Free Work versus Forced Employment (1998)

From the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why do you go to work? Is it because you enjoy what you do? Did you choose to work at what you do in the way you do? Would you do your job were it not for the money?

A few lucky people can do what they like. These include a certain class of people who have the economic privilege of not needing to work. They can live by exploiting the work of others. This exploitation enables them to live by appropriating rent, interest and profit. They can do what they like with their lives. They can sleep all day. They can travel. They can spend their time shooting animals for fun or shooting drugs into their bodies. If they wish, they can be philanthropists and "do good" for the poorwho are poor only because the rich are rich.

While the capitalist minority who own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth are free not to have to work, the majority of us are unfree. We are dependent upon working in order to obtain a wage or salary. We sell our mental and physical abilities in a relationship called employment.

Work and employment are not the same. Humans need to work because work is the expenditure of energy and unless we use some of it we rot away. Even the most parasitical aristocratic layabout occasionally does the odd stroke of work. Looking after a garden or painting pictures or cooking fine food are all work activities, but if you do them freely they are not employment. To be employed is to work for someone else: to be at their beck and call; to be given money by them in return for producing values for them. Capitalists will only employ workers if there is a prospect of them making a profit out of us. They make their profit by receiving from us more value than the value of our wages or salaries. Without this surplus value they would not employ us - which is why millions of able-bodied and skilled people who want to find jobs are unemployed; there is no prospect of a profit in making them work. There is no point in asking the capitalists to give everyone employment regardless of profit. That would not be in their interests and we should not expect them to invest in us unless they can exploit us.

So, the majority works not by choice but in an unfree relationship of employment. We are wage or salary slaves. We are employed not for the good of our health but so that capitalists can live in luxury without working. Employment is a form of institutionalised exploitation - or legalised robbery.

Increasing Misery - How Works Getting Worse

Karl Marx, who was the first to explain scientifically how capitalism turned the producers of wealth into exploited wage slaves, argued in the last century that conditions for workers would get worse: the increasing misery of the working class. Some reformists believe that Marx was wrong: that life under capitalism has been greatly improved for the workers as a result of philanthropic legislation and higher wages. Even certain pseudo-Marxists have declared that Marx was wrong about this and that capitalism has produced a working class which, though technically exploited, is pretty affluent and no longer in poverty. Even discounting the condition of the majority of the worlds working class who live in conditions of poverty comparable to those suffered in Victorian Britain (which such pseudo-Marxists do, because they are essentially only interested in British rather then global capitalism), it is nonsense to suppose that the exploited working class is now somehow well off. In fact, in many respects, the late 1990s are one of the worst times to be employed this century.

Employment is the sale of time. Capitalists want to be sure that they get their full chunk of our lives, down to the last second. So theyve invented new electronic timesheets, such as Tempo, VizTopia and Carpe Diem, which measure what we are doing during every minute of their day. Arthur Andersen, the management consultants (the new holders of the foremans whip) have invented a new 70-unit day, divided up into six-minute periods, each of which must be accounted for by the employee. At a recent socialist meeting we heard from a worker at one of the major banks whose useless job was to sit in front of a computer transferring money. There is a button labelled "More Work" which she had to press on her computer each time she had completed a task. By comparison, the Victorian factory sounds pretty civilised--certainly no worse. The New Labour-supporting Daily Mirror reports enthusiastically on the Nissan factory in Sunderland where workers have a fixed 35-minute lunch break (16 July).

The "good old days" when even the humblest wage slave got an hour off for dinner and a chat have been replaced. All over the industrialised world workers are being encouraged to arrive on the job earlier, stay later and take less time out for a pee or a pie. Little wonder then that the same newspaper reported that "soaring stress levels at work are making it Britains biggest health hazard . . . It is affecting a third of the countrys workforce and costing industry 90 million working days a year" (19 October) The TUC report from which the newspaper quoted this information also stated that nearly a quarter of Britains firms were not meeting legally required safety obligations. And with trade-union membership having fallen--largely due to the smaller full-time workforce and increased job insecuritymost workers simply have to grin and bear it. Without organisation for self-defence the bosses can impose whatever lousy conditions they think they can get away with.

In the Post Office in North London workers, whose paid job began at 6 am, were arriving half an hour early in order to complete the extra workload that management was expecting of them. They didnt arrive early because they were insomniacs and couldnt sleep; they were scared that unless they delivered what the managers were demanding theyd be replaced by other wage slaves fresh off the dole queue. Now the managers (who are merely the errand boys for Capital) have insisted that the official working day must begin at 5.30after all, most workers are arriving then anyway. So, more work will be piled upon them and the next step will be for some to have to arrive at 5 am to deliver their pounds of flesh. This is the increasing misery of the working class.

A World Without Wages

Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not some thieving parasite who can laugh as long as were dependent on his wages.

The abolition of wage slavery is no less than the abolition of class society. Because there are only two main classes left in society today--capitalists and workersthe abolition of capitalist exploitation must mean the beginning of free labour.

How will work be organised in a socialist society? Everyone who can work will work. They will work at what they do best, not for wages but as co-operative contributors to society. In return for giving according to their abilities they will be free to take from the common store according to their needs. There will be no wages. There will be no money. Instead of the market there will be free access for all to goods and services. It will be a more relaxed society. People in a socialist society will not have jobs but will do work. It is unlikely that any of us will choose to do only one kind of work all week or between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five. It is quite probable that the hours each week that each of us will be needed to work will be less than at present. Certainly, working conditions will be pleasant--because the object of work will be social satisfaction and not pumping as much toil out of each person as is humanly possible. People in a socialist society will have much more control than now over how their work is organised; the labour process will be democratised and no longer under the dictatorship of Capital and its managerial Gestapo.

Under capitalism what we call leisure is a snatched period of free time to use for rest and relaxation. In a socialist society the distinction between work and leisure will diminishperhaps even disappear. People will have an opportunity to use their hobbies and enthusiasms for the social good: to enjoy being useful. Whereas now much of the work that most workers perform is totally uselessfrom counting money to making munitions to guarding propertyevery human in a socialist society will know that their work is part of a process of producing for use.

We are not presenting the socialist alternative of a world without wages as a utopian dream for the century after next. This is practical now. Socialism is the sensible next step for humankind to take, away from a social system that wastes our energies, abuses or skills and stunts or creativity.

SC

The Great Money Trick

Taken from classic working class novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, which was originally published in Britain in 1914. The text was found via the website of the Manchester Branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

"Money is the real cause of poverty," said Owen.

"Prove it," repeated Crass.

"Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour."

"Prove it," said Crass.

Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it in his pocket.

"All right," he replied. "I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked."

Owen opened his dinner basket and took from it two slices of bread, but as these where not sufficient, he requested that anyone who had some bread left should give it to him. They gave him several pieces, which he placed in a heap on a clean piece of paper, and, having borrowed the pocket knives of Easton, Harlow and Philpot, he addressed them, as follows:

"These pieces of bread represent the raw materials which exist naturally in and on the earth for the use of mankind; they were not made by any human being, but were created for the benefit and sustenance of all, the same as were the air and the light of the sun."

"Now," continued Owen, "I am a capitalist; or rather I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me. It does not matter for our present arguement how I obtained possession of them, the only thing that matters now is the admitted fact that all the raw materials which are necessary for the production of the necessaries of life are now the property of the landlord and capitalist class. I am that class; all these raw materials belong to me."

"Now you three represent the working class. You have nothing, and, for my part, although I have these raw materials, they are of no use to me. What I need is the things that can be made out of these raw materials by work; but I am too lazy to work for me. But first I must explain that I possess something else beside the raw materials. These three knives represent all the machinery of production; the factories, tools, railways, and so forth, without which the necessaries of life cannot be produced in abundance. And these three coins" - taking three half pennies from his pocket - "represent my money, capital."

