The Civil War in Syria (2013)

From the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The civil war in Syria, now in its third year, originated in the 'Arab Spring' of 2010-11 when popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya overthrew long-time dictators. The 'cradle of the Syrian revolution' was Daraa in the impoverished south of Syria. In 2011 Syrian workers shouted: 'One, One, One, the Syrian People Are One !' but today Islamic fundamentalists are chanting ' Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the Grave !' According to the UN Human Rights Data Analysis Group there have been 92,901 reported killings in the period March 2011 to April 2013 in Syria.

USA and Britain vacillate over intervention in Syria. It was only in July that the USA agreed to 'limited military support for vetted rebel groups', although General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the Senate Armed Services Committee there was a 'risk arming al-Qaeda-aligned extremist forces amongst rebels'. David Cameron observed recently that the Syrian opposition contained 'a lot of bad guys' which means Islamic fundamentalists, Jihadists, and Al Qaeda.

Ba’athists

The Ba'athist Party have been in power in Syria since 1963 and the Assad family have been dictators of Syria since 1970. The Assad family are Arabs of the Alawite sect of Shia Islam who only comprise 12 percent of the population. The largest ethnic and religious group are the Arab Sunni Muslims who comprise 65 percent of the Syrian population. About 10-12 percent are Christians and 9 percent Kurds.

Modern Syria was born as a League of Nations mandate territory given to France in 1920. Under French rule the minority Alawites were recruited into the Syrian Army as they were not able to buy themselves out of military service. After Syrian independence in 1946 the Alawite Muslims had a large representation in the Officer Corps.

In post-independence Syria, society was still 'quasi-feudal' in nature and dominated by conservative rural landlords and the peasantry. The small industrial capitalist class vacillated between cooperation and antagonism with the landowning class which was ultimately a fetter on the industrialisation of Syria. There were regular political upheavals in Syria with coups and counter-coups, which was not good for capitalist development.

In 1947 the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of Syria was established which advocated Arab Nationalism and Arab 'Socialism', which in reality meant state capitalism. The word 'ba'ath' is Arabic for 'renaissance' but for the Syrian working class it was still the wages system under new management. A military coup in 1963 by the Alawite Muslim Ba'athist officer corps was supported by the peasantry, religious minorities such as Christians and the Sunni capitalist class. The Ba'athist regime was sometimes called 'Bonapartist' because it rested on 'the conservative peasant' and a radicalised layer of ‘petty-bourgeois’ Alawite army officers. Raymond Hinnebusch in Syria: Revolution from Above (2004) wrote that 'without the peasantry there could not have been a Ba'athist revolution'.

The 'social pact' was the foundation of Ba'ath Party rule which meant land distribution for the peasantry, social welfare for the working class, industrialisation for the capitalist class but no free speech, and banned trade unions. It was a planned state run economy loosely modelled on the state capitalism of the USSR. In 1965 the Ba'ath regime 'nationalised' 106 industries which included electricity, water, industrial plants, the transport system, insurance companies, and commercial banks.

Ba'ath Party rule ensured economic and political privileges were given to Alawite Shia Muslims and in 1970 Hafez Al-Assad, an Alawite, came to power as sole ruler. Assad became known as 'the Lion of Damascus', a personality cult was developed around him and the internal repression meant Syria became known as the 'kingdom of silence'. Assad's regime exploited sectarian divisions in Syrian society to defend the minority Alawite capitalist and political class from the Sunni Muslim working class majority.

The 1970s in Syria was a time of economic growth with a peak GDP growth rate of 10.2 percent in 1981 but Syria's state capitalism was not immune to the world capitalist slump and in 1984 GDP was -2.1 percent.

Crony capitalism

The Assad regime's response was 'Intifah' (economic liberalisation) modelled after Deng's introduction of the market into Chinese state capitalism in the 1980s. In Syria more private economic activity was permitted, state controls were loosened, free trade zones were established, tax exemptions and cheap credit introduced and local traders and merchants were allowed economic freedom to import and export goods. Nationalised industries were 'privatised' which meant state ownership was transferred to cronies of the regime. 'Crony capitalism' meant that by the mid 90s 'an upper class has emerged both greater in number and wealthier than the bourgeoisie of the pre-Ba'athist era' wrote Volker Perthes in The Political Economy of Syria under Assad (1995).

In 2000 Hafez died and his son Bashar became leader, and economic liberalisation continued. In March 2009 Assad opened the Damascus Securities Exchange, Syria's first stock market in over forty years. The IMF and World Bank were satisfied with the Syrian economy with its 'privatisations', and cuts in corporation tax for the capitalist class. The wealth of the crony capitalist class was evident when Maserati launched its range of high-priced vehicles in Damascus in 2010. One particular 'crony capitalist' was Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Assad who owned Syriatel (telecommunications), a TV network, assets in oil, gas, construction, real estate, banking, airlines, retail, and duty free stores. His assets were worth $5 billion and he was known to the Syrian working class as 'Mr Ten Percent'. In the uprising his properties and assets were attacked.

The 2011 uprising has its origins in economic inequality, poverty, inflation, unemployment in Syrian society, and 'crony capitalism'. Significantly Syrians abroad who previously sent home remittances returned to Syria following the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005, workers returned from the Gulf following the Dubai financial crisis of 2008, and 1.5 million Iraqi refugees poured into Syria following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Also significant was the 'proletarianisation in the countryside' because land redistribution failed as many peasants ended up with holdings too small to support a family and therefore were forced to become wage labourers for larger landowners or forced to work in new factories and mines. The 'privatisation' of state land led to peasant evictions, and the drought of 2008-10 forced tens of thousands of peasants to flee to the cities.

Underclass rebellion

Hanna Batatu writing in the 1981 Middle East Journal is prophetic about the 2011 uprising: 'rural people, driven by economic distress or lack of security, move into the main cities, settle in the outlying districts, enter before long into relations or forge common links with elements of the urban poor, who are themselves often earlier migrants from the countryside, and together they challenge the old established classes'.

An Associated Press Report of 16 October 2012 identified that the rebels were poor, religiously conservative from the underdeveloped countryside who felt economically marginalised, were against elite merchants and industrialists who dominated Aleppo and allied to the regime. An ex-car mechanic now in the rebel army said: 'those who have money in Aleppo worry about their wealth and interests when we have long lived in poverty'. The report concluded that the uprising was 'as much a revolt of the underclass as a rebellion against the regime's authoritarian grip'.

The Syrian opposition is the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces which advocates a secular, democratic, liberal, bourgeois capitalist Syria. The Vice President of the National Coalition is Riad Seif, a Sunni capitalist who once owned the Adidas franchise in Damascus.

The Free Syrian Army contains mainly Arab Sunni Muslims but also Islamic Fundamentalists, Jihadists, and Salafist militias. The Wall Street Journal (16 April) reported that the Obama administration did not want an outright rebel military victory because they believe 'the good guys' may not come out on top, and feared that Islamists tied to al-Qaeda were increasingly dominating the opposition to Assad. The Washington Post (1 May) reported 'If things continue as they are, the Syrian government will certainly be the party that has the major advantage in any talks, it is clear the Insurgency does not pose an existential threat to the regime'.

The 'bad guys' include the Jabhat Al-Nusra Front which is very well organised with access to resources and continues to gain control of Syrian oil fields. Jabhat Al-Nusra is a Sunni Salafist Jihadist militia which in April 2013 was incorporated into Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant and is the group of choice for foreign Jihadists coming to Syria. Jabhat Al-Nusra is financed by donations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan, all allies of the USA and Britain. The New York Times (27 April) reported from Aleppo, the industrial and commercial hub of Syria, that the Jabhat Al-Nusra Front controlled the power plant, ran the bakeries and headed a court that applied Islamic Sharia law. The report concluded that 'nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of'.

