Editorial: Labour capitalism (1989)

Editorial from the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party is not and never has been a socialist party. As we record in this issue, most Labourites have seen "socialism" as either nationalisation or some milder form of what exists in Russia. They have, in other words, confused socialism with state capitalism. Some, it is true though more in the past than in recent times, have like us wanted a society based on common ownership, democratic control and distribution according to need, except that they saw this as coming about through a series of piecemeal reforms introduced by Labour governments.

This attempt to introduce within capitalism what will undeniably be features of socialist society - such as free public services and the abolition of unearned income from shares - was bound to fail as it took no account of the fact that capitalism cannot be reformed to work other than as a profit-making system governed by blind economic laws. The economic operation of the capitalist system has meant either that these reforms have eventually been undermined or that they have had unintended side-effects. At the same time Labour governments, having come into office under capitalism, have had no alternative but to preside over the running of the capitalist system in the only way that it can: as a system in which profit-making takes priority in all fields over meeting needs.

Aneurin Bevan once described the National Health Service as "pure socialism". He was wrong, but for the right reason. Wrong because you cannot have bits of socialism within capitalism, but right because health care in socialism will be free. The free NHS began to be dismantled, under economic pressure of capitalism, even by the Labour government that had introduced it, and the free aspect has been whittled away ever since as successive Tory and Labour governments have introduced more and more charges.

Earlier Labour theorists, such as R. H. Tawney, saw Labour's role as to suppress unearned income, correctly regarded as a tribute levied by property-owners on the rest of society, by gradually taxing it out of existence. As, once again, socialism will indeed be a society in which shareholding will have no place, the higher taxes on unearned income by Labour governments were sometimes presented, wrongly, as a step towards socialism.

Now such pretences are to be dropped. The Policy Review document to be adopted at this month's Labour Conference shows that the Labour leaders, eager to get their hands on the reins of office, are preparing to accept capitalism as it has evolved in Britain -  a profit-driven market economy providing unearned income for those who own the means of production - and to abandon the attempt to impose on it isolated features of a socialist society.

The document has to be read to be believed. It opens with an introduction by Kinnock in which he states that Labour's aim is to help "make the market system work" and goes on to talk about Labour's priority being to establish "an internationally competitive economy", achieving "success in the marketplace", and creating "a new partnership with business".

This does not represent the abandoning by Labour of its socialist principles (that would be difficult since it never had any), but rather the tacit recognition by Labour of the failure of the strategy of gradually trying to reform capitalism out of existence which, at an earlier period, was accepted by many in the Labour Party. Not only have the actions of Labour governments not brought socialism one step nearer, but instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism it is capitalism that has gradually changed the Labour Party.

As socialists who predicted this failure, we draw the lesson that the only way to get to socialism is to work to build up a political movement dedicated to ending capitalism by bringing all the means of production, in one go and without compensation, into common ownership by all the people. For us, the failure of gradualist reformism vindicates the need for a social revolution, to be carried out by essentially peaceful, democratic means, from class ownership and control and production for profit to common ownership, democratic control and production for need.

The Labour leaders, opportunist politicians that they are (but then, as professional politicians, their main ambition in life has to be to achieve ministerial office), have typically drawn a different conclusion. They want to abandon the failed reformist strategy, but in favour of accepting capitalism as it is, market, unearned incomes and all.

This is not a development that need surprise since ideology can always be expected to sooner or later come into line with practice-and Labour's practice when in office has always been to accept capitalism and its logic. Every Labour government has worked with private business and has accepted that capitalists must be allowed to make profits (indeed, has taken steps such as freezing and restraining wages to ensure that they did). It is just that at this year's Labour Party Conference we shall be witnessing the precise point in time at which the gap between ideology and practice which has existed up to now will be closed, with Labour accepting a new ideology that conforms to what has long been its practice.

Socialism, Saints and Muffin the Mule (1996)

From the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris lived from 1834 to 1896. During his lifetime he involved himself in a bewildering array of activities. The last quarter of his life was spent in the cause of socialist revolution and he left a considerable body of socialist writings when he died.

Saint William Morris? It had to be a hoax. Actually, it wasn't. The Church of England, in its pathetically opportunist bid to recruit anyone with a credible image to its side, proposed canonising Morris, the nineteenth-century Marxist revolutionary who resolutely rejected all gods and religions. When he died in the late morning of 3 October 1896, Morris's last reported words were "I want to get mumbo-jumbo out of this world." Hardly the stuff of which saints are made. If it weren't for mumbo-jumbo every clergyman would be on the dole looking for real work.

In an age when, as the Stranglers reminded us, there are no more heroes (we're all cynics now), the present writer readily confesses to more than a passing admiration for William Morris. Here was a man born into affluence and opportunity: educated at Marlborough public school, where he famously stated that he learned nothing except by walking in the local countryside and observing nature and reading useful books in the local library, and then Exeter College, Oxford, where he was sent to train for the priesthood and left stating: "I won't sign the 39 Articles" (1855) because he had seen through the sham of the Church's authoritarian morality. Like many others of his age and class he could have become just another time-wasting ponce, living in thoughtless indolence upon the hard work of the majority. But Morris took a different course.

Talented Artistic Creation

Morris's belief was that art and society are inseparable. How often do we meet those dullards of the artistic establishment who, cocooned like monks in their galleries, pontificate about art as if it is something to be hidden behind bullet-proof screens: either a purchasable indulgence for the rich or a thing of beauty for school groups of working-class kids to be allowed to gawp at as a spectacle. Morris hated this idea of art. For him, art was about making things which were useful and accesible and beautiful to look at and to touch. He was, to be sure, a man of immensely varied talents: probably the most versatile and talented artistic creator of the last century. As an architect Morris revolutionised house design, with his building of the Red House near Bexleyheath. as a designer of textiles and wallpapers Morris revolutionised the skill, reviving approaches to colour and inventing methods of production. With Burne-Jones, his closest artistic friend, he did the same with the design of stained-glass windows in which their productions were unsurpassed in their splendour. As a poet of the second Victorian generation Morris was respected as being a superb writer, not only composing great long works such as 'The Dream of John Ball' (with its invigorating sense of how history changes in ways often unclear to those living through it), but also translating Greek classical poetry as well as the Icelandic sagas which so inspired him. When Tennyson was offered the poet laureatship in 1892 it had been planned to offer it to Morris who, needless to say, would have no part in being appointed to write flattering ditties for royal parasites. Not content to write poetry, Morris was a pioneer in the field of typography in which during the latter years of his life, he devoted himself to revolutionising printing methods and building up his own press which could produce words pleasurable not only to read but to look at.

What kind of man embodied these talents? Yeats, who came to know Morris in his London days (and was even tempted for a while by his revolutionary ideas until the folly of the fairies drew him to the mysticism of Irish nationalism which ended in a personal attraction to fascism), wrote of William Morris that "You saw him producing everywhere organisation and beauty, seeming in the same instant helpless and triumphant; and people loved him as children are loved." By all accounts, Morris seems to have been one of the most undisliked men of his century. When he died, only in his early sixties, a century ago, the doctor declared that he died of simply being William Morris. It is understandable that vicars, usually noted for adding little to the world and most in their element when burying the dead rather than energising the living, might look at the enormous vivacity of Morris's character and assume that he must have been superhuman, fit for sainthood. Morris would have hated such an idea of himself. For him, there was nothing that he could do which, given the opportunity, others could not learn to do also. Unlike the precious artists, so often second-rate, who surround themselves with a mystique of creative specialness, Morris's achievements were always intended as inspiration, not exclusivity.