"But before we go any further," said Owen, interrupting himself, "it is important to remember that I am not supposed to be merely a capitalist. I represent the whole capitalist class. You are not supposed to be just three workers, you represent the whole working class."

Owen proceeded to cut up one of the slices of bread into a number of little square blocks.

"These represent the things which are produced by labour, aided by machinery, from the raw materials. We will suppose that three of these blocks represent a week's work. We will suppose that a week's work is worth one pound."

Owen now addressed himself to the working class as represented by Philpot, Harlow and Easton.

"You say that you are all in need of employment, and as I am the kind-hearted capitalist class I am going to invest all my money in various industries, so as to give you plenty of work. I shall pay each of you one pound per week, and a week's work is that you must each produce three of these square blocks. For doing this work you will each recieve your wages; the money will be your own, to do as you like with, and the things you produce will of course be mine to do as I like with. You will each take one of these machines and as soon as you have done a week's work, you shall have your money."

The working classes accordingly set to work, and the capitalist class sat down and watched them. As soon as they had finished, they passed the nine little blocks to Owen, who placed them on a piece of paper by his side and paid the workers their wages.

"These blocks represent the necessaries of life. You can't live without some of these things, but as they belong to me, you will have to buy them from me: my price for these blocks is one pound each."

As the working classes were in need of the necessaries of life and as they could not eat, drink or wear the useless money, they were compelled to agree to the capitalist's terms. They each bought back, and at once consumed, one-third of the produce of their labour. The capitalist class also devoured two of the square blocks, and so the net result of the week's work was that the kind capitalist had consumed two pounds worth of things produced by the labour of others, and reckoning the squares at their market value of one pound each, he had more than doubled his capital, for he still possessed the three pounds in money and in addition four pounds worth of goods. As for the working classes, Philpot, Harlow and Easton, having each consumed the pound's worth of necessaries they had bought with their wages, they were again in precisely the same condition as when they had started work - they had nothing.

This process was repeated several times; for each weeks work the producers were paid their wages. They kept on working and spending all their earnings. The kind-hearted capitalist consumed twice as much as any one of them and his pool of wealth continually increased. In a little while, reckoning the little squares at their market value of one pound each, he was worth about one hundred pounds, and the working classes were still in the same condition as when they began, and were still tearing into their work as if their lives depended on it.

After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their meriment increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a pound's worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took their tools, the machinery of production, the knives, away from them, and informed them that as owing to over production all his store-houses were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down the works.

"Well, and wot the bloody 'ell are we to do now ?" demanded Philpot.

"That's not my business," replied the kind-hearted capitalist. "I've paid your wages, and provided you with plenty of work for a long time past. I have no more work for you to do at the present. Come round again in a few months time and I'll see what I can do."

"But what about the necessaries of life?" Demanded Harlow. "We must have something to eat."

"Of course you must," replied the capitalist, affably; "and I shall be very pleased to sell you some."

"But we ain't got no bloody money!"

"Well, you can't expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You didn't work for nothing, you know. I paid you for your work and you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me. Look how I have got on by being thrifty!"

The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the rest of the crowd only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the kind-hearted capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and even threated to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before at Featherstone and Belfast.

Further Reading and Viewing:

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard -

Robert Tressell and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Andy Vine's graphic illustration of the Great Money Trick that originally appeared in issue 3 of the political comic, Warning This Is Propaganda.

Robert Owen: paternalist utopian (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Robert Owen. The Owenites introduced the word “socialism” but Owen himself always opposed the class struggle.

Owen’s key idea, indeed perhaps his only one, was: “Man’s character is made for and not by him”. He thought that it was therefore possible to give a person any character you like. He was, in short, a ‘man moulder’.
Robert Owen was born in Wales. He had little formal education but through hard work and nous (including marrying the boss’s daughter) soon became a big cheese in the cotton spinning business. In 1800, at the age of 29, he moved to New Lanark in Scotland.
This was the real era of the dark satanic mills. Sans unions and sans factory legislation, the workers toiled endlessly for a measly pittance, existing in a degraded condition in filthy slums. Owen took New Lanark (which it must be said was even at the start one of the better mills) and made it a model factory estate. Nice Mr. Owen became well known as a genial entrepreneur and benevolent philanthropist. At his factory at Lanark he improved hours and conditions, introduced schooling, and banned ‘morally harmful’ out of hours activities (outlawing pubs and books and fining extra-marital sex). He raised the minimum working age from six to ten years. Entertainment for his workers was a little harmless music, some dancing and physical jerks. Military drill was introduced to “give them an erect and proper form, and habits of attention, celerity, and order”. In addition “firearms, of proportionate weight and size for the age and strength of the boys shall be provided for them”. A key element in the workplace was the public display of a block showing the behaviour of the individual (shades of Maoist self-criticism). This was said to be character building but also produced a disciplined and productive workforce. (All quotes are from A New View of Society Owen's account of New Lanark).
The aim at New Lanark was made absolutely clear in a letter from Owen to The London Times in 1834:

“I believe it is known to your lordship that in every point of view no experiment was ever so successful as the one I conducted at New Lanark, although it was commenced and continued in opposition to all the oldest and strongest prejudices of mankind. For twenty-nine years we did without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single legal punishment; without any known poors’ (sic) rate; without intemperance or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the adults, diminishing their daily labour, paid interest on capital, and cleared upwards of £300,000 of profit.” (quoted in GJ Holyoake’s History of Cooperation).

Like Lord Leverhulme at Port Sunlight, Owen found that treating your workers better makes better workers which makes better profits. The rest of Owen's life was an attempt to recreate the Lanark Mills experience on a large scale. True later on for different reasons. But Owen never really understood that at New Lanark he was able to impose ‘nice’ upon his workers by their very status as workers.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought a period of crisis including mass unemployment. This resulted in a high poor rate. Owen, being a businessman, sought to lower this with a plan for solving unemployment. Again this was the 5 percent philanthropy at work. Concern for the suffering was tempered by profit making – in the form of a lowered tax burden. Some time around 1817 this tax plan became a general scheme for the changing of society.

Essentially society was to be transformed by means of experimental communities. These self-contained and self-supporting complexes were to be built as grand squares, the parallelograms. In the communities the precise form of ownership of property was left open, leaving the way open for ‘community of goods’. However Owen was averse to this. Economics, like the precise form of internal administration in the colony, was unimportant. Education was the key to Owen's scheme and its purpose was to mould the individual into an ideal social character. Finance was to come by an appeal to the rich and influential. Such was not forthcoming. Owen blamed his failure on his relatively mild criticism of the established church and the family. Doubtless this had some effect but the rich really had no particular interest in solving the problem of poverty. So far as they were concerned the poor could rot.

From 1824 Owen poured his own money into setting up a community in America. New Harmony, in Indiana, failed within a few years, essentially due to lack of discrimination in choosing occupants (the great problem of freeloaders). Without the power that goes with being a factory owner, Owen was unable to make the communists behave as he wished, particularly as, despite his own high opinion of himself, he was not a particularly good organiser, often leaving deputies to deal with problems while he swanned off for parties with the wealthy (Owen was always fond of the Great and Good, dedicating the New View to the appallingly corrupt Prince Regent).

When Owen returned to Britain in 1829 after the dismal failure of his American experiment, he found the situation somewhat altered. Throughout the country the working class was making use of the repeal of the anti-combination laws to set up trade unions. These were as yet little more than local self-help clubs, often carrying out some form of cooperative trading venture. Many of those involved looked to Owen as a source of inspiration. Owen himself had lost virtually all his money and whatever slight influence he may have had amongst the wealthier classes. Bandwagonning a little, he began to associate himself with the various self-help schemes – co-operatives, barter schemes and trade unions. Although so far as he was concerned these were only of use in ‘preparing the public’s mind for community’, this short period (1829-34) was the making of Owen as a figurehead of the old Left.