Proxy war

Recently the EU has lifted sanctions on oil exports from the Syrian oil fields (mainly in the eastern part of Syria near the border with Iraq) because they are in rebel-controlled areas although mostly controlled by the Jabhat Al-Nusra Front. Before the civil war, the EU spent $4.1 billion on Syrian oil imports, in 2010 oil sales generated $3.2 billion which accounted for 25 per cent of Syria's revenue. Syria has estimated oil reserves of 2.5 billion barrels. With economic liberalisation foreign oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Total SA, Gulfsands Petroleum, China National Petroleum Company, Stroytansgaz, and India Oil and Gas Corporation went to work in Syria although all operations were suspended by the civil war. In 2008 Syria produced 187 billion cubic feet of natural gas and has estimated reserves of 9.1 trillion cubic feet which led to SunCorp, a Canadian energy corporation that owns Petro-Canada to invest $1.2 billion in the extraction of Syrian gas reserves.

'The Road to Tehran Goes Via Damascus' is key to western capitalism's view of Syria. Iran is the second largest oil producing country in the world. The USA and Israel view Assad's Syria as a 'rogue state' and part of an 'axis of evil' with Iran. The competitive economic struggle between western capitalism and eastern capitalism (Russia and China) is reflected in Syria where Assad's regime is supported by Putin's Russia and by China while the West backs the Syrian opposition.

Assad's regime has given political support to Hezbollah, the Shia Islamic group which has been in conflict with the Israeli state. Hezbollah receives large military and economic support from Iran. Hezbollah are fighting alongside Assad's army against the rebels and recently Israel launched air strikes on Hezbollah forces in Syria.

As well as a proxy war between the West and Russia and China, between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran, the USA and Iran, Syria is also a regional proxy war between the Sunni Muslim capitalism of the Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar allied with the Sunni Muslim state of Turkey against the Shia Islamic capitalism of Assad's Syria and Iran. The Financial Times (17 May) reported that Qatar had spent $3 billion over the last two years supporting the Syrian revolt, and this was only exceeded by donations from Saudi Arabia.

A planned natural gas pipeline from Iran (second largest gas reserves in the world) through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean and Europe has had its route through Iraq agreed in May. There is a rival pipeline planned from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria which makes the defeat of the Assad regime in Syria all the more urgent.

For the Syrian working class the best likely outcome in present circumstances from an ending of the civil war is a bourgeois capitalist liberal democracy and at worst an Islamic fundamentalist reactionary theocracy. Any group replacing the Assad regime will have to continue to run Syrian capitalism for the benefit of the Syrian capitalist class.

Steve Clayton

Post-Tory World (2013)

Book Review from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

How I Killed Margaret Thatcher, By Anthony Cartwright Tindel Street Press, 2012.

Anthony Cartwright’s novel evokes memories familiar to anyone who lived (or, especially, was growing up) during the early 1980s and the reign of Thatcher. It is the story of 9-year old Sean, growing up in Dudley, amidst his family as they and their aspirations, hopes and fears evolve under Tory rule. The narrative structure, of Sean as an adult looking back and telling his tale and where he is now, adds to the sense of historical movement.

It starts with a fight between his grandfather and his uncle, who has voted Tory and gets a smack in the gob for his pains. Sean’s father daren’t admit he voted for Thatcher too. They all live in a heavily industrial area, working in the Midlands’ factories. Sean’s father wants to move out of the street he grew up on, and own a house of his own, gaining a mortgage that looms, throughout the narrative, foreshadowing the eventual havoc de-industrialisation was going to wreak on the family.

The story shows how some working class voters did support Thatcher, and the offer she made to take them out of the conditions they were living under. Working class people are shown as not monolithic or consistent: Sean’s mother, who opposes Thatcher is still aspirational enough to correct his dialect ‘yew am’ to ‘you are’. Chapters are interspersed with quotes from Thatcher that show her trying to appeal to working class sensibilities.

Sean absorbs the antipathy towards Thatcher, blaming her for all his ills, and begins to scheme violent vengeance. He is aware, with each news report, with the family gathered in front of the telly, whose side he is on. Although, as we know now, he never did kill Thatcher, his trajectory through the pain inflicted on his family, into a post-Tory world seems to grasp the evaporation of a clear narrative of the workers’ movement. There is no hope at the end of this novel, only a continuation of a hard life.

This is a simple but powerful book, showing where we have come from and where we are now.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: One State, Two States or No States? (2013)

Editorial from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Talks have started between the Israeli State and the Palestinian ‘Authority’. In a world where might is right, it will be an unbalanced negotiation between a well-armed occupying power and its virtually unarmed opponent whose population has been quite literally beaten into submission. All the Palestine side has going for them is US pressure on Israel, its client state which it has maintained and armed over the years and which acts as its proxy in the Middle East, an area of strategic importance as well as containing most of the world’s more easily-extractable oil.

Israel was set up after the last world war by Jewish nationalists, the Zionists, as a ‘homeland’for people of Jewish background. It is an entirely artificial state based on the religious myth that Judaism’s tribal god gave the land of Palestine to the Jews to live on. Formally, Israel is a European-type parliamentary democracy and there is more freedom of speech and of organisation there than in any other state in the Middle East. But is also a sectarian state –‘A Jewish State for Jewish People’–where its non-Jewish subjects, mainly native Arab-speakers who make up 20 percent of its population, are second class citizens. Its rulers, with the support of most of their Jewish subjects, are not going to consent to ending its sectarian character as it is the basis of their power.

This is why one proposed solution –a single, non-sectarian, democratic state made up of the present Israel and the west bank of the river Jordan –is not on the agenda. The most likely outcome of any negotiations is the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli one. This state will be weak and will have to accept that there are limits as to how far it can be independent. But at least its subjects will no longer be subject to direct Israeli rule and oppression.

There is another way of looking at the question. At the end of July Gary Davis, who in 1948 famously renounced his US citizenship and declared himself a ‘world citizen’, died. Arguing that ‘the nation-state is a political fiction which perpetuates anarchy and the breeding ground for war,’he spent the rest of his life campaigning for one world without frontiers with a world government.

He was wrong, but on the right track. It is capitalism, with its built-in competitive struggle for sources of raw material, markets, trade routes and investment outlets, that is the breeding ground for war, but so-called ‘nation’-states are part of this. They are instruments of force, acting in capitalist interests, through which this struggle is waged, sometimes by threats explicit or understood (‘might is right’), sometimes by military action.

The solution is indeed one world without frontiers and without states, but not a world government presiding over a world capitalist economy. It is world socialism, where the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all, to be used for the benefit of all Earth’s people. A Palestinian state will be one more such instrument of capitalist competition at the service of its ruling class.

An Open Letter to Professor Miliband (1977)

From the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Your article in the Socialist Register 1976 entitled "Moving On" asks the question, why none of the organizations which since 1956 have occupied the area you describe as the "left wing stage" "constitute an effective socialist formation"? You claim that "such an organization remains to be created". You go on to give an "explanation" of why "existing organizations cannot fill the gap". But the "gap" your article reveals is in your own knowledge — yawning chasm would be a better description. Your contribution is merely ignorance confounded by confusion; first your analysis of the present "left wing" misunderstanding of the nature of revolutionary activity and second, your exclusion of the SPGB reveals either ignorance or political dishonesty.

Let me begin with your discussion of the current "left wing". (I won't use the inverted commas any more for that term, but when you reply, please explain what that term means.) "Inevitably one must start with the Labour Party" you say. You claim that the Labour Party is the "party of the working class and there is no alternative to it." The only reason for "starting" with the Labour Party is to finish with it. There was never any doubt from its formation that the Labour Party was simply a reformist party. The activities of the Labour Party have confirmed this ever since. However, you still appear to think that the Labour Party has something to do with Socialism. You write: "There cannot now be many socialists in the Labour Party (and even fewer outside) who believe that most of its leaders are concerned with the task of effecting the fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people . . . But there are many socialists in the Labour Party who do believe very firmly that they can eventually . . . compel their leaders to adopt left-wing policies."