For most of his life Morris was just a critical complainer against the effects of capitalism, but, like so many others, one who never knew what capitalism was or even that it existed. At first he bemoaned the loss of true arts in the nineteenth century, pursuing the criticisms of his teacher, Ruskin, against the regimentation, waste and tackiness of urban, industrial squalor. But he knew not what caused this to be. As a supporter of the radical wing of the Liberals (the equivalent of Labour today, as the anti-Conservative but pro-capitalist party of his time) he joined the Eastern Question Association in protest against the atrocities being committed in the Balkans to which the rest of the world turned a cynical blind eye. (What changes?) As Treasurer of the EQA Morris was forced to look in the face the hypocritical posturing and limited vision of the capitalist politicians. Meanwhile, as a founder of SPAB (the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings), Morris and his friends were fighting a losing battle to preserve some of the beauties of the pre-industrial world from the ravages of vandalism for profit.

Socialist Activist

William Morris was over fifty when something important developed within his thinking. He came to realise that all of these hideous acts of destruction against art, beauty and human life were not accidents of history or the consequences of wrong government. They were the inevitable effects of the capitalist system which can no more put beauty and life before rent, interest and profit than the church could put science before superstition. What was wrong with the times in which he lived was the system. Morris was no less energetic about this revelation than he had been about any of his other occupations. He set himself to read Marx (in French, for Capital was yet to be translated into English) and became an active member of the newly-formed Social Democratic Federation, the first revolutionary socialist body in Britain.

Within a year of joining the SDF (and giving it time, money and enthusiasm hitherto reserved for artistic creation) Morris found himself in a majority on its Executive Council refusing to endorse some of the policies being pursued. Firstly, there was the arrogance of the Eton-educated self-appointed leader, Hyndman, whose belief that the SDF was almost his own personal property, and whose contemptible imperialism and anti-Jewish racism, was too much for those like Morris, Eleanor Marx and Belfort Bax to stomach. Then there was the question of reform. Hyndman and his supporters took the view that a socialist body should advocate reforms of capitalism under the illusion that these would be "Stepping Stones to Socialism". Morris had read Marx too well to believe that the inherent class robbery of capitalism could be reformed in the interest of the robbed. He took the view that only by educating those who are robbed by capitalism of the cause of their miseries and the hope of a real alternative could socialism ever be achieved. Like Marx, Morris maintained that there could be no socialism without conscious socialists to bring it about. So, in December 1883 Morris and the others, though a majority on the EC of the SDF, resigned from it and established the Socialist league. Soon they had their own journal, Commonweal: the political contributions made to it by Morris have now been collected in two volumes in the William Morris Library (edited and introduced by Nicholas Salmon) and these, together with A.L. Morton's excellent little edition of the Political Writings of William Morris are amongst the finest socialist writings ever produced. (Every socialist owes it to themselves to read these.)

In 1890 Morris took upon himself the task, tried by others but never with anything close to the same force of clarity and imagination, to depict what a socialist society might look like. More than that, what it would feel like to live in. Morris's News From Nowhere is more than just a pretty picture of utopia. Readers may like bits and discard others, and Morris the libertarian would respect them more for doing so: he was no prophetic author of blueprints for the future. What Morris attempted to do - and succeeded with brilliance - was to show that a society based upo common ownership and democratic control could exist; that free access to wealth without the existence of the market or money as social fetters upon human freedom could work effectively; that a society could exist co-operatively and humanely without the need for the state, with its governments, police and prisons; that human nature is not opposed to human decency in the world. What had happened to the world to allow this great transformation to happen? It did not require the coming to earth of some miracle-making messiah who, in line with infantile religious belief, would purify the earth so that Saint Morris could write about it. No such claptrap for Morris: his depiction of the new age of humanity depended upon the assumption that workers had united to get rid of capitalism. There was no other way to bring about the socialist alternative.

It was once said of Morris that whereas the reformers had told people what to want, Morris had told them how to want. He had attended to the education of desire, teaching people that their dreams of a better world could only be realised as visions to be enacted if they would organise on the basis of knowledge and co-operation. He was right. How much more refreshingly right than those sad relics of the museum of political postures on the British Left, marching not to the socialist Nowhere but the capitalist nowhere being planned for by that emblematic nobody, Tony Blair.

There is something of an irony that in this year of the centenary of his death, vast numbers of people will file past the great Morris exhibition at the Victorian and Albert Museum and many more will remember him with self-deceiving selectivity: every Sunday supplement is running something about Morris, but they will neglect to mention that he dedicated his later life to the creation of a moneyless, wageless, stateless society. Not only did he write about it, but he gave endless lectures and speeches, from Secular Halls to open-air platforms across the country. He talked to striking Northumbrian miners and small gatherings of drunks and autodidacts in damp rooms and windy street corners. He was a fighter and an inspiration to many of us who were born long after he died.

Better than any saint, it could be argued with some force that Morris's contribution to the sum of human history was rather greater than that of Muffin the Mule. Not so according to the Post Office which has rejected a proposal to produce a commemorative stamp to mark his death on the grounds that "William Morris was not of sufficient stature". (Instead, stamps with pictures of Muffin the Mule and the glove puppet, Sooty, will be produced.) There has been a minor outcry from a few Labour MPs (currently led by a human glove-puppet, operated with much dexterity by the Stock Exchange) which is the usual respect paid by Labour leaders to long-dead socialists. Had Morris been alive today, advocating the revolutionary abolition of the market and production for profit, his condemnation as "irrelevant", "utopian" and "not in line with practical politics" would be churned out by the very Labour MPs who like looking at Marxists as long as it's only on a stamp.

Steve Coleman

One World Administration (1996)

From the August 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a socialist society, for the first time ever, the globe-spanning communications networks - which capitalism itself has built up and which socialism will develop even further - will be used to ensure that everyone can have an input into the decisions which affect their lives on a global, regional and local basis.

A united humanity, sharing a world of common interests, would also share world administration. This is the socialist alternative to the way that capitalism divides the planet into rival states and sets people against each other. Driven by class interests and profit and spurred by the attitudes of nationalism, racism and religion, war and civil strife continue to cause death and misery. During this century more people have been killed than in any previous century. Yet, during this time there has been developed a world framework of communications and administration that in socialism could be swiftly adapted for the needs of all people. Just as capitalism has developed powers of production that could provide every person with a comfortable and secure life so it has also developed means of organising a world of co-operation.

It is sometimes said that world administration would mean power of central control over local democracy. A lot of argument is wasted over opposing options about where control should be placed. But a system of world democratic administration in socialism need not be based in either world, regional or local spheres. We can envisage an integrated system that would be adaptable and could be used for decision-making and action on any scale between the local and the world. Practical necessity would require such adaptability and we can suggest some principles which determine this.

Local democracy

In socialism, for the first time, local communities will be free to make decisions about the development of their areas. With the release of productive resources solely for needs, for the first time they will enjoy real powers to act on those decisions. These would be decisions about local services such as health, education and transport, public facilities such as parks, libraries, leisure centres and sports grounds; local housing, the siting of production units, management of farming, care of the local environment, cultural events, and so on.

We anticipate that with people being able to co-operate much more in their own interests there would be a stronger and more active sense of local community than exists now and this would be expressed through bodies adapted from present parish and district councils. The principle determining the practice of local democracy would be that decisions affecting just local populations would be made by them and not for them by any larger or outside body.

World production

The importance of local democracy has to be seen in the context of modern production which is world-wide. There may be some scope for local production for local needs but in the mean, even simple articles of use are made with additions of labour which extend across the globe. For example, a ball-point pen needs world mining, the oil industry, chemicals and world transport, etc. We eat fruit, vegetables and spices from every climate. Our lives would be much more limited if we were restricted to what could be produced or grown in our local areas.

