Cons'IS'tent Incons'IS'tency (1976)

From the December 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Saturday afternoon meeting of the Socialist Party at Glasgow's Exchange Square was "honoured" by the attendance of some members of the International Socialists who, not having a meeting of their own to bore people with, decided to latch on to ours instead. Immediately, our speakers were taken to task for not doing anything about "the current urgent proble facing the working class".

"Which urgent problem?"

"Unemployment. You never protest against these problems!"

"Wrong", the speaker replied. "That's precisely what I am doing this afternoon: protesting not merely against unemployment, but all the problems the working class as a whole suffer directly under capitalism".

"But that's not positive enough. What you should be doing is getting out on the streets and marching. That gets definite results."

"Yes, sore feet. Don't you understand the basic ABC of capitalism? Employers employ workers to produce commodities. If they can't be sold on the world's markers to realize a profit for the owner, then he will have no alternative but to close down his factory."

"We would occupy that factory", the critic asserted.

"They tried that in an Italian car factory", said the SPGB speaker. "Then they made a brilliant discovery: you can't eat tyres or drink petrol. So they simply came back out".

"But they would be assisted by their fellow trade-unionists".

"All that would result in", said the speaker, "would be a factory full of unpaid night-watchmen". He added, on the question of the so-called "right to work": "Unemployment can't be solved by making slavish demands for an alleged 'right' which doesn't exist. Neither can any tangible difference be made by screeching at trade-union leaders or throwing sticks at Callaghan's car. How illogical can you be in the IS? First you urge the workers to vote the Labour Party into power - then, when they do get in, you attack them for doing what you voted them into power for: running British capitalism!"

"Tactics, comrade, tactics", the IS member explained. And, with a straight face, he said: "What you've got to do is show the workers the utter futility of voting for the Labour Party, by telling them to vote Labour. That way they experience how awful the anti-working class Labour Party is".

Trying to prevent himself reeling dizzily off the platform, the SPGB speaker said: "What will happen if you put up candidates at the next election? Will you urge workers to vote Labour in constituencies where you are contesting?" This brought the discussion round to the fact that, despite their avowed anti-parliamentarianism, IS were contesting the election at Walsall. This mental somersault was defended with the claim that workers, disgusted with the National Front, would turn instead to them!

The speaker told the audience that the SPGB had tried to debate with the National Front but the meeting was broken up by "freedom-lovers" who were against the free expression of opinions - including members of IS. Apparently as the only reply they could think of, one of the IS group said: "Do you mean that you actually debated with people like the National Front?"

"We debated with IS too", said the speaker. "The way to defeat organizations like the National Front is not to suppress them but to have them express their views and then expose them for the gibberish they are. Once armed with Socialist knowledge, no worker will allow himself to be led up every blind alley demanding the thousand-and-one 'urgent' reforms which only ensure that capitalism stumbles on a little longer".

Exeunt IS members shaking their muddled heads, perhaps trying to clear them.

Tone.

Bismarck's Communist Heirs (1972)

From the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the eighteen-seventies Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, went in for a big programme of nationalization, both because it suited the needs of the German ruling class and because he hoped thereby to win support among German workers who confused this state capitalism with Socialism. As Bismarck said to his Conservative supporters in the Reichstag, they "shouldn't be afraid of the word Socialism". Reformists all over the world walked into the trap and in Britain propaganda misrepresenting nationalization as Socialism was carried on by the Fabians, the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party. Only the Socialist Party of Great Britain, from its formation in 1904, urged the workers not to waste their efforts on something so useless to them and to the Socialist movement. The advocates of nationalization made all sorts of extravagant claims for it - higher wages, greater efficiency, lower prices, and that as the workers would feel that they were working "for the community" strikes would disappear.

Time has shown how right the S.P.G.B. was. No government, Liberal, Tory or Labour, has ever supported the policy of paying the workers in nationalized industries more than the general level of wages. When, under the Wilson Labour government, enquiries were made into the industries with large numbers of low-paid workers, central and local government workers and workers in the nationalized industries showed up no better than private industry and in some cases they came out very unfavourably. Strikes continued and in some years (1966 for example) the days lost through strikes in the nationalized industries were nearly as many as in the rest of industry put together.

Bismarck's policy was written about by Frederick Engels in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific:

But of late, since Bismarck went in for state ownership of nationalised industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating now and again into something of a flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic.

(Socialism, Utopian and Scientific; 

Moscow, 1970, page 70)

Engels went on to point out that state ownership "does not do away with the capitalist nature of the productive forces . . . The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with."

One of the people who fell for Bismarck's "spurious Socialism" was Lenin. In his The State and Revolution (1917) he had this to say:

A witty German Social Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the Postal Service an example of the Socialist economic system. This is very true.

(Central Books edition 1972 based on the 1969 edition published in Moscow. Page 47)

It was in this section of The State and Revolution that Lenin urged the Russian workers that what they needed was to apply the German Post Office model to Russian industry, but with all official, technicians etc. to be paid "a workman's wages". Like the British nationalized industries under Tory and Labour government all idea of avoiding the ordinary wide inequalities of pay has long since been abandoned in Russia.

Following Lenin's advocacy of "spurious Socialism", the British Communist Party has continued to mislead the workers by telling them to waste their efforts on securing an extension of state capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituary: Rudolf Frank (1971)

Obituary from the March 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our old comrade, Rudolf Frank of Vienna, passed away peacefully in his sleep on the 21 January. He was 88 years old and had been a fervent advocate of Socialism for over sixty years.

Rudolf Frank came to England before 1914. He attended economic classes at our Head Office and joined the Party. When the 1914 war broke out he was interned in Alexandra Palace as an "enemy alien". Whilst interned he ran classes on Socialism. On account of these activities he was deported to Germany when the war ended. He made several attempts to return to England without success. When the 1924 Labour government turned his application down he gave up and became reconciled to remaining in Austria, where he had moved from Germany.

Over the years he contributed regular articles to the Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist. He also tried to stir up interest in Socialism on the Continent, constantly writing letters of criticism to the Austrian national papers. At one time he made a tour of the continent in an effort to stimulate interest in Socialism. He made a reference to this in the following extract from an article he contributed to the fiftieth anniversary number of the Socialist Standard.

Upon returning to the Continent after World War I, efforts, however feeble, were not wanting to make the founding of a revolutionary Socialist Party in England known over here. Comrades of the writer started a group in Dortmund, Germany, which however seems to have eventually disintegrated after the death of the most active members. Before anything could be got under way here in Austria, even the Western pattern of democratic liberties was finally lost by the advent first of the Dolfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship, then by Hitler and now by another occupation, so that for the last 20 years it has been virtually impossible to openly advocate the revolutionary socialist policy. I need hardly remind you of the fate awaiting anyone who exposes publicly in the Russian Zone the fraud and masquerade labelled communism.

In spite of the risks and the difficulties Comrade Frank found a way of getting over his ideas. He taught English to a class and used, as his examples of English, extracts from current copies of the Socialist Standard. Fortunately no member of his class ever gave him away.

Comrade Frank made a number of translations, including the translating of the following four pamphlets into German: "Socialism or Chaos" (Australia), "Russia 1917-1967" (S.P.G.B. London), "The Socialist Manifesto" (Canada), "History—Economics—Politics". He also wrote a sixteen page manifesto to the Austrian workers on the occasion of a General Election.