You say: "There are socialists who work in the Labour Party." The Labour Party represents a certain section of the capitalist class and runs capitalism in the interests of capital. Like all other parties of capitalism, the Labour Party will dress up what they are doing in borrowed phrases in an attempt (successful to date) at misleading the working. But there never have been Socialists in the Labour Party.

Socialism is a world society which will take the place of capitalism; it will abolish all property and existing production relationships and establish in its place a free society where each person voluntarily contributes to the wealth of society and takes from it what the individual requires. There are no governments (with their attendant armies and coercive powers), no wages system, and no production for profit. (For a fuller account, see our Object and Declaration of Principles, and also our pamphlet Object and Declaration of Principles — Socialist Principles Explained.) Could you explain what someone who wants that society would be doing in the Labour Party? You say that "a socialist party is needed in Britain and the Labour Party is not it." In that case, how can there be Socialists in it? There may be some within the Labour Party who call themselves Socialists, but are they who you mean?

Turning your professorial attention to the Communist Party, you claim that "It is a Marxist Party" and add "of a sort"! But a party is either a Marxist party, standing for the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with Socialism, or it isn't. The Communist Party has always and inevitably stood for capitalism. Its history has been taken up with defending the contradictory activities and statements of the Russian ruling class which it supports. You rightly point out that since 1956 and more particularly since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. the fawning adoration of the Russian monstrosity has lessened, and you say that the Communist Party has "a blandly complacent view of the Soviet system." In other words, the Communist Party is not Marxist but anti-democratic and reformist. As you put it, it has been in "pursuit of the politics of illusion . . . for more than forty years." The main illusion (other than the Soviet delusion) is its adherence to the coat-tails of the Labour quackery. Charitably you say that the Communist Party is not "to be reproached for seeking to put pressure on the Labour Party or on a Labour Government or for trying to influence the Labour Left or any other part of the labour movement." The politics of illusion indeed.

The Labour Party has not failed as such — it set out to run capitalism. The more important part of your article is the criticisms of the left-wing parties other than the Labour Party and the Communist: Party. You think that these other parties are not suitable for "Moving on". It is necessary, you argue, to create a new party because those that exist are inadequate. You ask "why these groupings of the 'ultra left' have not fared better" than they have done and give one answer which you say these groups themselves frequently give — the ruling class's control of ideas. This you say is inadequate since it: fails to explain why "left" groups have made progress (though this is merely asserted, it is not explained). You then examine a collection of other reasons such as "narrow doctrinaire sectarianism ... a marked tendency to believe that the final crisis of capitalism is imminent, to which is naturally added . . . adventurist sloganeering; and an internal rigidity of organization." What you fail to point out is that none of these reasons can apply to the SPGB. The SPGB is dedicated to the establishment of Socialism. In no sense is our case "narrow doctrinaire sectarianism." If you were to attend any of our propaganda meetings or any one of our branches you would find a range of views being expressed on a variety of topics, "the SPGB university" as it has been called. We have never said that capitalism's final crisis is at hand. We have always agreed with Marx, that crisis is a part of the normal workings of capitalism. Capitalism will not have a "final" crisis in the sense that this will cause its downfall. We have consistently pointed out that capitalism will continue until it is brought to an end by the working class. (See in particular our pamphlet Why capitalism will not collapse published in 1932.) So far as internal rigidity of organization is concerned, examine the workings of the SPGB; its flexible democratic method is a model for organization in a Socialist society. As for "sloganeering" — read some of our literature and attend our meetings; you would find nothing that resembles sloganeering.

Your conclusion is that the main cause for the failure of left-wing organizations is "their basic perceptions as to the ways of socialist advance in Britain." The explanation you give for this is twofold; the first is that "All these organizations have a common perception of socialist change in terms of a revolutionary seizure of power on the Bolshevik model of October 1917". In other words, you point out that all these parties have no intention of being "mass" parties at all — they are all in favour of minority coups. But, Professor, where or when did the SPGB put forward such a view? Right from the start of the Bolsheviks' takeover of power, we pointed out that it was not possible for Russia to establish Socialism. The material conditions in Russia — highly developed productive forces and working-class understanding — were not present. The second condition is not there today.

Your second criticism of left-wing groups is that they have succumbed to what you call "anti-parliamentary cretinism." In other words the left-wing parties have nearly always been anti-parliament and very often, anti-democratic. But the SPGB has insistently pointed out that the working class can and must use Parliament as part of the process of establishing Socialism. Historically, every ruling class has had to capture political power. The capitalist class, for example, had to obtain control of parliament and did so after a long struggle. The working class, when it takes over society in its own interests must also take political power in order to abolish both power and classes. That is why we have always said that Parliament and the electoral system must be used by the working class in the establishment of Socialism.

Your critique of left-wing organizations does not apply to the SPGB. In one sense it is a tribute to us that we are not included in your tattered list. We are not a part of the left wing at all. We are opposed to those parties that you refer to as the left wing (including IS, WRP etc.) All these parties stand for capitalism — the SPGB does not. Yet you do not mention in your article that the SPGB exists or that there is a party which does not suffer from the defects you highlight. How can a Professor of Politics ("a leading intellectual of the New Left" as one of your books describes you) have failed to notice a party formed two years prior to the Labour Party as an uncompromisingly Socialist party, which has worked for Socialist understanding since its formation, which has continually published literature, held meetings, contested elections and so on? On reflection the omission cannot be due to sheer ignorance — it must be deliberate. No doubt like the other political ostriches you folded your left and right wing and just hoped that by putting your head in the academic sandpit we could just be ignored.

Your reply is awaited.

Ronnie Warrington

Socialism Made Simple (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Existing society is based on class ownership. This means that the main resources of society are owned by the few and not the many.

In Britain today the poorest half of the population own only 6 percent of marketable wealth. The richest 10 percent own over half of all the wealth.

Society is not like this because it has to be. The rich are not at the top because they do more or know more than the rest of us. On the contrary, we, the vast majority, produce all wealth.

The capitalists do not need to work. If they want to they can go off to the Bahamas or the South of France for months on end, sure in the knowledge that their millions of pounds per week, month or year will still be pouring into their accounts. The capitalist minority live by accumulating rent, interest and profit. Who gives it to them? The Working Class.

We. the workers, run society from top to bottom. We are paid wages or salaries. Whatever we are paid is less than the value of what we produce. The difference between what we are paid and what we produce is taken by the capitalist as profit. The basis of all profit is the legalised robbery of the workers.

We do not choose to be legally robbed or exploited. We do not choose to be wage (or salary) slaves rather than capitalists. We are workers because we do not own enough resources to live without selling our labour power (our mental and physical energies) for a price.

So. we work in order to make enough money in order to pay to live so that we can go back to work and make profits so that the capitalist does not have to work. The capitalists live off our backs.

We do not need to carry the capitalists on our backs. We do so because we have agreed to live this way. We have agreed because we are conditioned to accept capitalism. We are conditioned because the capitalists pay to condition us. If we are properly conditioned we vote for leaders who will continue to run capitalism. Workers vote for their own exploitation.

The workers are many, the capitalists few. We have only to refuse to support capitalism and the whole system could not go on. This is a matter of political consciousness. At present most workers are politically ignorant. This is not intended as an insult. What we are saying is that our fellow workers have yet to realise their strength. When they do they will understand that it is not necessary to live second-class lives, enjoying less than the best that can be produced. The best of everything is available for everyone, not just the rich few. What we have to do is take it.

