order to be used though unless it was capable of being used it could not (except under false pretences) find a purchaser. This means that, an enormous number of clerks, travellers, salesmen, shopkeepers, and others too numerous to mention must be maintained in labour which adds not one iota to the wealth which is produced. According to the Census returns of 1901 there were 504,294 commercial travellers and commercial and business clerks engaged in this useless labour in the United Kingdom—apart from thousands of other clerks and touts, such as those employed by lawyers, political and other organisations, for example. How many shop-assistants are wasting their time waiting for customers who do not come ? How many baker’s and butcher’s carts chase each other over the same ground ? How many canvassers, agents, and house-to-house distributors swarm the streets ? And all this because goods must be sold when they are completed, instead of then being immediately available for consumption.

And as goods are produced under the present system only to be sold, so they are only produced while they can be sold. Hence there is at all times an immense army of workers unable to find employment because there is not sufficient sale for the sort of goods they are producers and distributors of. In the year when the stupendous amount of wealth mentioned by Mr. Money was produced the “percentage of members of Trade Unions making returns who were out of employment was 6.8” (“Statistical Memoranda,” Cd 4671, Local Govt. Board). It is generally admitted that the unorganised trades would show an even larger unemployment percentage, but this figure applied over the whole field would give about a million workers in the country in enforced idleness.

Then even before the war there were in the Army, Navy, Police force and Prison staffs, the very pick and flower of the race another half-a-million men adding nothing to the wealth of community, while 50,000 parson “labour” but to keep us in the land of nod.

Everywhere around us we find energy wasted, from the railway ticket-collector and the ‘bus company’s spy to the jeweller setting diamonds in the collar of her ladyship’s Pekinese pup and the flunkey buttoning up his dilettante master’s breeches. And on top of all this there is that great group of the master class, to the number of about 5,000,000, who produce nothing, and who would, if they contributed workers in the same ratio as the working class, add another 2,000,000 to those available for production.

These figures, even if they may be disputed on the matter of strict accuracy, are sufficient to show that society has means to hand to produce vastly more wealth than is at present produced with the same average expenditure of time and toil which the members of the working class who are in employment render for their bare, miserable subsistence, or the same amount with far smaller average expenditure of time and effort. But we must find a method by which all these idlers, compulsory or voluntary, shall be brought into production, and all these workers whose efforts are directed into wrong channels shall become fruitful in their labours.

* * *

Before we go any further let us make up our minds for the wholesale destruction of preconceived notions, it is quite apparent that, the enormous waste of human labour entailed, in the selling of all the products of man’s industry cannot be eliminated by anything short of the abolition of sale and therefor of production for sale. Nor can unemployment be abolished, it is equally evident, until men’s employment ceases to be dependent upon the sale of the goods they produce—which again means that production for sale must go. And again, it is quite certain that we shall have to have a very different set of social conditions and a very different distribution of social power before those idlers, the master class, can be brought into production and distribution, and compelled to contribute their share to the common labour fund, in return for the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the houses they live in. So it is plain that the method we are looking for must involve very great changes in our social structure, and that before we can accept, such changes many of the ideas current among us to-day, and many of our common ways of looking at things, must go into the melting-pot together.

* * *

Why do working-class men and women have to sell their strength and skill (commonly but wrongly called their “labour”) to the masters for wages or salary ?

Because the masters own and control all the means by which people to-day can produce the things by which they live…..that is, all the land, mines, factories, machinery, raw material, railways, ships, and so on.

Why do the masters not have to sell their strength and skill, or, indeed, why do they not have to work at all, in order to live ?

Because they own the means and instruments by which all wealth is produced and distributed, and owning these things, own also the wealth which is produced with their aid.

Why are there at all times many workers who are unable to get employment ?

Because the goods in the production of which they seek employment are only produced for sale and when such goods cannot be sold the owners of the means of production will not employ workers to produce them,

Why will not the owner of these means of production employ workers to produce goods which cannot be sold ?

Because, firstly, in order to maintain himself in the position of property-owner (that is, to keep solvent) he must pay his way, which he can only do by turning the wealth his employees produce into money, or in other words, by selling it ; secondly, in order to live without himself producing wealth the employer must secure that produced by others (his employees). But as he cannot satisfy his needs with the actual goods his employees produce, any more than he can pay his debts with them, again he must sell them. And if he cannot sell them he could [not] continue to stand the expense of their production.

It is seen how all these things have their root in the basic condition—the private ownership by a class of the means and instruments of production and distribution. Clearly, then, private ownership in these things—in all things which are necessary for the sustenance and well-being of mankind, in fact—must go.

That, in brief, is the Socialist remedy. Private ownership in the instruments of labour and the raw material, in the land, mines, factories, machinery, railways, canals, ships, and the like of all these things, must cease. They must become the property of the whole community, and be controlled and operated by the whole community. Can anything be simpler than that?

Socialism, after all, is very simple. There is never any need to wrap it up in hard terms. It is just a social system based upon the common ownership of the means of living, as the present social system—capitalism-is based upon the private ownership of these things.

In a future issue it will be shown what will follow from the changed property condition.

A. E. Jacomb

Jottings. (1915)

The Jottings Column from the October issue of the Socialist Standard

It must not be thought that because the “Daily Herald” failed, mainly because it did not know or understand the working-class position, that George Lansbury has given up. Oh, no ! Within the pages of its successor, “The Herald,” he still advances a strange and mysterious dogma. Listen to this :

“Last week I said I wished Arthur Henderson would come out of the Government and against the conscriptionists, set the true ideal of national service by all for the good of all . . . . Whether or no Henderson comes into the wilderness and puts himself at the head of the working class in their march toward the promised land that march will go forward, for out of this present time of trouble and difficulty it is the only road which will lead the nations of the world to safety.”

The pure insolence of young Arthur putting himself at the head of the working-class army is rather in the nature of “coming it.” You must really wait, Arthur, my boy, until we’ve selected you. We must kick a bit about the reference, too, to “the promised land.” We seem to have heard the phrase before. But let Georgie make it clear. In the course of the same discourse he says:

“We need at this moment a spiritual awakening, bidding us all cease our strife for money, for fame, or for power.”

There, there, now ! That’s good, for is it not “light in our darkness,” and does it not prove that “Capital” will probably be forestalled by — the Holy Bible.

* * *

“Profit” Sharing

On Sept. 16th, 1915, the following letter appeared in the columns of the “Daily Express,” written presumably by a City business man. We must compliment this good gentleman on his very correct deduction at the outset, but crave his indulgence at having to severely “strafe'” him regarding his remedy.

A Challenge.

To the Editor of the “Daily Express.”

Sir,—More than a year of the greatest trial and danger that Britain has ever known has not only failed to still the strife between capital and labour, but would even appear, on the contrary, to have widened the breach between them, and if this eternal question is not promptly, carefully, and cleverly handled it is hound to affect disastrously the improved social conditions to which we all look forward when the victory of the Allies shall have brought the great war to an end. 