Until the formation of the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten in Austria Comrade Frank had carried on his activities in isolation, though on rare occasions he had visits from English and American comrades in recent years. It is amazing that he could carry on alone with such enthusiasm during the years before the Austrian party was formed and without the assistance of anyone who shared his views. He also wrote a pamphlet explaining the socialist position which he spread widely. When he took a bus or train he would carry some with him and pass one over to anyone with whom he had got into conversation.

About ten years ago he attended our Easter Conference and addressed the delegates, giving them a description of the progress and the difficulties of pressing the socialist position on the continent.

Finally we must pay a tribute to the steadfastness of purpose with which our late comrade carried on his advocacy of the Socialist solution to the problems of capitalism. We are glad that he saw, before he died, the formation of a party in Austria, largely the result of his efforts, which will carry on the work he commenced. We would add that it was a great satisfaction to him when his son joined our Party — of which he has been an active member for over 30 years.

I would like to add a personal note. I first met Rudolf Frank in 1911 or 1912 when we both attended an economics class conducted by F. C. Watts in our old Head Office in Grays Inn Road. I kept in touch with him and had a great admiration for his solo efforts under difficulties over the years. I feel very sad that, like so many old friends, he has gone from us to the "tongueless silence of the dreamless dust".

Gilmac.

Further Reading:

Socialist Standard November 1964 - Reminiscences of an old member

Socialist Standard December 1964 - Reminiscences of an old member (part 2)

Trotskyism (1984)

Book Review from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Militant, Michael Crick (Faber & Faber, 1984)

Much of this book deals with the history of the Militant Tendency from its stumbling beginnings in the various Trotskyist organisations (whose remains have littered the fringes of the Labour movement for fifty years) to its present, influential role in Labour's left wing.

Entrism is discussed as a specifically Trotskyist tactic, but one interpreted in as many different ways as there are Trotskyist organisations. Militant have developed a peculiar brand called Deep Entrism, a modified version of the "waiting for Lefty" entrism whereby they join a party at a time of social and political upheaval in order to be at the forefront of the revolution when the right moment comes.

Michael Crick notes (page 25) that "it is particularly ironic that three of the main leaders of the recent campaign against Militant should have all incurred the wrath of party officials at one time or another: Denis Healey—the Communist infiltrator of the 1930s; Jim Mortimer—member of a proscribed organisation; and, above all, Michael Foot". He also finds it interesting that "rebels should so easily become leaders" (page 25), but it comes as no surprise to socialists or anyone else who sees the futility of workers placing their trust in leaders of any kind. The argument against leadership is eloquently (if unintentionally) stated throughout the book.

The chapters relating to the organisational manoeuvrings of the leadership, Militant and other groupings in the Labour Party will be regarded by some as a central and important feature of the book. In fact, it borders on the irrelevant. The book however is worth reading as an outline of the history and nature of Trotskyist organisations. The cult of leadership is demonstrated by looking at the various Trotskyist organisations, which seem to have been dominated by only three or four individuals over the past half century.

Allied to this question of leadership, the book examines the organisational form taken by all such parties, the form of democratic centralism. Nominally the leadership is elected by the members, but an outgoing leadership will propose to a conference the new leadership and central committee by means of a "slate" (or list) of candidates. Members do not vote for individuals but for such a slate and it is rare indeed for an alternative slate to be proposed. This explains the "remarkable continuity of the Militant leadership over the years" (page 105). It should also be noted that this process of a self-perpetuating leadership explains the enormous power and prestige such a leadership has relative to its own organisation.

The organisation of such groups as Militant and all other followers of Bolshevism is certainly centralised, but has little to do with any democratic process.

Crick's book is largely a patchwork of interviews with old acquaintances and colleagues of the Militant leadership, the author's own observations and prejudices and already well-known facts about Militant but there is virtually no new material on the organisation. Much of the information on Ted Grant appears to be intended to reduce argument to personalised ridicule, unfairly depicting Grant as a senile eccentric. It is indicative of the state of the Labour Party that while sections can hold enquiries  into entrist groups or whatever, and spend ". . . in the year leading up to June 1983 four of the Executive's monthly meetings . . .  devoted almost entirely to the issue" (page 200), they cannot find time to seriously examine the nature of capitalism or to reach any conclusion regarding the urgency of socialist revolution.

Militant may sloganise and print radical catchphrases on its front page headlines but is in fact just another reformist organisation which is well suited to the Labour Party. Whether Militant and the Labour Party retain their companionship or not is a matter of complete indifference to workers. The tragedy is that in the eyes of many workers, revolutionary socialism is confused with Trotskyism, Leninism and  Bolshevism. It is an urgent task to remedy this situation and expose the quack remedies not only of Militant, but all those on the political left who distort the meaning of socialism.

Steve England

Further Reading:

Socialist Standard September 2006 - 'Death of a tendency'

Socialist Standard April 1982 - 'Which Way to Socialism: Militant Tendency or SPGB?'

Becoming a socialist (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A baby has been defined as a loud noise at one end and little sense of responsibility at the other. However that may be, it is certain that, give or take the odd precocity, the newly-born are not customarily noted for political and economic understanding. Were it otherwise, the year 1929—that of the Wall Street crash—might have made a sight more of an impression on me that, in fact, it did. As it turned out, the only crash that assailed my infant ears was that of the decaying ceiling of the third-floor back room in the borough of Lewisham, which was to be my home for the first few years of my life. (I believe this inelegant apartment later received the undiscriminating attentions of Adolf Hitler, who, it has to be admitted, knew a thing or two about slum-clearance.)

Suffice it to say, then, that my earliest years were, ceiling notwithstanding, as relatively cushioned as caring, if impoverished, parents could make them. (My father, who had suffered serious injuries at Ypres in 1914, was, in recognition of his services to his country, unemployed.) However, as hitherto indicated, my innocence in all these matters was absolute. And this, surely, is the point. We are, each of us, born into a world not of our own choosing. The conditions into which we are thus involuntarily thrust depend not, then, on ourselves (how can they?) or on some mystical preordination, but rather on the material circumstances of our parents and their immediate social condition. At birth a prince is as clean a slate as a pauper. Sooner or later, however, it is the pauper who is the more likely to start asking the awkward questions. So it was with me.

Well, to be strictly accurate, it was my father who put the questions and I was expected to struggle for the answers. For example, he would emerge from behind a cloud of cheap tobacco smoke to ask: "Why is it, do you suppose, that whereas the shoe-shops are bursting with children's shoes, there are thousands of children running about in the streets of London barefoot or ill-shod?" (The same type of question could be asked in connection with the Common Market food surpluses in our own times.) Anyway, I soon became familiar with the idea of capitalism as a generator of crises — the boom/slump cycle. Then there was gold: we had a lot of fun with this one. Not that we possessed any ourselves apart from my mother's wedding ring. But at least I early understood the difference between intrinsic and commodity value. For while gold is rustless, conducts heat and electricity, fills (some) teeth, and can be used to decorate books, fingers and religious houses, these qualities and uses can hardly account for its current (15 June 1984) mark-up of three hundred and seventy-five dollars an ounce. Or for the fact that, having been quarried and mined from the earth at the expense of colossal human hardship it is promptly buried again in places like Fort Knox and the Bank of England. Such idiocies serve to remind us of the fundamentally irrational nature of the capitalist system. No wonder that the logic of socialism is such anathema to its—capitalism's—practitioners.