The movement for socialism is a movement to end minority power and establish the power of the whole community. Socialism will mean that everything in and on the planet will belong to everyone who lives on the planet. In short, common ownership and democratic control.

Another way of putting it is to say that in a socialist society nobody will monopolise the means of producing and distributing wealth. Social resources will be owned by everyone — and by no-one.

Once we workers have taken the world's wealth into our own hands by means of democratic political action there will be no need for money, wages or other features of property society. Instead of wage slavery, people will work according to their abilities and take according to their needs. They will not work under compulsion, but because they will understand that to live we must co-operate to produce what we need. Access to available goods and services will not be rationed by money. Buying and selling will be abolished. Instead, everyone will have free access to what they need. Nobody will tell them what they need. The state will be abolished. Socialism is based upon the understanding that humans are intelligent, conscious, co-operative beings who do not need leaders or governments to force them to act decently.

On the contrary, it is the present capitalist system, which puts profits before needs and money before life, which forces humans to become uncooperative and indecent. Capitalism is anti-social.

The aim of socialism is not just to ensure that everyone has access to material wealth and that poverty is ended. Socialists want people to be free to co-operate. There will be no more class and no economic basis for prejudice based upon race or sex. Socialism will be a society of free, human equality.

The well-conditioned wage slave will regard the prospect of world socialism as a Utopian ideal. The prospect of homes heated and lit by electricity was dismissed as a dream by inhabitants of a pre-scientific age.

The working class needs to do some serious thinking about society—how it is and how it could be. Millions of politically conscious workers will be a threat to capitalism. We will educate and organise with more and more workers. Once we are a majority there will be no stopping us. The result will be social revolution.

The Socialist Party works to bring about the political consciousness and organisation that will make a revolution possible. In other countries companion parties work to the same end. Right now we are in a small minority. Our efforts are limited. But our analysis cannot be faulted and our principles are never compromised. We will continue to advocate the sanity of the case for a revolutionary transformation of society. We have nothing to lose but our chains: we have a world to win.

Steve Coleman

Debating: A Lost Art? (2013)

From the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The volume of correspondence in the world is greater now than ever. The internet provides us with the ability to contribute to many debates on an infinite variety of subjects on various platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. One can’t fail to notice that many of these ‘debates’ are characterised by anger and insult. Resolution or a ‘meeting of minds’ seems to be very rare. Anonymity allows people to vent their frustration and anger on complete strangers. Such diatribes do not, of course, represent any attempt at communication. Instead they are a record of people’s alienation and despair which is focused on the ‘other’.

I was once accused of calling someone stupid because I believed them to be wrong. The possibility of being wrong and intelligent simultaneously is something the ego finds difficult to accept. A disagreement (inherent in any debate) is interpreted as a conflict of egos. This represents the end of communication. Is there a way to ameliorate this phenomena? For a socialist this is a vital question since communication is the only way forward and always being ‘right’ will tend to alienate the opponent. If a debate focuses only on determining who is right and who is wrong then a dialectical resolution is impossible. What is meant by dialectical is a specific form of rhetoric that seeks to create a ‘synthesis’ between opposing views. In this way the polemic can be moved forward productively instead of stalling in egoism. All such disagreementsrepresent the dialectical forces inherent within the cultural context of the debate. What’s more –this historical context allows only one real politicaldebate that always lies beneath what ever is being discussed! I will now attempt to defend such a seemingly incredible position.

Superficially the multiplicity of debates on Facebook appear unconnected with an endless variation of subject matter. Everything from musical taste to politics and religion is hotly contested. Someone has said that there is a certain inevitability of the mention of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis terminating many emotionally charged political debates. The reason for this is not just the desire to demonise the opponent and their perspective but it also reflects an underlying fundamental confrontation between those who want and need authoritarian social structures and those who cannot stomach them. The latter see all kinds of conspiracies by the ‘establishment’ to keep their power while reactionaries long for a leader with simple political answers.

And so the debate rages on impotently, sometimes even provoking an online petition with thousands of signatures. Of course nothing changes and another ‘single issue’ takes up the energies of liberals and reactionaries inspired, usually, by the latest disaster created by capitalism. Some years ago when the infamous tsunami hit Sri Lanka I thought, at least this time, we could not blame capitalism for this ‘natural’ disaster. As it happens the early warning system had been abandoned because of ‘cost’ concerns so yet again the system was at the root of destruction. Another example is that of the hypotheses of global warming. Given the title of the theory one would expect it to be the ultimate debate of our time. But again it is the economic imperative of profit that underlies this catastrophe – no worker (indigenous or otherwise) would willingly destroy the environment if they could get other employment to feed themselves and their families. It is the height of hypocrisy for ‘middle-class’ environmentalists in advanced industrial societies to criticise just this one element of capitalism while they enjoy a comfortable life style which is dependent on the system. Economics, or at least, market economics has become a godhead for reactionaries in that it must be worshipped and cannot be denied.

It is a different story when those indulging in this religion of Mammon are directly affected adversely – then it’s the fault of rogue bankers, etc. In debates people congratulate themselves for being realistic in contrast to their opponents – when, in reality, they are both being equally idealistic. One ideology in all its permutations reflects the economic needs of the ruling class and the other, debased and confused with the single issue problematic, represents the needs of the immense majority of humanity. A true dialectic can only be achieved when this is recognised –a result of the historical forces that have left just two social classes.

I’m aware that this perspective sounds suspiciously dualistic – not unlike Christianity’s Armageddon (last battle between good and evil) and the Viking Ragnarok, etc. It may be that it’s the other way around and that these mythologies represent a deep social need to return to the communism of pre private property societies – as Rastafarians believe: I and I becomes the One again in Zion. So what constitutes the socialist synthesis? Revolution, my comrade. As long as capitalism lasts with all its travails then so does the same solution. The coalition of Whigs and Tories seem intent on taking us back to the 1800s. No re-branding can change capitalism and we call upon all those well-intentioned people obsessed with single issue politics to join us in dealing with the disease and not just the symptoms. It is purely self-indulgence to involve yourself in reformism because you ‘can’t wait for the revolution’. It is you that keeps the rest of us waiting. As to what Facebook will be debating after the revolution there’s always: ‘who was the most authentic roots reggae artist – Bob Marley or Burning Spear?’ But don’t get me started, that’s a whole other debate – the synthesis of which still eludes me.

WEZ

Egypt: Why Did the Generals Depose Morsi? (2013)

From the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

For most of the year of Mohamed Morsi’s presidency, government in Egypt was based on an understanding between the generals (represented by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) and the leadership of the Moslem Brotherhood. The understanding seems to have been in place well before the elections, which the generals helped the Moslem Brotherhood to win – for instance, by tolerating numerous reported irregularities.

Protecting military interests

As president, Morsi made a great effort to return the favour and protect military interests:

- The new constitution sponsored by the Moslem Brotherhood enshrined the position of the armed forces as ‘a state within the state’ by entrusting military affairs to a council dominated by officers and unaccountable to parliament.  

- Morsi gave the military and the police legal immunity. After a presidential commission implicated senior officers in the killing and torture of demonstrators, he described the claims as ‘insults’ and rewarded those concerned with promotions.

- Morsi did nothing that might threaten the interests of the armed forces as a capitalist corporation. This corporation owns an estimated 25-40 per cent of the country’s economy, including vast tracts of land, and exploits conscripts as slave labour. The privatisation of state industry never extended to military property. (For more on these points, see Hesham Sallam and Zeinab Abul-Magd at www.jadaliyya.com.)

However, Morsi did not wholly support the generals’ policy of maintaining the flow of US military aid by fully cooperating with Israel and the United States. According to Brigadier General Ayman Salama of the Cairo Military Academy, the army thought that Morsi was being too helpful to his fellow Islamists in the Hamas regime in Gaza, thereby undermining security in the Sinai (BBC World Service, 5 July). Indeed, no sooner was Morsi deposed than the border with Gaza was sealed off.