With the abolition of capitalist corporations many of which duplicate their operations on a world scale it is likely that socialism would want to use the most economical and structure of production. This could operate from world scale extractive industries like mining to regional centres of industrial processing and manufacture and final distribution to local populations. This could correspond to a similar network of administrative levels on world, regional and local scales.

An obvious example of production that has to begin from a world perspective is energy. The use of the earth's finite resources such as fossil fuels, the prediction of world energy needs, concern for the increase of radio-activity and carbon gases in the environment, the risk of accidents, the development of benign technologies, etc, all combine to make energy policy a world issue. This is a case where in socialism a single world energy authority would have the advantage of a complete overview of the problems and would be able to draw on information from every community.

This is not to suggest that such a single agency based in New York or Geneva or whatever would be making policy decisions for everyone on the planet. Its function could be to provide information and propose various development strategies so that alternatives could be decided democratically. From where we stand now a lot of people would say that priority should be given to ecologically benign methods such as wind, wave, solar power, etc. With the freedom to make such a decision without the economic constraints of capitalism, socialism could do it. The sole motive would be the needs of people and this would be in sharp contrast to the way in which governments decide matters now from the point of view of national economic and military interests.

Multi-citizenship

The example of energy policy means that people in socialism won't just be concerned about whether a piece of local land should be sued for housing, growing food, a cricket pitch or left as it is. People will also be engaged with issues affecting them which extend far beyond their local areas. So, as well as being citizens of their parish or district they would also be citizens of the world with all the opportunities for, and responsibilities of decision making and action in every sphere of life.

One of the great technical developments under capitalism has been electronic communications with satellites linking radio, television, telephones, etc., and the rapid processing and distribution of information. These media alter our awareness of being in the world and the boundaries between what is local and distant are shifted or become blurred. From one moment to another we are able to take in local news, issues and events and those on the regional or world scene.

The importance of these media is not only for their potential as means of organising administration and production, they are just as important for enjoyment and leisure. In socialism we could enjoy great sporting festivals such as the Olympic games and the World and European Football Cups without them being tainted by nationalism or commercialism. Similarly such concerts as those performed by the 3 tenors, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras would be events shared by many millions across the globe.

Communications also bring home to us with force and immediacy the often tragic results of disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Even in the cynical, alienated world of capitalism people do what they can to help and with the resources available in socialism world organisation would move swiftly to minimise the damage and the suffering. In a quite different way which can equally show the common identity of all people expeditions into space demonstrate that every person on earth shares a tiny planet in a vast cosmos. No doubt these exciting projects will continue in socialism organised by a World Space Agency.

So, as well as the face-to-face contacts of our daily lives at work, home, at the shops, in the library, at the football pitch or leisure centre with friends, neighbours and relatives, and as well as our part in local affairs, at the same time we would be involved with all other people in world issues and events of every kind.

Continuity

The abolition of class ownership and production for profit together with the establishment of common ownership and production for needs will begin a period of great re-organisation. In production the principle will be that work related to marketing and he profit system will become redundant - it will cease. Examples are banking, selling and accounting. Work that is socially useful related to the real needs of people like farming, building, energy supply, transport, etc. , will be continued and further developed. Practicality will require that socialism will begin with the structures it takes over, these to be fully democratised.

The same principle will apply to decision-making bodies and administration. Socialism will begin with its delegates being in control of national and local governments and from this point the role of these bodies as part of a state machine will be replaced by democratic organisation operating solely for the needs of communities. It follows that all the socially-useful parts of the previous state machine will be continued. At the local level these include planning, education, health and transport developments, etc.

At the national level there are useful ministries such as housing and agriculture and those which administer health and education on the broader scale. The United Nations also includes useful world bodies such as the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agricultural Organisation. This is the world-wide structure already developed by capitalism which would be taken over and developed for the needs of the world's population. For example, one problem that socialism would have to solve as quickly as possible will be the supply of enough good quality food for every person. This will require co-operation at every social level and the existing FAO, national ministries of agriculture and local departments could be swiftly adapted for the task.

The Way Forward

The practice of a fully democratic system requires more than communications technique. The potential of the various media to bring people together over great distances cannot be realised in the divided world of capitalism where power remains in the hands of governments and those who own and control production and the earth's resources.

Federalists aim at world administration but they are talking about world government - a world capitalist state. People would still be class divided and subject to all the tyrannies and insecurities of the profit system. In any case, governments are not going to give up the economic interests of the class they represent in favour of world administration.

Only the workers of all countries share a real interest in working to establish a world based on common ownership where all means of production and all resources will be held in common by all people. Production would then operate through voluntary co-operation and part of that co-operation will be the work of deciding what should be done in the interest of the whole community and then acting on those decisions. This is the basis on which the world communications and administrative bodies which have been developed for the objectives of capitalism can be used for the whole population. That we have no country but still have a world to win is still our best slogan and the best hope for all people.

Pieter Lawrence

An inevitable result of vanguardism (1996)

Book Review from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Grey Granite by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Canongate Press) 

The novel Grey Granite, the third volume of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's trilogy A Scots Quair, is a text that fits rather snugly within the canon of twentieth-century literary modernism, even though it is rarely to be found on a university syllabus, at least outside Scotland. 

 The plot primarily involves Chris Colquohoun and her son Ewan Tavendale, making a "new life" for themselves after moving to the industrial city of Duncairn from the country. While Chris works in a boarding house, Ewan goes to work at Gowans, the local steel works. The general relationships between these and other characters are obviously one of the main elements of the plot, but these relationships and the other events presented in the text are heavily coloured, if not determined, by Ewan's movement from an apparently self-reliant and individualist conception of his "self" to a more collective and class-conscious position. From an encounter (and argument) with an English socialist school teacher (who is largely, it seems, inspired by William Morris), Ewan comes first to an objective and rational recognition of a collective working-class interest which then develops through sympathy and empathy into a deeper subjective and emotional recognition of his shared experience with, and inclusion in, the working class. It is important to recognise that this movement from an exclusive individualist conception of his self to an inclusive class-conscious conception of self does not entail any loss of individuality. Rather it is in some sense a dialectical process in which the individual ego is lifted up, surpassed and preserved in the intersubjective collectively. 

Later, though, Ewan's individuality, preserved in the initial movement into class-consciousness, suffers some loss on his entry into and identification with the Communist Party, after which everything else is subordinated to their interests and aims. Part of the reason for this is the Communist Party's own identification of itself as "the working class" - that is, they substitute themselves for the class they see themselves as representing. This is, of course, an inevitable result of their vanguardism. Placing themselves in a position of leadership over the workers they then come to substitute themselves for the workers. As such, while ostensibly working for the overthrow of a hierarchical capitalist system, they come to institute a new hierarchy (quite apart from the fact that they would only bring about state capitalism rather than socialism if they succeeded in their aims); instead of serving the interests of the workers, they use the workers to serve the interest of the Party. This means that the workers remain in a subservient, subaltern position in relation to the Communists even while apparently struggling to free themselves from all hierarchical domination. 

Structurally, any vanguardist party, whatever its explicit intentions, is doomed to repeat this process, so betraying the revolutionary project it espouses. All this is made abundantly clear within the novel, in episodes in which the Communists lie to the workers in order to try and manipulate them for the Party's own ends as well as in the clearly-stated attitude of Jim Trease, a Communist leader: "For it's you and me are the working class, not the poor Bulgars gone back to Gowans." 

This is a novel with plenty to interest socialists, as should be clear from the above. It provides ample illustration of the hopelessness of the ideologies and strategies of both Labourist and Leninist parties and, by implication at least, of the necessity for the working class to organise and educate themselves for socialism, without leaders or hierarchies and against the constant capitulations and and political myopia that are the necessary results of reformism. I must finally state, though, that this is not simply a historical document or a political treatise. It is a wonderful example of literary modernism offering as much aesthetic pleasure as it does anything else, with great believable characters, full of human ambiguity, and a use of language that is simultaneously down to earth and poetic. 