With a view, therefore, to making an effort towards grappling with this question in a practical manner, may I be allowed to use the medium of the widely read columns of your newspaper to issue this challenge to all or any of the responsible representatives of both capital and labour to state as frankly, briefly, and definitely as possible, through this same medium, their objections to the introduction of a system of profit-sharing into every trade, business, or industry in which it can possibly be instituted.

E. Gordon Bigginson. 

Copthall-buildings, E..C.

I suppose we scarcely come within the gentleman's description of the “responsible representatives of labour,” but anyhow, we’ll have a shot at dispelling his acrobatic remedial notion. Briefly, we object to co-partnership because it is a complete snare and altogether useless as a means of “stilling strife.” Co-partnership or any other form of so-called profit-sharing in almost every instance means extra profit for the “boss.” As anything extra in wages earned by the co-partners is purely money paid for extra work done, it becomes quite obvious that the master class does not share his profits with his co-partners. As the basis of all “profit”-sharing schemes is the intensification of labour’s production—as witness the introduction of professional “sloggers” as instructors—does the gentleman still miss the objective, i.e., that the displacing of many workers owing to the increased output means increased dividends for the ordinary shareholders ? If the remaining workers earn, say, an average of two shillings more per week, who pockets the wages of the labourers displaced, save for the little that is necessary to woo those who, by doing their work, force them out of employment ? Thus while the workmen still engaged receive a wee bit extra in return for a big bit extra, the big balance always, by some wise dispensation of providence, finds its way into the master’s pocket. Will the writer of the letter see how the scheme works at Port Sunlight, The South Metropolitan Gas Co., and many other such works and engage the confidence of the “heads” there. The remedy for an evil will certainly never be gained by increasisg the evil. Understand this, my boy, there are ten thousand ways of missing the bulls-eye but only one way to hit it.

* * *

The following is from the Bristol Congress and is worthy of a place in anybody’s cutting-book :

“To a resolution expressing approval of the Labour Party’s action in assisting recruiting, the National Union of Clerks tabled an amendment regretting that they had not first secured from the Government guarantees of adequate provision for disabled soldiers. This “huckstering” spirit was hotly denounced by several speakers.” – Daily Mail,” 10.9.15.

The report that the assembled Congress received a telegram from the disabled trade unionists offering profuse thanks for services rendered is grossly exaggerated. Some people have all the luck while gratitude pays all our debts. Needless to add the amendment was lost.

* * *

The attached cutting was something in the nature of a smack in the eye for the dear Congress delegates. It reads :

A SOCIALIST MANIFESTO

.

The Socialist National Defence Committee, the members of which include Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Robert Blatchford, Mr. John Hodge, M.P., the acting Chairman of the Labour Party, and Mr. Charles Duncan, M.P., has issued a manifesto to the members of the congress. In it they say :

“In this hour of supreme national peril, when the independence of the people is brutally and the established public law and liberties of Europe are ruthlessly violated, a handful of PSEUDO-SOCIALISTS in this country are breaking the national solidarity and weakening the national efforts in face of the enemy ; it has become a duty for TRUE BRITISH SOCIALISTS to expose and repudiate the errors of these dreamers.”

Having explained so lucidly what is the duly of “true British Socialists,” the “true British Socialists” proceed to perform that duty. They accomplish the painful task of exposure and repudiation with surprising cheerfulness, proceeding upon the true British lines of the true British bulldog. They say :

“Some of them are extreme pacifists, some are aliens by both blood or sentiment, and ALL OF THEM ARE CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY THE AGENTS OF GERMAN KAISERDOM, and traitors to the IMPERISHABLE IDEALS OK LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY which have united free Britain, independent Belgium, and Republican France in an indissoluble and glorious alliance.”

One seems to see in that hooligan jibe “alien” the moving finger of Blatchford, the “true British Socialist who once publicly announced (in the “Clarion”) his antipathy toward Spaniards. Could any other hand so carefully have drawn that fine distinction between “German.” Kaiserdom and all other kinds of Kaiserdom ? or so cunningly have obscured the fact that, even he could not find a term that would serve to bring autocratic Russia into that “indissoluble and glorious alliance” which had been created by the “imperishable ideals of liberty and democracy” ? Yet it was easy enough. What was wrong with “Holy” Russia ? That should have appealed to the author of “God and My Neighbour,” and in the matter of veracity it would have matched the rest. And “lest we forget,” congratulations are due to two such eminent literateurs as Wells and Blatchford on the production of that gem, “aliens by both blood or sentiment.” And then again the reference to “pseudo-Socialists” and “true British Socialists” is indeed delightful. Fancy referring to Ben Tillett as an agent of German Kaiserdom, after all he has done, too. This is too bad, and the Tower Hiller has our deepest sympathy. Never mind, the truth about some men is never known until after they are dead, and even then you cannot find it on their tombstones. All the signatories to the manifesto are expected to figure in the next Birthday honours lists.

B. B. B.

World Socialist Radio - All Socialists Now? (2025)

Adapted from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

All Socialists Now? by The Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode criticises how Labour and other self-described “socialist” parties trumpet the label without a coherent understanding of socialism, arguing that most of their proposed reforms—such as nationalisation, higher taxes, expanded public services—do nothing to challenge capitalism’s fundamental logic of production for profit. It describes a “Your Party” meeting, where despite participants’ rhetoric about socialism, discussion centered on reforms rather than systemic change. True socialism means abolishing the market system entirely in favour of a moneyless, cooperative society, and that efforts to rebrand or tweak capitalism as “socialist” are misleading.

Adapted from the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

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To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

Editorial: Progress is socialism (1982)

Editorial from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Socialist Standard in June devoted a page to a sort of dictionary, a brief guide to an understanding of the way capitalism distorts and abuses the language we speak. A society in which the useful majority are deprived of the full fruits of their labour, as part of their relationship with a parasitic minority, has a political urgency to do this; it is part of a justification of the legalised robbery, repression and murder of millions of useful human beings.

Thus what is called peace is in fact a state of continuing but undeclared warfare and of industriously building up a more fearsome means of destruction. What is called prosperity is a condition in which tens of millions suffer varying degrees of deprivation, from simple poverty to outright destitution, homelessness and starvation. What is presented as truth is really a mixture of differing depths of deceit, from casuistry to outright lies. The list could be extended almost indefinitely.

One particularly striking example of this is the word progress, which is abused and misused with such persistence that any sensitive person would do well to take guard whenever they hear it uttered. Not so long ago, in the mouth of Tony Benn (then Minister of Technology), progress was represented by supersonic airliners which would boom their shattering way over our aching heads. It is motorways which carve their concreted, frantic route through countryside which once offered a green respite in the workaday life. It is nuclear power stations, which threaten to seep their radioactivity into the atmosphere for us to inhale and absorb. Or it is a human made potential volcano like Canvey Island. Progress is concentrated industry, urban stress, pollution, speed, a more pressured exploitation in employment.