Another complaint of the generals against Morsi was that his government was spending $1.5 billion a month too much, rapidly depleting the country’s financial reserves (Guardian Weekly, 12 July).

A means to a goal

Finally, the military were highly dissatisfied with the growing isolation of Morsi’s Moslem Brotherhood-dominated government from all other political forces. The understanding with the Moslem Brotherhood was not an end in itself for the generals. It was a means to their goal of stabilising the social and political situation in Egypt in such a way as to safeguard military interests.

In order to optimise the chance of achieving this goal, they seek to co-opt ‘realistic’ politicians from both the secular and Islamist camps who are prepared to accept military privileges while marginalising political forces committed to ‘continuing the revolution’ until full democratic rights are won for all citizens. But Morsi was alienating the very politicians whom the generals would like to co-opt.

One process that alienated many people was the so-called ‘ikhwanisation’ of government institutions – the replacement of incumbent officials by Moslem Brotherhood activists (‘ikhwan’ means ‘brothers’ in Arabic). This was a way to reward ‘brothers’ for selfless service to the organisation through the long years of persecution, but aroused the resentment of those displaced.

In fact, under different leadership the Moslem Brotherhood might have proven more flexible and managed to stay in government. One leading ‘brother’ – the physician Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh – was forced out of the Moslem Brotherhood together with his followers in 2011, but stood as an independent candidate in the presidential elections. He did quite well, coming fourth in the first round with 17.5 per cent of the vote. In July 2012 he founded the Strong Egypt Party. Fotouh represented a ‘left-liberal’ trend within the Moslem Brotherhood – he is more conciliatory toward the secular section of society and talks about ‘social justice’.

Cross-cutting divisions

The presence of cross-cutting divisions within society makes the political situation in Egypt hard to understand, let alone predict. A ‘left-right’ division on economic issues exists, but – for the time being at least – it is overshadowed by the split between Islamists and secularists.

In 2012 over 35 secularist groups came together to form the National Front for Salvation of the Revolution (also known as the National Salvation Front or National Rescue Front), coordinated by Mohamed El Baradei. These groups include pro-business ‘liberal’ parties as well as a profusion of ‘socialist’ organisations. This apparently strange alliance is held together by fear of the Islamists – not just the Moslem Brotherhood but especially the even more intolerant ‘salafis’ (fundamentalists) who seek immediate implementation of Islamic law.

Trade union activists tend to align themselves with the secularist camp, as do people concerned with the emancipation of women, cultural and intellectual freedom and human rights in general, and also non-Moslem minorities, the largest being the 10 per cent of the population who are Coptic Christians.

The class of private capitalists is also divided between the two camps, ensuring them both a flow of funds. The ‘liberal’ Free Egyptians Party was set up by Naguib Sawiris, one of the world’s richest individuals, while the Moslem Brotherhood has been financially dependent on the wealthy businessman Khairat El-Shater (furniture and textiles). Only the ‘socialist’ groups are less well provided for.

The division between secularists and Islamists partly overlaps with the division between city and countryside. Secularists and especially ‘leftists’ are concentrated in the larger cities. This enables them to stage bigger demonstrations, creating an exaggerated impression of their preponderance at the national level. In the last presidential election, the ‘left-wing’ (Nasserist) presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi won the metropolitan areas of Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Suez and Giza (Adel Iskandar, Egypt in Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution, AUC Press 2013, p. 106), while in the country as a whole, however, he finished third with 21.5 per cent of the vote.

Stefan

The Condition of the Working Class (2013)

Film Review from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The SERTUC Film Club at TUC Congress House in London recently screened The Condition of the Working Class, a new documentary film by Michael Wayne and Deirdre O'Neill who had previously worked together on the 2009 documentary film Listen to Venezuela. Over a period of eight weeks, the film follows a group of actors and non-professionals in The Ragged Collective (a homage to Robert Tressell) in Salford and Manchester as they work to put on a theatrical project based on their own working class experiences, and the Friedrich Engels book The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

The actors tell of working class life in Manchester in the age of austerity economics in capitalism where 'working class people are hurt by the cuts, there are attacks on collectivity, the bourgeoisie use divide and rule tactics, and people who have nothing want change'. Engels wrote 'the social war, the war of each against all, is here openly declared. People regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the end of it all is that the stronger treads the weaker under foot; and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains'.

Like in Ken Loach's film Spirit of 45, some of the people in this film feel that Thatcher is to blame for everything, as if capitalism was only invented in 1979 but the reality is that she presided over the operation of capitalism during the worst part of the slump phase of its economic cycle, and was the head of an openly pro-capitalist government.

There are many differences between life today in Manchester and life at the time of the Engels book but fundamentally there is no change as the capitalist mode of production grinds relentlessly on. The film participants state that a person has to 'sell my labour or starve' (the working class sell their labour power to the capitalist), that 'society is divided into a bourgeois ruling class and a working class', the BBC is referred to as 'the Bourgeois Broadcasting Corporation', and 'the bourgeoisie are riddled with class prejudice, oppress the working class, and use the power of wealth and the state so that the rich look after the rich'. A reference is made to the gentrification of parts of Manchester such as the Docks where it is pointed out 'the working class built Salford Quays' which recalls Brecht's poem A Worker Reads History: 'who built the seven gates of Thebes?/the books are filled with names of kings/was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?'

The film demonstrates what Engels wrote, that 'the humanity of the workers is constantly manifesting itself pleasantly. They have experienced hard times themselves, and can therefore feel for those in trouble, whence they are more approachable, friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more than the property-holding class'.

Film International commented 'this is not a film, it's a rehearsal for revolution' which is true in a sense, but unfortunately no one mentions the word 'socialism'.

Steve Clayton

Cooking the Books: The Decline of Manufacturing - Good or Bad? (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

In June the Office for National Statistics published an analysis, entitled 170 Years of Industrial Change across England and Wales, of how people’s occupations have changed between the 1841 census and the latest one in 2011. One of the key points it drew attention to was: 

‘Manufacturing was the most dominant industry in 1841 accounting for 36% of the workforce, followed closely by services at 33%. The expansion of services and decline in manufacturing meant that in 2011, 9% worked in manufacturing and 81% in services.’

The remaining 10 per cent was made up of agriculture 1 per cent (down from 22 per cent in 1841), energy and water (including mining) 1 per cent, and construction 8 per cent.

Services had already overtaken manufacturing as far back as 1881 but it was only from 1961 that the gap between the two began to widen. Until then each accounted for more or less 40 per cent.

Marx pointed to the results of the 1861 census to back up his statement in Capital (chapter 15, section 6) that:

‘the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labour-power in all other spheres of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working-class.’

After deducting the young, the old, the sick, housewives, rentiers and those he called ‘the ‘ideological’ classes, such as government officials, priests, lawyers, soldiers, &c.’, out of a total England and Wales population of 20 million he arrived at a figure of 8 million in work, of which he listed:

• Agriculture - 1,098,261
• Textiles - 642,607
• Mining - 565,835
• Metalworking - 396,998
• ‘The servant class’ - 1, 208,648

And he commented:

‘All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, taken together, number 1,208,442; those employed in textile factories and metal industries, taken together, number 1,039,605; in both cases less than the number of modern domestic slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist exploitation of machinery!’

The ONS analysis confirms that ‘in 1841, almost one in five working people (18%) were employed in domestic offices and personal services, roughly half of everyone working in service industries.’

Since Marx’s day ‘the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry’ has still made possible an increasing proportion of the workforce in services, though more in those Marx called ‘the ‘ideological’ classes’, especially people working in national and local government rather than in ‘the servant class.’ Perhaps surprisingly, the largest service group today is ‘wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motor cycles, with 4.2 million people, 16% of the working population and about one fifth of everyone working in service industries.’