Within a short time Owen had set up his own cooperative (Association for the Promotion of Cooperative Knowledge), union (Grand National Consolidated Trades Union) and labour exchange (National Equitable Labour Exchange) organisations. The latter functioned as an extension of the cooperative store, surplus coop produce forming the basis of its activities. Essentially goods brought in were valued by a committee and a note issued indicating the amount of labour required to produce the item. This could then be exchanged for other goods in the bazaar of the same labour time value.

The various groups were viewed as fund raisers and mind openers – fronts in modern parlance – rather than useful in themselves. Strikes were certainly not on Owen's agenda. And when the true class war came to a head in the summer of 1834, Owen bailed out, disassociating himself from the GNCTU. Extreme pressure from employers led to the failure of the union, which brought down in its wake the cooperatives and labour exchanges. The latter were probably fatally flawed in any case due to their limited ability to satisfy needs, most goods making their way there being unsaleable on the open market.

In 1835 Owen renewed the attempt to found a community. This time the attempt was made through a distinctly working class body. This was variously named the Association of All Classes of All Nations (1835-39), the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists (1839-42) and the Rational Society (1842-46). At its peak in 1841 there were 70 or so branches spread throughout Great Britain. In key centres, such as Manchester and London, meeting halls were built (the Halls of Science) and regular indoor and outdoor propaganda meetings held under the auspices of ‘Social Missionaries’. By late 1839 the efforts bore fruit with the opening of a community at Queenwood in Hampshire. This became known as Harmony.

Harmony was however distinctly unharmonious. Owen regarded the whole enterprise as a means towards the perfection of humanity, a great experiment in making people nice. The workers however saw Owenism in general and the community in particular, as a way of abolishing their own poverty. Conflict was inevitably the result, with control of the enterprise swinging back and forth between the paternalist Owen and the self-organising proles. The true downfall of Harmony however was really Owen’s responsibility. Having selected a hopeless site in the chalk uplands, he proceeded to build a hopelessly ornate ‘super workhouse’, burdening the society with unsustainable debts. In the summer of 1845 Harmony was sold off. Further details of the Harmony scheme can be found in Edward Royle’s excellent Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium (Manchester University Press, 1998).

Historically the attitude to the Owenites of the 1830s and ‘40s has been determined by the semi-religious millennial language that was used and group dismissed (e.g. by GDH Cole) as nothing more than a sect. Although there were elements of this, Owen as the secular saviour leading his chosen people to the glorious paradise of Community, the reduction is a rather unfair slur. Many contemporary organisations, including the Chartists, used flowery language. And the image of Owen as unquestioned leader was certainly far from the truth.

Owen has further been criticised for paying no attention to the main mass movement of the day – Chartism. Chartism was a movement for political democracy and as such was irrelevant to Owen’s aim – setting up experimental communities. It must also be said that so far as the starving worker of the day was concerned the issue of mere possession of the vote in itself would not have brought them food. The demand for the ballot was resisted by the upper class largely because it was believed anti-capitalist measures would follow in its wake. Owen recognised, unlike most Chartists, that political democracy is not the solution in itself to capitalist misery. He did not however recognise that it could be a means to this very end.

After 1845 Owen went into a form of retired senility. Seances, bumpreadings and other such garbage were the order of the day. Perhaps his greatest contribution of these years was his autobiography The Life of Robert Owen by Himself, published in 1857. Although obviously biased it is a great from the horse’s mouth source.

The principal practical result of Owen’s life was the setting up of utopian communities. The Owenite communities, both the official ones detailed above and the numerous examples in which Owen had no hand, failed to demonstrate Owen's theories of character formation, which was of course their main aim, because they never became properly established. What they do demonstrate however is how easy it is for such a community to fail. And since such communities would primarily be a demonstration of cooperation, providing a haven for a few from capitalism, the amount of enthusiasm and resources invested was surely wasteful.

Perhaps surprisingly, although Owenism was unfruitful in achieving its specified aims its by-products were far from inconsiderable. The Rochdale Pioneers, founders of the modern cooperative movement, were Owenites and the modern secularist movement can also trace its ancestry back to the Owenite movement of the 1840s.

The importance of the Owenites is that they marked a watershed; for the first time a complete change in the nature of society was contemplated by a section of the working class. We also owe them our name. Although previously in use, the name ‘socialism’ was adopted by the Owenites in 1837 to describe their aims and within a few years Owenism and Socialism were synonymous. The connection was so strong that Marx and Engels were forced to have a Communist Manifesto rather than a socialist one. The meaning of the phrase has altered much since then, primarily due to the influence of Marx and Engels, however the underlying assumptions of Owen and the Owenites that human nature is not eternally fixed and therefore a better world is possible remains the basis of socialism.

KAZ

What is to be done? (2009)

From the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

As capitalism loses some of its legitimacy, what should those who want to get rid of capitalism be doing?

After the battle of El Alamein, Churchill famously said “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.

In some ways, the socialist position on the latest slump should be similar (minus, of course, the celebration of mass slaughter). Capitalism has lost its veneer of invincibility, which is much of its strength. Pundits who a couple of years ago would have referred to “the economic system” – as if there was no other – have started to refer to capitalism. And as the possibility of pensions fades out of view, job security becomes a memory (to those who ever had it), people lose their houses, their savings, we can expect a similar reaction amongst those members of our class who had previously had no cause to question their life's trajectory within capitalism.

It is therefore imperative to use this opportunity, as capitalism's feet of clay are broken, to build afresh rather than patch up the past. And we are building from a weak base. Across the entire spectrum of political opinion membership numbers in parties are down – the working class has been demobilised politically, and often only ageing cadres remain, preserving political traditions rather than engaging in productive activity, recruitment and debate.

The battle of ideas
The first, most important battle is to continue the destruction of capitalism's legitimacy in the minds of our fellow class members. That is, to drive the development of our class as a class-for-itself, mindful of the fact that capitalism is a thing that can be destroyed and a thing that should be destroyed. As it rapidly crumbles from a high peak to a lower base, most workers “shouldn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, as the song has it.

The second is to develop an effective medium of engagement between workers and politics. A great deal of energy has been expended on this topic in the past, mainly because all political parties which lose membership will, understandably, see this as an institutional failing. This is frankly hubris. For an organisation to think that it is capable of single-handedly failing the working class is to reject the materialist approach, that our ideas come from our life circumstances and not from an all-knowing vanguard. This medium of engagement has to take account of society's development; open-air meetings at Hyde Park, for example, may be superseded by Second Life. The only way to establish this is to explore all avenues and reinforce those that work, while remaining confident in the class's revolutionary potential.

The third is to ensure that the right ideas for the working class win out, and constitute the basis for the overall class struggle. Historically this battle of ideas has been waged both in the mind – in debates, lectures and social events – and on the streets. We of course favour the first approach, and do all we can to keep activity there. This is not just a matter of aesthetics. All of capitalism's power, including its coercive power, is in the hands of the working class; fighting can only firstly divide us and secondly weaken us.

Capitalism digs its own grave
While socialists have few resources, capitalism's own failings have far more reach and power to convince our class of the folly of capitalism than we possess – the largest organisations claiming to be revolutionary may just about win a couple of column inches with a large demonstration, as opposed to daily front page news of corruption, failure and despair from the mainstream press. Capitalism will provide its own gravediggers. Existing organisations can at best address points two and three above – re-establish a mass political culture amongst our class, whilst engaging in debate between the various political traditions and throwing the matter open to our class, that the best ideas win in terms of membership.