So where did this paternal tutelage take me? Well, er, the Labour Party, would you believe it? Anyway, the least said the better, I think! A few years and much frustration later saw me out of the "broad church" charade and, er, into the Communist Party. Despite what I found to be a lack of trust within the Party, and notwithstanding, among many other anomalies, what I then interpreted as an incomprehensible backsliding which went under the euphemistic title of "Eurocommunism", I stuck it out with the CPGB. Until, that is, I made the acquaintance of an old anarchist with whom I played a few games of chess. I quickly discovered that my contempt for, and rejection of, the capitalist system was more than matched by his own. One evening he handed me some old leaflets and pamphlets, together with some back numbers of the Socialist Standard. My heart sank! As if I hadn't choked on enough political "literature" in my time!

Eventually I got round to reading some of it. At first I treated it as I might have done a typical Labour Party leaflet. I gradually came to realise, however, and almost unconsciously, that this was different. Nobody was trying to con me with hyperbole or waffle or vague promises impossible of fulfillment. I was getting socialism straight. It worked on me like a purgative. The sheer futility of labourism; the vicious obscenities of Soviet-style capitalism; all this was washed out of my system once and for all. Hitherto I had read quite widely: Marx, of course, and Engels; Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; Zola's Germinal; the poetry of Shelley (only latterly his political prose writings) and Wilfred Owen. I had dipped into William Morris, Jack London and George Orwell.

All I needed, it is now clear to me, was a corrective — a catalyst. A much read, tea-stained fistful of pamphlets had provided it. Waters muddied by the empty platitudes of pseudo-socialists and phoney "communists" rapidly cleared. There remains a great deal to learn but at least it is now possible to build on a firm foundation. However, I have to confess that, had it not been for my own obstinacy, I could have provided myself with this foundation long ago — before I joined Attlee's Labour Party, in fact.

That same father I have spoken of, long since dead, I'm afraid, occasionally referred to the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its message. He had evidently heard some of the Party's speakers as they threw out their challenging and abrasive truths from their (at the time, more numerous) open-air platforms in London. "These people" he would say "are the real socialists in this country." Well, I could hardly be expected to take for gospel everything the old boy told me, could I?

Richard Cooper

LA Law or class war? (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Riots and anger on the streets of LA. What ignited the flame? The frustration of poverty. In the USA today one in five families live below the official poverty line; the majority of these are non-white. The American Constitution claims that all men are born equal but in 1992 black workers stand more chance of being in prison than in college. In Washington DC 42 per cent of blacks between the ages 18 and 35 are either in prison or on parole. In Harlem, New York City, the life expectancy of a black male is lower than in Third World Bangladesh.

The riots have added fuel to various spurious theories about violence in society. White socio-biologists, wedded to outdated notions of human nature as determinants of anti-social behaviour, have argued that rioters are over-endowed with violent genes. For example, Mark and Ervin Violence and the Brain published with the support of the US Law Enforcement Assisance Agency argue that:

The kind of violent behaviour related to brain malfunction may have its origins in the environment, but once the brain structure has been permanently affected the violent behaviour can no longer be modified by manipulating psychological or social influences.

 Perhaps the authors of this crass rationalisation can explain why such violent brain cells seem to evolve amongst poor unemployed hopeless wage slaves and not amongst the rich people, both black and white, in Beverly Hills, Greenwich Village or Knightsbridge.

The long-held racist ideology of the USA is a reflexion of the fact that chattel slavery ended in the 1860s but that wage slavery persists in the 1990s. The brutality of the plantation owner has given way to the profit-grabbing claim to inherent superiority by the capitalist owners and controllers of the means of wealth production and distribution. Capitalism does not have inequality and divisiveness as an accidental and eradicable feature. Inequality and division are endemic to all class societies.

Some black political activists have seen the division in American society in terms of race or skin colour rather than class and in doing so they are avoiding the root cause. As early as 1865 a black convention in Charleston formulated an "Address to the White Inhabitants of the State of South Carolina" which called for an elusive equality amongst all men:

We simply ask that we shall be recognised as men; that there be no obstruction placed in our way; that the same laws which govern white men shall govern black men; that we have the right of trial by jury of our peers; that schools be established for the education of coloured children as well as white; and that the advantages of both colours shall, in this respect, be equal; that no impediment be put in the way of our acquiring homesteads for ourselves and our people; that, in short, we shall be dealt with as others are—in equity and justice.

This statement assumes that there is one human race rather than that society is divided into antagonistic interests on the basis of property possession. In 1965 the Watts riots in Los Angeles shattered the self-deception of American ideologists who thought that they lived in a land of equality where the wretchedly impoverished would never embarrass them by resisting publicly. Vincent Harding describes the Watts riots:

For five days fighting went on; blacks attacked police, firemen, white stores—but no white civilians. The flames from dozens of fires lighted the nighttime sky; bullets, tear gas shells, screaming sirens, shouting of men and women poured out a cascade of sounds closely approximating those of battlefields and it was. When police and 13,000 national guardsmen finally quelled the uprising 34 persons were dead, more than 1000 wounded and nearly $40 million of property had been destroyed.  (The Other American Revolution).

The then President, Lyndon B. Johnson, responded to the display of working class indignation by making pious reformist noises about The Great Society which would be created out of so-called equal rights legislation. The exhibition of police and court racism in LA is proof that the Great Society was a fiction utterly unrealisable within a system which creates economic waste and an environment unfit for human habitation.

The Bush government will not learn from the LA riots nor can it learn except how to contain its subjects more successfully. The rioters will have gained little from the riots but for some looted cheap goods and a sense of being noticed. And the results of the riots are more working class wounds; the enmity of wage slaves against wage slaves, many left dead. Workers will get nowhere fighting each other and calling for capitalist justice. What we must do is unite anger with understanding and turn these upon the real enemy: those who rob us of the fruits of our labour.

Steve Coleman  

Reminiscences of an old member (part 2) (1964)

From the December 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 can be read here.

When the 1914-1918 war broke out I was put in an internment camp. The long confinement at least offered opportunities for further enlightenment and discussion on politics. Lectures and meetings were held and prisoners were also free to debate subjects in all kinds of private circles, language classes, etc. Soon groups particularly interested in Socialism were regularly gathering around our platform. The discussion became particularly lively when Comrade Neumann, also an active member of the S.P.G.B. (translator of Kautzky's Erfurter programme) later joined the army of internees. Apart from lectures, a very successful May Day meeting was held with Neumann as the principal speaker. Among the many adherents to the Socialist case were Mundl, Guilke, Bankofsky, who all joined the S.P.G.B. after their release. With others, after I had been deported, I kept in correspondence from the Continent for many years. Most of them have long since died.

If there was comparative freedom to propagate revolutionary socialism on the Continent for a few years after the first war, it became rapidly more risky with the advent of Hitler. Even here, in Austria, the struggle for power between the two big electoral machines, had become so intense and bitter that it led to that terrible butchery on the Vienna Ringstrasse in July 1927, when nearly a hundred demonstrators were shot dead by Austrian police and army—and to other innumerable victims. Then in February 1934 Dollfuss and the Heimwehr smashed the Social Democratic Party in another, far greater, bloodbath. In 1935 Dollfuss was murdered and in 1938 Austria was incorporated in the German Reich. Then came the Second World War and the four power military occupation, lasting till 1956.

Even what little the few of us did, or rather could do, was not without peril, especially as personally I had, of course, not always kept my socialist light under a bushel before the years that were so fatal for Austrian, German, Italian and Spanish democracy. In Vienna alone more than 1,500 persons were executed by the Nazis for political reasons.