What exactly Marx meant by ‘unproductive employment’ has been widely debated. The ONS defines a ‘service industry’ as ‘where services are provided rather than a good being produced’, which implies that production involves turning out some tangible, material product. Marx himself didn’t go that far as he regarded the work of transporting and storing goods as productive.

We could argue over how much of the ONS service ‘industries’ amount to ‘unproductive employment’ in Marx’s sense, but the overall situation is clear. Increasing productivity has meant that, just as fewer and fewer people are needed to produce the food we eat so fewer and fewer people are needed to produce the material things society needs. It makes the case for production directly for use (to ‘serve’ people’s needs), which socialism will allow, even more relevant.

Editorial: What Can the Unions Do? (2013)

Editorial from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade unions are organisations of the working class established to improve and defend their pay and conditions of work in capitalism although they are limited in what they can achieve for their members. Unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism where the working class are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. Unions exert collective pressure on employers to prevent their members’ wages falling below the value of their labour-power. It is a way of ensuring that they are paid the full value of what they have to sell and can ensure that wages are not reduced below the subsistence level.

Strikes are necessary if the working class are to prevent themselves from being driven into the ground by the never-satisfied demands of profit. The strike is one of the working class weapons that can limit the aims of the capitalist class. We should not deceive ourselves into believing that joining a union or going on strike will free us from exploitation. This does not mean that the working class should sit back and do nothing. Within capitalism the trade union struggle over wages and conditions must go on but the real struggle is to take over the means of wealth production and distribution.

Some on the Left expect unions to act in a revolutionary way with non-revolutionary members but members of the working class who will not vote for socialism will not strike for it. The National Shop Stewards Network call for a 24-hour General Strike against the present capitalist austerity: 'If the TUC and the Trade Unions named the date for a 24 hour general strike or co-ordinated strike ballots on the pay freeze alone, it would be hugely popular with all those facing these brutal cuts.' It might be popular but would it be effective? In any event, the unions can’t overthrow capitalism.

To get socialism requires a class conscious working class democratically capturing state power to prevent that power being used against them. We do not criticise the unions for not being revolutionary, but we do criticise them when they depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between working class and the capitalist class, when they collaborate with the capitalist class, the state or political parties.

The Socialist Party declares that the working class need to capture the political machine and wrest political supremacy from the capitalist class before they can establish socialism. It is our job as socialists to stand with the working class in their necessary battles to defend themselves but we point out at all times that the real victory to be achieved is the abolition of the wages system. 'Instead of the conservative motto: 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: 'Abolition of the wages system!'

Greasy Pole: Wayward in Westminster (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

For some time it has been obvious that David Cameron hates Prime Minister’s Questions and that those who have to fill in his diary must make sure he has unavoidably urgent commitments as often as possible on the fateful day leaving poor Nick Clegg to take the punishment. Not that this exposure allows Clegg to take any glory – the loutish sneers, the contemptuous laughter, the snarling of meaningless 'questions'. Even worse for him, the Deputy Prime Minister has never mastered the Cameron technique of responding to a difficult question with one of his own – very often about something completely irrelevant. This is the Honourable Members at play, enjoying their post-lunch diversion.

Lobbyists

A recently sprouted encouragement of misbehaviour during PMQs has been Cameron's avowed determination to reform Parliament and its ways so that voters whose MP has failed to come up to scratch – perhaps by asking too many daft questions or guffawing too boisterously at an equally daft reply – can have access to a machinery which will force the deficient Member back into the real world by standing for election again. Another scheme is to make it more difficult – for Noble Lords as well as Honourable Members – to accept cash for promoting the cause of some company or pressure group. This is known as Cash For Access – lobbying ministers and the like with rewards which can bring tens of thousands of pounds dripping into the pockets of those pursued by the lobbyists. All of which is in breach of what are called The Rules of Conduct, betraying the promise that whatever influence an MP or a peer might have will be used in the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. This did not, of course, impress the Tory MP Neil Hamilton with those brown envelopes during the Nineties stuffed with cash from Harrods boss Mohammed Fayed, which introduced us to the word ‘sleaze’. When Hamilton was found out he had to resign from the front bench and was then soundly defeated by Martin Bell in the 1997 general election (his constituency is now represented by George Osborne) reducing him to earning his keep by appearing on The Weakest Link or – in the case of his wife – in the TV grovel of I'm A Celebrity...

Noble Lords

Meanwhile the scandal continues. Recently there has been the exposure of three peers – Lords Cunningham (ex-Labour minister – 'Are you suggesting ￡10,000 a month? Make that ￡12000 a month. I think we could do a deal on that'), Mackenzie (ex-police Chief Superintendent) and Laird (the Lords is 'a great place to do business'). And in the Lower House Patrick Mercer, Tory MP for Newark, was so cruelly shown up by a Panorama sting that he felt compelled to resign the Tory Whip to 'save my party from embarrassment' (not to mention his own discomfort) and to announce that he will not stand at the next election. His problem springs from being shown on the nation's TV accepting a down payment of ￡4000 towards a total of ￡24000 to promote a campaign for Fiji to be readmitted into the Commonwealth. The proposals of the bogus lobbyist included forming an All Party Parliamentary Group to press this cause, through questions in the Commons and an Early Day Motion, which was virtually written for Mercer, stating that 'there is no justification' for the islands' continued suspension. Fiji was first suspended in 2006, after being taken over by a military dictatorship. There is no evidence to support the terms of that EDM; the situation is pretty well unchanged, with all that implies in terms of democracy and human rights. Recently the International Federation of Journalists advised anyone thinking of going there as a holiday that it is 'no paradise right now'.

Cameron

This is not the first time that Mercer's ingrown tendency for abrasiveness has landed him on the wrong pages of the media. But in the unforgiving game of Westminster politics, could there have been any darker motive behind his exposure? The son of a Bishop of Exeter, he went to public school and Oxford before Sandhurst and the Army where he rose to the rank of Colonel with awards for 'distinguished gallantry'. But he did not live up to a background so appealing to any Tory activist and he has not turned out to be one of Cameron's favourite underlings. In 2007 he was sacked from the post of Shadow Minister for Home Security after suggesting that there was nothing exceptional in some soldiers being called 'black bastard' and expanding on this by recollecting that among some ethnic minority soldiers he had come across a lot were 'idle and useless'.

In 2001 he supported Ian Duncan Smith in the Tory leadership contest and in 2005 he was for David Davis against Cameron. But it was unnecessary for him to develop the theme by describing Cameron as 'a despicable creature...an arse' and elaborating by telling us that he had '...never, ever come across anyone less suited to the job in my life. I would take a beggar off the streets and put him in that position rather than have Cameron. I loathe him.' These remarks were published in the People: Mercer said they had been overheard and recorded in secret. As if that would have made any difference to Cameron loyalists nursing a desire for revenge on this wayward maverick.

But however incendiary his opinions and manner of giving vent to them Mercer had kept favour with his local Tories. When he first stood in Newark in 2001 his majority was 4073; in 2010, despite all his problems and clashes with the party, it was 16,152. He now sits as an Independent. When we consider the material which is dealt with by Parliament – the endless  obsession with violence, poverty, class privilege, dishonesty – it must be concluded that there is nothing to justify the legislators taking any pride in their work or claiming to be more trustworthy and morally superior than Patrick Mercer and his noble swindlers.

Ivan

Capitalism’s diminishing returns (2013)

Book Review from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bleakonomics by Rob Larson. Pluto Press. 2012.

Larson has written an engaging polemic against free-market capitalism and its proponents, focusing on the role of ‘externalities’ such as environmental destruction and the inadequate consideration of these by conventional economics.