This also determines the level of cooperation between these traditions. All, presumably, want a climate in which working class ideas can flourish. Though some may be powerful enough to have their own mass papers, in practice preaching is only to the converted.

Authoritarian parties are hostile at the second level: rather than defending their own ideas, they create their own political ghettoes, such as the old Communist parties which denigrated and suppressed their opposition so as not to compete (and fail) at the level of demonstrating the relative values of their ideas. This is where streetfighting plays its role: physically removing opposition that one cannot overcome in a battle of hearts and minds, whilst destroying the climate in which the working class can find its way. The revolution is aborted in the process, not defended. This is another reason why a socialist revolution must be peaceful, at least as far as our class is concerned.

By contrast, a genuine revolutionary party in capitalism is, by definition, a party of the working class. A depoliticised working class cannot make a socialist revolution. It must be a party that operates at the level of discussion between workers, not so as to fetishise a particular political form but because a successful socialist revolution is made by the working class coming to revolutionary ideas.

Let’s have a party
This brings us to defending our own political tradition. We are a party of the third part, so to speak: we focus on debate between traditions, engaging workers in the process, whilst maintaining the medium (finding out how people engage in politics, making the process a positive one). Even if we had the power to affect the news, we would have no need to engage in 'propaganda' in its pejorative sense; the simple facts damn capitalism amply enough, and it is enough to shout these facts from the rooftops along with our call to action.

We focus our differences at the level of ideas. Front organisations are only organisations that suppress debate and engage in conflict at a lower level. Classic cases are the recent Socialist Alliance, and Respect, coalitions which have been the means for various Left traditions to draw working class support together, all to then vie with each other to recruit for members within this pool. Only in such an environment could one use the word 'comrade' to refer to an organisational enemy. The Weekly Worker often carries records of physical ejections from meetings, even beatings, amongst these supposed comrades. The working class is profoundly deterred by these antics; perhaps more importantly, the idea that workers can never attain more than “trade union consciousness” is made self-fulfilling by denying debate.

The coming months and years will see many organisations, calling themselves working class, trying to establish or re-establish themselves. Calls will be made to support this or that country, this or that leader, this or that party. There is a simple way to negotiate this maze: those that do all they can to make space for the working class themselves to become revolutionary, are revolutionary: all others are impostors. The object must be nothing short of a society that has the liberation of our class from capitalism as its precondition: the abolition of wage slavery. We have the power to do this if we are confident and not distracted. We as a class must be trusted with our own decisions, and credited with the ability to know our own interests. And there should be no preaching of violence within the class; we fail when our energies turn against each other. In effect, this means that the revolution should be as peaceful as possible; all those who now bear arms are workers like ourselves, and history has shown how unwilling workers can be to fire on each other unless backed into a corner. But we should be hostile to all those who try to sow defeatism amongst our class, doubt our revolutionary ability or ability to organise ourselves, who attempt to turn our energies to their own ends.

We have, of course, more to say than this. Lessons from history that have been learned, the writings of past revolutionaries, and more. But these things are a touchstone to avoid the errors of the past: the revolution should be for the class and by the class, together as comrades. We may not, this time, end capitalism. But we can sense the beginning of the end; and get going a political party with socialism as its objective, not small reforms but the overthrow of capitalism – that is the end of the beginning.

SJW

Food: commodity or need? (2009)

From the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enough calories are already produced in the world today to avoid anyone having to starve. It’s just that millions can’t afford to buy the food containing them.

Air, water, food; the three essential requirements of life. Humans can survive for barely 2-3 minutes without air, several days without water and at most a few weeks without food. In our earliest days all were born with totally free access to these most basic necessities of life – access as required. Now we still have free air, if of questionable quality, although it is possible to buy a refreshing booster session of pure, clean oxygen in such cities as Tokyo. Water is still freely available to some – an ever-shrinking number – although many of these have to manage with a contaminated or disease-ridden supply, daily risking serious illness or even death. It has become a commodity denied to many, a basic requirement of life withheld, leading to aggressive acts in local, national and international arenas. Food, like water, finds those at the end of the supply chain, those who need the commodity rather than those who desire the profit, are the least likely to be consulted regarding the supply.

According to T. Lang in The Ecologist (March 2008) food is a $6.4 trillion-a-year economy, selling a necessity of life, which impoverishes more people than any other sector. There has to be a moral conundrum here if some of us are reduced to a daily recurring position of no money, no meal.

The discussion as to whether the world does or can produce enough food for the current population is generally heard through the loudspeaker of the economic/political sector which suggests that overpopulation is the problem. However, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's figures for 2006 there are enough calories for everyone even in most of the poorer countries, pointing to the fact that hunger is simply a problem of the barriers to distribution.

For example, in India between 2001-3 where 20 percent of the population (212 million) were undernourished there were 2440 available calories per person per day.

Another example is that in Ethiopia in 2001-3 with 46 percent of the population (31.5 million) undernourished there were 1860 available calories per person per day.

So, if enough food to feed domestic populations is available, why do so many have to go without and where does the surplus go? Lack of money is the answer to the first part and export to the second. Remember the Irish 'potato' famine when thousands upon thousands died of starvation as a result of potato blight decimating the crops of the indigenous population? Food was not scarce, there was plenty of production of food for export and for the wealthy but beyond the means of the local poor whose staple diet was potatoes. What's different but the century, the geographical location and the sheer scale of the iniquity of the market? The “market” – as if this were a lifeless entity with no human input. The market – in control or out of control, controlling or controlled – can have no moral or ethical standards for these are human qualities to be included or discounted at the decision-making, policy-making processes.

The export of food from the South on a grand scale is part of what leaves millions undernourished but export is a two-way process. The North also exports food to the South, highly subsidised food which makes it untenable for farmers in the importing country to compete, forcing them to switch to crops for export or go out of business. Thus the cycle continues. More impoverishment. More hunger. A glance at the 2008 subsidy figures of the US reveals $50+ billion given in particular to export crops. In diminishing order, corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, rice, sorghum, barley, peanuts. Absent from the subsidy list are fruit and vegetables and crops grown for local US markets.

One of the legacies of the colonisation of the South by the North has been the imposition of methods of farming along with the types of crops to be grown. Huge areas of previously diverse multi-crop forests were reduced to plantations growing single crops specifically for export – bananas, sugar cane, pineapples – decimating the land through soil erosion from this unsuitable method of farming and taking away the land and livelihood of local peasants. The heavy-handed, arrogant approach of incomers showing no regard for centuries old successful sustainable methods of farming.

Reinforcing food's place as a commodity rather than a right to a need is the way decisions are made by transnational corporations with respect to environmental consequences. The North's subsidised food puts populations in poor countries off their lands and into urban environments where they then work in manufacturing; manufacturing that has been exported there for their cheap labour. A World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 reported that transferring manufacturing to the South was the same as exporting pollution. Lawrence Summers, when at the World Bank (he’s now Obama’s chief economic adviser), put his name to a document which only half-jokingly suggested that exporting pollution to the poorer countries was a good idea financially on another count – people in those countries died younger anyway from other diseases and we would be saving on our own pollution clean-ups and health-care bills by so doing. Had Southern pollution control met minimal Northern standards the annual bill would have been $14.2 billion more. In other words, make it impossible for peasant farmers to compete with your highly subsidised food crops, watch them migrate to cities where they can no longer even grow food for themselves and employ them cheaply in polluting manufacturing jobs producing goods for export back to you.

