Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 139

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 139th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1562 friends!

Recent blogs:

Building a future

Free Trade, Fair Trade or No Trade?

Danger: capitalism at work

Quote for the week:

"As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour. Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks."

Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10, 1867.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Solidarity (2010)

Cross-posted from the Vaux Populi blog

The world we live in. The Tories attack Unite for seeking solidarity from the American Teamsters Union (according to the BBC). Now, the international solidarity of the workers is a principle of trade unionism, so it is in fact a good thing that workers are seeking one anothers' support. Just look, though, at the vitriol being poured on the BA workers for daring to stand up for themselves. Compare with the flood of stories about government cuts being needed to restore 'confidence' in the economy (e.g. here. What they mean by confidence is giving in to the overall policy demands of financiers, who will withhold their economic resources until their demands are met.

We are in the grip of a sustained capital strike, and yet the press turn vicious on any attempt by workers to mount a strike to defend their own interests.

As a note, the Tories are attacking the link between Labour and Unite, because Unite as the biggest union in the country is basically shouldering the cost of the Labour Party now. Labour loyalist Luke Akehurst rebuts the allegations.

The point, though, is that the link is hurting both parties, the interests of political parties and trade unions are not the same. further, by linking themselves to a party that will form government under capitalism, the unions are signing a paycheque to those who will have to implement capitalism's attacks against the workers.

We support, fully and utterly, the BA workers and Unite and the Teamsters in their efforts to stand up to their employer, a struggle we all share an interest in. We share, though, an even greater interest in getting rid of the wages system all together, and Unite the Union would do better to try and raise their aims to Unite the Workers, for socialism. Unite members in Lambeth and Camden can do this by voting for our candidates.

Pathfinder: Brave New Epsilons (2010)

The Pathfinder Column from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine going to a job interview in twenty years time. Chances are, you’ll have to take along your ID, your CV, and your personal genomic profile. One of the gene variants an employer might be looking for is Epsilon 4, which is thought to significantly increase your likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Some notable genome self-publishers like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker are choosing not to publish the Epsilon 4 part of their genome, perhaps understandably. As one researcher remarks, “I wouldn’t want to know whether I’ve got one and I certainly wouldn’t want other people to know” (New Scientist, 13 February).

The problem for workers is, genome-sequencing is already in the 3-figure dollar range and it won’t be long before we will be expected to provide a genome survey in order to get work, just like house sellers will now be required to provide the buyer with a house survey. The more privileged members of this brave new capitalism will no doubt ‘do a Pinker’, but workers in all probability will not be allowed to keep quiet about Epsilon 4, or anything else for that matter, and will be entirely at the mercy of what the bosses decide they don’t like. Unless more workers start inserting copies of this magazine into their jeans, we could all end up as Epsilon-class workers.

‘Just out driving my new Toyota Prius. Text later. Can’t stop.’
Possibly last month’s best SMS joke. In the midst of the fuss over the large-scale recall of the accursed vehicle, some engineers are doing the predictable thing and, with a knowing stroke of the greying whiskers, remarking that “O’course, they be too damn complicated these days, too much to go wrong. That’s their problem right there, I tell ‘ee.” Although the Prius problem was entirely and mundanely mechanical, speculation also centres round another of Toyota’s products, the Lexus. The more that modern car designs move from mechanical to electronic systems the greater the risk of electromagnetic interference (EMI), and designs like the Lexus with electronically-controlled acceleration or ‘drive by wire’ are now thought to be at risk of EMI-induced ‘sudden unintended acceleration’(New Scientist, 13 February).

Meanwhile, reports that increasing sunspot activity is likely to interfere with sat-nav systems provide a double-whammy (‘Sat-nav devices face big errors as solar activity rises’, BBC Online, 10 Feb). One can envisage whole convoys of flashy car drivers all roaring off down arbitrary highways like bats into hell, the blind leading the blindingly fast. Still, it could be worse. At least dodgy cars are being recalled these days. If the free-market capitalists got their way we might return to the unregulated days of the notorious Ford Pinto, whose manufacturers allegedly decided to pay off accident fatalities’ families rather than stop selling the dangerous car. All in all it makes you think about oiling that pushbike.

Public no longer believes poll findings, poll finds
Two recent polls commissioned by the Times newspaper and the BBC suggest that the UK public are becoming more climate sceptical, no doubt because they imagine the unusually heavy snow on their front lawn has blanketed the entire world and heralds a ten thousand year ice age. As the snow piled up, so did the column inches, with journalists speculating about why climate catastrophe has fallen so out of favour (see for instance ‘Climate scepticism 'on the rise'’, BBC poll shows’, (BBC Online, 7 February).

Favourite theories are the East Anglia email scandal, the hopeless effort at Copenhagen, and most recently the raw wet omelette served on the face of the International Panel on Climate Change by their careless and spectacularly erroneous claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, rather than the original and more accurate date of 2350. Interestingly this error has been traced back to an article in New Scientist, which observed that the panel has been ‘severely criticised for citing a non-peer-reviewed magazine’ (see New Scientist, 23 January, p5 – in a very small box).

But wait a moment, isn’t everyone getting a bit carried away? Scientists can make mistakes, can’t they? In fact the ability to make and identify mistakes forms the basis of all science. There may be some buffoons out there bonkers enough to think that if scientists get one thing wrong then they must have everything else wrong too, but that surely can’t apply to the whole population.

In all the journalistic hoo-ha about rising climate scepticism there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of poll scepticism, yet are the polls really significant or just a blip? As most people no doubt realise, polls are the journalist’s best buddy but make for unreliable real-world guides, especially in areas other than elections where they are unlikely to be corroborated later by hard facts. In the first place, they can be designed to produce the findings the poll-funders are looking for (or else, if they don’t, the funders don’t publish the findings). Even supposing the funder is genuinely disinterested in the findings (the BBC and Murdoch-owned Times are not climate sceptics so presumably weren’t hoping for this result, unless the idea was to manufacture some controversial headlines) there is no peer-review or general oversight of the polling methodology employed. What suggests the polls are a blip is the timing. One would, for instance, have to question the wisdom of asking people standing in two feet of snow whether they were especially concerned about global warming at the present time. One further wonders whether the BBC and the Times will be doing follow-up polls in flaming June or blue-sky July. Finally there is the question, admittedly a cynic’s recourse: do people tell pollsters the truth anyway, or merely make a little devilment out of the business? Why would they lie, you might ask? But equally, why shouldn’t they? Anyone who doesn’t believe this is possible has clearly never filled in a market survey report on branded products. In view of all this, does anyone apart from material-hungry journalists actually believe in polls? Maybe we should have a poll and find out.