Jonathan Clay

Editorial: The Whole of Capitalism is Unacceptable (2012)

Editorial from the March 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the 2010 General Election, the new government published the Conservative- Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement. In this initial policy document were proposals to reform banking, which stated: “We will bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector...” But what is an “unacceptable bonus”?

Should RBS bank boss Stephen Hester have been forced into waiving all his bonus, worth almost a million pounds? Is it okay that Barclays Bank Chief Executive Bob Diamond is getting a bonus estimated to be around £2million: or should it be less? The total amount of bonuses to be shared out around the City for the 2011-2012 period is £4.2 billion – that’s £2.5bn less than in 2010-2011 but peanuts compared with profits that capitalist firms rake in. Is that still too much? What should the amount be?

When it comes to answering questions like these, to paraphrase Rhett Butler, frankly, any socialist or right-thinking person won’t give a damn. Not about the greed and gross inequality, but about trying to come up with palatable reforms.

How much bankers get paid compared to teachers, nurses or refuse collectors is a distraction from the real problem, which is that a tiny minority have a right to own vital natural resources and industrial assets that provide the majority with all of the products and services that make life possible and acceptable and only allow those resources to be used if there is a profit in it for them.

Politicians encourage people into wanting, believing or hoping that capitalism can actually be made fair, when it can’t. For this deception they employ a we’re-all-in-this-together rhetoric and insincere calls for “responsible capitalism”, “performance-linked pay”, “value for money for taxpayers” and “rewards for success, not failure”. Reactionary newspapers and broadcasters play their part in spreading and reinforcing this futile reformism with their sole focus on capitalistic so-called ‘solutions’. And to be seen on the side of the austerity-penalised majority during an economic crisis, populist exercises are undertaken, like taking away an ex-banker’s knighthood or pressurising a few out-of-favour executives into trousering less money than usual (which can always be got back when the heat’s off).

If most voters just want to see the pay and bonuses of bankers cut back because their greed helped crash the economy, or because they don’t deserve the sizeable amounts they get, or because there’s such a thing as a fair profit, then there’s never going to any meaningful and lasting progress made. While capitalism carries on, there’ll always be widespread inequality in incomes and living standards because capitalism is irreversibly a system that exploits the many to benefit a few. Always has been. Always will be.

The alternative – a classless, moneyless socialist society – is actually very easy to achieve and maintain. A clear majority just knowing what it is and wanting it can bring it about. And as a much more efficient, unwasteful and uncomplicated system, compared to the present one, keeping it going certainly isn’t going to be a problem (not something that can now be said about outdated, failing capitalism).

Seeking to reform the bonus culture will achieve nothing because capitalism can never be made nice. It only thrives on inequality, ruthlessness and selfishness. Only completely replacing capitalism with real socialism will permanently end the disgusting inequality and greed seen in the present class-divided society.

Gifts and Giving (2012)

Book Review from the March 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life without Money edited by Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman (Pluto Press)

Several of the chapters in this volume are based on work which has appeared elsewhere. For instance, the chapter by Socialist Party member Adam Buick re-uses passages from the Socialist Standard.

It is certainly refreshing to come across a book that deals seriously with the idea of a world without money. As the editors say in the first chapter, ‘for us non-market socialism means a money-less, market-less, wage-less, class-less and state-less society that also aims to satisfy everyone’s basic needs while power and resources are shared in just and “equal” ways.’ A number of different perspectives on such a society are presented, some of which are more persuasive than others.

Two chapters look at small-scale attempts to live without money. One deals with the Twin Oaks intentional community in Virginia (http://twinoaks.org), which relies on a very complex system of labour credits. The other covers the squatter community in the Barcelona area. The squatters live by, for instance, recycling food (which would otherwise be dumped) from the port area, but they do need small amounts of money.

John O’Neill and Adam Buick deal with the economic calculation argument that in socialism there can be no single unit by means of which alternative actions can be compared (such as prices supposedly provide under capitalism). They point out that no such unit would be needed, since decisions can be taken by considering alternatives directly. Nor is some vast central plan needed.

Terry Leahy contributes an interesting essay on a gift economy where ‘products are either consumed directly by producers or made available to others as gifts’. This is a standard concept in the work of anthropologists looking at pre-modern (and some modern) societies, and it’s worth entering ‘gift economy’ in an internet search engine. It might be acceptable as a partial characterisation of socialism, except that in a complex industrial society producers cannot consume much of their own products, and most goods are produced by many different workers co-operating at different stages. Leahy also emphasises the role that might be played by hybrids of a gift economy and capitalism, developments which involve increased control of production and distribution by producers on some basis other than profit. The idea is that these hybrids could gradually be expanded so that ultimately a gift economy could take over from capitalism completely. Now, it’s possible that, as the socialist movement grows, hybrid-type arrangements will become more common, as people increasingly reject wage labour, but it will hardly be possible for this to replace a revolution to make the world’s resources common property.

A final chapter by the editors reinforces this notion of a gradual changeover, including the idea of ‘non-monetary exchange’ (as opposed to the socialist proposal to abolish exchange entirely). Despite this, though, the volume as a whole offers a refreshing look at alternatives to capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Banking Reform: is it relevant? (2011)

From the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Banking reforms are never going to stop capitalist crises.

Last month the Independent Commission on Banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers, published its final report. As expected, it recommended that banks should separate their ordinary High Street activities from their more risky (and more profitable) investment banking (their dealings in derivatives, securitised loans, etc). The aim is to avoid a future bail-out of the whole of a bank in the event of another banking crisis like that of 2007-8. If this happened again a bank’s investment arm would be allowed to sink or swim while the proposed requirement for extra capital reserves for the High Street arm should be enough to allow it to weather the storm.

The banks are up in arms and have been lobbying strongly against any such reform because it will hit profits for their shareholders, first, by tying up more of their capital and accumulated profits in reserves and second, by constraining their investment banking activities, since without the prospect of an eventual government bail-out they will become more risky and so more costly to fund. It remains to be seen how successful this lobbying will be, but the government has said it will accept the Commission’s recommendations and implement them sooner or later, if later rather than sooner.

Should we as workers care either way? In a word, no. This is an internal problem for the capitalist class, a fight between two of its factions. The non-banking faction is annoyed at having to pay for what it regards as the irresponsible activity of the banks which contributed to making the 2007-8 crisis worse than it would otherwise have been. They don’t want to be put in this position again and have been exploiting people’s dislike of banks to gain their support for moves towards more bank regulation.

People don’t like banks because they perceive them as parasitic on real activity. Indeed they are, but they are still essential to capitalism. Whereas, the role of industry is to profit by investing money in production, the role of banks is to lend industry that money and, in return, receive a share of its profit in the form of interest. Since profit is derived from the unpaid labour of those who work, banks are parasites on parasites.

But don’t banks lend to individual workers as well as to businesses? Yes, they lend workers money to buy a house or a car or some other big expenditure which couldn’t be paid out of monthly wages or salaries. Banks naturally charge interest on these loans but calculate that in time they will get both the interest and the loan back out of the future wages of the borrower. So, to this extent, worker-borrowers are affected by the level of interest rates.

Does this mean that low interest rates could be said to be in the interests of the working class? It’s not as simple as that because other workers are savers and prefer high interest rates. Some populist demagogues (such as reform-dangling Trotskyists) propose low interest rates for borrowers and high interest rates for savers. At the time of the Northern Rock crisis Militant said that they had “always demanded nationalisation, but on the basis of safeguarding all jobs as well as giving favourable deals to ordinary depositors and mortgage holders” (The Socialist, 19 February 2008.) But it’s not possible to pay depositors a higher interest rate than that offered to borrowers, as banks (and building societies) get their principal income from the difference between the rate they pay depositors and the rate they charge borrowers.