Occasionally, some worried voice — or some ambitious investigative journalist — will compose a questioning piece on the effects of “progress”. Is asbestos production progress, remembering its devastating effects on the human lung? Is lead dosed petrol an unmixed benefit, considering what it does to our brains and other vital organs? Under pressure, industry might be compelled to admit that what they call progress is not wholly good for us. But the argument will not be allowed to rest there; progress, it will be claimed, is innately beneficial and has some rewards in store for us and must therefore be endured, much as clerical hacks preach to us on the benefits of enduring earthly burdens to prepare us for the mythical joys of heaven.

It would also be claimed that "progress'’ must not be obstructed because it enhances profitability. Concorde threatened to torture us because it was hoped to be a money spinner for the British and French aircraft industries. Motorways are supposed to provide faster and cheaper transport of commodities; nuclear power stations, we are assured, can turn out low cost energy to industrial users. And so on.

This justification is specious if for no other reason than that profitability will also put the brakes on progress. Capitalism has a history of more efficient, safer, happier methods of production which have been left to moulder simply because they did not fit in with the current scheme of profitable operation. It also has a history of the destruction of wealth already turned out — notably of food while millions of people are starving — and of means of production and distribution left idle when it is not profitable to put them to use. In the present recession, for example, factories, steel mills, coal mines are being shut down and ships and aircraft are being laid up because it does not pay to keep them going.

Thus this profit-motivated social system acts as a restraint on production. Capitalism does not encourage material progress; it hampers it. It is an obstructive, reactionary society and those who are concerned for human progress should pay first attention to this massive fundamental reality.

Capitalism does not operate in this way through an accidental obscurantism, which could easily be adjusted or eliminated. It is basic to a system of class ownership of the means of production and distribution, and to the production of wealth as commodities, that progress will be obstructed when it does not meet the system's profit priorities. If there is to be real, permanent progress, there must be a real, permanent change in society. Such a change can come about only through a basic social  realignment.

By this we mean a social revolution. The only effective way of dealing with capitalism's problems is to abolish it. This can be achieved in only one way — by the replacement of private ownership of the means of living with common ownership of them. This revolution will establish a new society in which wealth will be freely available to all human beings, to satisfy their every need and desire. Socialism will have no differing qualities of wealth; there will be no reason for anyone conceiving, designing, or producing anything which is less than the very height of their abilities. In socialist society, everything we make will be the best we are capable of.

Socialism will thus liberate all human talents and skills. There will be such an explosion of abundance, beauty and satisfaction as to be inconceivable to us now, in this cramped and crippled life under the social relationships of capitalism. Socialism will be a massive advance in human society and will lay down the path to further achievement. It will be progress — historical, social, material and moral. In that understanding, it is clear that progress is something we have yet to experience.

And we should not overlook another, heavily significant advance for which socialism will be responsible. Humans will no longer speak in language distorted by the political need to justify an unjustifiable social system. Socialism will liberate and purify the means in which we communicate with each other. As part of the human intercourse in a society of freedom and abundance, words will take on a new richness. Socialism will be progress.

Running Commentary: Human nature (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Human nature

We watched them go about their daily affairs as the television narrator quietly described aspects of their way of life. “Here”, we are told, “No man or woman has authority over any other man or woman . . . wealth is shared communally, if one person manages to catch many fish the whole community benefits including those who are not able to work. or who have not worked on that particular day . . . they operate on the basis of 'from each according to his hunting ability, to each according to his hunger' . . . the land, forests and rivers are owned by nobody and no one works for anyone else." Worlds Apart (BBC2 10/9/ 82) was examining the lifestyle of the Panare Indians of Venezuela, with a lot of well presented evidence to repudiate the myth that it is “Human Nature" to be acquisitive, uncooperative and to wish to live in societies with hierarchies of wealth, power and status.

Here were people, physiologically the same as everyone else, who displayed none of the behavioural characteristics which have sometimes been labelled as immutable features of human beings. Through its historical stages, property society has cultivated people to think and behave in selfish and acquisitive ways. Although cooperativeness has always been a striking feature of mankind — as people are social animals and we cannot organise any society without working with each other — in capitalism we have had to cooperate with each other under coercive conditions.

In some parts of modern society with a long history of property, vicious aspects of human behaviour like the barbarism of war are offered as proof of brutal human nature. But war, and people’s behaviour in it, are products of a social environment not a natural propensity to violence. Property society pits people against each other.

An owner can say “This is mine, it is not yours, we have different interests". If the object is a factory the owner can say, “Because this is mine, you will have to spend your life working in it to produce wealth for me, and because the levels of my profits are inversely related, we will be in a constant struggle". The Panare have no notions of property and consequently no notions of competition. They have no competitive sports and those which are played in neighbouring areas, which do put people or beasts against themselves, are looked on as meaningless.

The Panare live in a small tightly-knit community which is a little suspicious of outsiders and does not use much modern medicine or technology. Such communities illustrate the behaviour that homo sapiens are capable of enjoying.

However, civilisation is marching into the forests of Venezuela with its Deeds of Land Ownership in one hand and its police forces and prisons in the other. New roads and a huge bauxite mine will soon disfigure the regions inhabited by the Panare for, as the television narrator observed, “to the investors and entrepreneurs the communities who presently occupy the forests are obstacles to progress". Curiously, in The Investors' Dictionary, the word “progress" is spelt profits.

Parker’s pen

The bookshops will not be troubled by long, disorderly queues of people desperate to buy a copy of Father of the House — the political reminiscences of John Parker, Labour MP for Dagenham. Parker is the longest-sitting Member — he has been in Parliament for 47 years — and that is how he qualifies for this fatuous title. And he has become a strangely tedious man, liable to pass over events of historic importance in some ill-considered laconism.

But it was not always so. Parker was once at the centre of an incident vital enough to reveal the true unsavoury character of the Labour Party. In 1945. Attlee appointed him Under Secretary at the Dominions Office which, as the Secretary of State was in the Lords, put Parker in charge of the affairs in the Commons.

His ministerial career did not last long. Parker refused to intervene over the death sentence passed on a Boer farmer in the (then) South African protectorate of Swaziland who had killed his girl friend. Of course only black people were hanged in South Africa: at that time a white man had not been executed for 15 years. The South African Prime Minister appealed to Attlee to help maintain this racist version of “justice" and the Labour Prime Minister was ready to oblige. Parker was sacked and never offered a job in a Labour government again.