Note to self
Lastly and a propos none of the above, a quick word from our BBC economics advisor Robert Peston:“It's plainly better for banks to make profits, than not (unless you are actively working for the destruction of capitalism)” (BBC blog entry, 16th February). Ok Bob, now there’s an idea...

Paddy Shannon

Socialist Guide to Marx’s Capital (2. The Starting Point)

Cross-posted from the World Socialist Party of the United States website

Marx begins his examination of capitalism in Capital with the analysis of the commodity; and he succinctly explains the reason for his starting point in the first paragraph:

“The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its [wealth’s] elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.” (Penguin edition; p. 126)

The term “wealth” is used here not to refer to riches in the form of money, but rather to the material wealth essential to any form of society: the products produced and consumed by human beings to sustain and improve their lives.

Material wealth is the basis for the existence of any society, including socialism, but only under capitalism does wealth overwhelmingly take the form of products that are bought and sold on the market; which is to say, only under capitalism does wealth appear as a “vast accumulation” or “vast heap” [1] of commodities.

Commodities of course existed prior to the emergence of capitalism, as did money, but it is only under the specific mode of production of capitalism that the bulk of material wealth—the vast majority of products of labor—take the commodity form.

It is true that some things produced under capitalism are for the direct consumption of the producer rather than for exchange (like tomatoes grown in a backyard garden), but such products are clearly an exception to the prevailing commodity production. A quick glance down the aisles of Wal-Mart is enough to confirm Marx’s observation that capitalist wealth appears as a vast accumulation of commodities. It was true in 1867 when Capital was published and is even more the case today.

There is nothing arbitrary, then, about Marx’s starting point, as it is based on two undisputable facts: (1) material wealth must be produced in any form of society; (2) material wealth overwhelmingly takes the commodity form in the specific case of capitalism.

Marx is not starting with some abstract concept that only exists in his own mind, but rather with an objective observation concerning capitalist society. (We will see later that nearly every misinterpretation of Marx’s “labor theory of value” is based on an inability to appreciate his starting point in Capital.)

In examining capitalism, Marx naturally concerns himself primarily with understanding the specific functioning of this mode of production, which sets it apart from other forms of society. So he begins with the examination of the commodity as the specific form of products of labor under capitalism or “elementary form” of capitalist wealth.

The defenders of capitalism, in contrast, attempt to present the commodity and other economic forms of capitalism as if they were common to any form of society; which is to say, they try to portray capitalist production as synonymous with social production in general—or argue that it is a reflection of some unchanging human “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” (Adam Smith).

That first paragraph of Capital teaches (or at least reminds) us though that the commoditization of wealth is only a widespread phenomenon “in those societies where the capitalist mode of production prevails.” There is no iron-clad law, in other words, that products of labor need to pass through the market before their useful qualities can be enjoyed.

The “unchanging law” of human society is not commodity exchange, or the need for money to mediate that exchange, but rather the simple fact that material wealth must be produced and consumed in order for a society and the people within it to continue to exist.

There are specific reasons—specific social or class relations—that account for why products of labor take the commodity form under capitalism (as Marx explains later in Chapter one). And once we understand those reasons why commodity production is necessary under capitalist social relations, we can already begin to understand what sort of different social relations will be necessary to move beyond the historical stage of commodity production.

The fact that we are so immersed in capitalism, however, where we have to pay for almost everything we consume, often blinds us to this simple historical fact that human beings under feudalism and other pre-capitalist forms of society managed to produce and distribute (the bulk of) material wealth in a way that did not involve buying and selling.

Marx overcomes this capitalist-induced myopia by treating capitalism as one historical mode of production (among others), which functions in specific ways under its specific social relations. He teaches us to distinguish between what is general to any form of society, and what is specific to capitalism—as in the distinction mentioned earlier between “material wealth” and its “commodity form.”

Footnote

[1] This is from the translation of Hans Ehrbar, available on his website (http://www.econ.utah.edu/~ehrbar/akmc.htm). Ehrbar has translated Capital and other works by Marx; and in the annotated version of his translation he guides the reader through the text, while pointing out many of the mistranslations of the Penguin and International Publishers editions of Capital. His website is an essential resource for anyone interested in studying Capital.

Michael Schauerte

Related Posts:

1. Socialist Guide to Marx’s Capital (3. Labor Theory of Value)

2.What Marx wrote about the credit system

3. Marx’s Contribution to the Critique of Reformism

4. Socialist Guide to Marx’s Capital (1. Intro)

5. Labor Theory of Value

Ordinary People (1999)

A Short Story from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

From as far back as I can ever remember, probably from the first time I became aware of my social environment, I have found myself wincing at the term "ordinary people". Politicians use it when speaking of the electorate. It is used mostly to delineate the working class and it has become a derogatory description either for people who are not members of the establishment, or for those who do not get themselves in the news. What the word conjures up, for me at any rate, is a picture of thousands upon thousands of dull, drab powerless people, hollow-eyed and mindless, trudging to work with no other thought in their heads than sullen obedience to their masters. Perhaps somewhere there are workers who appear like characters from Brave New World, but that is not my experience.

There have always been people who crave attention; they become local councillors, trade union leaders, MPs. Maybe some of them start out with altruistic motives and, are therefore, surprised at how being in the limelight makes them feel extraordinary. Surprise must soon turn to elation because it could be tempting to feel, once you are in the news, that you are in some way an authority, that your every word is received like pearls of wisdom escaping from the lips of the Oracle. Yet it is a myth that leaders know better than we do and possess the God-given right to direct our lives.