I may be allowed to repeat here what I wrote in a letter to the S.P.G.B.'s International Secretary:

"While the very democratic British government takes the credit for my one and only victimisation for political reasons (they repatriated me to the Continent against my will in 1919 after four years internment as alien-enemy and undesirable subject) the family (wife, mother-in-law and two boys) survived unmolested the fascist onslaught on democracy in the civil war in Austria in 1934, the Anschluss of Hitler in 1938, and the second world war. As a socialist I never lifted a finger in support of those criminal capitalist operations. Though I could not, of course, after the 1934 upheaval continue socialist propaganda (as I had done in England, especially in the Internment camp) and had, until the departure of the occupation troops in 1956, to keep underground, I am proud to share with other comrades the merit of never having allowed the socialist light to be extinguished. My radical politics were known (if not shared) by the colleagues at the office where I worked and in wider circles, so that a really anxious time began for us in Vienna in 1934; especially for my wife, who had never forgotten our fate at the end of the first war. But I was lucky—nobody ever betrayed me or played me a dirty trick, although practically everybody who knew me and mostly appeared to agree with my criticism of things, turned out to have actually been or had become Nazi."

Considering the very troublous times we lived through, we did relatively well and had many good opportunities with jobs here, traveling extensively in Europe. My son Lawrence returned to London before Hitler came; he was greatly helped by the comrades and soon joined the Party, in which he is heart and soul.

My family and I had to leave my job in London at the outbreak of the 1914 war. After my internment in 1915 and repatriation at the end of the war, my London employers offered me a job at one of their enterprises in the Rheinland, with accommodation for my family near the works. If we left the firm and the Rheinland three years later for Austria, it was only to fill a contract I had previously made with the Austrian Krupp Metalworks Berndorf, where we stayed for four years. Our late comrade Fitzgerald visited us there in 1926 and again in 1928. By that time we had moved to Vienna, where Fitzgerald saw me at my final job, with the Austrian Official Tourist Office. Both his visits were fruitful for Socialist propaganda, as arrangements were made for distributing the Socialist Standard in quite a number of bookshops in Vienna. A large number of the pamphlet Socialism and Religion was also distributed at "language courses" I held at the Krupp works. I am sorry that not a single copy of that pamphlet is left in my hands now. Sorry also that interest in Socialism could not easily be revived after the dark years that followed, and that a good number of comrades I had gathered around me dropped out. But new contacts have now been made with a group of dissenters from the big S.P.A. the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten, which issues a monthly typed paper called the Wiener Freies Wort. Direct contact with the S.P.G.B.'s Overseas Contact Secretary has long been established and it is  our ambition to make the S.P.A. dissenters adopt the Declaration of Principles and eventually to make it a true revolutionary companion party. There is real hope for the future, but we must not lose patience with those  undoubtedly earnest workers. A challenging sixteen page pamphlet and Election Manifesto is being distributed. It contains, of course, the Declaration of Principles.

Has the world changed since I set out? In some respects it certainly has. As I have mentioned before, in 1902 there was no thought or fear of war that was to come; you could travel across Europe without passports, you could work in any country without labour permits. In all my wanderings in Germany, Switzerland, France and England, the first time I ever had to report my presence to a police office was in London at the outbreak of the first war. What a change indeed has come over all this! Today people are hedged in everywhere by frontiers, barriers and police guards, exacting and scrutinizing your personal documents. Some frontiers, made more impassible by barbed wire, often electrically charged, and hidden bombs, run across big cities like Jerusalem, Berlin, and others. There is one thing that has not changed in well over a hundred years, one thing that has so far survived all crises and upheavals, and dozens of major capitalist wars. This one unchanged feature is the fundamental status of the working class of the world, as the disinherited wage slaves of the capitalist class.

R. Frank

Cooking the Books: Labour is All Capitalist Now (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his column in the (London) Times (24 January) former Blair speech-writer Philip Collins recounted how he had met a ‘nameless plutocrat’ in Davos this year who had told him that Labour, despite its protestations to the contrary, was anti-business and that Miliband was indulging in ‘intellectual Marxism’. How ungrateful and how weird is the idea some people have of Marxism.

Collins commented:

‘Mr Miliband does think Marx is a better prophet of capitalism than those who cannot see beyond their own profits. Quite right too. Business people believe in competition just so long as they are benefiting from it. They soon realise competition means somebody else might take their winnings. Echoing Adam Smith on the conspiracies that businessmen practised against the public, Marx pointed out capitalism’s inexorable tendency towards monopoly. Competition, in other words, producers its own grave-diggers.’

This is alright, except that Marx didn’t see all industries as necessarily ending up as a monopoly. He wrote rather of the concentration of production in bigger and bigger productive units and of the centralisation of the control of these by a ‘constantly diminishing number of magnates of capital’ (Capital, volume 1, chapter 32 on ‘The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation). For him, this was an expression of the fact that production had already become ‘socialised’, operated by co-operative labour of the working class as a whole. He envisaged that eventually the working class would organise to bring ownership and control into line with productive reality and ‘expropriate the expropriators,’ ushering in a socialist society based on the common ownership of land and industry with production directly for use not profit. This hasn’t happened but ‘intellectual Marxism’ still has to see this as being the future for humanity.

Labour’s answer to monopoly is not this (of course). It’s more competition. Miliband’s ambition, according to Collins, is to ‘reform capitalism’. Or, as shadow business Chuka Umunna told the Financial Times (16 January):

‘We are all capitalists now. The question is, what sort of capitalism do we want? We embrace free markets but we want competitive and free markets and more responsible capitalism.’

This is the opposite of what socialists want. Labour wants to mend capitalism; we want to end it.

Labour is not anti-capitalist or anti-business at all. Most ‘nameless plutocrats’ and ‘magnates of capital’ will know this perfectly well, but this hasn’t prevented them, and their supporters in the Tory party (the party of the rich, as most people recognise), raising a howl of protest at a rather innocuous Labour promise to restore the 50 percent rate of tax on that part of anyone’s income over £150,000 a year.

There is nothing anti-business about this as it is a tax on personal income whereas the aim of capitalist production is to extract and accumulate profits as more capital. It is not to provide a privileged income for capitalists, though of course it does do this. The ‘entrepreneurs’ (as capitalists prefer to call themselves these days) who London Evening Standard columnist Richard Godwin said he had met were behaving more capitalistically:

‘When they started their businesses, they had neither the means nor the inclination to withdraw a six-figure salary for themselves. They preferred to reinvest’ (29 January).

But the plutocrats and magnates are people and they like their privileged income and the lifestyle it enables them to enjoy. In complaining about an increase in their income tax they are not being pro-business. They are being pro-themselves. As Godwin put it, ‘That’s not entrepreneurship – it’s self-interest.’

Reminiscences of an old member (1964)

From the November 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

To escape from the narrow and limited conditions of existence in my home town in northern Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia), where I was apprenticed for three years in a textile factory's office and received private English lessons, I left home in 1902 for a bigger industrial centre in Germany. I worked in Plauen (Saxony) famous for its lace industry, and found excellent contacts there with English, French and American students working and learning in the factories.

As one could in those days travel right across the whole European Continent without let or hindrance, without passports or labour permits, I went a year later to Switzerland, to Lyon in France and eventually to Paris, where I worked during 1904 and 1905. One of the great advantages of my stay in Paris was that I was able to get certified at the Austro-Hungarian Embassy as exempt from military service.