In any event, this is an academic issue since interest rates are not fixed to benefit workers and there is nothing workers can do to influence them.

How banks work
The Report does provide an insight into how banks work. There’s no nonsense here about banks being able to make loans out of thin air by a mere keyboard stroke. Banks are recognised as “financial intermediaries” whose role is to “bring together savers and borrowers”. Banks of course do other things as well (such as deal in derivatives and securities, and underwrite share issues). The Report proposes to “ring-fence” a bank’s “core economic function of intermediating between depositors and loans” from these other activities. It proposes that only what it calls “ring-fenced banks” (which will include building societies) should be able to take deposits from and provide overdrafts to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses (fewer than 250 employees). If they choose, they will also be able to accept deposits from bigger but non-financial businesses and make loans to them. Non-ring-fenced banks will not be able to take deposits from or make loans to individuals or small businesses, but they will be able to do everything else they have been doing until now.

The clear assumption throughout the Report is that a bank’s loans are financed out of its deposits. Ring-fenced banks will, however, be able to borrow money from the money market in a limited way to cover a short-term need to make payments. Here, the Report makes a reference to the famous (or notorious) cash reserve which banks have to keep to deal with withdrawals, and which forms the basis of so-called “fractional reserve banking”. The reserve is not very high now (about 2-3 percent) and doesn’t all have to be kept in cash; part may be held as very liquid assets (i.e. assets that can be converted more or less instantly into cash). “Within a bank”, says the Report, “the treasury function maintains an appropriately sized pool of liquid assets so that it can be confident of meeting its obligations to pay out depositors and other creditors”. The rest of what is deposited with the bank it can lend out (if it can find enough suitable borrowers).

This aspect of banking (which applies equally to building societies, credit unions and savings clubs) has given rise to all sorts of misunderstandings and confusions. Some even believe it to mean that when a bank receives a cash deposit it can immediately make a loan of many times the amount. As stated, the Report doesn’t give any credence to this sort of nonsense. It simply takes it for granted that banks make loans out of deposits.

The Report does propose a new capital ratio requirement. This is the ratio of a bank’s own capital to its assets (loans) and is not the same as the cash reserve requirement. The Report suggests that this should be “at least 10 percent of risk-weighted assets”. This would not normally restrict the amount a bank can lend, nor is it intended to. The money to build up its capital to the required level would not come from depositors but from the bank’s profits or from a share issue. Similarly, a ratio in excess of 10 percent would not mean that the bank would lend more. The Report sees this as increasing a bank’s “loss-absorbing capacity, and is trying to ensure that banks have enough capital and accumulated profit to sustain a potential big loss.

The Report does not go the whole hog and propose a complete separation of “ring-fenced banks,” as was done in America from the 1930s till 1991. Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays, etc can continue to exist as universal banks, but they will have to take legal steps to “ring-fence” their lending and deposit-taking to and from individuals and small businesses, and so separate them from their investment activities. No doubt the banks are already thinking up ways to get round this and, when the present crisis is history, to launch a campaign for de-regulation.

One thing that the banking reform will not do is to stop another economic and financial crisis, as some politicians are suggesting. We hold no brief for the banks but they did not cause the present slump. This was caused by capitalism’s tendency to overproduce for particular markets in a boom, not by monetary policy or institutional arrangements, even if they were an exacerbating factor. So, no banking reform is not going to eliminate the boom/slump cycle that is built-in to capitalism.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Libya: job done? (2011)

Editorial from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ‘Arab Spring’ flowered in Libya in February of this year. A series of protests against living conditions, then against the government, quickly escalated into a civil war aimed at removing the dictator Muammar Gaddafi. On 19 March, the British government, with its American and French partners, launched a bombing campaign, ostensibly to ‘protect citizens’ from Gaddafi’s troops. Just six months later, on 15 September, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, landed in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to declare, in effect, ‘job done’.

But what job is being done? If you’re gullible enough to believe the rhetoric of politicians, then Western intervention in Libya was all about protecting citizens from dictators and helping revolutionaries establish democracy. But the real reason for Nato’s concern is quite obvious. The real reason is oil.

You needn’t take socialists’ word for it. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Gaddafi henchman and now chairman of the National Transitional Council, was anxious to assure Cameron and Sarkozy of the intentions of the new regime: “The supportive role of France and Britain will have a future influence. Until now we have signed no [oil] contracts and we will honour all previous contracts. But our friends will have a premier role according to their efforts in supporting Libya,” he said (Financial Times, 15 September).

Indeed, it’s so blindingly obvious that the Western intervention in Libya was about oil that it is instructive to watch commentators who are obliged, for ideological reasons, to deny it.

George Friedman of Stratfor.com, for example, in one of his regular email reports (30 August), said that he “sympathised” with those who thought the war must be about oil and tried to find “a deep conspiracy” to explain it. But Friedman dismisses the “theory” for the simple reason that Gaddafi “loved selling oil”, that he would simply change the arrangements about oil if pressure was brought to bear because he “was as cynical as they come”, and it was therefore “not necessary to actually go to war to get whatever concessions were wanted”. Friedman then concludes that the official explanation is therefore “the only rational one”.

It’s a daft argument. Friedman is dismissing a silly theory no one believes in – that there was a “deep conspiracy” to start a war to steal Gaddafi’s oil – in order to discredit and dismiss a different theory which is obviously true, but socialist, and hence to be suppressed – the theory, namely, that all capitalist economies have a vital strategic interest in guaranteeing their supplies of raw materials, most crucially oil, and that therefore those countries’ states pursue foreign policies with such interests in mind. Formerly, that meant installing and arming the dictatorships the Arab Spring rose up to overthrow. Since the Arab Spring, it has meant scrambling to come up with some other way of installing or supporting regimes that will be subservient to Western capitalist interests.

And it is in this sense that, for now at any rate, the Nato intervention seems to be going so well. For a relatively low cost, and with relatively few Western casualties, Britain, France and America looks like it has got rid of a tyrant they had struggled to control for decades, staged a brilliant PR exercise supporting a democratic revolution in the Middle East, and are about to help install a regime friendly to its vital strategic oil interests in a country with the largest oil reserves in Africa. Job done indeed.

Media moguls and tabloid hacks are old news (2011)

From the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tabloids and ruthless reporters pre-date Murdoch’s era by many decades.

Rupert Murdoch and his sleazy crew of phone-hacking journalists are easy to hate. But even if Murdoch’s media empire crumbles, other media moguls and conglomerates will simply pick up the broken pieces. And tabloid reporters will continue to write titillating stories about celebrities and crime with or without recourse to phone hacking. Murdoch, of course, is hardly the first to build up a newspaper empire. One way to put the current scandal in some historical perspective, is to watch two classic Hollywood movies: Citizen Kane (1941) and Ace in the Hole (1951).

A Pre-Murdoch Mogul

In his film Citizen Kane, Orson Welles plays the role of newspaper owner Charles Foster Kane, who he models on the real-life tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The media empire that Hearst built, beginning in the late 19th century, bears more than a superficial resemblance to the present-day empire of Murdoch.

In the film we see the obscene amount of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of Kane and how he uses his network of newspapers to influence public opinion and politics, to the point of not only cheerleading for war (as Murdoch has often done) but even furnishing a casus belli for the Spanish-American War. Kane tells a correspondent, “You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.”