“You are what you eat” or “Food is Life” may be seen as mantras of diet-obsessed wacky people but on a science-based, physiological level they happen to be true. To be effectively nourished and maintain decent health requires an adequate supply in reasonable balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and fibre. Fresh, whole foods, uncontaminated by polluted air and water or dozens of chemical sprays and manufactured additives. More and more studies contradict the conventional view of the industrial agricultural complex, generally upheld by politicians, which pushes farming on a huge scale and uses manufactured fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, hormones and genetically modified seed, promoting the idea that bigger is better. It may yield more profit but that is about all. Outside the industrial agricultural complex it is recognised that organic methods are more favourable to producers, soil, sustainability of the environment and to the consumers. A 2007 report from the University of Michigan said that an organic world could yield over 2,641 calories per person per day and that small farms are the most productive. This could be interpreted that food viewed as a need rather than a commodity is a viable prospect and enough could be available for all when the requirement for profit is removed. Unfortunately, as yet, this is a disparate group of movements and pressure groups worldwide which has far from the political clout of the entrenched industrial agricultural complex and transnational corporations' lobby which leaves us with the obvious conclusion that the only solution is the urgent dismantling of the system of commodities in favour of one of free access for all.

(References from Wayne Roberts' “The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food” – one of a series from New Internationalist).

Janet Surman

Glasgow May Day School (Saturday 9 May 1.00pm till 5.00pm) (2009)

May Dayschool 2009

Saturday 9 May 1.00pm till 5.00pm

Banks:Who needs them?

Community Central Hall 304 Maryhill Road Glasgow

Capitalism in Crisis:

1.00 - 2.15pm 2009: The Year of Economic Crisis.

Speaker Brian Gardner
Glasgow Branch.

This year has seen the collapse of banks, of building societies and the closure of factories and retail outlets. As millions of workers throughout the world face the re-possessions of their homes and the grow-ing fear of unemployment we ask why the economic bubble has burst. We look at the various "solutions" that are offered to alleviate the problems and analyse what can be learned from previous eco-nomic slumps. Previously abandoned by political econo-mists the old ideas of Keynes have made a startling come-back to the extent that many politicians are now espousing his ideas as a solution to the present economic woes. We look at the problem from a Marxist viewpoint and con-sider whether these ideas have value in today’s context.

2.15 - 3.30pm The Environment in Meltdown?

Speaker, John Cumming
Glasgow Branch

How serious is the threat to the global environment? Is the melting of the polar ice pack a product of global warming caused by natural causes or the over production of carbon gases? Is the growing water shortage as serious as depicted and is there any possible solution? Is man-made pollution the cause of the threat to the world's oceans and the possible destruction of the marine food chain? All these inter-related pollution problems are examined from a socialist analysis and some of the proposed solutions are examined.

3.30 - 3.45pm Tea break

3.45 - 5pm Can Socialism Solve the problems?

Speaker Paul Bennett
Manchester Branch

Modern society has produced immense social problems. We have millions of people existing on less than a $1 a day in-side a system that could produce enough food, clothing and shelter to satisfy all human needs. We have magnificent ad-vances in human knowledge but seem incapable of solving problems like world hunger, poverty and war. Wealth today takes the form of commodities - articles produced for sale with a view to making a profit. The Socialist Party is unique in that its only aim is world socialism - a society where everything is produced solely to satisfy need not make a profit. How would this new society based on common ownership operate? Could it solve the problems of capitalism?

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

For more information about the Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party, please visit their Branch Website.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (96)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 96th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1486 friends!

Recent blogs:

Anarchism and Marxism

What is Capitalism?

What is Socialism?

Quote for the week:

"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Pathfinders: Socialism on drugs (2009)

The Pathfinders column from the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

When young people ask if there would be drugs in socialism, they don't have in mind things like Seroxat and Prozac, they mean Skunk and Poppers. We can't say these things would be 'legal' or 'illegal', because the status of 'law' in a cooperative stateless community remains to be debated. What we can say is, if people need a drug and there is no good, scientific reason for not manufacturing it, it will no doubt be produced.

Capitalism has a funny attitude to drugs, both the legal, medical kind and the illegal, recreational kind. Legal drugs with important medicinal properties are often not produced because there is no profit in doing so, often because the patents on them have expired and lie in the public domain. This is the problem facing the new 'Polypill', a cocktail of five very cheap drugs which evidence suggests may halve the rate of strokes and heart attacks in middle-aged people ('The polypill: Medicine's magic bullet', Independent, 31 March). It works, but it won't be produced because it doesn't make money. Much the same can be said of many other cheap, unexploitable drugs which would save millions of lives in developing countries yet can't turn enough bucks for the big boys. Instead the drug companies concentrate on research into diseases of rich, white Westerners, such as obesity and skin cancer.

Where there's a wallet, there's a way, but even if you accept capitalism's own profit-oriented logic, its attitude to illegal recreational drugs still fails to make any kind of sense. From Al Capone to Afghanistan, the history of drug prohibition by capitalism continues to represent one of the most bizarrely stupid aspects of a social system never notable for its good judgment. The lesson of America's prohibition period should have taught the world that if you banned coffee today, you would create a coffee mafia tomorrow, in the process creating an unnecessary and, from the ruling class point of view, expensive 'war on coffee' simply to deprive people of something harmless that they like. We would also see a crime problem at every scale from coffee barons and their private armies to burglaries and back-alley shootings over a jar of Maxwell House in Manchester.

Most of the arguments against illicit drugs are bogus, unscientific and politically oriented. In particular, the idea that legalisation would create a massive social problem of a drug-crazed free-for-all is not borne out by the experience of Holland, or more recently of Portugal, which decriminalised illicit drugs in 2001. There, it turns out, drug usage and associated behavioural pathologies are among the lowest in all the EU countries, especially when compared to those countries with very restrictive drug laws (Cato Institute White Paper, 2 April).

While the drugs 'problem' is not a make or break issue for socialists, it does illustrate how capitalism tends to operate in defiance of any logic, even its own. Even leaving aside more pressing issues like poverty, war or climate change, it ought to be obvious from this that it is simply not clever to leave major decisions about production and supply in the hands of an unelected and uncontrollable minority. The capitalist ruling class are making the whole planet ill, and there's no magic pill for that.

Arthouse socialism
One accessibility issue about which there would be no question whatever in socialism is that of copyright, so the young Swedes recently convicted of copyright infringement over their Pirate Bay file-sharing site would have no case to answer in a society of common ownership ('Court jails Pirate Bay founders', BBC Online, 17 April). Their defence, that their web server did not contain illicit material, was always a long shot. True, they weren't handling 'stolen' goods themselves, but the court took the view that they were doing the equivalent of standing outside a house full of silverware and directing passers-by towards the open windows.

Socialists, as indeed many workers, have little sympathy for the fat cats of Hollywood and the music industry. Most writers, actors and musicians make no money out of their creativity anyway, so the property laws do nothing for them. Indeed, by giving workers so little respite from wage-slavery, it could be argued that capitalism prevents much art and science from ever being born in the first place, as well as narrowing the full spectrum of human creativity to a thin channel of bland commercial profitability. Who can say how many Mozarts, Mendels or Modiglianis the world has killed or incapacitated through poverty, wars or sheer overwork?

The Swedish defendants are probably too busy organising their appeal to note an amusing story in the British papers which shows that even the police don't take music copyright seriously. The Wiltshire police have just had a £32,000 bill from the Performing Rights Society for the playing of music in Wiltshire nicks ('Music bill forces police off beat', BBC Online, 17 April). Now the boys in blue are banned from their boogie boxes. Presumably now they'll just have to use their whistles.

No-spam socialism
Trivial point maybe, but socialism wouldn't see much in the way of spam, the background white noise of online capitalism, since commercial advertising of products wouldn't exist, nor any dodgy Nigerian money scams. So most emails would presumably be legitimate, apart possibly from those tedious 'Hey, this is hilarious, send it on!' posts which in any case only prove that workers under capitalism will resort to any tactic to waste their bosses' time at work. The environmental significance of this irritating feature of cyber-capitalism has now been highlighted by a new report which for the first time relates spam to carbon emissions. Every year, says the report, 62 trillion spam messages are sent globally, representing 33 billion kilowatt hours of energy and 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions (BBC Online, 16 April). When a spam site was recently closed, the resulting 70 percent drop in global spam was equivalent to taking 2.2 million cars off the road, according to the antivirus company McAfee. Next day, of course, another site was up and running instead. On with the show.