Indeed, the chapters on capitalism and the environment are amongst the strongest, making very clear –with some well-chosen examples –how the market is unable to allocate resources in an environmentally-friendly and sustainable way. The Deepwater Horizon oil well explosion and spill, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (‘a Texas-sized ocean eddy saturated with minute plastic particles’) are just a couple of the externalities of capitalism that Larson highlights to useful effect.

Larson discusses class division intelligently for the most part, along with the excesses of a system that rewards the top one percent merely for their ownership of wealth, though there is a sense that he thinks a regulated capitalism wouldn’t create nearly as many problems as the private enterprise version that exists in America and has spread across much of the world.

He is more consistently effective when he discusses some of the fundamental flaws of conventional bourgeois economics, such as the theories of marginal utility and marginal productivity. An excellent chapter on ‘Economics as a Failed Science’ recounts practical research into how businesses make their decisions and illustrates that diminishing returns on the growth in productive capacity doesn’t typically happen in practice. This is important, because one of the contentions of conventional economics is that these diminishing returns limit the production of individual firms and keep these enterprises small relative to the total market. This is a key factor underpinning the notion that capitalism is based on competitive markets that respond to subtle price signals influencing the ebb and flow of new entrants to an industry.

But the research shows this doesn’t happen in practice –economies of scale are a far more important factor for companies, leading them to expand their production to secure cheaper costs per unit produced. This in turn helps create two of the most significant features of capitalism: first, the drive by companies to expand production as if there is no limit to the market for their products, which leads to overproduction and economic crisis. Then the same phenomenon also leads to the concentration of capital into fewer hands, with a resulting tendency towards oligopoly. This was illustrated in the 2007 US Economic Census, which showed that 97 per cent of cigarettes in America are produced by the four largest manufacturers, the four biggest brewers produced 90 per cent of the beer and the top four oil refining firms produced almost half the petrol and diesel.

So, on this front Marx was right again, even though Larson doesn’t mention his analysis directly. Larson does quote, tellingly, from Einstein and his analysis of the anarchy of capitalist production and focuses on the calls for ‘economic democracy’ made by the Occupy movement among others as the remedy to the problem. But what he doesn’t say is that this remedy can only take effect when the anarchy of the market and the tyranny of money and prices have been destroyed, to be replaced by common ownership and production directly for use, rather than under a ‘regulated’ capitalism.

DAP

Billy Bragg: Not Looking for a New England (2012)

From the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I never advocated the abolition of capitalism” (Billy Bragg, Radio 4, 21 April)

1984 was the year of the Miners' Strike and Billy Bragg. He identified himself with the Miners’ struggle against the Thatcher Tory government. In fact, Bragg says that Thatcher made him who he was. His album Brewing Up with Billy Bragg contained a song called The World Turned Upside Down about the Diggers and Levellers of the English Revolution of 1649 who advocated the“common treasury” of the earth, the title of the song referencing Marxist historian Christopher Hill's book.  All proceeds from Bragg's EP, Between the Wars, were donated to the Striking Miners’ Fund.

In April, the Reverend Richard Coles invited his old Red Wedge comrade, the ‘Bard of Barking’, Billy Bragg, onto his Saturday Live Radio 4 show, introducing him as “the British Left's most consistent voice”.  Bragg's consistency has been as a reformist, gradualist, and non-revolutionary voice. The Guardian (1 January last year) declared that Bragg had “an unshakeable commitment to democratic socialism”. Is the term ‘socialist’ an accurate description for this Dorsetshire denizen?

Bragg was brought up in Barking in East London, experiencing “the reality of working class experience not the theoretical” and attending Barking Abbey Comprehensive School.  He was energised by the Punk Rock explosion of the late 1970s, stating he was politicised by seeing The Clash at the Rock Against Racism carnival in Victoria Park in Hackney in 1978. The Clash were notorious for radical chic Leftist gesture politics such as wearing Red Brigade/Baader Meinhof T-shirts, and eulogising the Leftist Nicaraguan Sandinista government.

Bragg would have been better politicised if he had seen the Gang of Four confronting British Movement skinheads at Thames Poly in Woolwich in 1979. The Gang of Four were a Marxist post-punk band originating at Leeds University who were influenced by the Frankfurt School, and wrote about love, sex and leisure as fetishised commodities in capitalism, and alienated labour. In 1982, their single, I Love a Man in a Uniform, dissected war and capitalism. This song came too late for Billy Bragg because in 1981 he had joined the British Army. He had not worked out an analysis of capitalism and war and the fact that the working class do the killing and dying in capitalist wars.

After the end of the Miners’ Strike in 1985, Bragg's next campaign was Red Wedge which was a pop music collective dedicated to electing the Labour Party and getting Neil Kinnock into Downing Street.  Bragg told Coles that Red Wedge was “hardly revolutionary, it was Neil Kinnock”. Kinnock was already expelling from the Labour Party Trotskyists such as Militant and beginning the modernisation process that would eventually result in New Labour.  In 1987 Thatcher was elected for the third time.

After the 1987 election, the next stop for Billy Bragg was joining the newly formed pressure group, Charter 88, which had been set up by Liberal/SDP intellectuals. Charter 88 would eventually merge with the New Politics Network (which had evolved from Democratic Left which was, in turn, the 1991 successor to the defunctCommunist Party of Great Britain) and form the pressure group Unlock Democracy.

Barking Abbey Comprehensive School also produced Malcolm Eden and Tim Gane who formed the indie pop band, McCarthy, in 1985 who were explicitly a Marxist group that sang about socialism (Red Sleeping Beauty), the socialist commonwealth (CelestialCity), while their 1987 album, I am a Wallet, was all about capitalism and commodity fetishism in Thatcher's Britain

When McCarthy split in 1990 Tim Gane teamed up with French singer, Laetitia Sadier, to form Stereolab. Sadier told Melody Maker in 1991: “I want to change the world” and Stereolab's lyrics had a Marxist content. One song called Ping Pong in 1994 was a Marxian economic analysis of capitalism's crises. A 1992 song, Surreal Chemist, identifies the Marxist perspective of Stereolab:

“Even more than philosophers/Aiming at no less than the total transformation of man and his world/ True life embodying pleasure principle's noblest triumph/Over the cowering mendacity of bourgeois christian civilisation”.

In 2005, Bragg supported Oona King MP (New Labour, pro-Iraq war) in her election campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow in East London against the maverick Leftist, George Galloway. She was defeated.  New Labour had so abandoned the working class in East London that the far-right BNP gained seats on Barking Council.

The rise of the BNP in his native East London prompted Bragg to write his 2006 book, The Progressive Patriot, where he champions English nationalism and multiculturalism and even draws inspiration from Rudyard Kipling. (He of the British Empire and ‘the White Man's Burden’ whose propaganda egged on the slaughter of millions of the working class in the trenches of the First World War.) Bragg has no class analysis of society and writes he is “developing a narrative which explains how we all came to be here together in this place” (my emphasis) and states we now live in a “present classless society”. He does not see that the capitalist ruling class seek to convince the working class that ‘we’ is ‘the Nation’ and the Nation state is run by the capitalist class in their interests. He does not see ‘multiculturalism’ from a socialist angle, which views it a divisive because it forces the working class to identify with other groups against their class interests.

Since 2001, Bragg has stated that he is a tactical Lib-Dem voter but feels betrayed by the Lib-Dems being in the Coalition government with the Tories: “They had some positive things in their manifesto, and they seem to have abandoned the lot of 'em”.

Bragg told Reverend Coles in April that “there are no utopias, I was never that kind of revolutionary. As if I've ever called for the abolition of capitalism”. He agreed with Coles that his was “a modest programme of change, chipping away at that which is tractable”. Last year he told the Guardian:  “We're living in a post-ideological period” and that “the long shadow of Karl Marx” was over, and of the new protests he did not “care if it's called socialism”.