This episode did nothing to reduce Parker’s ardour for the Labour Party. A quirk of his was that he often agreed to take part in public debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain. His defence of the Labour government’s desperate attempts to organise British capitalism was unconvincing but no matter how many times he was floored by the SPGB, Parker persistently got up for more.

In his old age. does he reflect now on these instructive experiences in his political life — on the practical and theoretical destruction of the case for the party to which, through thick and thin, he gave his misguided loyalty?

Jaws

A ten-year-old boy was recently killed by an automatic exit barrier at an underground station in Newcastle on Tyne. It happened very simply and very suddenly. The boy jumped, or tripped, into the barrier, which snapped its jaws about his neck. It took a long time to free him and he was dead by the time they got him to hospital.

Anyone who has had a thoughtlessly trailing piece of luggage bitten by these barriers knows how aggressive they are, with that malevolently watchful eye to trip them into action. The barriers are installed, in places like Newcastle and London, to stop people travelling without paying a fare — to stop them using the railways as a means of travel instead of as a means of yielding a profit to the owners. They are not designed to distinguish between those who are evading paying a fare and those who are just not totally alert to the instantaneous demands of electronic ticket checks.

The cause of profit making is greater than all others, in the morality of private property society. Truly, it is greater than any human being, or of any collection of them. In this cause it is permissible to herd long suffering workers, probably trying to get to and from the places where they are to undergo the indignities of being exploited by their masters, into canyons of electronically controlled discipline. To stray deliberately from the canyon could mean that they are punished — fined, imprisoned — and if they do this by accident they may even be killed.

In many ways — some trivial, some substantial — capitalism informs the working class that they are socially inferior, exploited, degraded. This information is sometimes emphasised in episodes of bitter tragedy, which would not have happened but for the class divide of capitalism, or for the production of wealth as commodities, or for the poverty of the majority of people, or for some other essential feature of capitalist society.

Such an incident was the death of the boy in Newcastle. There will be an inquest, which may decide that it was an accidental death. A better verdict — simpler, straighter, more accurate — would be that Capitalism Kills.

Blogger's Note:

"A quirk of his was that he often agreed to take part in public debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain." 

According to the SPGB debates wiki page, Parker only debated the SPGB once, in June 1948 at Fulham Town Hall. (The SPGB speaker was Clifford Groves.) My guess is that the wiki page is incomplete, and that Parker did debate with the SPGB on more than one occasion. He was a Fabian intellectual in his early political career, and such types had a tendency to debate again and again with the SPGB.

NHS dispute: In place of life (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May the long-awaited and greatly feared industrial action by workers in the National Health Service began in South London. Hundreds of ward orderlies, cleaners, catering staff and hospital porters declared a one-day strike. Similar action was taken in Manchester, where three people were arrested after nurses clashed with NUPE pickets outside Oldham and District General Hospital. On May 19 over 600,000 NHS employees took the day off in various parts of the country; and on May 27 and subsequent Thursdays for several weeks two-hour stoppages by selected groups were staged. The action was stepped up in June.

In the months since the beginning of the dispute, hospital waiting lists have soared, admissions have plummeted and tempers have frayed. Rumours are rife that the strikes may be extended to accident and emergency services within the near future.

The aim behind this action is to improve the pay offer for 1982-3 made to nurses, midwives and ancillary staffs by the Department of Health and Social Security. Initially, the offer proposed an increase of 4 per cent on basic income for most ancillary workers, and an average increase of 6.4 per cent for most nursing and midwifery grades, “in recognition of their special skills”, with veiled promises from the Secretary of State for Social Services, Norman Fowler, of future additional payments to nurses “to be drawn from government contingency funds”. Ambulance workers, doctors and dentists and hospital electricians and maintenance staff, whose pay settlements are made separately, were offered average pay rises of 5, 6 and 8 per cent respectively.

In June, the offer to nurses and midwives was increased to 7.5 per cent; ambulance workers and hospital pharmacists were to receive 6.5 per cent and other ancillary workers 6 per cent. These offers were immediately rejected by all except nurses in the Royal College of Nursing, who have now also voted to turn down the offer.

The nurses' and ancillary workers’ claim was. and continues to be, for increases averaging 12 per cent on basic rates, with a reduction in hours of work and more annual leave, and future index-linked pay increases. For the first time, the ten TUC-affiliated unions representing health service workers were to co-ordinate the campaign for these increases through their membership of the TUC’s Health Services Committee. Of the ten, the most important would be the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) with 300,000 technical, ancillary and nursing staff members in the NHS, the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO) with 100,000 NHS members and the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) with 150,000 members employed mainly in psychiatric and mental subnormality hospitals. The Royal College of Nursing, which is not affiliated to the TUC but has for some years flirted with the idea of limited industrial action by its 195,000 nursing and midwifery members, declared its support for the campaign in June, though without any change in its "no strike” policy. As it represents more nurses than any other union, the RCN’s support was of crucial importance to the success of the campaign.

Official union plans were to reduce the health service to an emergency service within a few weeks, beginning as early as possible after April 26, organisation being initially by local union branches. TUC policy prevented the withdrawal of emergency cover and there has been no change in this at the lime of writing, although spokesmen for individual branches have asserted that the policy is not sacrosanct.

Since the strike began to bite, with a lull at the height of the Falklands escapade (a propitious exercise for the government from more than one point of view), the propaganda war between unions and DHSS has been vigorous and almost unbroken. The government has naturally gone to great lengths to sugar the pill which its workers are expected to swallow, promising “new arrangements" (unspecified) for nurses' and midwives’ pay in the future, based perhaps on a "comparability scale” of the sort mooted on August 18, and talks on new arrangements for ancillary staff. It has also descended to the unusual tactic of publishing blatantly misleading advertisements to NHS staff in national newspapers (of which more below). But the DHSS campaign has concentrated on the message that, owing to the nature of their work, health workers are morally not entitled to strike or take other action which. in the words of Norman Fowler, "must damage patient services and lengthen waiting lists”.

This judgment has posed a considerable dilemma for health service workers. Indeed, it was thought at first that public outrage against the withdrawal of one of the most vital services — outrage assiduously stimulated by the national newspapers — might seriously weaken the strikers' resolve. In fact, unexpected support for the 12 per cent claim received initially from hospital employees in the National Association of Health Authorities of England and Wales, and from doctors of the usually very conservative British Medical Association and in Scotland and Yorkshire, have greatly improved the NHS workers’ public image. (The Lancet, one of the two most respected medical journals, on August 13 1982. actually called for Fowler’s resignation over the matter. But doubts remain among the strikers about the "justice" and efficacy of their action.

