The Scene of the Crime (1): The People of the Abyss (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Scene of the Crime: 1

A series of articles recalling famous books about working-class conditions in particular areas of Britain and viewing those areas today.

In 1902 Jack London, already established as a writer in America, went to stay for seven weeks in the East End of London and write a book about it. He rented a room in a shabby quiet street, bought old clothes and a dirty cap in Petticoat Lane, and walked the streets as a sailor down on his luck. On 22nd August he wrote to his friend Sterling in California: "I've read of misery, and seen a bit, but this beats anything I could even have imagined." In later years he said: "Of all my books, I love most The People of the Abyss. No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor."

Jack London's East End was Limehouse, Poplar, West and East India Dock Roads, Mile End, Whitechapel, Spitalfields. He slept and ate in the spike, the casual ward ("I must beg forgiveness of my body for the vileness through which I have dragged it, and forgiveness of my stomach for the vileness which I have thrust into it"). He tramped the streets wet to the skin and went to the Salvation Army barracks, where the crowd of paupers were made to stand four hours and listen to speeches and prayers before being given a skinflint breakfast. He went to the hop-fields in Kent, and watched Edward VII's coronation parade in Trafalgar Square.

To what he sat, he added copiously from official statistics, newspaper items, trade unions' and social workers' reports. A census of the alleys in Spitalfields:

In one alley there are ten houses — fifty-one rooms, nearly all about 8 feet by 9 feet — and 254 people . . .  In another court with six houses and twenty-two rooms were 84 people — again 6, 7, 8 and 9 being the number living in one room, in several instances.

A report on the factory workers in "dangerous trades":

The children of the white-lead worker enter the world, as a rule, only to die from the convulsions of lead poisoning — they are either born prematurely, or die within the first year.

No wonder that Jack London wrote to Anna Strunsky: "I am made sick by this human hell-hole called the East End."

Of course he was not the first to write graphically about it. Arthur Morrison's A Child of the Jago, to which London referred, was published in 1896.  Morrison was an East Londoner himself: "the Jago" was the frightful Old Nichol district on the boundary of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch. According to Charles Booth, it had the greatest poverty of all in the East End. Morrison also, incidentally, had no good to say of the Salvation Army's charity — in his book he called General Booth the "Panjandrum of philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place".

But what impressed Jack London most was the parody of human physique in the Abyss. He wrote repeatedly of its "woebegone wretches" — the East Ender with the scrawny arm, the "stunted forms, ugly faces", the young fellow who boasted of being a fine specimen and weighing ten stone:

I was ashamed to tell him that I weighed one hundred and seventy pounds, or over twelve stone, so I contented myself with taking his measure. Poor, misshapen little man!

And the incident with two men who, walking along with him, picked up orange peel, crusts and apple cores from the filthy pavements to eat: "And this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest and most powerful empire the world has ever seen." London, a worshipper of strength, would notice all that specially, but others too observed it. In his book about the 1914-18 war, Disenchantment, C. E. Montague wrote of British troops on the road beside Canadian and Australian ones: "Battalions of colourless, stunted, half-toothless lads from hot, humid Lancashire mills; battalions of slow, staring faces" — against the Dominions' "taller, stronger, handsomer" men.

The People of the Abyss was published in 1903, illustrated with the author's photographs taken in East London. When submitting it to the publishers he described it as a report "from the field of industrial war", and added that it

proposed no remedies and devoted no space to theorizing — it is merely a narrative of things as they are.

However, after consultation with the publishers he made some modifications, and a letter accompanying the revised manuscript said:

I have wholly cut out the reference to the King of England in the Coronation chapter, have softened in a number of places, made it more presentable in many ways, and added a preface and a concluding chapter. 

What is the Abyss like now? Some of it is still there. The streets and alleys of Whitechapel were the scene of the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, and a book on the murders published in 1972 has recent photographs of two places where they were done. But it is all coming down, fast. Limehouse, the  dockside setting of a famous silent film called Broken Blossoms, is now an estate of council flats; Ratcliff Highway, a terrible place, is the same. So is Sidney Street, where the Russian terrorists were besieged and killed in 1911. The docks, now little used, are intended for a massive redevelopment with all kinds of amenities spoken of.

No one would say "hell-hole" now; but "affluent society" would be a misconception too. "Itchy Park," where human derelicts gather, is as appalling as anything Jack London saw. Repeatedly, cases of violent crime come out of the same East End — not by demented individuals but by gangs from those dull, neat flats (the "in" crime at present is stealing lorries for their loads). The shops and stalls along the high roads are crowded with clothes and household things which are showy but cheap and shoddy. You have the feeling in the East End that people are out of the Abyss, but only by the skin of their teeth.

The major factor in the reforms there have been was the 1914-18 war. Lloyd George told the capitalist class they had gone too far: a starved working class had scarcely the blood to shed for them. The point was taken and applied in social welfare, housing and medical services. The effect has resembled the policy of a stingy farmer, accepting the necessity to feed his stock for a profit in the market but watchful that the creatures get not a turnip more than they have to.

In one respect alterations have brought no change. Jack London wrote of the "man-killing" air of the East End:

Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, curator of Kew Gardens, has been studying smoke deposits on vegetation . . . six tons of solid matter, consisting of soot and tarry hydrocarbons, are deposited every week in every quarter of a square mile in and about London . . . Sulphuric acid in the atmosphere is continually being breathed by the London workmen through all the days and nights of their lives.

Today lorries roll in thousands continually along the highways through East London, and the result is called pollution.

Robert Barltrop 

Working Girls (1987)

Film Review from the August 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working Girls (director: Lizzie Borden)

It is difficult to see what Lizzie Borden was trying to achieve with her film, Working Girls, about a day in the life of a prostitute. There was no story or plot as such and little attempt to make the characters anything more than two-dimensional. Was it then intended to carry some kind of message or social comment? If so, it is difficult to see what that message is.