I once heard a man on a radio programme announce, when asked a question about the preparation of vegetables before cooking them, that, yes, it is preferable to rinse them lightly under the tap. Now isn't that something? I didn't know that, did you? He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to. He was an expert. Another time I listened with horror to Paul Boateng telling parents that it was perfectly all right to smack their children, when I had spent most of my life believing that it wasn't. But he is one of those with the authority (and the audacity) to inform the rest of the nation that a belt round the ear does our kids the world of good. Some people will believe him. He is extraordinary, after all.

My dictionary says: Ordinary—usual, common, normal, not specially good. I don't know anyone like that. In my street lives a builder. Among other things he builds marvellous flint walls, poetry in themselves. He erected the conservatory which acts as an extension on the back of my house and he worked with a skill which I found fascinating. When Henry plies his trade he does it lovingly and gracefully and so for the first time in my life I began to value people who built things. But that is not all that Henry does. He has an allotment where he grows spectacular vegetables, row-upon-row of whatever is in season. I am on the receiving end of some of those vegetables and they are wonderful to behold. Sometimes he will take a cabbage, a green pepper or a bunch of carrots from the proffered bag and comment on how fine it is. He says it with pride and I know he is remembering buying the seeds and sowing them in the ground. He would have nurtured them as tenderly as if they were his own children until they were ready to be harvested. And at the end of the season he would set about preparing the soil for his next act of creation. Henry doesn't say much, but is he ordinary? Never. Scratch the surface of anyone you know and you will see what I mean.

My own mother would have come under that awful heading "ordinary". Though bowed down by poverty and five kids she played the piano. Neighbours would come to our front gate to listen to her. I would be moved to tears at the pieces she played with such feeling. I used to wonder that if she hadn't been my mother then who would she have been? I felt a little jealous that inside my mother dwelt another person—a woman who could produce such beautiful musical sounds. She wasn't ordinary.

Ordinary under capitalism means you haven't been discovered or there isn't a market for you. It means, too, that you are there to be told what to do. Your opinions are of no consequence unless the powers-that-be have created you or you are rich and powerful enough to create yourself. You are mostly not defined by your uniqueness but by your market value. When I give an acquaintance the Socialist Standard to read and they come across something I have written, they will often ask "Do they pay you?" When I answer in the negative they quickly lose interest in my modest efforts as though there can be little merit in them unless they bring in the filthy lucre. My response to people who ask what I like doing is always that I like writing. They invariably ask "Are you a professional?" So little in life has real value unless it is rewarded with money. Yet the majority of us would surely blossom without the daily grind.

My little daughter once wanted to be a nurse. She spent happy hours heaping blankets upon her father as he snoozed in his armchair, sticking imaginary hypodermic needles into his arms and wiping his brow with a tea towel. All this soon altered as her working life loomed large. True she could have grown out of her desire to heal the sick but in the end what must focus our minds is how much we can get paid for the countless hours spent away from home for the best part of our lives. Most of us do it without understanding that there is another way of organising our time. But that does not mean we are ordinary.

Heather Ball

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 138

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 138th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1564 friends!

Recent blogs:

What is common ownership?

The social revolution

America and the S-word

Quote for the week:

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are." H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Pieces Together (2010)

From the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

PEACE PRIZE ?

"President Obama is planning to increase spending on America's nuclear weapons stockpile just days after pledging to try to rid the world of them. In his budget to be announced on Monday, Mr Obama has allocated £4.3billion to maintain the U.S. arsenal - £370million more than George Bush spent on nuclear weapons in his final year. The Obama administration also plans to spend a further £3.1billion over the next five years on nuclear security. The announcement comes despite the American President declaring nuclear weapons were the ‘greatest danger’ to U.S. people during in his State of the Union address on Wednesday. And it flies in the face of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to him in October for ‘his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’." (Daily Mail, 29 January)

DEBT RIDDEN BRITAIN

"There has been a huge rise in the amount of money that banks are writing off as bad debts on their credit cards. Bank of England figures show that the total value of the write-offs doubled to £1.6bn in the third quarter of 2009. In each of the two preceding quarters, the figure had been about £800m. It totalled £3.2bn during 2008. The figures reflect the impact of the recession and are an acknowledgement by the banks that the money will never be repaid by defaulting borrowers. By contrast, the value of mortgages written off in 2008 was just £408m, and has averaged £260m in each of the first three quarters of 2009." (BBC News, 19 January)

THE GAP WIDENS

"The richest 10% of the UK population are now more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10%, according to the Anatomy of Economic Inequality. The study shows that by 2008 Britain had reached the highest level of income inequality since soon after the second world war. Household wealth (including cars and other possessions of the top 10% amounts to £853,000 or more, while the poorest 10% amass £8,800 or less." (Observer, 31 January)

"CARING" CAPITALISM

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals." Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor (of South Carolina), made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said." (Greenville News, 23 January)

Socialist Guide to Marx’s Capital (1. Intro)

Cross-posted from the World Socialist Party of the United States website

This series of short articles will examine the first volume of Marx’s Capital from a “socialist perspective,” which is to say, with an eye to how an understanding of capitalism can contribute to our understanding of socialism.

I should recognize the obvious fact, right away, that a worker hardly needs to read Capital to arrive at an anti-capitalist position. Life under capitalism is negative advertisement enough for that social system.

Who knows, there may have been a budding capitalist at some point in time who mistook Capital for a how-to guide, and part-way through reading it saw the error of his ways and converted to socialism. But it is not a polemical work aimed simply at fostering a hatred of capitalism (even though there are memorable passages throughout that attest to Marx’s own steady-burning hatred for this class-divided system).

Capital is not a book in which Marx simply lists up a bunch of social problems under capitalism to stir up the reader’s moral outrage against that system. Rather, he clarifies how problems (for workers) emerge inevitably from the fundamental nature of capitalism; from its irresolvable contradictions and insurmountable limitations.

One might wonder, though, why socialists would need to exert such effort to better understand a social system they are seeking to replace? Doesn’t it make more sense to concentrate on explaining socialism than wasting time analyzing capitalism?