The NHS is the largest employer in Britain, with nearly 800,000 workers, and is the tenth largest employer in the world. NHS pay policy, while it is in the end controlled by the government, is influenced, for some groups of workers, by "independent assessors" like the Doctors' and Dentists’ Pay Review Board. (Senior hospital doctors also retain the archaic right to confer “merit awards" upon one another, which may add around £18,000 to an annual income of £21,000 at top consultant rates, without any party to the exercise being accountable to Parliament or the DHSS.) No independent bodies exist to assess the pay of nurses, midwives and the majority of ancillary workers; the nurses’ and midwives' Whitley Councils are merely negotiating forums. Pay increases in the NHS have not been index-linked and are consequently subject to the vicissitudes of government policy, and have tended to be very low.

The 1974-9 Labour government, pledged to rectify this situation, increased NHS wages and salaries in their first year of office. By October 1975 wage rates were approaching those in other industries, but in subsequent years they again fell behind. The present rate for an unskilled male worker in the NHS is about £65 a wreck. After a 12 per cent increase, the basic rate would still be below the net family income at which supplementary benefit becomes payable (currently £82 a week). So a high level of overtime working is necessary for ancillary workers with families — if it can be had. But there are still workers like the laundry attendant interviewed in the Observer of August 15, who earns £71 take-home pay for a 40-hour week plus 18 hours overtime, and who must support families on that. A first year nurse working full-time on the wards receives £63 (gross) a week, after working frequent night shifts and “unsocial hours" as part of the job contract. Board and lodging costs for nurses in hospitals have risen by between 18 and 33 per cent in the past year. According to COHSE, many of these people would be better off on the dole.

On August 6, the DHSS paid about £85.000 for an advertisement in the main national newspapers “to ensure that all NHS staff are aware of the facts". It stated that a ward sister’s “estimated weekly gross average earnings” would be raised by the current pay offer to between £132 and £170 a week. For a staff nurse, the increase would bring in from £107 to £131 a week; for a male ancillary worker (position unspecified) £91-£146 a week, and for a female ancillary worker, £82-£139.

The following day, health workers staged protest strikes in several Scottish hospitals, and COHSE announced that it would report the DHSS to the Advertising Standards Authority. For, as a NUPE official commented, the higher figure mentioned in relation to ancillary staff would apply to no more than 160 top-grade employees, and then only after working up to 20 hours overtime. All the other figures similarly assumed maximum rates of overtime and additional earnings. In fact, most ancillary workers in cleaning, catering and other general service fields are women working part-time, who would be quite unable to earn such amounts.

The DHSS has since admitted that surplus payments were included in its calculations, but insisted they were “statistically valid". Union statistics clearly show that this was not true, whatever “estimated weekly gross average earnings” may be taken to mean. Need we be surprised? Lies and distortions are constantly fed to us to try to persuade people to smoke cigarettes, to insure for private health care, to support the armed forces, so why should the government not use the same tactics in wage-bargaining?

The way in which the health workers’ scruples about striking have been used by successive governments to hold down wages is demonstrated by the recent awards of between 14.3 and 18.6 per cent to top civil servants, the judiciary and senior officers in the armed forces, of 9 per cent to gas workers and 7.5 per cent to public sector manual workers outside the NHS. For the health workers, according to Norman Fowler, 6 per cent should suffice and 12 per cent is "unrealistic" — as if 12 per cent on a pittance made for anything other than a slightly larger pittance.

The question of pay is not the only one to trouble NHS staff. In recent years the loss of small hospitals and the concentration of beds and ancillary services in large district general hospitals, the reduction in patient turnover time and the cut-back in recruitment have greatly increased the work-load on existing staff. In Brent Health District in London, it has been calculated that earlier discharge of patients (five days earlier, in some cases) and a reduction in the time for which a bed is left empty between successive patients have allowed a 25 per cent reduction in beds without affecting waiting lists. As there has been no increase in the number of staff employed in Brent, either in the hospitals or in the community where patients now do most of their convalescing, this has imposed a heavy extra burden on hospital workers. The day-to-day running of a hospital is very labour-intensive; it is difficult to reduce this by introducing machinery. And it must be remembered that 75 per cent of NHS employees are women who, besides their traditionally lower earnings, tend to have pressing commitments and a full job of unpaid work at home.

Women's average earnings now are 37 per cent lower than men’s; 87 per cent of part-time workers and 75 per cent of lower-paid workers are women. Promotion prospects for women in the NHS are poor, and many are forced to take on agency (private) nursing — a notoriously unreliable source of income — in their off- duty hours. On those precious days when they are not working unsocial hours and night shifts for the NHS, they may be doing so for the agency. In truth, they are a peculiarly exploited group of workers.

The long hours are made even more intolerable by the conditions in which they have to be spent. Many hospitals are still situated in old and wholly inappropriate buildings, particularly geriatric, psychiatric and mental subnormality hospitals and small general hospitals in underfinanced and inner city districts. Less than a quarter of existing hospitals have been built since 1948, as against half of the existing schools and houses; 40 per cent of hospitals in England and Wales were built before 1918. and 6.5 per cent before 1850 (In Sickness and in Health — David Owen). The task of caring for sick human beings in such decayed surroundings may be a particularly frustrating and at times a revolting one, and not without risks. Occupational accidents are by no means uncommon: orthopaedic injuries constitute a particularly grave risk for nurses, through proper lifting aids not being installed.

Even in the best-run hospitals workers may be exposed to infections, air-borne drugs, chemical toxins and radiation at a high level. Among the identified effects of this exposure are miscarriages, which occur twice as commonly among women with an occupational risk of inhaling low levels of anaesthetic gases than among others. Occurrence of tuberculosis is five times as common among microbiological laboratory staff in hospitals as in the general population (Hospital Hazards —leaflet produced by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1981). It is true that the NHS commonly gives its staff priority over other patients when they are in need of medical advice or treatment; but that can hardly be regarded as a perk. People clearly do not join the health service for the sake of their own health.

In an attempt to play down the penalties of employment in the NHS, Fowler referred to it in Parliament as a “service which enjoys secure and growing employment”. This hackneyed argument no longer holds water. It is true that the number of people employed by the service is expected to rise by around 10,000 in 1982-3 but it certainly is not true that individual employees arc secure in their jobs. In such a labour- intensive industry, the tightening of belts demanded by successive governments over the last two decades has meant lay-offs, either through hospital closures or as a result of the policy of reducing staffing levels by “natural wastage”. The resulting increase in work loads for remaining staff has been partially offset, at least in the short term, by the conscription of student nurses and police cadets, who can be made to work hard for little pay, and by steadily increasing numbers of voluntary workers. These people effectively mask the effects of job losses, and even of strikes; the fear that voluntary labour may be used for strikebreaking has often inhibited workers from taking industrial action in the past. This is not to deny the useful work performed by voluntary workers, particularly in geriatric and psychiatric care, and care of the mentally handicapped. But the extent to which voluntary labour has replaced paid labour in hospitals of all kinds puts in doubt both the future standard of care in these hospitals and the good-will extended to voluntary workers by employees whose livelihoods they threaten.