The central character in the film supplements her income by working the occasional shift as a prostitute. However this is not a story of the sordid, often violent life of those women who ply their trade on the streets. The women in this film sit in a comfortably furnished apartment, make appointments with their clients by telephone and then wait for them to arrive. When they do so they are given a drink prior to being ushered upstairs to a bedroom. As the film progresses we are offered glimpses of a number of "girls" and clients all of whom display a range of neuroses, hang-ups (sexual and other) and inadequacies. The sex itself is depicted as sanitised - endless clean sheets, towels, tissues and the ubiquitous condoms - but is nevertheless explicit enough for some people to want to see the film for that reason alone (although one suspects that the peddling of soft-porn was not Borden's intention). The girls' working environment is clean, pleasant and relatively safe. They are not forced to do anything they really object to and threatening clients are removed.

The fly in the ointment as far as the girls are concerned is the brothel-keeper who only just manages to conceal a hard-nosed approach to her business behind a sugary-sweet facade. But despite the boss, this film suggests that prostitution is not a bad way to earn a living as exploitation goes. I don't know how many prostitutes work in these kinds of conditions, but I would imagine that the majority have to endure the danger, potential violence and indignity of life on the streets. To that extent the film failed to convince me either that prostitution was any better or indeed any worse than other work.

The only really interesting moment in the film came towards the end when the central character quits the brothel because the "madam" has made her work an extra shift. As she informs the brothel-keeper that she won't be back, she asks her if she has ever heard of surplus value. In a film that was totally unremarkable for its dialogue, this glimmer of insight comes as something of a shock - but the film ends at that point.

Janie Percy-Smith

Democracy and 'democracy' (2004)

From the November 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nature and meaning of democracy in society has recently become a topic of major interest in the media. Not only are we repeatedly reminded that the ‘war on terror’ is being waged to defend ‘our’ democratic rights and freedoms, but more recently the issue acquired unexpected notoriety when supporters of the ‘Countryside Alliance’ tricked their way into the debating chamber of the House of Commons. Although a great embarrassment to the ‘security forces’ and the government and a mild source of amusement to the rest of us, it did trigger a debate, however brief, on the role of parliament and what constitutes a working democracy.

    

The first moves towards control of parliament by means of elected representation emerged in England in the 17th century, as parliament attempted to expand its authority at the expense of the king. The electorate was limited to the small minority, who regarded it as imperative that they capture exclusive political power to pass laws that would safeguard their land and property interests from the ‘propertyless masses’.

    

Their purpose was to exclude ordinary people who might voice views dangerous to the propertied class or pass laws detrimental to their interests. The control exerted over parliament became a reflection of the property relations in society; a role that parliament has successfully fulfilled, largely unchallenged, to the present day.

    

As capitalism emerged as the dominant social system, competition and the misery of working people intensified, so worker organisations struggled against laws that hampered their ability to defend themselves and improve their conditions. The ‘Anti-Combination Laws’ that made unions illegal were repealed in 1824, although it wasn’t until the depression of the 1870s and the Trade Union Act of 1871 that legal protection was granted to union funds. Later, peaceful picketing was allowed. Likewise, the struggle to achieve universal suffrage was slow, driven by overcrowding, excessive hours, child labour, dangerous working conditions and dire poverty. It took the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 to expand the franchise, but even by 1900 only 27 percent of the male population had the vote and it would take a further 30 years before full adult suffrage would be conceded to working people.

    

By the end of the 19th century the political debate influenced by worker organisations centred on whether the state should become involved to help the poor or whether traditional laissez faire – the notion of individual self-help – should prevail. Collectivism – the view that the state must improve things for the poor – gradually emerged and led to the development of what we know now as the welfare state in the twentieth century.

    

This summary raises two important issues. The first is that whilst parliamentary government still operates to protect property, the concessions and the elbow room that have been won in capitalist democracy are important and of value to working people. Rights to organise politically, express dissension and combine in trade unions, for example, are valuable not only as a defence against capitalism, but from a socialist viewpoint are a platform from which socialist understanding can spread, while the right to vote the means by which socialism will be achieved.

Not enough

At the same time we must recognise that genuine democracy is more than these freedoms and the right to vote. Whilst ‘one person one vote’ is an essential ingredient of democratic society, democracy implies much more than the simple right to choose between representative of political parties every five years. The Chartist movement, in the 19th century, saw that gaining the right to vote was meaningless unless it could be used to effect ‘change’. But today exercising our democratic right to vote for a conventional political party does not effect change. It amounts to little more than making a selection between rival representatives of power and class interest whose overarching function is to protect private property and make profits flow. It is representative government where all the representatives support obedience to the capitalist system.

   

Some exponents of modern democratic theory assert that ordinary working people should only be ‘spectators’ but never ‘participants’. They hold that while we may busy themselves on the fringes of political issues, ordinary working people must be excluded entirely from any involvement in deciding economic matters; for this is where the real decisions that effect our lives are made. This is where the interests of the capitalist class have exclusive decision making authority.

    

Milton Friedman in his Capitalism and Freedom, for instance, tells us that capitalism and democracy are inseparable. He assets that far from being its antithesis, profit creation is actually the very embodiment of democracy and any government that restricts the market is pursuing an anti-democratic policy. He argues that the real issues, including the distribution of resources, social organisation and the economic sphere in general must be excluded from public debate and left to ‘free market forces’ or removed from public scrutiny altogether and made secretly. He predictably concludes that government should limit its involvement to the protection of private property, law enforcement and to a policy of limiting all political debates to minor peripheral issues. Not surprisingly, capitalist democracy is one where the political agenda is dominated by trivial and often insignificant debate between political parties with the same class based convictions.

Manufacturing consent

Other exponents of capitalist democracy go still further, for they assert that to keep democracy ‘healthy’ (by which is usually meant working in the interests of capital), public opinion must be moulded and manipulated to encourage obedience – to “manufacture consent”. Ordinary working people are to be targeted with propaganda and ‘public relations’ exercises to induce acceptance of things that are contrary to our interests. The effectiveness of this propaganda is illustrated by the widening gap between people’s preferences and government policy which often result in the quiet acceptance of, say, unpopular cuts in social spending or policies clearly incompatible with their interests. It is hardly surprising that working people become increasingly disillusioned with ‘democracy’ and politics and register their frustration by declining participation in elections. We start to believe that if our vote is so ineffective in changing things there can be little point in casting it. We become exactly what our master class wants us to be, obedient and silent.