Returning to Austria in 1905, I worked in Vienna for four years as foreign correspondent with a large export firm, and in 1909 went to try my luck in England. After a three week search, I found a job in an important commercial concern in London, where I soon felt securely enough established to get married. Before I made that plunge I made another, to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1910. I was a member till 1919 and have kept in happy and close contact to the present day, with the exception of the second world war years. It has been my great ambition from the very day I set foot on the Continent again to found here a companion Socialist organisation. If greater success has so far been denied us, the stalwarts of the SPGB will, in view of their sixty years' experience, readily understand our difficulties.

My contact with Socialism really dates back to the turn of the Century when, in 1898, my father had already taken me to a Sunday afternoon meeting of the Social Democratic Party, going in our home town under the name of Lichstrahl (Sunbeam). Teenager as I still was, I hardly knew what they were talking about. I remember that evening lectures on Darwin and Marx were often advertised in the local party press, but my mind at that time was bent on my job, on learning English, going dancing, enjoying cycling and skating, etc. No political contact worth mentioning was made afterwards in Germany or in France. In Vienna from 1905 to 1909 contact with people interested in Socialism had been quite by accident, not by design. Occasional talks with party members there were not stimulating. I went to "Socialist" meetings but their propaganda also was far from arousing sufficient interest even to envisage joining the movement. It is then remarkable that within a few months of my arrival in London, my views and interest in social affairs should have undergone so swift and radical a change that by 1910 I felt impelled to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Living near Finsbury Park, I strolled on one of the first Sunday mornings over to where public meetings were in progress. My particular attention fell on the political platforms—the Labour Party, Social Democratic Federation, Christian Commonwealth, etc. I found the speakers lustily criticising and attacking each others' policies for which I had at first little understanding. My interest had, however, been so deeply aroused that I went again in the afternoon, when I discovered an additional platform with the name SPGB. No sooner  had a speaker mounted the platform than the bulk of the audience of most of the other speakers rushed over. Listening attentively, I was surprised to hear the speaker showing up not just one or the other opponent, but the lot of them for misleading and confusing the people on vital issues concerning their lives. In my bewilderment, and anxious to better understand, I bought all the papers I could get hold of—Labour Leader, Justice, Christian Commonwealth, and the Socialist Standard. At home I began studying them all, and on the following Sunday I was early around the platform of the SPGB again. Much wiser, I now enjoyed even more what the speaker out for. I also go to know his name—it was Anderson—and it was evident that the impact of what this speaker had to say, in his rare and convincing way, was as decisive on many listeners as it was on me. I heard other speakers from that platform on many following Sundays, with the result, as I have already mentioned, that I applied for membership of the party they represented, and was enrolled in the Islington branch.

At Head Office I joined a class on economics with Comrade F. C. Watts as teacher. I met there young comrade Gilmac, who remains my life-long friend to this day. Soon I knew a great number of equally inestimable and unforgettable comrades, among them Fitzgerald, Adolf Kohn, Jacobs, Jacomb. Gostick and wife, Sandy Pearson.

Anderson sometimes came to my home. I remember a Christmas party my wife gave to some children, including Anderson's. At the end of the party Anderson (an inveterate teetotaller) thanked us very much, especially for the "wonderful lemonade"—the "best he had ever drunk in his life." My wife afterwards smilingly confessed to me that, of course, she had mixed some spirit with it, as she invariably did.

Anderson was a born speaker and an eminently able man, invaluable for the only cause that is worthy of the fervour and devotion of such a rare and unforgettable character. He was evidently happy on the platform and excelled in ready and witty answers to questioners. "What about the missing link?" somebody once shouted from the audience. "The missing link," promptly retorted Anderson, "is not far away."

Becoming a Socialist meant that I rapidly changed my whole outlook and attitude on such questions as "earning your living" by a "fair day's work for a fair day's wage," on "social justice," ethical and moral codes, religion, etc. What I had been taught about history had to go by the board, to be irremediably replaced by the Materialist Conception—the scientific theory of the evolution of society. Words like value, price, the source of interest and profit, and the true role of money and capital; why wealth was produced for sale at a profit instead for the sole purpose of satisfying human wants and desires, etc.—things I had never explained at school—all received thorough attention. The knock-out blow was delivered to falsehoods and fallacies. And all this, be it noted, before the two world wars, during which churchmen were doing overtime blessing the guns and the fratricide.

(To be concluded)

R. Frank

The YCL's Land of Hope and Glory (1967)

From the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing about the Young "Communist" League: no one can accuse them of being internationalists. Time was, of course, when—like their CP senior—they were slavish Kremlinites. Today their old Russian nationalism has given way to a more respectable British nationalism.

"It is plain to see that Britain, with an outdated way of life, no longer stands among the foremost nations of the world", they lament, adding, Wilson-like: "We want to change the whole way the country is run, to get Britain out of the rut and moving forward." (The Trend—Communism).

Not so long ago, discussion with members of the "Communist" Party or Young "Communist" League produced, from their side, little more than naive eulogies of the Russian workers' paradise. Today, any mention of Russian state capitalism on our part usually gets the embarrassed rejoinder: "We'll build British socialism so as to make the Russians envious", or some such disclaimer. It has become increasingly difficult for any well-informed person to hold that the Soviet system is fundamentally different from the West: a more plausible line is to claim that here and there they can plan things a bit more efficiently. Not that we want to accuse the YCL of being well-informed, either. But the spectacle of the world's two biggest "socialist" states rattling sabres at each other with jingoistic ferocity should be enough to shake the most paranoid of the Moscow flock.

Naturally the YCLers want the best of all worlds: the Romantic legend of the barricades and red banners, plus an ultra-modern teenage image—and of course, dear old Britain. Their horrible mixture of trendy imbecility, starry-eyed echoes of revolution, and patriotism, is summed up in passage of lyrical splendour like

The old-fashioned way our country is run is turning Britain into a backward-facing country; in the past we have see Conservative and Liberal governments; these are old parties with old ideas; they have failed to make Britain a country for all people, not just the rich. Now we have a Labour government which could change Britain, but which is following the old out-dated ideas. We want to change Britain into a Britain for everybody. (Who is Wrong—Youth or Britain?)

They do talk a lot about "socialism". They do use Marxist terminology. They do draw attention to many of the abuses of capitalism. (What capitalist party doesn't?) And they do insist, at least verbally, on making radical changes in the structure of society. "We Communists make no secret of our aims," they state—a ludicrous near-quote from the 1847 Manifesto. To some extent this is true. Through the fog of image-building phrases it is possible to interpret broadly what the YCL wants. What is it?

First of all, as we have pointed out, they are good patriots. Secondly, they are full of advice about how to run capitalism: "U.S. Hands Off Vietnam," "Jobs Not Bombs" etc. They are bold reformists, unaware that it is impossible to run capitalism in the interests of its wage-slaves.

They will be quick to point out that these are only "immediate demands." What they're ultimately after is "socialism." But words are cheap. What do they mean by this? There can be no doubt about this. They persist in referring to Russia's allies as "the socialist countries." They are still firmly committed to support a type of society basically like that in Russia. But they also give a description of "a socialist Britain": a list of reforms including cheaper rents, cheaper transport, ending unemployment, shorter working hours, equal pay for women, more sports and arts facilities, "democracy in industry," cheaper holidays, and "a good pension." Most of these are advocated by every capitalist party, and none of them touches the basis of capitalism. Of course, they are all to be welcomed if we can get them (with the possible exception of  "democracy in industry," which if Russia is anything to go by means castration of the unions). But they do not affect the root cause of most human misery, which is the system of production for profit.