It seems likely that the government will take advantage of the present chaos in the public service to urge increased openings for private contractors in NHS ancillary services and for medical insurance schemes. Even before the dispute, the growing proportion of the NHS workforce hired from private companies was a source of concern to workers who feared it would divide and weaken the unions at times of industrial action, as well as masking the effects of redundancies in the regular workforce. In Sweden. 70 per cent of ancillary services are contracted out to private operators; and such an arrangement would be favoured by the present government, since contract workers are easily hired and fired, and are often more flexible than permanent workers.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the dispute is the distinctive attitude of the nurses and midwives. Until now, these workers have been well known for their willingness to perform an exceptionally demanding and highly responsible job, often under totally inadequate conditions and for the most punishing hours, in return for very low rates of pay. They have been eulogised on paper and on the screen as earthly angels with unshakeable traditions of discipline and dedication. It has often been assumed, both by governments and by the public at large, that in keeping with their singularly “feminine” (because caring) role, nurses should also be politically weak, and should do the feminine thing by obeying the (predominantly male) authorities, just as they are expected to obey the (predominantly male) doctors. Nurses have tended to accept this and have therefore become among the most conspicuously exploited of all workers. Offers of sympathetic strike action from non-nursing trade unions often reflect this all too clearly. Such support may come across as tactless or patronising and may actually reinforce the popular prejudice that a "caring profession" must inherently be vulnerable to exploitation. Even when their union colleagues can turn this prejudice to their own advantage — as during this dispute, when health ministers confessed that only popular sympathy for the nurses prevents them from taking a tougher line with the other health service staffs many nurses feel like weak and therefore second-class union members.

PC

Blogger's Note:

I'm not 100% sure who 'PC' was. My initial thought was that it could have been an early pen-name for Carl Pinel, but I've since been told that it could have been (Doctor) Peter Cook. Fingers crossed that one of them reads the blog, and clears the matter up for me.

Festival of thieves (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Approaching from a distance it seemed as if it could have been a meeting of the Youth section of the Bulgarian Communist Party: flags attached to poles were held high by blank-faced patriots who clapped occasionally with all the passion of a fly drowning in a glass of water; on the makeshift platform stood grey-suited, makeshift leaders whose faces seemed to blend in to the empty slogans which were written on the solitary blue banner; the hum of conformity was in the air and, approaching, it became clear that the three hundred or so people assembled in Hyde Park stood beneath a banner which announced that this was a “RALLY FOR FREEDOM”.

Freedom, eh? Certainly not the Bulgarian CP, then. On closer inspection they might have been a regiment of newly-recruited Boy Scouts — or perhaps a crowd of extras waiting around for a re-make of Mary Poppins. But then came that all too familiar clapping sound — that sound which tells you that “Britain" or "Our Boys” or “Long Live Maggie" have been mentioned — the sound of non-verbal consent and complacency which is Nature’s little way of telling us that Conservatives are around. There is no mistaking the Tory clap; your reporter had stumbled upon a Young Conservatives’ rally — a rally for freedom, no less — freedom under capitalism. The Houdinis of British politics were about to perform live — well, almost.

The flags were upside-down Union Jacks and their holders were young Tories who had come to cheer their leaders who had come to tell them that there could be no sweeter freedom than that which capitalism offers. An exiled Hungarian general was brought on to frighten the crowd with horror stories about “Hungarian Communism”. “We must keep the flame of democracy burning” he said (by which he did not mean that we should burn down the House of Lords) and “the Communists must be opposed with all our might". The crowd applauded heartily, not realising that by “Communism” the general meant a society based on authoritarian government, impotent trade unions, intense militarism and national chauvinism (all of which are features of state capitalist Russia and all of which also happen to be Tory objectives) and that by “freedom” he meant the right of the rich and powerful 10 per cent to exploit the propertyless 90 per cent. The deception of rhetoric is well disguised by a long, hard Tory clap.

Next comedian to mount the podium was Rhodes Boyson, government minister for indoctrinating the wage slaves. Ex-headmaster Boyson spoke with all the arrogance of a village idiot who has become drunk on a pint of shandy, thus acquiring the confidence to open his mouth as if he knew what he was talking about. He referred to the Berlin Wall and the need for respect and said that meetings like this could certainly not take place in Red Square. He was right about the last point — in Moscow they are able to assemble even more deluded patriots in their cynical attempts to manipulate wage slaves in the name of “freedom". The crowd clapped Rhodes Boyson until they were exhausted (for some of them this was the most energy they’d expended in months) and fifteen seconds after his speech ended the next contestant to be Tory Twit of the Year ascended the platform.

The third man was concerned about “defence”, by which he meant attack, and felt that fifth columnists were at work in our schools, by which he meant that it was terrible that not all teachers are in favour of telling children that when they grow up they must go out and kill people. He said that “we need to get back to teaching the basic values of civilisation; we need to explain . . .” “Yes, the basic values of sending workers to kill each other in your commercial wars" interjected a bearded heckler in the front row. He was soon surrounded by three or four Tory stewards w ho wore Union Jack shirts and looked as if they had failed the intelligence test allowing them to join the National Front. No questions allowed at Young Conservatives meetings: so that’s what they mean by “freedom”..

The star speaker was John Biggs-Davison who announced that the theme of the rally could be summed up in one word which was . . . um . . . er (reaching for his prompt cards) “Ah yes, self-determination — that's what we stand for. The right of people to live as they choose to live." He failed to mention that this “right" would be denied to the vast majority of the population who produce the wealth of society. Capitalism offers workers no more than the right to live as we can afford lo live. The freedom to be impoverished — to be alienated from ownership and control over the world we live in — is no freedom at all.

In the subway leading to Hyde Park there used to be a couple of old con-men who obtained fivers from gullible Americans by performing the three-card trick. One day they were arrested and now they are conning tourists in a different area of London. But what of the Tory con-men for whom freedom means exploitation, liberty means inequality and peace means oppression? Trading on the political ignorance of the exploited class, these people have police protection while they perform the political three-card trick. But nothing will defend the advocates of capitalism against the genuine case for social freedom. Be they Tory. SDP or Labour, the misleaders of the working class will not succeed forever.

Steve Coleman

Political Notes: Labour love in (1982)

The Political Notes Column from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour love in

In November 1980 Michael Foot defeated Denis Healey in the parliamentary election for the leadership of the Labour Party. This victory was regarded by many people in the Labour Party as signalling an important change, as with a new, dynamic, “left-wing" politician as leader, the next Labour government would be able to begin, once again, the job of running the profit-system in ways it claims are beneficial to the working class.

As Foot's ascendancy was greeted from some quarters with great enthusiasm, we were not encouraged to remember that he had been Minister of Unemployment in the last Labour government when the number in the dole queues had doubled. The large membership of the Labour Party is not united in sharing a single political objective and Foot's inability to smooth out major disagreements between the fighting factions has led to speculation that he is about to be ousted from his position.