    

Clearly, ‘democracy’ under capitalism is different from the generally accepted meaning of the word as a situation where ordinary people make the decisions that shape their lives, frequently summarised as being the ‘rule of the people.’ But democracy is not simply about ‘who’ makes decisions or ‘how’ the decisions are to be made. It is an expression of the social relations in society. If democracy means that all have equal opportunity to be heard, then this not only implies political equality but also economic equality. It further presupposes that people have individual freedom. A genuine democracy is therefore one where people are free and equal, actively participating, without leaders, in co-operative discussion to reach common agreement on all matters relating to their collective as well as individual requirements.

    

A genuine democracy complements equality and freedom and is therefore incompatible with capitalism. We are told we have ‘equality,’ but how can this be when the majority are compelled to sell their labour power to a minority who have the wealth to purchase it? Likewise, we are told we are ‘free’ but in reality our only freedom is to sell our labour power to someone who is ‘free’ to buy it – or not, as the case may be. If we choose not to exercise this freedom then we are ‘free’ to go without or even starve. It is quickly apparent that in capitalism freedom is an illusion because freedom cannot exist when the conditions for the exercise of free choice do not exist. In capitalist democracy freedom has become a commodity strictly limited to the amount that can be purchased by a given wage or salary. In the workplace our ‘work’ organised under a strict division of labour is often tedious and repetitive; we have become an appendage to a machine or computer in industry organised on a strictly ‘top-down’ chain of authority – more fitting to a tyranny. This is what freedom means under capitalism.

The vote as weapon

The realisation that genuine democracy cannot exist in capitalist society does not alter the fact that the elbow room already secured by struggle can be turned against our masters. The right to vote, for instance, can become a powerful instrument to end our servitude and to achieve genuine democracy and freedom. Working people with an understanding of socialism can utilise their vote to signify that the overwhelming majority demand change and to bring about social revolution. For while democracy cannot exist outside of socialism, socialism cannot be achieved without the overwhelming majority of working people demanding it.

   

A genuine democracy can flourish only in socialist society. Socialism will liberate the productive forces within capitalist society by bringing the means and instruments of producing life’s necessities into common ownership, thereby destroying the economic foundation upon which class distinction and social discrimination rest. It will replace production for profit with production for need, where money, exchange and the market will all become obsolete. The democratic organisation of socialist society will necessarily require the full participation of all free and equal people, without leaders, to vote and decide on the issues that determine how the welfare of all can best be served. It will end forever the degradation of wage slavery, hierarchy and coercion and provide the economic basis for free people to become creative, unfettered to express their diverse and individual talents and be fulfilled as human beings.

    

Today, we must view with suspicion attempts to further restrict or limit our legal rights by carefully considering the motives that lie behind such moves. For we need to use these rights to organise and spread socialist understanding so a socialist majority can capture political power, end capitalism and establish socialism. Only then will we have genuine freedom and a genuine democracy.

                                                                                                                                   Steve Trott

Consciousness (2000)

Short Story from the August 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you noticed that when we are ill advice seems to come in from all directions? Echinacea, someone will tell you, wonderful stuff, invaluable to the immune system. Vitamin C has been known to prevent cancer and goodness knows how many possibly fatal diseases. Carrots too are beneficial and have healing powers. Yoga, Chinese herbal medicine, Shiatsu, Chi Kung all help prolong life. Oh, and staying "positive". No that ain't easy when all you are positive about at the time is that you feel ill. Another saying is that laughter is the best medicine. But what is there to laugh at when that big, black cloud descends to obscure the vision of a life you once accepted as normal? Maybe I shouldn't scoff at all these well-meant offers of help, though I must admit that the man who assured me that a couple of juicy steaks would put me right came close to causing me an apoplectic fit.

What has brought me to laughter (and tears too) whilst being in this wraith-like, depressed and anxious condition is the reaction of those around me (my family and comrades come into a different category). People are mind-bafflingly, singularly wonderful and if, as they tell us, laughter is the best tonic then by now I should have undergone a miraculous cure.

If the way some people raise their voices for my benefit is anything to go by my malady could be seen as having rendered me deaf. True my speech is severely effected but my mind and mental processes are much the same as they ever were. I could plainly hear, for instance, the hoarse whisper uttered in my presence, "I don't want to tire her". I was not consulted. This remark was directed at my spouse as though he had metamorphosed into a stern nurse who would stand no nonsense from visitors. And from another visitor, "She's looking a bit brighter today". I was not, as you might believe, sitting up in bed, pale and languid, supported by numerous pillows, but lounging on the sofa smoking a fag and enjoying a cup of tea. Next to me on the sofa was a book and this month's copy of the Socialist Standard. I don't take five-mile walks anymore but neither have I retired from the world. One remark was addressed to me by a very loquacious friend, "Don't tire yourself, dear". I thought "Why should I tire 'myself' when she can do that for me in five minutes flat?" At lunchtime the talkative friend returned with a tureen of soup and a bowl of strawberries, leaving me wracked with guilt at the irritable inclinations I had felt towards her. And what of the neighbour who appeared at my front door with her car keys? "Keep these and use my car whenever you need it," she said.

You would say that all this is meant very kindly and you would be right. But when ill I have discovered that one becomes a slightly inferior being and in their eagerness to help other people can reduce one to the level of someone who has lost a few of their marbles. At the hospital a young nurse alarmed at my weight-loss cautioned me to eat more vegetables, potatoes and pasta. I wouldn't know that would I?—I have only been feeding a family for about forty-eight years. A retort sprang to my lips but I knew that with my silly voice I could say nothing with the required dignity.

Some of those people who are being kind and helpful to me during my illness are not among the politically aware. My guess is that whichever political party promised them the most would get their vote. Karl Marx said, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." Yet despite capitalism's erosion and distortion of the basic social instincts in human beings, the fundamental desire to provide practical aid and compassion when it is sorely needed is still there. The system will never succeed altogether in eradicating the understanding we all share of being human and needing one another. Some of my friends and neighbours have agreed with my premise that money can corrupt and change people for the worst. Ultimately we learn from each other and when the lessons are good we can develop our consciousness and gain knowledge and wisdom from that experience. Certainly if my illness is teaching me anything at all it is that most people have the potential for change—for the better.