Paddy Shannon

Banks, who needs them? (2009)

From the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there was production directly for use we wouldn’t need banks

Are the banks and greedy and incompetent bankers to blame for the current economic crisis? That’s what a lot of people think and what the media seems to want us to think. Certainly, bank directors generally are greedy – awarding themselves huge “salaries”, bonuses and pensions – and some of them are incompetent on their own terms. But blaming them is to let the real culprit off the hook: the capitalist system of production for profit.

Capitalism inevitably brings about from time to time a fall in production (despite plenty of unmet needs). Banks and bankers are no different from other capitalist enterprises and their directors. When there are profits to be made they go for them and the devil take the hindmost. In the real economy this results in overproduction relative to market demand; in the financial sector it results in the overexpansion of credit, fuelling speculative bubbles. Both of which inevitably eventually end in tears. Overproduction leads to cut-backs in production, factory closures and redundancies; overexpansion of credit leads to not all loans being repaid and to bank losses and credit crunches. In fact, normally it is overproduction that brings about the contraction of credit and the pricking of speculative bubbles. Which is where we are now.

If the capitalist system of production for profit is to blame, the only way to avoid periodically-occurring crises is to get rid of it and replace it with a new and different system. But what? Socialists advocate that production be carried on purely and simply to meet people’s needs. Production for use instead of production for profit, or rather, production solely for use since even under capitalism what is produced has to be useful (or at least seem to be useful), otherwise it wouldn’t sell and there’d be no profit to be made out of arranging for it to be produced.

But before there can be production solely for use, we – society – will have to be in a position to control production, to decide what (and how and where) things are produced, and we can only do this if the places where things are produced and the materials to produce them are no longer the exclusive property of rich individuals, corporations and sovereign states. They must have become instead the common property of the whole of society. Which is not the same as state ownership, or nationalisation, as states never represent the interests of the whole of society but only of a privileged minority within it.
Common ownership is in fact the same as no ownership. It means that nobody or no group can exercise ownership rights over any productive resource. These will simply be there, to be used to produce what people need. But how? It will simply be a question of finding some way of deciding what people want and then of arranging for this to be produced. “Simple” not because it really will be that simple, but simple compared with what has to happen today under capitalism where money – and the drive to make more money – complicates things.

The aim of production under capitalism is for those who own and control workplaces to make a monetary profit, to end up with more money than they started off with. This involves selling what has been produced and at a higher price than was paid for the resources, including the working skills of the actual producers, used in producing it. Everything has a monetary value. To calculate profits, the cost of everything bought and the income from everything sold has to be recorded. In other words, a whole superstructure of monetary accounting is imposed on the actual process of production. Banks come into it as gatherers of funds to lend to other capitalist enterprises.

Of course, with production solely for use, a record in physical quantities of the resources used in producing something will have to be kept too. But under capitalism this is duplicated by parallel records of the monetary value of these quantities. In socialism, with production solely for use, this second recording will disappear, so simplifying the organisation of the production of wealth. After all, all that is needed to produce wealth are materials that originally came from nature and humans with the skills to fashion these into useful things.

Production for use
Even without money and monetary calculation it will still be necessary to co-ordinate the relations between the different workplaces. One suggestion that has been put forward by socialists is what has been called “self-regulating production for use” which, for goods and services for individual consumption, would operate on the same basis as the market is supposed to operate today.

According to economics textbooks, production today is initiated in response to how “consumers” choose to spend their money. They “vote” for what they want to be produced by what they spend their money on. Those who own and control workplaces producing particular types of consumer goods and services respond by organising the production of what people have chosen to buy. If people choose to buy more, they get their workers to produce more; if people choose to buy less, they get their workers to produce less. These workplaces producing consumer goods order the materials to produce them from other workplaces and they from their suppliers and so the initial paying demand works its way through the whole network of workplaces, through those producing machinery to mines and farms producing the original materials from nature.

Of course this ignores the fact that the money most consumers have to spend is limited by the size of their wage or salary, the total amount of which depends on how much labour those who own and control workplaces want to employ. Which depends on how much profit they think they can make by selling their product. In other words, it is the prospects for profit-making, not consumer demand, that initiates production and determines what is produced; the level of consumer demand, and its ups and downs, is a consequence of this. But, leaving this aside, it is true that under capitalism signals as to what to produce are conveyed via the market.

With socialism, and production solely for use, the consumer really will be the start of the process leading to the production of things and services for individual consumption, only the message will be conveyed not by what they can afford to pay for but what they actually take to satisfy their needs. We can imagine that they go into a super-store as today and take off the shelves what they need. What is taken off over a given period will be recorded and transmitted to suppliers. If stocks are down, this will be a signal to produce more; if they are slow to move that would be a signal to produce less those who own and control workplaces those who own and control workplaces those who own and control workplaces – and so on throughout the whole productive network. It will be more or less self-regulating like today except that the messages will be conveyed as required amounts only and not this and their monetary value.

This is only one suggestion as to how the production and distribution of wealth, or at least of consumer goods and services, could be organised without money. Other more directly planned arrangements would have to be made for expanding productive capacity and infrastructure projects as well as for introducing new products.

But whatever the arrangements, with production solely for use, money will have no place. So neither will the complications that it brings to the organisation of the production of wealth. Money may make the world go round under capitalism but it also, from time to time, stops the world going round, creating unused resources alongside increased unmet needs.

With production solely for use, overproduction could still occur but only by accident (and it would be overproduction in relation to real needs, not in relation to paying demand as today) but this would not have the consequences it does today. It would not clog up production and lead to its interruption. Production in other sectors would continue as before. So would consumption since what people can consume would not be tied to working for a monetary income as today. Everybody would be able to satisfy their needs, irrespective of whether or not they were currently working, without being restricted by the amount of money they have.

No money means of course no banks either. Saving, borrowing and lending will have no more sense in a production-for-use society than buying and selling. So, what we say about the banks is not regulate them, nor nationalise them, but make them redundant. Abolish them, along with all the rest of the complicated, financial superstructure of the capitalist production-for-profit economy.

Adam Buick

Pieces Together (2009)

From the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

"At an exclusive soiree tomorrow evening at an upmarket London bar, an elite circle of VIPs will sprawl on velvet beds as they receive relaxing, complimentary massages. Around the corner at an equally glamorous event, guests will be entertained by circus performers and big-name DJs as they sip champagne. Most of Britain may be in cost-cutting mode as the recession worsens, but it seems that someone forgot to tell the fashion industry. London Fashion Week kicked off its 25th anniversary celebrations by popping bottles of Moet et Chandon before 10am yesterday, and fashion labels promised a weekend of opulent and expensive parties." (London Times, 21 February)

A FREE SOCIETY?

"A jobless Taiwan man released from prison two years ago asked police to send him back so he could eat, police and local media said Tuesday, a grim sign of hard economic times on the island. When police found the 45-year-old convicted arsonist lying on a street in a popular Taipei shopping district, he requested a return to life behind bars, nostalgic for the 10 years he had already served, the China Post newspaper reported. Wang had also contacted police separately with his request, a spokesman said. Officers who found him bought him a boxed lunch but declined to send him back to prison, the police spokesman said. ‘We advised him to keep looking for work,’ he said. ‘I don't know why he can't find a job. Maybe employers think he's not suitable or that he's too old.’ Taiwan is in recession, with a slump in exports leading a record economic contraction in the fourth quarter of last year." (Yahoo News, 24 February)

PREPARING FOR WAR?