The names of Denis Healey, Tony Benn and Roy Hattersley have all been rumoured as possible successors. As the ideas of these heirs apparent are canvassed it is worth remembering that they all give general support to the profit system. The Institute of Directors in Scotland recently invited Healey to address them on “How any future Labour government would not be a bad thing for business, or for free enterprise" (Observer, 5 September 1982) to which Healey readily agreed. A twist to the episode came when Denis — engaging in some free enterprise himself — asked for a £500 fee on top of his expenses, and the Institute, unwilling to pay his free market rate, went elsewhere for a speaker.

Tony Benn, although often mistakenly associated with the word “Socialism", does not advocate revolution. By his own admission he believes that capitalism can be changed to work in our interests by a series of reform measures. In the 27 August edition of New Socialist, the Labour Party magazine, Benn urged certain reforms regarding the constitutional power of the cabinet to declare and end a war and the monarch's power to dissolve Parliament and invite someone to form a government. He does not urge the arrangement of society so that there will be no need or use for monarchs, governments or wars.

Wars fought over the interests of the ruling class — over markets, trade routes, raw materials and strategic areas — are not democratic occurrences. Soldiers are not, for instance, asked by their commanding officers whether they would care to engage in killing “the enemy". But this is what Benn would like to see: "The making of war and conclusion of peace should be subject to the consent of the Commons".

In an interview after his article had been published, he described his proposals as “modest". The scale on which our lives are impoverished and made insecure by capitalism is not “modest" and this social structure cannot be dismantled by piecemeal measures.

As Shadow Home Secretary, Roy Hattersley has been busy trying to cultivate an image of respectability, perhaps in order to be regarded as a person “responsible" enough to be trusted in higher office. Unveiling a proposed policy to be debated at this year’s Labour Party conference. Hattersley said that the next Labour government will adopt “a compassionate and moral attitude" towards immigration. He said the approach would be not to treat immigration issues as a numbers game about black people.

From the point of view of his vote-catching potential. Hattersley must have been pleased to have made his opinion clear, lest his support for the racially discriminatory 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act was remembered. For all his endearing “compassion”, he is still firmly in favour of the world being artificially divided into nations and of people's mobility being shackled by their "nationality". Being interviewed on News at Ten (ITV) last month, he was asked whether, by wishing to case the pressures on immigration, he was implicitly condoning the actions of some "illegal immigrants”? “Oh No", he replied, “I am very much against illegal immigration, and I favour catching illegal immigrants and sending them home.”

More love

In a pamphlet, The Labour Party — Myth and Reality, published by the Socialist Workers Party, the role which the Labour Party has played in supporting capitalism is described in some detail and many examples are given of its impotency to remove the problems we suffer in a class-divided society. It speaks correctly about the "myth that the Labour Party can be won to socialist politics". It concludes, however, with the ludicrously illogical statement, “We even support the Labour Party against the Tories, until we are in a position to replace it". If you continue to give support to something you will, of course, never be able to replace it. For, although it may have escaped the attention of the Leninist intelligentsia of the SWP. you cannot both support and oppose the same political party.

Racist repentant?

In his early days as governor of Alabama, George Wallace would get his audiences going in that Deep South fortress of racial persecution with a chant: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”.

Well forever is a long time and it was a notably different Wallace who recently went on the campaign trail for another term (or rather to win the Democratic nomination, which amounts to the same thing). The old favourite of the Ku Klux Klan came out as a bold champion of equal rights between white and black.

No secret was made about the reason for this. Few black votes were allowed in Alabama in the old days but now about a quarter of the state’s registered voters are black. Wallace badly needed their support. Leaving nothing (he hoped) to chance he also declared himself a fervent friend of god (religious groups like the Born Again Christians have quite a political influence in the Deep South).

The old Wallace was a chilling politician; in face of his racist mob oratory, one did not know whether to laugh, cry, or run for cover. It was easy to forget, then, that he had not always spouted these vicious prejudices; he came out as a white racist only after his first attempt at being governor failed because he was too “liberal”. The lesson he learned is that, if there are votes in it, you must out-racist the racists—or, now, try to out-liberal the liberals.

If Wallace is to be taken seriously, it must be in a way he does not intend. His cynical, vote-grubbing changes of policy, careless as they are of the effect on the conditions — and in the case of Alabama it used to be on the very lives — of people, were always inspired by a single-minded ambition for power.

They may be represented now as caricatures but if so it is because, like caricatures, they have a basic validity, illustrating the nature of the features they emphasise.

Wallace’s campaigns, with all their swings, have one message. The politics of capitalism are cynical, corrupt and decadent, typical of the social system itself.

Sunshine

Geoffrey Howe has never been famous as the Conservatives’ little ray of sunshine but even at that his latest thoughts on the matter of unemployment were gloomy enough to depress the dole queues even further.

Interviewed on Radio Two by Jimmy Young (who tries to be famous as everyone’s little ray of etc., etc.), Howe said that the peak of unemployment has not yet been reached (in other words, things will get worse) and that “It’s bound to take a long time” before the jobless figures begin to fall.

Well if anyone is supposed to know about these things it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer but the unemployed can take comfort; Howe, like his predecessors, has a notable record for getting his prophecies about the economy wrong.

In May 1980, flushed after his first year in charge at the Treasury, he exulted “. . . inflation would start to move down after July, the economy would resume its growth from next year, interest rates would come down ‘in due course’ and there were still many opportunities for firms to expand” (Daily Telegraph, 29 May 1980).

Just over a year later, Howe was definite that he had done the trick, claiming that “there was an accumulation of evidence” which justified him in saying that “the recession was over” (The Times, 10 August 1981).

If Howe was wrong when he said that things were getting better for British capitalism, he can also be wrong when he groans that they are getting worse. Both prophecies are false for the same reason: no Chancellor, nor any of the hordes of “experts” who offer their advice (whether asked for or not) can predict the course of capitalism’s economy. If it were otherwise, they might be able to eliminate booms and slumps and instead organise an even progress to prosperity.

Their obvious impotence should of itself be enough to ensure that no worker anywhere will ever vote for them again. What will actually happen, at the next election, is that people will leave the dole queues to join those at the polling stations, lining up to opt for another spell of anarchy and poverty. And that is a little ray of sunshine for Howe.

Death on principle (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Asbestos is the Greek word for unquenchable, which fairly describes its devouring effect on the human body. It is a fibre embedded in a rock found in many parts of the world — Canada (where there are the largest deposits). Zimbabwe. Russia and Cyprus. South Africa has a lot of the especially unquenchable blue asbestos and the USA is the world’s principal manufacturer of asbestos products. The rock is quarried from holes in the ground, then crushed to extract the fibre which can be processed into yarns and cloth or compounded into rubber and cement. Its great value is in a high resistance to heat and to electricity, which means that it is widely used in the building industry and for gasket and brake linings.