Heather Ball

Cooking the Books: Imperialism? (2014)

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

Capital is value that expands. As self-expanding value capital is naturally imperialistic. Expansion is the essential process of capitalism. Capital expands via concentration (expanded reproduction through successive investments of a portion of surplus value realized as profit over and above consumption by the capitalist class) and centralization (whereby one capital kills many). And it always looks out for low-cost sourcing – cheaper sources of productive resources and labour-power on the one hand, and for upbeat profitable markets on the other. This is how the empire of capital expands. Therefore, every region of the capitalist world, developed or underdeveloped, small or large, is potentially expansionist or imperialist. Every aliquot part of the global capital is intrinsically expansive – imperialistic. Capital is global from its inception. It is not a national or regional entity. It has to be understood as a dominantly global entity.

A contrary treatment of capitalism is utterly misleading. The problem of our world is not imperialism, it is capitalism.

Capital is not a thing at rest; it is a circuit describing process continuously passing through three distinctive forms – money capital → productive capital → commodity capital – constantly reproducing its exploitative, oppressive, wasteful and alienating relations of production and distribution. Capitalists as we see them (individual, joint-stock, state, etc.) are but capital personified. They are merely the functionaries of capital. Capital grows unevenly via a centre/periphery framework and relation – some regions being highly industrialized centres while others remaining mostly raw material providers. And capital is inherently anarchic and self-contradictory moving through perpetual cycles of boom and slump.

Nobody could ever accurately predict about, and effectively administer, the anarchic behaviour of the capitalist socio-economic system. As Marx pointed out, ‘The essence of bourgeois society consists precisely in this, that a priori there is no conscious social regulation of production. The rational and the naturally necessary asserts itself only as a blindly working average.’ (Marx’s letter to L. Kugelman, July, 1868)

Capital is an active social force. And we know as Engels knew, ‘Active social forces work exactly like natural forces, blindly, forcibly, destructively’ ; in spite of us, in opposition to us, they master us ‘so long as we do not understand and reckon with them.’ (Anti-Dühring, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1969, p. 331)

This is true for every region of the world. You cannot do away with this pattern of capitalist growth. 

You can, however, do away with capital itself with all its paraphernalia only by organizing world socialism only.

Binay Sarkar

Mixed Media: Burston Strike School Museum (2014)

The Mixed Media column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Burston Strike School Museum, Church Green, Burston, Norfolk (free admission, open all reasonable hours (key at adjacent bungalow)) website: Burston Strike School.

Pre-visit publicity gives a rather misleading impression of the Burston Strike School Museum and its setting in the village of Burston, near Diss, in Norfolk. This is not a charming rural community but a straggling suburban development of retirement bungalows and nouveau-rich villas, interspersed with a few ropey farmsteads, home to a particularly unpleasant agribusiness installation. As such, the museum and the annual rally on the pocket handkerchief village green are rather incongruous. The large-scale rural poverty once found in this area is no more because the formerly ubiquitous ragged farm labourer, whose existence the Museum recalls, is no longer required. They have been discretely bundled off to hidden estates in the market towns or to the mean streets of the run-down coastal resorts. 

The Museum competently tells the story of the events leading to the Burston School Strike in 1914 when the teachers at the local school, Annie and Tom Higdon, were sacked after a dispute with management. The petty powers had objected to their industrial and political activities, and, led by the local priest, enacted the dismissal of the Higdons from their posts on trumped up grounds. The teachers were supported by the local farm workers, whose cause the Higdons had valiantly espoused. Pupils were withdrawn from the school as a protest (thus the strike was not an ordinary industrial one). Although unthinkable today, there was a rash of so-called Schoolboy Strikes in the years immediately before the First World War (see, for example, Dave Marson’s excellent 1973 pamphlet Children’s Strikes in 1911), so this was not an entirely isolated outburst.

The Higdons set up their own alternative school in a tent on the village green. Later the school moved to local carpenter’s premises and then to a purpose-built school financed by donations from the labour movement, and it is this building which now houses the museum. The Burston Strike School carried on teaching local children until shortly after Tom Higdon’s death in 1939, becoming, therefore, the longest running ‘strike’ in British history.

The displays in the museum, recently renewed to commemorate the centenary of the start of the children’s strike, are well maintained and informative in the conventional narrative style. A recent acquisition is a charming and entirely relevant bronze casting of one of the original Strike School chairs by Norwich artist Louise Richardson. The exhibition is backed up by extensive literature, which is on sale at the museum or on-line, including reproductions of The Burston Strike School by Casey (originally published by the Independent Labour Party) and T.G. Higdon’s The Burston Rebellion, as well as A Striking Village, which provides interesting background material. The latter was written by members of the Potter family, whose ancestor, Violet, led the schoolchildren in 1914. There is also an excellent range of postcards as well as well-designed mugs and pencils.

There have been additional events during the centenary year, including the Burston Community Primary School six week project that culminated in a re-enactment of the original candlestick march round the village. On their arrival on the Green they were greeted by ‘Mr and Mrs Higdon’ from The Stuff of Dreams Theatre Company’s production of their new play The Bricks of Burston. The annual Burston Strike Rally will take place on 7th September 2014. This year it will be addressed by Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. There will also be music from the NASUWT Band, and Thee Faction, an R&B band.

Younger children especially will, doubtless, gain something from a visit to the museum. However, overall, the impression is of the quaintness of the past, of white pinafore dresses and tight lace up boots, of strange and antiquated hand tools and odd facial hair. To the discerning visitor, however, much is left wanting.

Leaving aside footnote enquiries, such as details about the donors commemorated by the foundation stones lining the front of the Burston Strike School Museum building, whose brief inscriptions hint at fascinating untold stories, there is vital historical information which one needs for a full understanding of the case. Particularly, one would like to know the nature of the alternative education provided in the ‘Free School’. Besides being ‘nice’, what was this? The cursory treatment of this phrase is particularly disappointing because it was the duration of the school, a whole quarter century, which makes the incident noteworthy. In the era of McDonaldisation of education, independent education for the working class ought to be a particularly relevant issue.