Steve Clayton

Further Reading:

Socialist Standard review of Billy Bragg's The Progressive Patriot

Further Listening:

Billy Bragg - The World Turned Upside Down

Gang of Four - I Love A Man In Uniform
McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty
Stereolab - Ping Pong

UKIP: Are they really the BNP in blazers? (2013)

From the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Trafalgar Square at this year’s London May Day Rally, left wing Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn urged the working class to 'Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism' (although both are symptoms of capitalism) and attacked UKIP as 'the BNP in blazers'.

The main UKIP (UK Independence Party) policy is British withdrawal from the European Union. With this main platform they got 147 councillors elected in the English County Council elections in May taking 23 percent of the popular vote. This followed on from the Eastleigh by-election in February where they achieved 27.8 per cent of the vote. In March UKIP leader Nigel Farage was invited to dinner with capitalist media mogul Rupert Murdoch who later tweeted: 'Economies going nowhere. New leaders emerging on distant horizon. Stagnant Europe racked by discontent and resentment of EU. Farage reflecting opinion'.

UKIP was established in 1993 by Tories opposed to the EU Maastricht Treaty. By the 2009 European Elections UKIP had 13 MEPs, 17 per cent of the popular vote which equated to 2.5 million voters. At the General Election in 2010 they received 920,000 votes. Support for UKIP appears to be an expression of the economic insecurity after the 2008 financial crash, xenophobia, and a distrust of the political elites of the main parties. At present, however, most of the capitalist class do not favour withdrawal from the EU. Recently both Ford and BMW warned Cameron against EU exit insisting it would be 'devastating' for the British economy, and in a British Chambers of Commerce poll of 4,380 companies, 60 per cent felt exiting the EU would harm business.

The Tory Party leadership have been scathing about UKIP over the years; from Michael Howard in 2004 describing them as 'political cranks, gadflies and extremists' to Cameron in 2006 talking of 'fruitcakes and loonies – and closet racists mostly' to this year and Kenneth Clarke speaking about 'waifs and strays' and 'a collection of clowns'. Yet in a Guardian ICM Poll this May Labour were on 34 percent, Tories 28 percent and the 'clowns' of UKIP on 18 percent followed by the Lib Dems on 11 percent.

City backers

Farage has been described as a 'reactionary throwback', and his party, 'the Kippers', revere Churchill and Thatcher, want smoking back in pubs, a small state, low taxes, the end to mass, uncontrolled immigration with a points-based work permit system. UKIP's 'saloon bar politics' are anti-multiculturalism, anti-political correctness, against gay marriage which represents a traditional social conservatism that hides homophobia and misogyny. Their brand of rightwing populism wants increased police numbers, the doubling of prison places, an expansion of the armed forces and to 'no longer involve the UK in military adventurism' which seems to be a rejection of liberal interventionism. UKIP are also supporters of Climate Change denial (see Pathfinders, June issue). An unknown leading Tory referred to grass-roots Tory activists as 'mad, swivel-eyed loons', but they could be describing UKIP.

UKIP have an avowed belief in economic liberalism or laissez faire capitalism. The party is full of ex-bankers. Farage himself is former commodity broker, and UKIP want the City excluded from EU controls. They want the repeal of the EU directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers which seeks to regulate hedge funds and private equity companies in the City. The Daily Telegraph (1 June) reported that Farage had held fund-raising dinners for City supporters and had received a five figure donation from the former chief executive of a FTSE 100 company.

UKIP propose 'tens of billions' of cuts to taxation, along with a further £77 billion of cuts to the public sector in order to reduce the deficit. The economic plans outlined by UKIP have been called into question by thee Times (29 April) which identified a '£120bn black hole' in their spending plans. On workers’ rights, UKIP want to reduce the influence of Employment Tribunals, limit unfair dismissal claims, scrap most 'equality and discrimination legislation', and limit the power of Trade Unions. UKIP argue that if private sector workers have to endure pay cuts and job losses during the economic recession we are currently experiencing then it’s only fair that public sector workers must do the same. One UKIP MEP feels that women of child-bearing age should not be employed because maternity rights were 'too draconian' for employers.

Tax policy

A discussion paper on their website citing Adam Smith and David Ricardo as a guide to their taxation policy, states:

‘Every attempt to tax wages sets in motion a “shifting” process whereby the tax finishes up as a corporate impost anyway. This phenomenon was clearly set out 220 years ago in Adam Smith’s illustration of an employee earning £100. If the state imposes a tax of 20% his pay must rise by 25% in order to re-instate the employee’s former purchasing power (£100). He must now be paid £125 so that the 20% tax leaves him with disposable earnings of £100. In practice there may be a time-lag over which purchasing power (or the basic standard of living) is restored’ (Their emphasis. www.ukip.org/index.php/issues/policy-pages/tax).

David Ricardo did indeed argue: 'Taxes on wages will raise wages, and therefore will diminish the rate of the profit of stock... a tax on wages is wholly a tax on profits'. We too have always argued that although some taxes are paid by the working class, the burden of taxation rests on the capitalists and has to be paid out of the profit accruing to them in the form of rent, interest and profit, the basis of which is the unpaid labour of the working class.

Marx too explained why abolishing taxes on wages would make no difference for wage-workers:

'If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which today goes into them. Either the employers’ profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalist also advances, as part of the wage, the taxes which the worker has to pay, the capitalist would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the state... For the bourgeoisie the way in which taxes are distributed and levied, and the use to which they are put are a vital question on account of its influence on trade and industry' (www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm).

UKIP believe that 'Low taxes, few regulations and small government are the recipe for a successful economy'. They want to reduce the rate of taxation on the capitalist class by replacing VAT with a Local Sales Tax, abolishing the employers’ National Insurance contributions ('the tax on jobs'), abolishing Inheritance Tax and reducing Corporation Tax. UKIP are enthusiastic supporters of the Flat Tax to replace income tax and NI. They believe that there is tax avoidance by the capitalist class because rates are too high. So everybody, whatever their income, would pay the same flat rate of personal income tax.

Rather than ‘the BNP in blazers' UKIP are loony rightwing advocates of free market capitalism.

The British National Party (BNP) are Britain's very own pseudo-Nazi party, the successor to Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. The BNP are 'state capitalist' and advocate a different brand of capitalism to UKIP. They oppose globalisation, laissez faire capitalism and economic liberalism, and want an economic nationalism (autarky) whereby industries are British-owned, a renationalisation of the utilities, subordination of the City to central government, and a greater share ownership for workers.

The BNP's 'state capitalism' has its roots in 'Strasserism', the leftwing Nazism that originated in the Nazi Party’s 25 points programme from 1920 which included the abolition of unearned income, the breaking of ‘debt interest slavery’, nationalisation of associated industries, and the division of profits in heavy industries. The Nazi Party economist Gottfried Feder advocated 'breaking the shackles of interest' and saw financial capitalism or 'Jewish finance' as opposite to productive capitalism, and at the root of societal problems not capitalism itself. The Socialist Party pointed out that this opposition to 'unearned income' was due to the fact that foreign capitalists were raking off proceeds from German industry and was a cry from the hearts of the German capitalist class. The BNP state capitalism is indeed more 'reformist eyewash'.

UKIP represent a populist rightwing capitalist reform party which is fundamentally an external faction of the Tory Party while the BNP and their quasi-Nazi state capitalism would be the wages system under new management. Both are just alternative ways to manage capitalism. A Radio 4 talking head recently said Farage was not Mussolini because he had not got the 'grandiose idea'. In that sense, UKIP are 'more Enoch Powell than Oswald Mosley' and not 'the BNP in blazers'.

Steve Clayton