It is only in recent years that asbestos has been recognised as a deadly killer responsible for incurable, agonising illness. One of the victims featured in the TV film about asbestos sufferers — Alice, A Fight for Life — recalled when the mill workers would lark about with the stuff, wearing it in wigs and beards, unaware of the appalling risks they were running. Now, a local council sends its workers-to rip the stuff out of houses and flats dressed in space suits of protective clothing, as if they were handling the most perilous of radioactive materials.

Asbestos kills through the inhalation of a dust of its minute but durable fibres which stay in the lungs for life, causing asbestosis — a respiratory disease — lung cancer or mesothelioma, a cancer of the membrane of the lungs or the abdomen. One of the companies exposed in the TV film — Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA) — described it as a process in which the asbestos particles "get right down into the lungs and file away the tissue”. This sounds ghastly enough but was in fact a clumsy attempt to play down the risks.

This same safety memorandum, which was given to all employees of TBA. asserted that: "Health problems are caused only if a lot of asbestos dust is breathed into the lungs over many years". In truth there are examples of people contracting asbestos-related diseases after as little as two weeks’ contact and the woman who once fooled around with an asbestos wig worked with it for only nine months. One study of the TBA factory in Rochdale found that 58 per cent of the employees were showing the first symptoms of asbestos-related diseases; another found one worker in four actually suffering from the diseases.

The recognition of asbestos as a twentieth century industrial killer has loosed a flood of demands for compensation for its victims, which threatens to gather force into a deluge. This might force TBA to pay out rather more than the no-obligation grant of about £10 a week they have made to some of the families of their dead employees. Sometimes they gave nothing at all, other than the wreath which they sent to the funeral. (The TV researchers traced a lot of the asbestos victims through pathetic thanks for the flowers in the Deaths column of the local paper.)

While their workers were suffering and dying. TBA were devoting themselves to concealing the extent of the problem. Their safety memorandum breezily assured everyone: “Working with asbestos is a bit like working with gas — you've no problems so long as you stick firmly to a few simple rules". They did not publish a report of their own company doctor which showed the incidence of asbestos-related diseases at TBA to be 75 times what the company admitted to. Weeks after the TV programme, in face of the mounting evidence of the dangers, TBA conceded that some of their estimates had been wrong but they adopted a new, equally spurious, defence — that 30 per cent of mesothelioma cases happen spontaneously. TBA did not concede that they make their profits through putting people to work with a peculiarly nasty and dangerous material; the work could be a lot safer — as safe as human ability allows—but this would cost a lot of money and file away some of those profits like workers’ lungs.

TBA is not the only asbestos company to be in trouble. In America there is the more spectacular and provocative Manville Corporation, which was once the world's largest processor of asbestos. We say "was" because Manville recently went bankrupt. There was no suicide among the corporation’s penitent executives over this because Manville is in fact financially healthy. According to the Guardian of September 7, at the time it had $15 million in cash, apart from its other assets, and continues its business as normal. Manville's bankruptcy was a ruse, calculated to protect it against the claims of the sick and crippled workers. There are some 16,500 of these claims at present and more are on the way.

Of course there was an indignant outcry at Manville's cynical but effective manoeuvre. One American Congressman accused the Corporation of leaving behind “. . . the wreckage of their workers’ and consumers' lives". But there was also some support for the company, from American bankers and lawyers, who are trained to applaud an effective preoccupation with taking in the profits, even if it costs the lives of the people who make them. The tragic fact is that those smug, desiccated business people who stood up for Manville had social reality on their side, unlike those who were in pain or dying because they had worked for the Corporation or the others who were angry about it all.

The first part of that reality is that asbestos can yield some very impressive profits for the people who own the quarries where it is extracted and the plants where it is processed. The second part is that those profits arise, not just from the fact that human beings apply their abilities to the mining and the processing, but that this takes place under certain social relationships. The owners, who receive the profits, are part of a social class who monopolise the means of production and distribution. The workers, who make the profits, have no ownership; their part in the relationship is to be exploited as they produce asbestos, or things made from it, with the object of being sold to realise the profits.

Within this relationship there are no rights or moral obligations; there is only an antagonism of interests. The employers don't owe their workers a living and when a worker is killed as a result of their employment the employers are being generous when they send a bunch of flowers to the cemetery. If the facts about asbestos make an embarrassing scandal that is only because the employer/worker relationship is so widely misunderstood and obscured.

Capitalism tags everything with a price — even a person’s life. There are people, called actuaries, who are trained to work out those prices and to express them in terms of insurance premiums and payouts. 'These calculations have no room for sentiment or emotion; it has been known for a small part of one particular person's body — a film star's legs, a footballer’s feet — to be insured for hundreds of times more than the entire body of the people who watch them perform. This cold-blooded process extends into other fields and will play its part in deciding, say. whether to develop an airport runway or build a motorway or some other assault on the lives of the people living around it.

Any investment in industrial safety must be subject to those same actuarial principles. Safety itself is a profit element; to kill workers too early in their life effectively reduces the supply of future exploitation-fodder. The skill — if that is the word — is in finding the balancing point, when safety measures cost too much or when adverse publicity from meddling media people begins to affect investment in the firm. In any case it is always worthwhile to fight a rearguard action, even if it is over the wrecked and wasted bodies of the victims of actuarial principles.

Another woman in the TV film, who died at the age of 55. was at first judged to be ineligible under the rules for any compensation at all; although she was dying from asbestosis the doctors who "examined" her found no symptoms. Two months before she died, in great pain, hardly able to move and heavily drugged, she mistook the date when her disability began, which meant that under the rules she was entitled to only a limited payment. After her death, and a post mortem, the authorities agreed that she had been completely disabled and should have received a total of about £18,000.

No comment was made on the degradation of it all — the exploitation, being put to work with a lethal substance; then the sickness, the withering away onto the scrap heap observed by doctors and bureaucrats, all concerned that nobody should get more than the rules allowed. No comment was made, that all of this was done in accordance with those actuarial calculations so essential to a society in which the overriding priority is the production of wealth for profit.

At the end of the 18th century a child called Robert Blincoe was sent as an apprentice to various factories in Nottinghamshire. There he was beaten and tortured, his hair torn out and his teeth filed down in his head. His was not an isolated case and eventually there was a massive protest. His sufferings were in accordance with the actuarial principles of the first days of industrial capitalism, which laid it down that it paid to operate factories and mines with starving, battered children.

Has capitalism improved since then? Observe how those same principles operate now — the tortured bodies of the asbestos victims, the contemptuous evasions of the employers’ public relations staff, the insult of the company flowers on the grave. And be warned that here, behind the anger and grief, is this society’s enduring reality.

Ivan