Certainly it is true that some Marxian economists have carved out a nice career for themselves as experts on capitalism, to the point where they might even be reluctant to bid farewell to that object of study. Revolutionary socialists do not necessarily share the mania of some academics for examining capitalism in its minutiae; nor do they think that such scholarship offers tremendous benefits to the revolutionary movement.

Yet socialists do need to have the clearest understanding possible of the nature of capitalism as one historical “mode of production” among others that have existed up to now. This is because once we have arrived at a deeper understanding of the capitalist system of production, to the point where we have a clear idea of its essential limitations, we will be well on our way to a better understanding of what socialism means and how this new form of society resolves problems that can never be resolved (even though reformists never give up trying!) under capitalism.

So it is not a question of choosing between examining capitalism or explaining socialism — the two tasks are completely interrelated. This series will attempt to examine and explain some important aspects of Marx’s analysis of capitalism presented in Capital as a means of arriving at a better understanding of what socialism means, how it is a realistic possibility, and why it is so necessary.

Michael Schauerte

Related posts

Socialist Guide to Marx’s Capital (2. The Starting Point)

Socialist Guide to Marx’s Capital (3. Labor Theory of Value)

Debating the “S” Word

What Marx wrote about the credit system

Capitalism in Crisis: Reforms, Collapse — Or a Socialist Revolution?

Greasy Pole: “...Less Equal Than Others...” (2010)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the snowdrops and daffodils signal an approaching spring – and another general election – anyone who has doubts about the government being in a panic should remind themselves that one of Labour's top electoral strategists, plotting to steer the party to another term of chaotic fumbling across the face of British capitalism, is Harriet Harman. Yes – she who alone survives of those breezy, achingly ambitious Blair Babes who so cheerily arranged themselves for the cameras on that May morning in 1997 when nothing seemed beyond them. There were Margaret Beckett; Ruth Kelly; Patricia Hewitt; Hazel Blears; Caroline Flint...but none of them hung on to a place near the top of the greasy pole. Only Harriet Harman, whose very name once had John Prescott displaying his stock of seaman's expletives like flags at a ship's mast, got there. Notwithstanding that while declaring herself an opponent of selective education she took care to get her son into an exclusive grammar school some way from her home saying that “we did it for our son.” Or that she voted in February and March 2003 in favour of attacking Iraq but feebly excused this, when she was campaigning for Labour's Deputy Leadership in June 2007, as due to her not being in possession of the full facts.

Survivor

Meanwhile, apart from now being Deputy Leader and Chair of the Labour Party, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality, Harriet Harman has taken on the monstrously demanding job of trying to dissuade a betrayed electorate from descending into a sense of outraged alienation and political apathy. But perhaps all of this has followed because, reacting to what has befallen her, Harman has become a survivor. In 1998 it seemed to be all over for her when, after just a year in charge at the Department of Social Security – notable for persistent clashes with junior minister Frank Field over Labour's plans to “reform” the “welfare” system – she was abruptly sacked. Yet three years later she bounced back as Solicitor General since when, if we disregard some typically indiscreet gaffes, her progress has been pretty – although at times bewilderingly - smooth. Which is not to say there may not be trouble ahead; Labour has decided that the class system is a likely vote winning issue in the election and Equality Minister Harman has been chosen to spearhead their campaign.

Class

This was an interesting choice, if only because of her secure family background and social connections – apart from anything else she is the niece of an earl and (according to an “amateur genealogist”) related through her aunt's marriage to none other than Old Etonian David Cameron. Harman has done her best to re-assure us on this matter, arguing inside the Labour Party against an all-male leadership on the grounds that men “cannot be left to run things on their own” and suggesting that in the next parliament there should be 39 openly gay MPs. More significant are her views on class society, its nature and effects: “Persistent inequality of socio-economic status – of class – overarches the discrimination or disadvantage from your gender, race or disability...The public wants an equal society, one where there is not a yawning and growing gap between the bottom and the top”. While the first part of this statement is valid enough it avoids the question of how “the public” views class society and how susceptible they are to the argument, tirelessly pumped at them by their leaders, that it is the very inequality in the class structure, protective and enhancing, that drives capitalist society to the benefit of everyone whatever their class. This all avoids the vital question of why this Minister with the job of adjusting us into an “equal” society is a member of a government which over 13 years of power has failed to deal with this “overarching” problem – and why it should suddenly be so urgent.

Poverty

There has been no lack of promises, explicit or otherwise, from the Labour government since 1997 but let the most recent, in their 2005 election manifesto, suffice: “Our vision is clear; a country more equal in its opportunities, more secure in its communities, more confident in its future”.That drivel would have impressed only the most impenetrably blinkered; the rest would have preferred to rely on their real experiences of Blair and his government. There is plenty of evidence about this, the most recent being the National Equality Panel report An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK. Among the report's findings are: the richest ten per cent are more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest; the top one per cent each possess a total household wealth of £2.6 million or more; being born into a disadvantaged class does intensive damage to a person's chances in education and beyond, affecting whether they realise their potential and so improve their life chances. At the same time Save the Children told us that 13 per cent of UK children are living in severe poverty.

When politicians like Harman hold forth on this situation they offer only confusion, encouraging an assumption that a person's social situation and prospects can only be judged by reference to insignificant changes in their income. But this does not even approach the heart of the matter, the key to which is the ownership of the means of life by a minority class who live off their privileges while the other class depend on employment with all that means in terms of class misery – insecurity in their livelihood, homes, survival and expectations. This is the authentic meaning of class society and of the inequalities which will endure despite the politicians' rhetoric.

Ivan

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 137

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 137th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1565 friends!

Recent blogs:

The market versus cooperation

Who needs money?

Who bailed out the bankers?

Quote for the week:

"The rich require an abundant supply of the poor."

Voltaire.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

People before profits? (2010)

Book Review from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

People First Economics. Ed. David Ransom and Vanessa Baird, New Internationalist Publications .2009.

Here is a book with contributions from twenty or so well-known writers, economists, politicians, activists and professors; inspiration for readers who seek to be part of a 'fairer world’. In one way or another all the contributors succeed in pointing out major flaws in the capitalist system and all have their ideas on how many things could be improved to work better for more people. Recurring themes include restructuring the tax system, transparency in the tax system, putting an end to corporate tax dodging, closing tax havens, prosecution of the guilty, cancellation of Third World debt, protection of the environment, reducing inequalities, investing in sustainability. I don't recall an example of a call for a non-capitalist alternative, just adjustments although some of them quite major.