And it is the failure to create links between the past and the present which makes the Burston Strike School Museum, like the People’s History Museum in Manchester, a failure. History is never finished business, done and dusted. Only by analysing society, how it came to be and how it is, can we hope to advance to a better future.

KAZ

A Broken Reid (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

After twenty-five years Mr. Jimmy Reid, the doyen of Left Clydeside, has left the Communist Party where he was an Executive Committee member. His reasons for leaving the Party are obscure, as this institution of meddle and muddle has not altered either in its reformist leadership case, or in its slavish acquiescence to the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. (How could it, when the Morning Star, the Party organ, depends on Russian finance? Russia, and the Iron Curtain countries take nearly 14,000 copies of the Morning Star out of the daily number sold of 41,000 copies: Sunday Telegraph, 15th February 1976). According to the Sunday Telegraph, this amounts to a subsidy of 250,000 a year out of a total of 500,000 a year which is required to keep the paper alive.

This fact must have been known to Mr. Reid as a member of the Executive Committee. The British Road to Socialism, the Party statement upon which Mr. Reid bases his faith, has certainly made a large detour through Eastern Europe.

Unfortunately for the working class of Clydeside, Jimmy Reid did not leave his ideas, so we can expect the usual windy dialogues and mis-information about Socialism when his conscience has settled down, or his career has got the better of it. In an interview given to Ian Smith in the Daily Telegraph 13th February 1976, "Mr. Reid said that if a political party emerged which showed it supported Socialism and democracy he would consider joining it". Where has Mr. Reid been during his twenty-six years in politics if he does not know that such a Party has existed for over 70 years — the SPGB? Not that we are waiting on the doorstep to welcome Mr. Jimmy Reid into our ranks. Fortunately we have a choice over those who may decide to join us, and in his present state of muddle we could not permit an individual as ignorant on the fundamental aspects of Socialism to enter our organisation.

By Socialism Mr. Reid, in common with all left-wing parties, means freedom to worship reforms, State capitalism, a touch of Scots Nationalism, and anything else which will provide a peg for opportunist propaganda. It's all in the pamphlet The British Road to Socialism of which he was co-author.

In an interview given to Peter McHugh of the Daily Mail (13th February 1976) he expresses interest in the newly-founded Scottish Labour Party of Mr. Jim Sillars, MP, who apparently is a personal friend and who also is the same type of modern Labour fakir. Both men have in common their rejection of the organisations which brought them to political prominence. It is people like Reid and Sillars who hold back Socialist propaganda, and expect prestige for doing it, as does every professional left-wing politician.

It has taken twenty-six years in politics to convince Reid he backed the wrong horse in the Communist Party. Instead of making public confessions of his ignorance of politics he should gracefully retire to develop a few real Socialist principles. For his and others' information, Socialism means a social system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, and its achievement depends on understanding.

Jim D'Arcy

Communism Now (1973)

Book Review from the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Le Mouvemente Communiste. by Jean Barrot. Editions Champ Libre.

We in this country have consistently argued the need for Socialism as a classless, wageless, Stateless world community. On the continent of Europe some groups have claimed to hold the same idea, even if our and their ideas as to how to achieve Socialism are quite different. Jean Barrot has been influenced by one such continental group, which necessarily raises the question whether he really does see Socialism as we do.

For him the aim of the working class movement is the sort of society we call "socialism" or "communism". He sees this as an immediate possibility. The world as a whole, he says, is "communisable", that is, ready for the establishment of Communism. There is no longer any need, as there was in Marx's day, for a period during which the means of production are further developed to the stage where they can provide abundance for all. This stage has already been reached. The immediate task of the Communist (-Socialist) revolution is to re-organise production with a view to eliminating waste and creating interesting and pleasant jobs. To do this, insists Barrot, involves the immediate abolition of production for sale, money, wages, prices and all the other manifestations of the social relation of "value".

Barrot argues that Marxian economics is not simply an explanation of how capitalism works but a social critique of the whole system; that for Marx capital and value are not things but social relations: the relation between stored-up dead labour (and its controllers) and living working labour (and those who embody it, the producers). Barrot maintains that an accurate description of a capitalist, is not simply (or rather, not necessarily at all) a legal owner of the means of production but any group, whether legal owners or not, which "manages capital". Capital is here to be considered of course as a social relation not a thing, so Barrot is not talking about technical factory managers and the like but about whoever actually controls dead labour with a view to exploiting living labour. He points out that at different times and different places, a great variety of people have performed this fucntion from cigar-smoking Victorian capitalists to ascetic army officers. Barrot says that this at least has the advantage of making clear to the working class that what they must abolish is not just "the capitalists" but the whole capitalist system of wage-labour and production for profit.

When it comes to how to establish Socialism our disagreement with Barrot begins, though even here he expresses views worth considering. For instance, he argues that since about 1914 capital has no longer had any progressive role to play in developing the means of production so that Socialists need not support, as Marx did in his day, the spread of capitalism at the expense of pre-capitalist economic and political systems. Their task is to strive for Communism (-Socialism).

But how? Barrot is emphatic in denying that the establishment of Socialism is at all a question of consciousness. According to him, it will be the result of a spontaneous revolutionary outburst which could occur at any time and which will sweep the workers on, almost in spite of themselves, to suppress commodity-production and inaugurate instead production-for-use. It would be nice if it would be as simple as this. But in our view, Barrot seriously underestimates the extent to which workers must understand and want Socialism before it can be established. Of course this is not a question, as Lenin taught, of some outside group "bringing consciousness" to the workers. Socialists consciousness will be the outcome of the practical experiences of the working class under capitalism, including hearing the case for Socialism from Socialist fellow workers (whose Socialist consciousness in turn will have emerged from earlier working class experiences). It's a two-way process in which experiencing the problems of capitalism and hearing the Socialist case interact, eventually producing a mass Socialist consciousness amongst the working class. Until this stage has been reached Socialism just cannot be established. Any attempt to do so, even if successful in dislodging the sitting ruling class, would soon give rise to some other group to take their place as the "managers of capital".