"China is aggressively accelerating the pace of its manned space program by developing a 17,000 lb. man-tended military space laboratory planned for launch by late 2010. The mission will coincide with a halt in U.S. manned flight with phase-out of the shuttle. The project is being led by the General Armaments Department of the People's Liberation Army, and gives the Chinese two separate station development programs. Shenzhou 8, the first mission to the outpost in early 2011 will be flown unmanned to test robotic docking systems. Subsequent missions will be manned to utilize the new pressurized module capabilities of the Tiangong outpost. Importantly, China is openly acknowledging that the new Tiangong outpost will involve military space operations and technology development. (Spaceflight News, 2 March)

IT'S A MAD, MAD WORLD

"Supertankers that once raced around the world to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for oil are now parked offshore, fully loaded, anchors down, their crews killing time. In the United States, vast storage farms for oil are almost out of room. As demand for crude has plummeted, the world suddenly finds itself awash in oil that has nowhere to go. It's been less than a year since oil prices hit record highs. But now producers and traders are struggling with the new reality: The world wants less oil, not more. And turning off the spigot is about as easy as turning around one of those tankers. So oil companies and investors are stashing crude, waiting for demand to rise and the bear market to end so they can turn a profit later. Meanwhile, oil-producing countries such as Iran have pumped millions of barrels of their own crude into idle tankers, effectively taking crude off the market to halt declining prices that are devastating their economies." (International Herald Tribune, 3 March)

How I got to be a socialist (2009)

From the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I could hardly fail to notice that all was not well with the world of the mid-seventies”.

All of a sudden, it hits you. Overnight you go from saying “Yes, it all sounds very nice, but we’re all too greedy. What would happen if everybody wanted three televisions?” to realizing that there’s just no other way to sort out the world’s problems.

I don’t know how common it is to catch socialism from your father but that’s what happened in my case.

When younger my father had been a member of the British Communist Party. Generally, he seems to have kept his political activities low-key (the only controversy I know about is when, shortly after he had married a catholic girl from Italy, the local priest apparently created a bit of a fuss when, on a house visit, he found a CP newspaper lying around).

But he evidently became disillusioned with the CP. Certainly while I was growing up I only remember him voting Labour. Then, in the 70s, he started buying the Socialist Standard and joined the Socialist Party not long after. He got a few other people interested and soon they had formed the West Yorkshire branch. I was back home temporarily after studying and working in London and he used to keep the latest Socialist Standard in prominent view somewhere around the house. I later discovered that this had been with the express intention of getting me interested. I did read it at times but I thought it was all rubbish. What particularly annoyed me was his parting shots at the end of seemingly every news bulletin, “It wouldn’t be like that if we had socialism”.

I wasn’t remotely interested in politics. In the late sixties, as a student, I had totally failed to understand what all the unrest was about. I couldn’t see that the students had the answer to anything. During the recession of the early seventies, some of my friends talked about an impending apocalypse – things were going to get much worse – so, I thought, if we’re all going to die then fine. I’ll take some tins of food and hide somewhere.

But I could hardly fail to notice that all was not well with the world of the mid-seventies. And what with hearing my father talking to his socialist friends, and running out of answers to the things they said to me, and surreptitiously reading more and more of the Standard, suddenly socialism all started to make sense and I was hooked.

This happened the same year I started to work for a large multinational company. Before, I would have dreaded the thought of this. I had read a book by Marcuse about technology and society, which contributed to my growing dread of the modern world, but socialism provided me with the perfect context for it all, a way of seeing through the madness. I now knew what these large organizations were about and they no longer scared me.

I joined the Socialist Party and started going to branch meetings; far from being a publication of the lunatic fringe, the Socialist Standard became my monthly dose of sanity.

I stayed with the same company, in IT, for 28 years, doing a more or less 9 to 5 job, and every few years surviving the inevitable re-organisation and accompanying job cuts. By the time I finished, the structure of the IT department was back more or less to what it had been like when I started, only with about a quarter of the people. I think it would all have been too horrifying without the large pinch of salt that my membership of the socialist movement provided. I actually enjoyed the job most of the time – but it was always with the constant thinking against the grain, the knowledge that the world could be so much better, that socialism provides.

Why don’t more people become socialists?
Unfortunately, thoughts of building a world that is radically different don’t feature much on people’s agenda. Capitalism always throws other imperatives at them and there’s always another day to get through. I think I was lucky in that at the time I started to think about socialism, I was “between jobs”, single and without any particular commitments. And for all that they may bewail their lot and want to see something done about the injustices in the world, people feel uncomfortable if anything threatens to disrupt their everyday routines and thought processes. It’s easier to complain than to be constructive. It’s also quite a jolt to be told that we can scrap money, employment and governments. People think they are going to “lose all they’ve worked for”, to go back to a more primitive, barter-like existence. And unless world leaders and celebrities get behind some cause or other, it’s not regarded as important.

But once you see that socialism is the only sensible way forward, no other view of the world makes sense. For all that socialists might despair from time to time of ever getting there – just ask – what’s the alternative?

Rod Shaw

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (95)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 95th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1483 friends!

Recent blogs:

Overlords and underlings

Capitalism versus nature

Oscar Wilde and socialism

Quote for the week:

I be so tired when I spit, all my words slur together

Got so many calluses my hands are like leather

Watching MTV in your big-ass chair

Trying out slang words while you're combing your hair

"Your productivity is whack, bring that box here fo-sheezy [for sure]

Go get some coffee player, punch out before your leave"

Got your feet up on the desk nodding off to sleep

While I lift, push, pull, dig, sweat, and sweep

I could work hard all my life and in the end still suffer

Because the world is controlled by you lazy muthafuckas

The Coup, Lazy Muthafucka, Party Music, 2001.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Cooking the Books: Capitalism, but not as they know it (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eric Hobsbawn and Amartya Sen have both written interesting stuff. Hobsbawm on the history of capitalism in Britain and Sen on how famines are not caused by a shortage of food but by the collapse of some people’s legal entitlement to it. But their comments on the current crisis are confused.

In an article in the New York Review of Books, reprinted in the Guardian (14 March), entitled “Capitalism Beyond the Crisis”, Sen questions “whether capitalism is a term that is of particular use today”, arguing:

“It seems to be generally assumed that relying on markets for economic transactions is a necessary condition for an economy to be identified as capitalist. In a similar way, dependence on the profit motive and on individual rewards based on private ownership are seen as archetypal features of capitalism. However, if these are necessary requirements, are the economic systems we currently have, for example, in Europe and America, genuinely capitalist?”

Citing increased state funding over the years of the armed forces, the police, health and education as examples of non-market, non-profit economic activities, he concludes: “the idea of capitalism did in fact have an important role historically, but by now that usefulness may well be fairly exhausted”.

The market and profits certainly are central to capitalism, and state spending certainly has increased compared with some past periods, but is state spending really non-capitalist or is it not rather part of the necessary overheads of running capitalism? Capitalism and the state have always co-existed. In fact the state helped capitalism come into existence and expand and is needed to maintain it today. State spending on armed and police forces is patently aimed at serving capitalist interests at home and abroad. State spending on education and health is essentially aimed at providing employers with a fit and trained workforce and so too is pro-capitalist.

Hobsbawn also thinks we should be looking towards a society that is neither capitalist nor socialist, as in the title – “Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?” – of a recent article of his in the Guardian (10 April) brings out. But his definition of capitalism is as wrong as his definition of socialism. He contrasts “the centrally state-planned economics of the Soviet type and the totally unrestricted and uncontrolled free-market capitalist economy”.