There are two items missed out of the above summary of the YCL's "socialist Britain," because they are worth examining more closely:

"You go to work . . . to a factory that used to be owned by Fords. But that was in the past. It's against the law now to make money out of others' work. Ford's belongs to the people who work there and so do the profits of course.
. . . but would you be free? Well, if you mean are there other political parties, yes there are. Mind you, there no millionaires to back the Tory party." 

Obviously the YCL has the idea that it is possible to look at society and just eliminate its undesirable features piecemeal. It is not. There are some aspects of society which entail certain consequences. For instance, if there is production for sales at a profit, there are bound to be great inequality of wealth, as the example of Russia has shown. Lenin apparently sincerely thought his government could introduce equal wages for everybody, but the economic laws of capitalism dictated that there should be wide differentials. There are millionaires in Russia, after 50 years of "socialist" rule. Why? And would Britain, if the "Communists" came to power, allow them to do what they are unable to do in Russia or Eastern Europe?

At least the YCL doesn't want to take away the measure of political democracy we have—but why don't they draw the logical conclusion and denounce its absence in Russia?

The YCL is currently selling copies of "a great, new, top quality, hand screen-printed poster of an original lithographic drawing of Karl Marx."

A father-figure for the bedroom wall isn't good enough. If the YCLers claim to be Marxists they ought to read Marx, and try it without the spectacles of Lenin or Emile Burns. They might them wonder why Marx put such emphasis on his "revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system!'" Or why he stressed that the existence of the state was a sure sign of class coercion. Pondering questions like these would lead unbigoted members of the YCL to see through the pseudo-revolutionary catchphrases of the "Communist" Party to the the reformist futility these shoddy words conceal.

STEELE

The New Yorker discovers Marx (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

One hundred and fifty years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the New Yorker has discovered that "Marx's version of free enterprise also chimes with the views of many contemporary businessmen, who would rather be flogged than labelled Marxist".

John Cassidy's 5,000-word essay "The Return of Karl Marx" in the October 27 issue of this magazine from the bastion of American capitalism does not include Marx's view of a future world based on common ownership. Nor does it support his labour theory of value. It is however amazingly laudatory when dealing with Marx's analysis of how capitalist accumulation operates. Cassidy quotes one Wall Street organiser of stock issues as saying: "The longer I spend on Wall Street, the more convinced I am that Marx was right . . . I am absolutely convinced that Marx's approach is the best way to look at capitalism."

At first Cassidy was astonished at that claim and recalled that he had studied economics with his financial friend at Oxford in the early eighties when their teacher had taught them to agree with Keynes that Marx's economic theories were "complicated hocus pocus". He decided to re-examine Marx's writings and found himself agreeing with his Wall Street friend.

After sneering at Marx's writing style he goes on to heap praise on his analysis of capitalism:

"When he wasn't driving the reader to distraction, he wrote rivetting passages about globalizaion, inequality, political corruption, monopolization, technical progress, the decline of high culture, and the enervating nature of modern existence--issues that economists are now confronting anew, sometimes without realising that they are walking in Marx's footsteps."

Cassidy is unstinting in his praise for Marx's materialist conception of history:

"Indeed, as Sir John Hicks, a Nobel Prize-winning British economist, noted in 1969, when it comes to theories of history Karl Marx still has the field pretty much to himself. It is, Hicks wrote; 'extraordinary that one hundred years after Das Kapital . . . so little else should have emerged'."

Globalisation

On the growth of global markets Cassidy again praises Marx. "Globalization is the buzzword of the late twentieth century, on the lips of everybody from Jiang Zemin to Tony Blair, but Marx predicted most of its ramifications a hundred and fifty years ago. Capitalism is now well on its way to transforming the world into a single market, with the nations of Europe, Asia, and the Americas evolving into three rival trading blocs within that market."

While criticising Marx's view of the struggle between worker and capitalist as "too rigid", Cassidy provides some startling figures about ownership in the USA in modern times. "Between 1980 and 1996, the share of total household income going to the richest five percent of the families in the country increased from 15.3 percent to 20.3 percent, while the share of the income going to the poorest sixty percent of families fell from 34.2 percent to 30 percent." Even more to the point he writes: "According to Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University, half of all financial assets in the country are owned by the richest one percent of the population, and more than three-quarters of them are owned by the richest ten percent."

In discussing the role of the unemployed in keeping down wages, Cassidy is in no doubt that Marx got that right too. "Marx believed that wages were held down by the presence of a 'reserve army' of unemployed workers who attempt to underbid the employed. Reduce the ranks of this army, he said, and wages would rise--just as they have started to do in the last year."

The role of the state

This remarkable essay ends with the writer discussing the relationship of politics to ownership. "Perhaps the most enduring elements of Marx's work is his discussion of where power lies in a capitalist society . . . Marx, of course delighted in declaring that politicians merely carry water for their corporate paymasters. 'The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie,' he wrote in the 'Manifesto', and he later singled out American politicians saying they had been 'subordinated' to 'bourgeois production' since the days of George Washington. The sight of a President granting shady businessmen access to the White House in return for campaign contributions would have shocked him not at all."

For socialists reading any praise for the works of Karl Marx in such a supporter of American capitalism as the New Yorker magazine is astonishing. It shows that once an enquirer frees himself of the prejudices of orthodox thinking the only way to understand how world capitalism is developing is from the standpoint of Marx's materialist conception of history.

With a little more application Cassidy may even rid himself of the orthodox nonsense that he at present embraces; namely "supply and demand curves, production functions and game theory", and realise that Marx's labour theory of value is the view that best explains production, exploitation and surplus value.

But let's not look for too much. We still relish his conclusion that "despite his errors, he was a man for whom our economic system held few surprises. His books will be worth reading as long as capitalism endures."

Richard Donnelly

Five myths about class (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class is determined by how you speak, how you dress or where you live.

Class is not a subjective concept, but is determined by the objective relationship of a n individual to the ownership and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth (the factories, mines, offices, docks and so on). In Britain, over half of all wealth is owned by the richest ten per cent and top one per cent own more wealth than the poorest eighty per cent. The working class produce all wealth and the capitalist class, who own the productive and distributive apparatus, receive the profits which result from production.

There are three classes: Upper, Middle and Working

Sociologists invent class labels to fit their own images of society. There are in fact only two classes in society: workers (about ninety per cent) and capitalists (about ten per cent). The characteristic of a worker is that he or she owns virtually nothing but an ability to work (labour power). A capitalist owns sufficient capital to have no need to sell his or her labour power for a wage or a salary. If you can't live without seeking employment, you're a wage slave, no matter what class you claim to be in.

Class used to be important, but these days it's irrelevant.

Any worker who thinks that class is irrelevant should try living the life of a capitalist - he or she will soon discover the extent to which class determines lifestyle. The capitalist is free to exist as a social parasite, living in luxury on the labour of others. Being in the working class guarantees a life of social insecurity; if it is not profitable to hire you the boss will soon fire you.

Under Labour governments, class differences diminish.

Between 1974 and 1976 the richest one per cent increased their concentration of wealth ownership. This under a Labour government pledged to redistribute wealth. (That was one promise they kept.)