Barrot's book is difficult reading as he makes no concessions to the reader's possible difficulty in immediately grasping the difficult concepts he employs. Nevertheless it is encouraging to see in others the apparent agreement about what Socialism is, even if they're still mistaken as to how to get it.

Adam Buick 

Pathfinders: What’s Going on With the Rainforest? (2014)

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

Last month the BBC broadcast a documentary called ‘I bought a rainforest’, in which a good-hearted but slightly buffoonish wildlife cameraman embarks on a one-man crusade to save a small corner of Peruvian rainforest by buying it and pitching camp. As might be expected, the cameraman’s schoolboy quest to ride to the Amazon’s rescue like the Great White Colonial Hope is foiled at every turn. His ‘rainforest’ turns out to be pre-logged scrubland. Nevertheless he puts up ‘Protected Area’ signs which are promptly ignored. He can’t patrol the land and neither can the scarce rangers. He has a logging squatter he can’t get rid of. He has armed cocaine-growing neighbours he is terrified of. He visits the local indigenous tribe and despairs that they are forced to log their own land. He visits a gold miner working 16 hour days in toxic conditions for mere pennies. He accompanies loggers who can’t get work any other way. He wails that ‘the west doesn’t need mahogany’ and that one tree supports more biodiversity than the whole of Western Europe. Finally he comes to the miserable conclusion that if he was one of these people, he’d be a logger too.

The overall environmental message of this generally insightful and sympathetic documentary is that the Amazon is doomed and so are we. Recent reports add to the gloom, with Brazil’s environment minister citing a 28 percent increase in deforestation last year (e.g. Al Jazeera, 15 November 2013).

What the reports often don’t say is that this is an anomalous ‘uptick’ after the lowest rate of deforestation on record. Deforestation has seen a 70 percent decline since 2004. Despite five decades of clearance over 80 percent of the Amazon is still intact. So is the rainforest doomed or not?

Unhelpfully, the media confuses matters with its preference for bad news over good, and its cavalier use of different metrics to make things look worse. For example, a report about gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/ohnyumf) cites an annual clearance of 15,180 acres of forest since 2008, twice previous estimates. The reason it is twice previous estimates is that in 2008 there was a global credit crunch and the price of gold went through the roof, sparking a Peruvian gold rush which, as happened before in the 1980s, will peter out as the price of gold crashes.  But 15,180 acres is just over 61 square kilometres. At that rate of clearance and assuming no grow-back (which is impossible), it would take 13,000 years to clear the Peruvian Amazon, and 88,000 years to clear the whole rainforest. The only reason to use acreage as a metric is that it gives a big fat number.

Bucking the trend, the science press likes to emphasise good news over bad, promoting the image of science as a positive force in society. So we get ‘Deforestation Success Stories’ from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which cites a 50 percent increase in protected areas, good progress towards a halt to agricultural clearance by 2020 and towards net zero deforestation by means of compensating regrowth elsewhere (ucsusa.org and New Scientist, 14 June). UCS wants to motivate us, not demoralise us: ‘There are enough examples of success, some very rapid and far-reaching, to encourage continuing the global effort—and indeed, stepping it up’ (ucsusa.org).

As most people already know, the overwhelming cause of Amazon deforestation is beef ranching (65-70 percent – an area the size of France). 5 - 10 percent is ‘Big Ag’, mainly soya for biofuels and animal feed (including dog food), 20 – 25 percent is subsistence farming by locals. Logging is around 2 – 3 percent, while all others including mining, fires, roads, settlements and dams account for just 1 – 2 percent.

So what happened in 2004-5 to cause such a massive drop in clearance rates? First, studies estimating that deforestation caused 17 – 29 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions provoked a raft of control measures, which included punitive Forest Code laws by Brazil outlawing logging and imposing restrictions on beef and soya producers, who responded by making better use of existing cleared land. Second, the Brazilian real strengthened against the dollar, weakening Brazilian beef exports, and world soybean prices also fell by more than 25 percent. The 2008 financial crash further reduced profitability and consequent deforestation. As profits went down, more trees stayed up.

With last year’s 28 percent increase in clearance, the signs are that this has turned around. Soy is once again up and the real is down. Cattle and soya farming intensification is starting to hit a wall, while the Forest Code has been revised (i.e. revoked). This has outraged environmentalists, but the truth is that none of the control programmes were working. Most are voluntary, or rely on threats rather than incentives. The UN REDD+ scheme to compensate rainforest countries for preserving primary forest has been ‘gamed’ by dodgy companies and ‘carbon cowboys’ and none of the money has gone to the indigenous tribes it was aimed at. In short, the fate of the rainforest is inextricably bound up with the fortunes of international capitalism. As the world economy once again shifts into boom mode, the gears will once again start shifting on the Amazon tractors, trucks and bulldozers.

But statistics can only tell you so much. The BBC documentary instead focussed on the human drama, and it’s here that you see the real bind that capitalism puts people in.

Nothing brings home the reality of Amazonian poverty like seeing a child, brain-damaged from an industrial machine, smiling vacantly while her mother weeps and her father explains with admirable dignity why he’s obliged to continue defying the rich cameraman’s wishes.  Nothing brings home the human cost of gold mining like seeing a young boy standing for an hour in a bucket of mercury solution, as if he’s treading grapes. Nothing confounds the moral mind like the religious logger who loves the forest, and the plea ‘what will you pay me NOT to cut this tree down?’ And nothing so eloquently and poignantly captures the impotence of western liberal thinking like the cameraman agonising over how to choose between trees and people.

For socialists the problem is not trees versus people, but trees and people versus capitalism. The cameraman doesn’t understand this, not because it’s a hidden problem but because conversely it’s too enormous to comprehend. It’s the forest that he can’t see for the trees.

We never claim that socialism would have no problems. But by sharing the world democratically, without leaders and without buying and selling property, an entire class of ‘commodification’ problems would certainly vanish. The Amazon is the world’s greatest ‘tragedy of the commons’, where land of value to everyone is ruined by the exploitation of private ownership and trade relations. Take it into common ownership and custodianship, and our most important carbon sink and biodiversity hothouse laboratory can certainly be rescued, and indeed made to thrive.