A former derivatives trader possibly overcome by guilt or remorse reveals the predator/prey relationships in banks and finance companies. 'Replacing the interest-based money system is the critical struggle of our time. It is not a system we can reform. We must simply defeat it because if we don't it will defeat us.' How it will be possible to defeat the interest-based money system is left open to conjecture but as he reveals in his article no-one was interested in taking up his new 'debt-free' home finance product because debt expansion is more profitable than debt reduction. He is listed as a financial adviser.

Other suggestions are to regulate and control, to put social services back into the hands of communities, away from the market, to use local currencies, to expand the commons and to share the common wealth. The closest we get to a socialist alternative comes from Nicola Bullard, an Australian researcher, campaigner and writer with 'Focus on the Global South' who reminds us that Marxists (and some others) agree that capitalism destroys nature and alienates society but that the main objective of the G20 is to put it back on its feet again after the recent 'crisis’. Her way forward is three-fold: expand the common good by decommodifying goods and expanding open-source; cool the planet by using appropriate agricultural methods, and share the common wealth – meaning a fairer sharing of profit between labour and capital, tax reforms etc. She ends by proposing that it should be possible for all to live in a system of economic production and consumption where the commons is for all and wealth is shared by all but owned by none.The chapter 'Equality is better – for Everyone', written by Richard Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham Medical School and University College London and Kate Pickett of the University of York and the National Institute for Health Research and taken as an edited extract from their book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better is interesting in its focus on various measures of well-being. What they show is that the wider the difference in monetary terms between rich and poor in any society, the greater are the problems within those societies, from rates of mental illness, teenage birth rates, prison populations, distrust of others within society, life expectancy and murder rates, which confirms that socialism (a more equal society will not be found) should be hastened and welcomed by all.

The final three chapters focus on climate change but again largely promote regulation and reform and the final paragraph of the final chapter pretty much sums up the tone of the book, 'The current movement…is an opportunity to be ambitious, to challenge the central precepts of the capitalist system at its roots and replace it with a new set of economic power relations founded on principles of justice, redistribution and collaboration' – as if to say that money can be retained but a new system can be organised around it without the negative aspects that now abound.

There are plenty of optimistic suggestions but you would have to believe that those who currently have the power – corporations, the mega-wealthy and their media and puppets in governments – are actually seeking such a wide-ranging, inclusive solution for it to have any possible chance of success. If this were the case then they would surely have already been working towards it.

Janet Surman

Tilting at windmills with a banjo (2010)

From the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pete Seeger is now in his 90th year. His songs have always been better than his politics.

It was strangely moving: a frail lanky figure complete with banjo, lurching up on stage proceeded to gasp his valiant way through several of the best-known songs in the American folk pantheon. Pete Seeger at ninety, demonstrating that he can still enthral an audience. The casual onlooker would have difficulty believing that this unthreatening personage came however, ready-stamped with his own unique Government Health Warning.

“The most boycotted, picketed, blacklisted performer in American history”, he had endured a lifetime of threats, assaults, been labelled “traitor”, “Khrushchev’s Songbird” and suffered trial and conviction at the insidious hands of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Others viewed him differently, observing his enormous contribution to the collection and preservation of traditional music and how almost single-handedly he had rescued the five-string banjo from oblivion. A devout Humanitarian, abstemious, monogamous, unimpeachably principled, he is the trust of his patriots.

Born of well-heeled, musical New England stock in 1919, Seeger’s life compass was pretty much set for him at an early age. His father, in company with folklorists John and Alan Lomax belonged to that 1930s Popular Front “intellectual” coterie who, combining Radicalism and Patriotism, embraced the Folk genre as America’s “true” music and a vehicle for awareness-raising and social change. “Communism in Twentieth Century Americanism” ran its slogan, boldly – if bafflingly.

Seizing the baton, Seeger commenced his own musical and political odyssey presently, in 1940, forming the Almanac Singers, an amorphous, motley, Leftist crew whose proclaimed aim was, nevertheless to “change the World”. Performing such numbers as “Talking Union”, they supported labour rallies and, the Hitler/Stalin Peace Pact being current, opposed the War with their “Songs for John Doe”.

When, however, Germany attacked Russia the following year, the horrified group found the bulk of its repertoire rendered instantly obsolete. A massive rethink – and rewrite – ensued. Where once it had been confrontation, strike and “Franklin D. listen to me, You ain’t gonna send me across the sea”, employee and employer alike were now urged to unite behind the Military to “Deliver the Goods” and then skip merrily “Round and round Hitler’s Grave”. Remaining a “card-carrying Communist”, Seeger was nonetheless sufficiently chastened by this experience to never again identify quite so closely with the Party’s front-line tactics, instead lending his voice to more general issues.

The post-war years were difficult ones for an American Left struggling to radicalise an increasingly affluent, and hostile, Working Class. The Almanacs disbanded and in the prevailing “anti-Red” climate, Seeger encountered not only the FBI’s close scrutiny but also frequent exclusion from union events and marginalisation within the Communist Party itself. Fleeting commercial success with a new group, the Weavers, failed to salvage his finances and he found himself obliged to scour the continent playing small venues and universities, unwittingly in the process, founding what would eventually become known as the ‘College Circuit’.

Inevitably subpoenaed by McCarthy’s HUAC, he eschewed the usual “Fifth Amendment” route; that no citizen under the Constitution need incriminate themselves, opting instead for a head-on First Amendment plea; that the Committee itself was unconstitutional. For his pains he received a 10-year sentence which although never implemented and eventually overturned, nevertheless seriously blighted his life for several years.

The 1960s saw Seeger affiliating with the current “good causes”, plucking his banjo at Civil Rights rallies (an unfortunate instrument given Negro memories of stereotypic minstrel shows) and supporting the anti-Vietnam War movement. He was however becoming perceived as “Middle Aged”, “Old Left” rather than “Hippie”, “Student Power” and his “acoustic” music upstaged by the strident, electrified offerings of the rising Dylanite generation.