Even the meddling of newspaper tycoons in politics seems, if anything, worse in the Hearst era as depicted in the film – or at least more blatant. Kane uses his newspapers to build up an image of himself as the people’s crusader, and then to launch his own political career, taking on the corrupt politician, Jim Gettys, in the gubernatorial election. His opponent is no chump when it comes to using the press either and beats Kane in the election by exposing his adulterous affair.

For all of its insights into the brutal reality of journalism, the film may give the profession more credit than it deserves. At times Welles seems to imply that Kane’s tragedy stems from his veering away from the muckraking journalism of his early years when he even exposed economic scandals that touched on his own business interests.

There is an interesting early scene in the movie where Kane, admitting that as a capitalist owner he is just another scoundrel, says his duty as a newspaperman is, “to see to it that decent hardworking people in this community aren’t robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because they haven’t anybody to look after their interests.” Kane thinks that the fact he has “money and property” makes it possible for him to play this role. And it is hard to tell whether Welles as director thinks that Kane could have looked after the interests of hardworking people, or whether he recognizes the absurdity of a man with “money and property” defending the interests of those who lack both.

Kane may not in fact be as split in two between good journalist and bad capitalist as he claims, for in the same scene he adds, “If I don’t look after the interests of the underprivileged maybe somebody else will, maybe someone without money and property.” This seems to imply that the split between Kane the stockowner and Kane the journalist corresponds to the difference between his narrow interests as an individual capitalist and his broader interests as member of the capitalist class—two different shades of greed. If this is a point Welles was trying to make, he was a bit too subtle for his own good.

Ironically, the campaign Hearst led to suppress Citizen Kane did more to expose the newspaper tycoon’s obscene influence on society than the film itself. Hearst did not succeed in physically destroying Welles’ film as he had tried to do, but he did use the full power of his newspapers and columnists to coerce movie theatres not to screen it.

A Wilder View of Things

The 1951 film Ace in the Hole, written and directed by Billy Wilder, centres on a character far lower on the journalistic food chain, the newspaper reporter Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas).

The film opens with Tatum arriving in Albuquerque, New Mexico and begging his way onto the staff of a local newspaper, The Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. Tatum’s only hope at this stage in his career, after being fired from a string of newspaper jobs, is to chance upon some sensational story that will land him back at a big-city paper.

His opportunity finally arrives a year later when he is the first reporter to discover that a man, Leo Minosa, has been trapped inside an ancient Indian burial mound. Tatum is quick to realize that each day that Leo remains stuck is another day of exclusive reporting. To elbow out other tabloid sharks and drag out the rescue operation as long as possible, Tatum enlists the services of a corrupt sheriff up for re-election.

Tatum thus crosses the line between simply reporting a story and influencing how it plays out—all the while posing as Leo’s saviour and claiming, “I don’t make the news, I just report on it.” Tatum’s self-interested attitude disguised as compassion is no different from the outlook of today’s obnoxious reporters who feed on human tragedy.

Billy Wilder makes it perfectly clear that Tatum is no exception in the news racket by introducing other vicious journalists who almost make Tatum look decent by comparison. Tatum knows most of them by name from former jobs, and not one of them ever helped him when he was down on his luck. So when they plead, “Hey Chuck, we’re all in the same boat,” his icy response is that he is in the boat and they are in the water, “So let’s see if you can swim, buddies.”

Tatum knows the public’s appetite for “human interest” stories. He digs through the photo album of Leo Minosa to fashion a compelling profile and uses his skills as a writer to transform Leo’s estranged wife Lorraine into the picture of wifely fidelity because “that’s how the story reads best.”

Just as Tatum expects, the public eats up his story, even flocking to the site of the burial mound by the hundreds to take part in what has literally become a media circus, replete with amusement park rides and carnival performers. These onlookers are eager to believe that their own morbid curiosity and craving for entertainment actually constitute a sort of human compassion.

Wilder’s criticism cuts much deeper than the world of tabloid journalism and its readership. Tatum and the other reporters are not the only ones dazzled by money and power. There is Leo’s wife who wants to peddle enough hamburgers and Navajo rugs at her husband’s store to make her escape to New York, the young cameraman working with Tatum who is losing his innocence and dreaming of a world bigger than Albuquerque, the contractor beholden to the sheriff who agrees to the most time-consuming rescue method out of fear of losing his job, and all the carnies, musicians, and other riffraff who flock to the site to make a buck off the crowd. Even Leo, the victim, had gone into the cave in the first place to get his hands on some Native American relics to sell.

Money is the magic substance that brings together this crowd of strangers in the New Mexico desert, forming what a radio reporter there describes as a “new community” which has sprung up. But once the show is over and there is no more money to be made, this community dissolves in a matter of minutes. Leo’s “friends” take off in search of the next new thing, leaving behind his grieving parents.

Although minor characters, Leo’s parents are important: their love for their son contrasts sharply with the selfish and superficial human relations around them. In several scenes we see Mr Minosa refusing any payment from Tatum and others, mistaking them for his son’s saviours. And his devout wife is so lost in prayer for her son that she is almost oblivious to the obscene scramble for cash going on around her. Whenever Mr or Mrs Minosa enters a scene it immediately highlights how crass and downright bizarre the world of commerce is – a world where nothing is sacred, where everything and everyone has a price.

Setting the film in a part of the country where there are still traces of a pre-capitalist society is another way that Wilder makes our familiar money-centred world seem grotesque. The Native American rugs and pottery Leo had sold in his store were not originally commodities for the market but things for direct use or “sacred items” buried with the dead. What a remarkable contrast between that extinct society, where people had not been connected by money and the manic scenes of product peddling in the movie.

Tatum’s brand of journalism is perfectly suited to the money-mad society in which he lives. Wilder does present us with a character who might seem an alternative to Tatum: the upstanding owner of The Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin, Mr Boot, whose motto is “Tell the truth.” But Boot is only able to follow that motto by limiting his reporting to rather inconsequential local stories about soapbox derbies and rattlesnake hunts. When, later in the film, he says that he thinks the sheriff is corrupt and wants to expose him some day it does not sound convincing. A guy like Mr Boot has to stay in Albuquerque because he would not last a week in the cutthroat big-city newspaper business.

The films of Welles and Wilder and the past century of journalistic history are a warning to those who might think the end of Murdoch will mark some qualitative improvement in journalism. Take away Tatum, and another shark swims into his place: topple Kane’s empire, and another tycoon rises up. And the same will be true if Murdoch and his crew one day meet their demise. It is foolish to call for a reformed journalism but leave in place the profit motive that drives tabloid excesses.

Michael Schauerte

Cooking the Books: Too much debt or too little profit? (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Debt being the problem, creating more debt can’t solve it” was the title of a recent thread on the Zeitgeist global forum. Given all the fuss in the media about government debts (or “sovereign debt”), this is not surprising, but it is not debt that is the problem. Government debt is a symptom of the problem.

Government’s borrow money to cover the gap between what they spend and what they raise as taxes (the budget deficit). Like all borrowers, governments anticipate being able to repay their debts with interest out of future income, in their case, future tax revenue. Most taxes fall, in the end, on the new value created in production, and either taken directly as taxes on profits or indirectly as sales taxes and taxes on personal income.

Since the current slump broke out in 2008 new production has fallen and is nowhere near the level it was before, so putting governments in difficulty, some more than others. The anticipated income as tax revenue to repay their loans has not materialised. The current sovereign debt problem is thus a direct consequence of the continuing slump.

Governments typically borrow by issuing bonds for sale at a given face value and fixed rate of interest, repayable in a given period of time which can be as short as a month or as long as 30 years or more, say £100 at 5 percent interest per annum. Once taken up, the bonds become tradable and are bought and sold. The price at which they are traded is determined by the laws of supply and demand, not by their face value, but the amount of interest remains the same.