Arguments can go on about whether Russia was some form of capitalism or some new exploitative class society, but it was clearly not a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources with production directly to meet human needs and not for sale on a market, i.e. not socialism.

The case for saying that it was still a form of capitalism – best described as state capitalism – is that wealth there still took the form of “an immense accumulation of commodities” as articles for sale, produced by a class of people obliged to sell their working skills for a wage or a salary on whose unpaid labour a privileged class lived.

As an historian of capitalism Hobsbawn must know that, if defined as a “totally unrestricted and uncontrolled free-market” economy, “capitalism” has never existed because there never has been a time when market forces alone have exclusively determined how an economy has worked. States have always intervened to try to distort the market in favour of particular capitalist groups as well as to engage in the activities Sen mentions.

As class ownership, production for sale with a view to a profit, wage labour and surplus value still exist – as they patently do, whatever the degree of state activity – “capitalism” is the best term for describing the existing economic and social system.

History matters (2009)

Book Review from the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why History Matters by John Tosh, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

At the completion of the invasion of Iraq in July 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a speech to the US Congress in which he declared: “There has never been a time ... when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day” (Quoted by Tosh, p.5). Gordon Brown, with a Ph.D in history and current Prime Minister, supported that invasion.

Blair was probably speaking out of ignorance rather than deceit, for that was not the first time British military forces had invaded Iraq. In 1914 Britain acted alone in invading Iraq (then called Mesopotamia) to drive out the Ottoman Turks. Britain then administered Iraq as a Mandate of the League of Nations until 1934, and remained in a position of informal influence until the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958. Strategic interests were the initial motivation for the invasion, but important oil reserves were known to exist. As Marian Kent's study of this period shows, “by 1920 Mesopotamian oil ... had come to occupy a major place in British military and diplomatic concerns in the Middle East” (Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil, 1900-1920, 1976. Quoted by Tosh, p.2). History matters.

Politicians are often ill-informed, but Alan Greenspan, the long-time head of the US central bank, admitted that the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq was really aimed at protecting Middle East oil reserves. “I thought the issue of weapons of mass destruction as the excuse was utterly beside the point”, he said (See here.). How are we to explain these events? What processes are involved and what is a proper historical perspective? For John Tosh, a professional historian, “public history” matters because it can provide the basis for informed and critical understanding of the present. But there is no place for causation in this understanding of history: the invasions of Iraq in 1914 and 2003 were wars for oil, as Tosh would probably agree, but for him the causes were unique and all we can learn from history is their similarities and differences: there is no underlying structural cause. This is an unconvincing and inadequate theory of history given the regular occurrence of wars and other social problems thrown up by capitalism. History matters more than that.

Socialists have a materialist conception of history in which we view the past in the context of the development of the forces of production (productive technology) and relations of production (economic classes), and analyse social development to better understand the present and possible futures. The state and its machinery of government have historically favoured the interests of the economically dominant class - presently the capitalist class. It is in their interests that wars have been prosecuted in Iraq for oil, or for their strategic interests as in Afghanistan. This follows a regular pattern in capitalism, and using a materialist historical perspective we can see the capitalist process at work and predict that as long as we have capitalism we will have wars. We cannot predict where and when, but they will happen: the forces and classes driving history will always make them likely, and since the end of the Second World War there has always been a war being fought somewhere in the world. An understanding of the materialist conception of history would provide a rational motivation for revolutionary political action by us, the subordinate class in society, to end capitalism as the cause of war in the modern world. History matters because your life may depend on it.

Lew Higgins

Greasy Pole: Bloggers at loggerheads (2009)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advice for anyone who assess themselves as alluringly qualified to rescue the world from a deadly combination of economic disintegration and ecological catastrophe: pay heed to the example of Gordon Brown. Divesting himself of his rumoured persona of brooding neurosis occasionally relieved in volcanic tirades, the Prime Minister genially hosted the recent London G20 conference, promoted as a mechanism to flush out and eliminate every threat to the world’s harmony and health. As the assembled world leaders, deaf to the clamouring protesters outside – and to the thwack of police batons on their bodies – steamrollered on, smilingly massaging each others’ shoulders and self-esteem, Brown blossomed like an unusually poisonous nightshade. Around the world which the conference was supposed to have as its concern, banks and industries were choking almost to death and millions of workers were being ejected into poverty deep enough to be immediately life-threatening; meanwhile Brown went about the business of bolstering his appeal to remain as the occupant of Number Ten, strutting his fantastic stuff as the new Saviour of the World. Whether this act was effective to the extent of being sufficiently deceptive to the British electorate will be clear come the next election.

But meanwhile…
We were told that G20 would be a seminal gathering, in the sense that its terms of reference were to design a cleaner, safer world in control of its economy and its environment. As a side line its timing was clearly fortunate for Gordon Brown but his luck is not in for, whatever euphoria G20 may have encouraged among Labour supporters, it would have been immediately damaged by the emergence of real politics as represented by the murky strategies of governmental “advisers” Damian McBride and Derek Draper. These two set out to damage the Tory leadership through publicising some salacious allegations about them and their families. This is known as “briefing” against – another example of New Labour’s distortion of the lexicon, which defines briefing as a process of summarising a clutch of complex facts into an easily assimilated and presentable form. Far from embarrassing the Tories this provoked a mass panic among the Labour benches, as one minister after another rushed to assure us that they had also been victims of such smears which, as every right-thinking person knows, should have no place in politics: “vile, horrible and despicable” raged Ed Balls – who once worked closely with McBride when they were at the Treasury with Brown as Chancellor – “we all need to work to raise standards and to stamp this out”. This may have been unwelcome to McBride, who has been paid a lot of money over almost ten years to do just this kind of “work”.

Draper
A similar confusion may be affecting Draper, who was abandoned to his fate by the very people in the Labour Party who until recently might have been seen as his stalwart friends. A “special adviser” to Peter Mandelson in the early days of the Blair government, Draper’s naiveté and self-regard were to cost him dear when, in 2001, he boasted to an undercover reporter that, as an intimate of the “17 people who mattered” in the government he could be trusted to arrange rewarding meetings with them. This episode revealed him to be vulnerable as well as unusually conceited; a nervous breakdown preceded him fleeing to America to train as a psychotherapist. He came back here in 2004 to set up in what is described as a “successful” psychotherapy practice (it is to be hoped that that is the opinion of his patients and not just another example of his tendency for over-positive self-assessment). Impressed, and perhaps not a little envious, of the progress up the greasy pole of some of the people – like David Miliband and Liam Byrne – he had once been on a level with, he scraped his way back into Labour politics. An invitation to lunch at Chequers last November must have convinced him that he was on his way back and earlier this year he set up the web site LabourList, with plans to open another, to be called Red Rag, to compete with the scandal aimed at Labour leaders by the Tory blog ConservativeHome. This progress – if that is what it was – came to an abrupt halt with the exposure of the e-mails between Draper and McBride.

Anger
The distasteful episode has raised a lot of anger among grass roots Labour supporters, some of whom responded to Draper’s apology on LabourList: “What you have done is outrageous and disgusting, and no apology is enough” and another “You complete half-wits. Yet another weekend spent with one’s head in one’s hands every time the news comes on”. But such people are of too humble a standing to be treated with anything other than contempt by the likes of Draper and McBride, who were more readily impressed when they were disowned by the party leaders insisting that LabourList had nothing to do with the party and that Draper was used as only a part-time volunteer – and then by Gordon Brown raging that “When I saw this first I was horrified. I was shocked and I was very angry indeed. The person who was responsible went immediately”.
Such emergencies need to be understood. Those who have been immunised by experience against the conceits and fantasies of political leaders recognise that the rulers of class society can have no effect on the system which, they deceive themselves, is open to their manipulation. That is the only useful assessment of their behaviour and of their relationship with us.

Ivan