Remarkably too, he continued to adhere to the broad “Soviet World View”. Having remained silent over the momentous events of 1956 – the denouncement of Stalin and Russia’s brutal intervention in Hungary – he now displayed similar reticence over its intrusions into Czechoslovakia and the obvious tribulations of working-class life in Castro’s Cuba. But knavish, duplicitous, surely not? Myopic, naïve, more probably. increasingly disillusioned, he embraced Environmentalism, focusing particularly, and continuingly, on the campaign to clean up his “Dirty Stream”, the Hudson River.

Seeger has persistently overstated the power and value of song in political struggle, citing no less an authority that Plato: “Rulers should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.” Pursuing the rather Hegelian notion that the idea precedes and informs the action, he maintains that the “right song at the right time can change history” and whilst, for sure, songs have a certain rallying function, no way can his assertion that they triggered the Civil Rights Movement and shortened the Vietnam War be upheld. Fellow-Almanacers Bess and Butch Hawes were much closer to the truth in pointing out that “songs; ideas can only appear when events provide the material”. Perhaps they’d been taking a peek at Marx.

Unable to fully comprehend the nature of the capitalist system he professes to despise, its impersonal, all pervading imperative for profit and the root cause of the multitudinous socio-economic and environmental problems afflicting humanity; lumbered also with a Leftist/Bolshevist mindset he has never managed to transcend, Seeger has sought solution through a whole range of single-issue campaigns and support for assorted pseudo-socialist, state capitalist regimes. A successful lawsuit, for instance, by residents against General Electrics for polluting the Hudson, laudable in itself, was hailed as a great victory for “localism” and “community” rather than an opportunity to ponder the competitive, cost-cutting forces that had brought about the pollution in the first place. And all the while, the authentic socialist model of a democratic, classless world society of common ownership and free access has awaited his perusal. Painful as it is to criticise a clearly well-intentioned if Quixotic figure, Seeger’s political life does serve as vindication of our founding principle of campaigning solely for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism.

So what is left? Well, laying aside more than a few political stomach-turners, there is a rather wonderful body of song. We can, for example, teach subversive little numbers, “Cindy”, “Froggie Went A-Courtin’”, to our offspring and (in our cups) declaim “the warnings, dangers, love we’d ring out incessantly all over the bloody place – if only we possessed the requisite hammers”. Perhaps also, in more sombre (and sober) mood, we’ll quietly croon the hauntingly-beautiful “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, even if, of necessity we think of Pete himself and his ilk at the mournful refrain:

“When will they ever learn,
When will they ever learn?”

Andrew Armitage

Why doesn't big business support a national health service?

Cross-posted from the blog, Stephen's Blog.

It is often argued that a "single payer" health insurance system run by the federal government or a national health service would be in the interests of American big business apart from the health insurance companies. The growing burden of healthcare costs on the economy would be brought under control, and companies would no longer have to pay insurance premiums for their employees. Companies in Britain and Canada are quite happy with the national health service in those countries.

So why does big business not promote a real healthcare reform? This is the question asked by Doug Henwood in Issue 120 of his Left Business Observer (a publication that I highly recommend for its astute analysis of American economic and political developments; see here).

Apparently some people offer a "web of influence" explanation that focuses on interlocks (overlapping membership) between insurance companies and other companies and on the role of insurance companies as a source of finance for other companies. Henwood presents detailed evidence to show that these are not very significant phenomena.

Basing himself on testimony from researchers who have interviewed top executives on the issue, Henwood states that some (perhaps even many) executives support "single payer" in private but are reluctant to make their views public for two reasons.

First, they worry about the possible reaction of other firms with which they do business. Small companies especially are considered hostile to "single payer." They do not stand to gain in terms of costs because they do not provide health insurance to their employees, while they would have to bear part of the additional tax burden. So they would see such a reform as an attempt to shift costs from big business to small business.

Second, they are afraid of "encouraging would-be expropriators." One informant formulates this fear as follows: "If you can take away someone else's business -- the insurance companies' business -- then you can take away mine." In other words, the politics of capitalist class solidarity trumps the economics of cost reduction.

Henwood adds another consideration: "Employers like workers to feel insecure. Fear of losing health coverage makes workers less willing to strike or resist pay cuts or speedups."

At least in this case, it is misleading to view reform politics solely as an arena of conflict among diverse business interests. It is also an arena of class struggle.

Stefan

What is Real Democracy and How Do We Get It? (2010)

From the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a month or so the people of Britain will be asked once again to decide which representatives of the ruling class will rule over them for the next four or five years.

It is well known that the word ‘democracy’ originates from Ancient Greece and means ‘power of the people’. Such an idea, in its literal sense, encompassing economic, political and social democracy does not exist anywhere in the world. This is primarily because the planet’s resources, many of which human beings need in order to live, do not belong to the people as a whole. Instead, they are in the hands of a small, privileged, rich minority. Such extremely limited political ‘democracy’ as does exist in parts of the modern world, is scarcely even a shadow of what genuine democracy will be like when it is finally put into practice.

For real democracy: imagine a society where all the people would be of equal status, with equal, free access to resources owned by the community, as a whole (e.g. food, shelter, healthcare, education, transportation, etc.). Imagine a world with no leaders and no elite to lord it over the rest of the population. A society where everyone can have an equal say in the issues that concern them. Above all, a world, in which all the people own and share the wealth that we need in order to live.

People and Politics
Not just socialists, but large numbers of people sense the lack of democracy in present society. Huge and ever increasing sections of the electorate, not only in Britain, but globally, feel, and by now know, that with the prevailing political ideas, the outcome of elections is not going to make any real difference to their way of life.

People have not always felt this way. Those who struggled to gain the franchise in the 19th and early 20th centuries, earnestly believed that this would empower them sufficiently to provide a means of solving many of the social, political and economic problems around them. Even fifty years or so ago, many thought that their vote could bring about genuine, significant change.