Paddy Shannon

A Problematic Friend (1977)

Book Review from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack London: The Man, the Writer, the Rebel by Robert Barltrop. Pluto Press, £4.50 hardback (illustrated).

Anyone undertaking a biography of Jack London is assuming a task that appears larger than life. More like a legend than a man and the image of the adventure stories that in part made him famous, London has an appeal that few stories can match.

Inevitably such a man is full of contradictions and to some extent these are left unexplained: London's desire to be accepted by the society members he despised; his racial hatred of the Japanese yet his ability to call Japanese revolutionaries his "brothers"; his extreme generosity and yet his overwhelming desire for money, and other inconsistencies. But Robert Barltrop does manage a reasonably rounded whole. Dealing with London's life in chronological order, he starts with a poor and rough beginning, wild adventures, his yearnings to write and his urge to consume literature, his early disappointments, and the almost fairy-tale rise to popular prominence. His political development until this stage is also carefully documented, and we see the conversion of the protester into an allegedly Socialist propagandist.

Alongside this are developed the personal characteristics which were to destroy him: above all the feelings that whatever he did had to be done better than anyone else, including drinking. The success years are catalogued with much sympathetic detail; in particular the visit to London and the writing of The People of the Abyss. This extraordinary description of the people living in slums at the turn of the century ("I am made sick by this human hellhole called the East End") is described as the only truly sincere book he wrote. His divorce and instant remarriage caused a scandal which affected his book sales as the press turned on him. With a truly remarkable strength of will London battled on, writing, indulging in extravagant schemes, madly building boats and houses and travelling with his second wife. The rather pathetic decline is then explained: the burning down of an engine that had been ready to take on the world, and the ultimate futile death, probably by suicide.

Writing poured out of London as drink poured into him, excessively. A great merit of this book is making the criticism of London's literary output readable in itself and illustrative of the intellectual progress of the man. Against such a vivid background there is little danger that the more "academic" parts of the book are going to turn boring. The writer gives telling criticisms of London's writings and politics. He gives a very full analysis of The Iron Heel, London's most successful (in terms of continuing sales) political story. Rejecting the usual viewpoint—including Trotsky's—that the book predicts the rise of fascism, he claims that by the time London wrote it he had virtually rejected Socialist ideas. Depressed at finding that the revolution was not coming as quickly as expected, he confirmed his ultimate fallacy, the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race and the crude representation of the theories of Darwin.

Barltrop suggests that London never really got to grips with the essentials of Marxian economics, and describes The Iron Heel as London's argument why Socialism could not come about in the foreseeable future. Despite his lectures on Socialism, donations for the cause, etc., London was "without understanding of how society works; the virile combative imagery was the guise of smatterings". The writer concludes that The Iron Heel was not far from being an anti-Socialist work. One might make the same condemnation of London himself.

Despite praise for a most unusual literary figure, London's lack of understanding condemns him to the category of those who have chased the rainbow of illusion and helped others to indulge in the same fruitless escapade. London was a man with a passion against much of what was (and is) wrong in society. Yet his failures illustrate that it is not sufficient merely to be a very angry young man; knowledge of both cause and solution is required. Despite London's ability to study nineteen hours a day, he chose easy paths and skimped understanding. He always found studying "easy", but the techniques he had used for passing exams and beating the bourgeois whom he despised (hasty cramming and superficial answers) are totally inappropriate for comprehension of Capital and its conclusions.

The writer's summary of London life is: "Its various aspects are of a personality whose strengths and weaknesses alike were invited to over-expression by the hurly-burly of the time. It is possible to regard them all and still feel affection as for a problematic friend." When the Workers' Socialist Party (forerunner of our companion party the WSP of America) was formed and wrote to London just before his death with a copy of their manifesto, his reply (according to Barltrop his last political statement) was that he wished them well but could not involve himself. Therein lies the consummating summary of all those who spend their lives in the bitterness of opposition to capitalism but have failed to take the necessary steps to understand the cause of their fury. The political actions of such people, like those of Jack London, are doomed to impotence.

The biography — which makes several mentions of SPGB members — is an excellent illustration of that fundamental lesson. As Marx wrote of Proudhon (in a letter to P. V. Annenkov in 1846): "a man who has not understood the present state of society may be expected to understand still less the movement which is tending to overthrow it, and the literary expression of this revolutionary movement."

Ronnie Warrington

Stereotypes in print (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's role is no longer to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Simpler, more effective birth control has meant that women are freed from the risks and hardships of frequent childbirth. Nevertheless most continue to play a role that is subservient to men, both at home and at work. The female sexual stereotype persists in defining women as the weaker sex - gentle, caring, emotional and unassertive. Traditionally women are admired for being pretty, caring and retiring. The traditional role of men, in contrast, is the authority figure in the family, responsible for providing food and shelter. Men are supposed to be physically strong, aggressive, unhampered by gentleness and emotion.

Biological differences are real enough - women are built to bear children, men to father children and these biological differences dominate relations between the sexes, confining women and men within sexual stereotypes. Women and men respond to their environment and to their biological role in life; therefore many women today "enjoy" a dual role as homemaker and worker resulting in them having to try to balance the responsibilities of work and home, fitting work in around shopping, cooking and cleaning.

In what little time is left over from these activities women may choose to relax by reading some of the bewildering array of homemaking magazines available to them but for which there is no equivalent for men. Men's magazines consist of periodicals on hobbies, sport and women as sex objects. Nothing on running a home, how to make the housekeeping go further, how to get a cleaner wash or how to make up to look attractive to the opposite sex. In magazines designed for the male interest women appear only as decoration, reinforcing their subservient position in society at large. Media images portray women simultaneously as sex objects, as independent (but still sexually attractive), as career women, as doting mothers obsessed with food and clean laundry.

The format of women's magazines can be explained by the fact that each is competing for sales, therefore each must appeal to the broadest section of the female population by including something for everyone. What does a typical women's weekly contain? A mixture of articles on homemaking, health, fashion, competitions, special features and possibly politics interspersed with a lot of advertisements and a horoscope column.