If, as has happened to Greek, Irish, Portuguese and now Spanish and Italian bonds, those wanting to sell (supply) exceed those wanting to buy (demand) then their price falls. If it falls, say to £90, the government still has to pay the same amount of interest on them (in this case £5). The ratio between this amount and the bond’s price is known as their “yield”. In our example it would be 5/90 or 5.55 percent. In other words, the rate of interest will have risen from 5 to 5.55 percent and this will be the rate the government will have to offer on future bond issues. Which presents a problem when the loans come up for renewal, as they continually do.

The governments of the Eurozone countries and the European Central Bank are not trying to solve the sovereign debt crisis of some of their members by creating more debt. They are trying to reduce the likelihood of the holders of these debts (amongst them leading European banks including some in Britain) not getting all their money back. This is why they are pressing the governments affected to reduce their budget deficit by reducing their spending, i.e. by imposing austerity. They have also come up with various schemes to keep interest rates on these governments’ bonds down as interest payments on them are part of government spending.

What all this confirms is that interest is secondary to profit. Debt and the interest on it is not the root problem. Interest is a share in the surplus value created in production. If not so much surplus value is being created – and a slump is precisely a drop in production including of surplus value – then there is less available to pay interest, either directly by businesses or indirectly via governments.

Creating more debt is indeed not the solution. But neither is creating less debt. If capital accumulation resumed and reached previous levels, there would be no further talk of a “debt crisis” as international investors would be assured that the surplus value would be there from which the interest on their loans and investments could be paid.

If, on the other hand, capital accumulation does not resume quickly enough, as some are beginning to fear, then the investors may well lose some of their investments. But it won’t be the result of too much debt but of too little profit.

The riots: not the way to help ourselves (2011)

From the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Self-regarding and typically under-employed, those exotically nominated experts in human behaviour have offered many wordless thanks for the unheralded events that enlivened the streets during those August nights. Suddenly they found the immediate future looking decidedly rosy with the prospect of well-paid sessions of unexciting analysis from TV sofas responding to badgering by equally tedious chat-show figureheads. Then there was the blossoming market for anaesthetic contributions to the newspapers, offering the seamier among them some help in recovering from the consequences of their exposed habit of phone-tapping. All of which sprang from the reassuring assumption that there was an easily accessible explanation, handily encapsulated in a slogan or even a single word, for the mobs with their rioting, looting and violence. This was a process to be helped in accordance with the weight of the qualifications of the “expert”. Even more so if their theories or explanations could be presented as original but neglected.

Previous
There is, as usual, no lack of precedent offered by those same experts and commentators. For example from London's recent history there were the events in Brixton in 1981 and the disturbance in Broadwater Farm Estate in 1985 in which a policeman was killed, for which a black man was sentenced to life imprisonment only to be exonerated in 1991. Inevitably, there were official enquiries after the disturbances, yielding the assurance that “lessons will be learned” – a phrase which has been worked to exhaustion in response to the present crisis, demonstrating how futile and misleading it is. Because the “lessons” have often revealed faults – shortcomings, errors or deliberate provocations such as racist bigotry on the part of the police – which have persisted to the present. So when it comes to the inevitable probing of this year's disturbances the starting point should be the police killing of Mark Duggan on 4 August and the attempt to dismiss the family's concern until, on 6 August, the threat of serious demonstrations on the streets burst out, spreading across London and to other cities.

In their response – or perhaps lack of it – the police seemed to be following an established procedure. This was not the first such case in which the official version, coming immediately after the event, was quickly shown to have a worryingly tenuous relationship with the truth. It brought back memories of the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 demonstrations in 2009. It then required some years of probing before the facts of Tomlinson's death were established and, however reluctantly, accepted by the police. One result is that a police officer, condemned by the inquest, is now due to stand trial for manslaughter.

In the case of Mark Duggan the police said initially that they had been forced to shoot him after he fired the first shot at a police officer, whose life was saved only because the bullet struck his radio. It did not take long for this version to be blown away, when the Independent Police Complaints Commission stated that there was no evidence to prove that Duggan had fired a gun. But beyond this confusion – if that is an adequate word for it – there is the hard reality of the actual social situation, of unyielding divisions, of inequality, poverty, sickness, despair... The police can deny any obligations arising from this, except to act as the enforcers of the essential principles of capitalist society, whatever misery they cause.

Opportunistic
We have not seen the last of the verbal strategies used to conceal the nastiest facts about those recent public disorders. For example there was a newly minted vocabulary to denounce the looters, which had them as “opportunistic” offenders against property. This paid no heed to the fact that we are actively encouraged to accept that very word in admiration of much of what is rapturously accepted within capitalist society. Like the bankers and their infamous bonuses, or hedge traders gambling on a forecast movement in share prices. Like the exploitation of any and every development for whatever advantage it can allow a political party. Like the flood of lies designed to conceal the tragic reality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of them opportunistic.

Then there was the dismissal of the looters' claim that as things are now they can have little sense of ambition for their future and were merely trying to ease their poverty by helping themselves from the shelves of convenience stores or giants like ASDA. A youth worker from East Ham told the media that young people feel “trapped in the system...disconnected from the system and they just don't care”. This was countered with the argument that young people can hardly complain about poverty when they are wielding the latest models in so-called social networking technology, suggesting that they could cope with their problems as stoically as others such as elderly vulnerable people.

The limits of this case were shown by a social worker in a part of London unaccustomed to social disorder among its leafy green open spaces who was almost speechless with rage on behalf of one of his clients who is housebound, blind and incontinent, and whose (paltry) special laundry allowance has been cut off by the local council. This woman is scared of the rioters in her locality, and the social worker, while not at all likely to join them, has something of an understanding of their motivation. He is not at all impressed by the millionaire ex-Etonian, David Cameron whining about “...sickening scenes... This is criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated” – which brings us stark memories of Thatcher's opinions about the riots which periodically broke out while she was doing something called putting the Great back into Great Britain: “Nothing, but nothing, justifies what happened...They were criminal, criminal...”

Bullingdon
And in case there is any doubt it should be made clear that she was not referring to the earlier activities of Cameron, Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson who helped themselves ease the boredom of swotting during their time at Oxford by joining the Bullingdon Club which, apart from dressing up in fancy evening suits devoted themselves to wrecking restaurants and other such places, often to the fear and annoyance of other people there. It was Johnson who came back from his very costly recent holiday to join the chorus about the looters' behaviour being “criminal” without recalling those leisure time activities of his younger days; perhaps he had forgotten that in his case there was a rich parent to defuse any resentment and dissuade the Bullingdon's victims from any intention to refer the matter to the courts.

But for anyone caught up in, or suffering from, those recent nocturnal mob activities, there was no such relief; their lot was fear and anxiety about their safety – or even their survival. For them any anger, desire for revenge about the looters would be perfectly understandable, if as futile as the whole machinery of so-called justice and order. The fact is that riots do not emerge from nowhere or nothing. Social disorder, damage to life and home, are part of the daily assumptions about life within capitalism. Even David Cameron has had to acknowledge that these forces are inexorably at work when he referred to “120,000 most troubled families” in this country (he did not mean those with someone in the Bullingdon Club).

Teaching
The police sent to control this year's outbreaks were stronger in their weaponry and protective clothing than those in the past. This is represented as progress in the verbiage of the politicians and of those experts when what it in fact demonstrates is that the problems persist and show no sign of fading into history. Any meaningful investigation of the origins of the riots and looting cannot disregard their link to the effects of unemployment and the other persistent features of working class life – to poverty whether unemployed or in work, to poor housing and unnecessary disease all adding up to a burden of social deprivation which needs a relatively minor provocation to bring an explosion of anger and violence.
Is this the best we can expect in a world capable of satisfying human needs? Must our society be distorted by the toxicity of social ulcers? The looters deceived themselves that through the shattered shop fronts they were not just helping themselves to material goods but in a sense re-arranging social assumptions. As the enquiries into those events will eventually tell us, there are lessons to be learned here, but we reject the notion that these come best from those who claim the right to teach us, discipline us and punish us. Better to help ourselves by working for a peaceful, co-operative, abundant community.