Now, experience has led people to think otherwise and, although most of them will still be casting their votes, few will have any great expectations, whether they vote for Tweedledum (Conservative) or Tweedledee (Labour) or, for Tweedledum-dee-dum (Liberal-“Democrat”). In mainstream politics, apathy has grown. Although this is disconcerting for the activists of the dominant parties, the general forces of capitalism are not overworried by it.

Those who administer capitalism want the electorate to vote for the main parties, which are all thoroughly committed to the capitalist status quo. However, capitalism’s leaders have no interest in public involvement in politics, outside of election time. Of course, there are radio phone-ins, programmes such as ‘Question Time’, ‘Any Questions’, etc., but these are tightly controlled and the participation of individual members of the audience in studio discussion is very limited, to say the least. Forums on the Internet have allowed more expression of dissent, but generally in practice to smaller, well-scattered audiences, in spite of the huge potential of this medium. Capitalism’s ideology and indoctrination dominates the thinking of the vast majority of participants. If large sections of the electorate, through apathy, do not vote, capitalism remains firmly entrenched, by default.

Why people are powerless
Almost everyone would like at least some degree of control over what shapes their lives. Many know they have not got that now, and probably most of those, if they thought about it, would realise that in the past, they didn’t have that degree of control either. Simplistic, misleading explanations are concocted as to why people are powerless. These include: ‘greedy bankers’, ‘corrupt politicians who don’t listen to the people’, ‘fat cats’, the ‘nanny state’ etc.

Capitalism, on the one hand, and genuine democracy, on the other, are completely incompatible with one another. The reason for this is that under capitalism, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very small minority of the population. This wealth brings its owners huge power, influence and lifestyle opportunities, completely unavailable to the majority.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, more than 1.2 billion people – nearly one in every five people on Earth – survive on less than $1 a day. More than one billion people in developing countries lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Contrast that with the fact that the net wealth of the 10 richest billionaires is $133billion, more than 1.5 times the total national income of the least developed countries.

A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University reports that the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world’s assets. In contrast to this, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 percent of global wealth.
If we look at the U.K, it is well known that since Labour has been in power, inequality has grown even greater than it was under the Conservatives. In fact, in January 2010 a government commissioned report by the ‘National Equality Panel’ revealed that the gap between the rich and the poor was greater than it was 40 years earlier.

In 2004, the top 1,000 people on the Sunday Times Rich List were worth a total of £202.4 billion. That’s an average of about £200 million each. On the average UK wage in 2004 of £21,000 a year, it would take nearly ten thousand years to earn that much. It should by now be crystal clear that such enormous disparities in wealth ownership which capitalism generates, make any meaningful democracy unattainable, within the present setup. The only effective solution is to get rid of capitalism, the root cause of this problem and replace it by a society, in which the world’s resources are shared by the world’s population.

Boardroom dictatorship
We are told by the apologists for the status quo that we live in a ‘free’ society. However, just ask people how ‘free’ they really feel on their daily commute (slog) to their places of employment (exploitation), as they are crammed together in buses or trains, or face the predictable monotony of the traffic jam. Employment is accurately described as being exploitation since the value of what the workers produce in the form of goods and services is much greater than the value of the wages/salaries which they receive. The surplus value is pocketed by the capitalist class and is a very important source of the wealth of the ruling class.

How ‘free’ do the working class (vast majority of the population) feel when they arrive at work, where they spend a significant amount of their waking hours. Few dare to criticise their line-managers or conditions of employment. They are only too well aware of the consequences of doing so: loss of promotion prospects and/or, quite likely, the sack. Trade unions do not and cannot give the protection which left-wing reformers once hoped they could. The trade cycle of booms and slumps is a natural part of capitalism. Particularly in a slump, most workers have to keep their mouths shut about their grievances and, even when the economy is stronger, workers still have to be very wary about what they say openly.

The basic reason why the working class majority feel powerless and not really ‘free’ is because they do not own any significant amount of the means for producing and distributing wealth, which people need in order to live. According to Social Trends 2003 published by the Office of National Statistics in the UK, the top 5 percent of population own 58 percent of this wealth, while the bottom 95 percent owns only 42 percent. This is a very important statistic since it means that out of every 20 people in Britain, the wealthiest one owns more than all the other 19 put together.

Such enormous inequality, although variable in degree in different parts of the world, is very typical of the global situation. It means that the vast majority are forced by their circumstances, to become economic slaves to the rich minority. The term ‘wage slavery’ is still very apposite. When people think of slavery, a picture of Ancient Rome and Greece with their slave drivers bearing whips, usually comes to mind. Modern wage slavery is very obviously quite different from this. The whip is no longer required. Capitalism has something far more subtle and far more productively effective at its disposal. In the Ancient World, slaves were quite often brutally treated by their masters. However, because the slave was the property of the owner, it was in the interests of the owner to keep him or her in a reasonable condition, in order to work.

In contrast to this, when capitalism began to develop further, in Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and, spread to other parts of the world, the industrial working class (wage slaves) themselves were clearly not the property of the capitalist class. This meant that the capitalists had no economic interest in maintaining those, who worked for them. After all, these workers could always be replaced by others in the queue, looking for work. This was the thinking of the employers in the earlier period of capitalism and, still is today in the less developed parts of the planet. Hence, the grinding poverty of early industrial capitalism in Europe and, still today, in many undeveloped countries.
Modern capitalism, in the more economically advanced countries has been adapted subtly to suit the self-interest of the ruling class. Welfare systems have removed the worst excesses of poverty in such countries and, most importantly from the point of view of the capitalists, have to a considerable extent, removed the threats of instability for the owners of industry, caused by any organised discontent amongst workers. Such is the sophistication of modern wage slavery that, workers can often be persuaded (indoctrinated) into exercising self-discipline at the workplace, which means that line managers (more highly paid workers) often need to spend less time in supervising their subordinates.

Revolution from below
In view of the overall situation of poverty, wars, inequality, pollution etc., how do we get from the dictatorship of capital and the boardroom, to the system of real democracy described earlier? The means to reach such a society must surely reflect the composition of the new society itself.

Since the emergence of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, private ownership of the means of production has developed, with a ruling class at each stage. Many changes have taken place since then but the key element has been private ownership of resources, by a small minority, right from slave owning societies through to feudalism and then, to capitalism. Significant political changes have been led by minorities, who have successfully imposed their will and rule on a population, very often by means of violence.