Socialists advocate class hatred.

Socialists are opposed to capitalism, not to specific capitalists - some capitalists are bastards, others may be "jolly decent chaps". It is the capitalist class whose interests are antagonistic to those of the working class. The workers must dispossess the capitalists, and to this end the Socialist Party of Great Britain (and our companion parties) call upon workers of the world to join our movement. Should capitalists wish to join, they may do so if they are principled advocates of the working class interest. Should any capitalist object to what we say, too bad.

Steve Coleman

Questions Answered - and Asked (1998)

From the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are often asked about how socialism would deal with certain situations that might arise in that society. What about anti-social behaviour, or people who refused to work? How would we allocate genuinely scarce resources? And so on.

Because our definition of socialism is so different from that used by some opponents and those who would also claim to be socialist, it requires a leap in imagination to get one's head round what it will involve. Socialism will not be about equal wages, equal sharing, state control or world government. Nor will its democratic system involve systematic physical coercion, though, in social relations perhaps some form of moral or emotional persuasion, of a non-hierarchical nature, might be needed occasionally. There is often an assumption underlying the questions put to us that there will be some sort of hierarchy who will lay down the law on what and what not to do.

Socialists can deal with general questions of, say, how production and distribution would be carried on. (Readers are directed to our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative for an outline of this.) But then we get queries about one-off and awkward situations that might arise. Of course we can't always give clear-cut answers to these, nor is it our responsibility to do so. People in that society will have to deal with such situations by using then existing institutions and mechanisms (including emergency and contingency plans) or by introducing new ones to deal with problems when they arise or are anticipated.

The belief behind some of the questions put to us is that members of the Socialist Party and its companion parties, or their successors at the time of the introduction of world socialism (and it has to be world-wide, because it will be replacing the world-wide capitalist system), will have (or claim to have) some sort of collective wisdom which they can call upon to deal with any and all situations, and if they don't then the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards. This is not so. Our contention is that socialism will be established not only when a majority understand and want it, but that there will also have been prior lengthy discussion among members of the working class, who after all are the people that actually run the world today, on how it will be administered and organised.

Socialists came to the conclusion a long time ago that capitalism cannot work in the interest of the working-class majority. That majority, as we said, today runs society from top to bottom, but not for their own benefit, and do so under artificially difficult, dangerous and needlessly complex conditions. Socialism will entail those same people running the world in their own interest, in a benign and much simplified environment. If you agree with all this, then it incumbent upon you to make the effort to bring it about.

What would you propose?

Perhaps it's time socialists started asking the questions. After all, there are many of you out there-people with the relevant scientific knowledge, technical skills and organisational abilities-who are able to offer suggestions on how we can deal with the problems that will inevitably occur. For instance, how to go about setting up a production unit, firm, enterprise, endeavour-call it what you may-to deal with a particular need. In capitalism accountants are brought in to do a costing, involving how much wages it will involve, what is the effective (i.e. ability to pay) demand for the product, and how much raw materials etc. are needed and if their calculations predict a profit then, subject to any local restrictions, the work usually goes ahead. In socialism it will be rather different. It will have to be decided by those appointed to do so whether the production is really necessary. Is there sufficient demand? (Real demand-not can we pay for it.) This could be carried out by some form of consumer-as opposed to market research. How much raw material-in amount not cost-will be required? How much labour will be needed to work on the raw materials or build a factory? What, if any, will be harmful to the environment? If it seems that the amount of resources required will outweigh any immediate general benefits that might accrue, it may be decided to abandon the scheme unless some overriding reason (such as health, safety or some long-term consideration is involved) dictates otherwise.

No-one can say that wrong decisions won't be made-that would be foolish-but we can be certain that any mistakes made won't be in the pursuit of profit

We need your help, not just in terms of increasing our membership, though we welcome that, but also for developing and expanding ideas on how the new society will be organised. If socialism has to wait until everyone has their questions answered in the minutest detail, then we will never achieve it. Now is the time to speed up that process by involving yourselves in the technical and theoretical work that needs to be done.

Dealing with any anti-social behaviour that might occur will take on an entirely different dimension from that pertaining today. First of all, property crimes will have disappeared. So what are we left with? Domestic crime and irrational behaviour. The first are usually the result of people living in intolerable conditions from which, for economic reasons, they are unable to walk away. The second are caused by various mental conditions, and one would assume that these will be dealt with in that context-i.e. as a medical problem. Perhaps there may remain a small rump of anti-social behaviour-much of it a hangover from capitalism-that couldn't be dealt with, that would cause a problem here and there. Surely this would be infinitely better than the uncertain world in which we live today, with millions dying in conflicts and from disease and starvation.

Julian Vein

Pathfinders: Under the Ground and Over the Moon (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

One way for the capitalist class to prevent any future repetition of miners’ strikes, in any country, is the thrilling idea of not digging coal out of the ground but setting fire to it in situ and sucking the choking but exploitable gasses out through frackstyle L-shaped tubes (New Scientist, 15 February). Anti-frackers will probably be aghast at the idea of lighting the fires of hell under our collective feet, and there are all sorts of predictable questions about 1100 degrees of heat fracturing erstwhile impermeable layers and subsequent leaching of benzene and toluene into water boreholes, as happened at one UGC site in Queensland, Australia. But it’s worse than that. While fracking does at least offer one built-in environmental brownie-point in having only around 50 percent of coal’s carbon footprint, underground coal gasification (UCG) offers no such saving, and instead relies on the pious promise by extractive industries to invest in money-losing carbon capture and storage schemes (CCS). Enthusiastic capitalists on fire to cash in on a process offering a potential 1000 years of global energy say the giant subterranean ashtrays created by UGC are the perfect spot to stuff all that unwanted CO2, while the fabulous profits will easily pay for the required CCS pumping hardware. Conversely it won’t only be socialists who, understanding why industrial pollution exists in the first place, will easily foresee that the mining will happen because there’s money in it, but the CCS won’t because there isn’t. Humanity may have set its sights on a zero-carbon energy future, but as ever when capitalism gets a whiff of the filthy lucre, industry dashes off in the opposite direction.

With renewable energy as always in a sinkhole of unprofitability, what is the current state of play in nuclear fusion, that ultra-powerful and ultra-clean energy source that stubbornly refuses to exist in reality? Well, some good news there, as the National Ignition Facility in California has just announced a breakthrough with the first ever ‘fuel gain’ test, where 10 kilojoules of energy were put in and 15 kilojoules came out. But hold the champagne, because to run this test in the first place required an overall expenditure of 2 megajoules, meaning that overall net fuel gain is still orders of magnitude away. Part of the problem is the fact that fusion technology is currently based on heavy hydrogen. Hydrogen has just one charged proton, but its isotope deuterium carries an extra uncharged neutron, while tritium lugs about an extra two like an overloaded tourist.

Fuse the tourists together at sun temperatures and a barrage of uncontrollable neutron baggage fires off in all directions, destroying and irradiating everything in its path including the reactor walls. This means that a) fusion is not clean at all but creates highly radioactive building waste and b) most of this neutron heat hurricane is wasted in the conversion of water to steam to drive a turbine, just like a fission reactor.

For a long time fusion freaks have been talking about using a light isotope of helium instead. Helium-3 or 3He is heavy on spare protons rather than neutrons, so protons get fired off instead. Because protons carry a positive charge you can channel and direct them with magnets, like a flock of excitable sheep, but they also convert directly to electricity without the need to boil water for a turbine. The result is that a) they don’t burn your house down and b) they give an enormous increase in efficiency.