Ivan

Old Labour (2011)

Book Review from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. By Owen Jones (Verso Books 2011)

This well-received book has a snappy title and the subtitle fairly summarises one of its main themes. But a careful reading of its pages, and especially the concluding chapter, suggests a more descriptive title: “Down with middle-class Conservatism and New Labour. Up with the working-class Old Labour.”
Jones writes at the end of the introductory chapter:, “Class prejudice is part and parcel of a society deeply divided by class. Ultimately it is not the prejudice we need to tackle; it is the fountain from which it springs.” Tackling ‘the fountain from which [prejudice] springs’ is open to different interpretations. But the context makes it clear that for Jones the ending of the class system by the substitution of socialism for capitalism is not one of them.

The following chapters range over the inconsistent media treatment of the disappearance of middle-class and working-class children, the horrors of Thatcherism (no argument there), and the blaming of the victims in ‘broken Britain’.

In his concluding chapter – the author develops some of his Old Labour ideals:

“Instead of economic despots ruling over the British economy with nothing to keep them in check, key businesses could be taken into social ownership and democratically managed by workers – and consumers for that matter. It would be a real alternative to the old-style, top-down bureaucratic form of nationalization…”

Nationalisation is not, of course, the same thing as socialism, nor is it a step on the road to socialism. It is one of the two forms of capitalism: state (or officials acting on behalf of the capitalist class – as a whole) and private (ownership by individuals or corporations).

“The new class politics would be a start, to at least build a counterweight to the hegemonic, unchallenged politics of the wealthy… Working-class people have, in the past, organized to defend their interests; they have demanded to be listened to, and forced concessions from the hands of the powerful. Ridiculed or ignored though they may be, they will do so again.”

With those few stirring words Jones introduces his cunning working-class plan designed to achieve the new – improved – status quo. First, step up delivery of the loaves we produce into the ample larders of the rich and the powerful. Then fight them peacefully for crummy concessions. Good luck!

Stan Parker

Editorial: Why society is falling apart (2011)

Editorial from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1997, as New Labour was first being elected, we carried a series of articles about the future of capitalism. In the light of the London riots, which spead with devastating effects through many other towns and cities across England a few weeks ago, it seems timely to reproduce some of the most salient points this month. They seem even more apposite now than they were then, and are all the more tragic that they were so predictable.

The social and moral codes which developed alongside the rise of the capitalist class during the system’s ascendency have been undermined. The nuclear family, the bourgeois work ethic and the sanctity of private property have all taken a battering under pressure from the rampant and ruthless individualism unleashed by the market itself. For any system of society to survive and prosper it needs its own codes and regulations of behaviour, but those that developed within bourgeois society are now being ceaselessly undermined.

This putrefying of capitalism's social basis and codes has taken on a number of forms, all of which are symptomatic of a society which is, to coin a phrase, ‘ill at ease with itself’:

The ongoing break-up of community relationships and the atomisation of the individual. This has been particularly characterised by the development of a competitive "every person for themselves" type culture as the dominant one in society, and by the appearance and consolidation of seemingly unbridgeable generation gaps.

The massive explosions of crime and drug taking, phenomena which were once peripheral or isolated in pockets, but which are now generalised throughout the market economy.

The increases in violence and social disorder, spurred on by the horror and violence infecting the media (especially for children), and the re-appearance – generally for the first time since capitalism's turbulent infancy – of mass rioting on a regular basis, which has turned major cities at the heart of capitalism into uncontrollable war zones.

The continuing, if not increasing, political vacuity of the capitalist class which has been mirrored in the rise of a nihilistic ‘no future’ culture among large sections of young dispossessed workers who see no progress and no hope beyond their pint glass or next ‘hit‘.

The massive corruption of capitalism's political apparatus, which is particularly evident in Britain, but which is in fact a feature of the modern nation state virtually across the globe.

It is in these ways that capitalism is undermining the principles and continued existence of collective life . . . and all the signs are that it will continue and probably deepen, for there are few if any forces or tendencies within capitalism operating in the opposite direction.

Filling the prisons is no solution on many grounds, not least of which is cost, and no government following this line has yet really succeeded in reversing the process which the market has started. None of the political appeals to "family values" are likely to succeed either as the very continued existence of capitalism and the forces it has unleashed make that near impossible.

Appealing to some sort of higher morality or set of values within the context of the market is clutching at straws, a long way from a considered and practical response to the problem. If the social decadence infecting society is to be overturned it has to be tackled at source – and that means the abolition of the market and the poisonous relationships which spring from it.

A Denunciation of Nationalism (1952)

Blogger's Note (8/4/2023)

This Hardcastle 'article' is actually from a much longer Notes by the Way Column. I'm not sure why it was separated from the rest of the column. Maybe the content of this piece just extra resonated back in 2011.

Now that I've scanned in the rest of the column, that does not mean I am going to delete this piece. It was obviously posted in 2011 for a reason . . . and, to be honest, I don't want to mess up my numbers for the blog.

From the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Indian, M. N. Roy, who was at one time prominent in the Communist International, but later broke away and took a line of his own, recently wrote for the Manchester Guardian (21/6/52) an article "Asian Nationalism. Its Roots in Race Hatred."

In it he puts the case that the Asiatic nationalist movements are not just movements to secure independence from the foreign governments that kept them in colonial subjection, for even after achieving independence they continue to preach the same anti-foreign doctrines as before. He quotes Mr. Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and advocate of Indian nationalism, as having admitted that he does not know what nationalism is:

"What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive."

Yet though Mr. Nehru could not define nationalism he went on to declare that it "warms the heart of every Asian" and that "any other force that may seek to function must define itself in terms of this nationalism."
Mr. Roy says this is nonsense and that what Mr. Nehru's explanation really means is that nationalism is "race hatred kept alive artificially."

"Asia nationalism is an unmixed evil. It has not got the saving grace of a cultural and idealist origin as in the case of earlier European nationalism."

Although Mr. Roy notices that between the wars European nationalism developed into fascism, and quotes the statement of the late Lord Acton that nationality sacrifices everything "to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould and measure of the State," he does not appreciate the simple fact that nationalism has been and is everywhere the form in which each capitalist group tries to carve out a place for itself in the world of warring capitalist states. If he did he would not be at all surprised that the politicians who have used nationalism to gain independence from a colonial power need it just as much afterwards in order to persuade the workers to go on fighting capitalism's battles.
If it is an illusion to think that nations can be friendly in a capitalist world provided that they are all "independent," it is equally an illusion on the part of Mr. Roy to think that the Powers, great and small could dispense with nationalism.
At least one thing Mr. Roy has correctly summed up. Discussing the disappointing results of national independence from the worker's point of view, he says that when India and other countries achieved independence, "absolutely nothing changed except the personnel of the State machinery."
On one thing we can put Mr. Roy right. He says of the "reforming Liberals and the revolutionary Left: in the Western countries" that, disregarding the bitter experience and irony of history which had shown them nationalist movements starting with men like Mazzini and ending with regimes like Mussolini's, they "vied with each other in patronising colonial nationalism." Whatever the Liberals and Labourites did, the S.P.G.B. certainly did not fall into this error but always condemned nationalist propaganda whether at home or abroad, in Europe or in Asia.

Edgar Hardcastle