Capitalism, with its ruling class was established and developed by a minority, that is to say by leaders. In complete contrast to this, genuine democracy or real socialism, the two are synonymous, will be a society run by the whole of the people. Since it will be without leaders, this democracy will be set up by a majority of the people, consciously and politically organising themselves for a change, which they both understand and desire.

Even now, many people realise that there is something seriously wrong with the present system (wars, poverty, pollution, inequality etc.). However, it is the awareness of an alternative to this which is missing. The task of socialists is to get people to think for themselves, without the need for leaders. When more people consider the genuine socialist, democratic alternative to capitalism, those who give it support, will swell the size of the already existing world socialist movement. As the number of socialists grows, the ideas will spread among the people they come into contact with, particularly in a world where those ideas can be communicated so much more quickly than in the past. A series of political, democratic acts will be needed to establish the truly democratic society of socialism. People with a socialist consciousness will unite and upon achieving a majority, measured by voting, will be in a position to establish the new society.

World Socialism
At last, democracy will have real meaning: a society of production of goods and services for human need, with ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by all the people. Since the division into rich and poor will have been abolished, it will be a classless society. The precise, day-to-day details of the running of this future society will be up to the people at the time, but what we can be sure of is that just as there will be free access to goods and services for everyone, without any need for money, so there will be open access to the administration of society for those interested in particular issues, such as food production, health, education, building of houses, the environment and local matters.

Probably, there will be local administrations, perhaps in the form of councils, which will be reflected at wider levels, such as regional and global. The new democratic society will most likely involve participation of delegates in these councils. The consequence of this is that certain delegates could be subject to recall, if the electorate were dissatisfied with their activities. These factors would emphasise the genuine democracy and choice available to everyone.

Such a society will clearly face challenges in the need to clean up the mess created by capitalism. Swift measures will be required to undo as much as possible of the damage which has already been done to the environment by the previously existing profit system. Adequate food supplies, housing, health services and education will need to be expanded to areas of the planet previously deprived of them under capitalism. The tasks involved will obviously be considerable. However, the numbers of people available to do such work will be much greater than could ever be the case in a market economy since unemployment and the vagaries of the trade cycle will have been abolished. There will be increased automation of some tasks, and further technological development, with consideration for the environment. The scale of human energy available, accompanied by a social concern for creating the best possible working conditions, will make work a far more individually and socially satisfying affair than could ever be the case under capitalist wage slavery.

These will be enormously exciting times because at long last, human society will have evolved to the position of being able to tackle effectively the challenges facing the modern world. Immense satisfaction will be experienced by huge numbers of individuals as, on the one hand they will be able to contribute their mental and physical energies into increasing the commonly held wealth of society, whilst on the other hand, they will satisfy their own self defined needs from the common store.
The new era for humanity will have begun.

Vincent Otter

The prophet debunked (2010)

Book Review from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trotsky. A Biography. By Robert Service. Macmillan. 624pp.

Were Trotsky alive today, he would have the editors of this book shot. It is riddled with irritating errors. Round brackets close square; names change spelling; weird sentences like the idea that Russian radicals “took the bits of Marxism they disliked and discarded the rest” slip through; and apparently Oslo and St. Petersburg lie on the same longitude, 59 degrees North. Macmillan should be ashamed to have allowed this slapdash product into print.

This would not matter except that the representatives of Trotsky on Earth have launched a flurry of chaff to attack this biography of their idol. Forensic hair splitting has been their method, and finding faults, such as that Natalya Sederova (Trotsky’s partner) died in 1962 rather than 1960 as the book claims. This is, of course, a distraction tactic. Hardly any of their reviews deal with the meat of the book.

Peter Taaffe, leader of the “Socialist Party” (formerly Militant) performs the usual Trotskyist miracle of simultaneously denying and justifying the repressive tactics and terror of the Bolsheviks. David North of the World Socialist (sic) website cavils over trivialities, and even manages to accuse Service of anti-Semitism. North also has the lack of originality to describe Service’s text as part of the ‘School of historical falsification’ echoing his hero’s riposte to Stalin.

They don’t address Trotsky’s ordering the decimation of a battalion for cowardice. Or Lenin signing an order for 100-1000 leading citizens of a city to be hanged. The book notes Trotsky’s willingness to use authoritarian methods, and suggests that prior to 1917 he never spelled out what he meant by dictatorship, but that during the crisis leading to the Bolshevik coup d’Etat, he would speak in praise of the guillotine that made opponents of the revolution “shorter by a head”.

Service depicts, with accounts from witnesses, Trotsky as an aloof and self-centred man, who lacked political judgement to help him keep friends close. He alienated many by his manner. He was never, contrary to the received wisdom and dogma of the sects, an organised Marxist. He was a non-aligned member of the Russian Social Democratic Party, who spent the years up to the Great War trying to unify the factions but never joining any. Even when he joined the Bolsheviks, it was as a loose cannon, and that would be part of his undoing.

Service attributes Trotsky’s failure to become the leader of the revolution after Lenin to a lack of will on his part – and claims that any obstacles were surmountable. He suggests that Trotsky was not planning, nor might have been able, to use his position of head of the Red Army to seize power: but that the fear of this motivated his opponents.

What sticks in the craw of the Trots, and threatens the entire ideological edifice of their movement, is Service’s contention that Trotsky did not in policy terms differ from Stalin, and that he had indeed consciously presided over the introduction of a series of show trials of opponents like the ones used by Stalin against Trotsky’s allies. Further, he examines Trotsky’s late claim that the “backwardness” of Russian development was to blame for the “degeneration” of the revolution. In that case, enquires Service, was not the whole enterprise, including all its shed blood, a forlorn waste of time.

Despite the claims of the acolytes, this is not an entire hatchet job, Service freely acknowledges that Trotsky was a great writer and orator, and a brave man in his own personal right. It is, though, a biography, as much a literary form as an historical one, and judgement plays an important part. Service gives his opinion, and is openly critical of Bolshevism and the reader can make up their own mind.

Pik Smeet