And the point of all this? The point is that there is hardly any 3He on Earth because being lighter than air it tends to float off into space, but there’s tons of it on the Moon, where there isn’t any air so it isn’t lighter than anything and therefore stays put. Like UGC, the estimated potential for global energy usage for lunar 3He is around 1000 years. Which is precisely why China has got a Jade Rabbit up there. It plans to strip mine the Moon.

On the face of it not much has changed since the last time the Standard covered the Great Moon Rush (see Material World, December 2008). China may have set, if not foot, then robotic wheel on the surface, but this feat is dismissed by carping critics who point out that this only places China 50 years behind the US and the Russians, and that the Chinese tech is all old Russian knock-off anyway. Still less impressive that after two weeks in the freezing lunar dark the poor Rabbit emerged into the solar glare to stand transfixed with barely a pulse flickering.

But there is a key difference today, because water-ice has been found at the poles, buried in deep and permanently dark craters. A human requires around 2 litres of water a day, and with the cost of lifting water from Earth at around $25,000 a litre, even with intensive recycling of every last sweat globule a manned moonbase looked out of the question. Not anymore. With that discovery, strip-mining of the Earth’s ‘seventh continent’ is finally becoming feasible. Being pragmatic about such things as all capitalists are, China wouldn’t pay too much for labour, but would send Tibetans, or convicts, so don’t be surprised if future miners’ strikes take place on the Moon.

Still, it’s early days. The Moon Rush is at present more of a stroll. Budget-strapped NASA is in cahoots with private firms to get back in on the act, but private capitalists have to date shown less than cosmic  achievement. The $20m Google Lunar XPrize for the first privately-funded rover on the Moon, which blasted off in 2007 with much media fanfare, has so far not paid out so much as a bus fare, even though the deadline has been repeatedly extended. There is some debate about revising the terms of the various Space Treaties, according to which common ownership somehow exists in space, in order to allow private ownership to intrude into this absurd and uncapitalist anomaly. But the debate is civilised at the moment because nobody is in a position to stake much of a claim, and besides everyone knows that these treaties are mostly unsigned anyway and worth about as much as the Kyoto Agreement. The main legacy of Jade Rabbit thus far has been, rather like with the US Apollo missions and the Soviets, that China is winning its regional pissing contest with Japan. But the Japanese aren’t taking this lying down, and plan with an appropriate sense of bushido to have their own rover on the Moon by 2017.

It’s a curious fact that the glassy regolith dust on the Moon’s surface smells like gunpowder, and there may come a time when Earth goes to war over this rock, perhaps for the platinum group metals expected in concentrations in the dark ‘sea’ areas you can easily see with the naked eye. An even more distant possibility is that mining won’t stop at the Moon, but that it becomes a fuelling station on the way to the other planets and the moons of the gas giants.

One thing is beyond reasonable doubt. Were it not for the fact that the stars are permanently out of reach by any conceivable technology, the capitalists’ eyes would be fixed greedily on the entire cosmos. For many people, forced to the realisation that there is literally nothing in heaven or earth that capitalism would not rob and rape and destroy, a space-age future without socialist sharing and collective resource management will be a prospect as chilling as the lunar night.

Paddy Shannon

Letter: Red Wedge (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

With reference to your article Rock Bottom (March) I should like to make the following comments. I attended two Red Wedge concerts and was also present at a "Day of Action" in which Billy Bragg and the "Wedgies" were questioned about their motives for the tour and I feel that your article gives the wrong impression.

The tour was not thought up or arranged by the Labour Party but by Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and other left-wing artists; in fact, your first line is incorrect as Red Wedge is not just a campaign by rock musicians but also by comedians, cabaret artists, actors and writers who have been or will be on the road with their own tours.

Propaganda did not come from the stage but MPs—and a certain (ex) GLC leader—were in the foyer to be approached only if so desired. The theme of the tour was to make young people aware that politics is something that affects everyone, and also to get young people to register to vote—whatever party they may vote for, as many young votes had been lost in the 1979 election due to "punk" apathy.

In all, socialism was more the issue than the Labour Party, and at one concert Joolz stated that "no mighty thing" called the Labour Party would change anything—only the people can do that.

Amongst the leaflets on chairs were ones on behalf of CND and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Socialist Worker and Militant papers were for sale (where was the Socialist Standard?) and even the slogan on the official T-shirts, like the songs of the artists involved, advocated socialism, and I don't think that is a thing to be knocked.

Yours faithfully,

Philippa Britton

Jersey

Reply:

It was an omission on our part to refer to Red Wedge as including only musicians; it does also include comedians and actors. It is, however, definitely a pro-Labour movement, even though it is officially independent of the Labour Party. During 1985, Billy Bragg performed some fifty concerts as part of the "Jobs For Youth" campaign in conjunction with the Labour Party. That tour led directly to the founding of Red Wedge which declared itself, from the start, "committed to a Labour victory at the next election". Needless to say, the "Jobs For Youth" campaign had not made great play of the fact that Labour policies have proved as hopeless as those of the Tories in trying to control capitalism: every Labour government since the 'thirties has left office with unemployment higher than when they were elected.

It may be true that Labour Party propaganda has not been featured on stage, but the performers would not have to tolerate the politicians "in the wings" if they did not wish to. It would be rather surprising if, come the next election, Red Wedge performers such as Robbie Coltrane, Paul Weller and Billy Bragg were to withhold their votes from the nationalist and fundamentally pro-capitalist Labour Party, and, of course, they make no secret of this. Indeed, Billy Bragg tried to defend his active canvassing for Kinnock in a Sunday Times article of 26 January 1986. "Anybody who cares about politics has their part to play, and that's best done as a local party member". He went on to say of earlier protest singers, "All that generation came to nought. They thought if they joined hands and sang Imagine the world would change". Of course, it is essential for people to think critically and to organise politically; but when John Lennon asked people to "imagine . . . no possessions", was that not more challenging than Bragg's sad badge of slavery in Between The Wars: "I'll give my consent, To any government, That does not deny a man, A living wage"?

Meanwhile, the political hacks were gloating. In the Sunday Times article referred to above, Andy McSmith, co-ordinator of the Labour Party's Jobs and Industry campaign, was quoted as saying "Billy is worth his weight in gold to us", and Eric Heffer comments: "It is a good thing that an ordinary working-class lad like Billy should identify himself with the Labour movement".

It is fair to conclude that Red Wedge does not exist purely to encourage young people to vote and to think in any way they might feel like, but to vote and think Labour. The T-shirts might refer to "socialism", but this would not be the first time this term has been used for its popular appeal. Perhaps some performers are being "used" by the politicians to some extent, and any comments they might make about young people thinking for themselves can only be supported by socialists. But it is contemptible for artistic popularity to be prostituted to the sale of stale and second-hand ideas for an alternative brand of "people's capitalism".

The Socialist Party did produce a leaflet which has been distributed at Red Wedge events, which we quote from here:

Enjoy the music, but do your own thinking. Beware of the smooth talking leaders who are waiting in the wings to sell you their sterile ideas. Workers are capable of building a future which might now seem like a dream. That future has nothing to do with swapping the inhabitants of Ten Downing Street. It is about establishing a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use—a genuine socialist society. You owe it to yourselves to consider the case not for the Labour Party but for socialism.

Editors.