Competitions include an opportunity to "Win A Man" from a computer dating agency by listing his personal attributes in order of importance. Should he be tall, handsome, professional, educated? Another offers a prize of a cleaning person for six months if "you can tell us in no more than 35 witty words  . . . " For those women who have already found the man of their dreams and want to hold onto him a little longer there is a chance to win a set of pots and pans by answering four simple questions.

Lavishly illustrated recipe pages inform women that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach but in case they're too liberal with the cholestorol, the insurance companies reassure women that for a small payment they won't be left penniless in widowhood. "Romance" features highly - recipes for romance, romantic lighting for the home - but one can't be overweight and attractive to the opposite sex so articles on health include numerous fad diets and exercises to keep bums and other bumps in shape.

Fashion articles demonstrate how to dress and make up to look "sexy" and there is a proliferation of homemaking articles guaranteed to make readers perfect wives. Scattered throughout the magazines are adverts for food - some of them ambiguous - "What are you giving your old man tonight?" Not, not a dose of sexual subservience, but a packet of frozen hamburgers. For those who can't manage the housekeeping. there are plenty of ads for mail order catalogues, all of them offering a wide selection of goods to be paid for on the Never-Never.

Tampon manufacturers battle to sell their products using all sorts of technical diagrams and jargon - but disguise the possibility of toxic shock syndrome in very small print. 

The "Politics" column (if there is one) will most likely deal with some of the less attractive aspects of being female in capitalist society - for example one column bemoans the lack of screening facilities for early detection of breast and cervical cancer although, apart from criticising government underfunding of these health services, there is little political comment.

The ideas put across in these magazines occupy women's minds with trivia but at the same time subtly reinforce the dominant values of capitalist society, of privacy, family and home. Even those magazines which claim to appeal to the "liberated" woman concede only that she has an equal place in the job market - liberated in so far as she may not depend on a man to dole out the housekeeping. She is free to go out and obtain it for herself by selling her mental and physical energies to an employer for a wage or salary.

True liberation from traditional roles will only come through a partnership of men and women united in their desire for socialism. How might socialism change women's position? For a start, they will be on an equal footing with men. Neither will be obliged to sell their labour power to a capitalist class in order to survive. In addition women will be freed from their role in life. HUman beings will share all the tasks necessary to run society equally and in partnership with one another and we won't need glossy magazines to tell us how to do it.

Cathy Gillespie

Action Replay: Play the Game (2014)

The Action Replay column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Premier League, Formula One and Wimbledon are a tiny tip of a very large iceberg in terms of sporting participation. Most of those who play of an evening or a weekend are amateurs of varying degrees of ability, taking part for fun, for exercise, for bonding with their mates. Many kids play or run or jump or swim, not so that they can win but so they can enjoy themselves, usually as part of a team.

Back in April the MCC and the cricket charity Chance to Shine released the results of a survey they had commissioned, of 8-to-16-year-olds and their parents. The headline finding was that nearly two-thirds of the children said they would not be bothered if the competitive element was removed from school sport. At the same time, almost one parent in four said they would be less interested in their offspring’s sporting activity if there was no competition involved.

Wasim Khan, the head of the charity concerned, said, ‘It is worrying to see that so many children would be relieved to see competition removed from sport … We want to teach children the importance of playing sport competitively and fairly, and for them to see the benefits that it can bring to their lives.’

In another comment on these findings, Steve Bull, described as a performance psychologist, argued: ‘Competitive sport is a great way of preparing young people for the “real world” in which things will not always go their way. Learning how to deal with adversity, bounce back from disappointment and accept that luck isn’t always on your side are important lessons for children to absorb before they step out in to the world of work’ (Observer, 27 April).

So there you have it: school sport can prepare you for the knocks you are likely to meet later in life, as competitive capitalism throws its worst at you. Don’t complain or resist too much, just toughen up and realise that things won’t always go your way.

The Duke of Wellington famously said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, though apparently he was referring to how he learned to survive in fistfights rather than his prowess at cricket. But your schooldays don’t just fill your heads with religious or patriotic nonsense, they also exploit sport to help you learn how to cope with losing.

Paul Bennett

A Stretch of Hard Labour (1964)

Editorial from the November 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The noise and the ballyhoo are over for the time being, and another Labour government has scraped into power. The opinion pollsters can sit back with a sigh and claim vindication for their sampling methods, while Tory ex ministers can take the rest which, some of them have been unkindly hinting, their colleagues need so badly.

There is not much doubt that under Wilson's leadership the Labour Party has managed to paper over some of the cracks between its various factions and fight generally as a well planned and disciplined force. By comparison, the Conservative morale sank lower as the campaign went on and the foolish remarks of such political clowns as Quintin Hogg must have been like so many plums dropping right into the Labour leader's lap.

Just like their Tory and Liberal opponents, the Labour Party fought the election on a mass of promises; promises to solve the problems which they promised to solve when they last rose to power nearly twenty years ago. Housing and health, pensions and peace, education and unemployment, all those things which workers are so sensitive about, were given a merciless hammering by Labour spokesmen up and down the country. It was an astute campaign, and it just succeeded.

But now that the pendulum has swung a little, let us ask ourselves how much Wilson's promises are really worth. Does he really stand much chance of remedying the countless ills which so many politicians before him have failed to remedy? The Guardian of October 12th called him "a man with a heart full of indignation and humanity" but what will they call him when we get the multitude of excuses when his government fails to deliver the goods? We have had excuses from the Labour Party before. We had them in 1924 and again in 1931, when they blamed their failures on to the lack of a working majority. Will they try the same line this time, when their majority is so small? Let us prick that particular balloon before it leaves the ground. The Labour Party have taken power in the full knowledge of their standing in Parliament. They say that they intend to give "strong" government and to carry out their full programme. They are confident now. Let them remember this when the time comes for apologies and excuses.

In fact, the evils from which we suffer, and which political parties are always promising to cure, spring directly from the very social system of capitalism which statesmen seek to administer. In a world of minority ownership of the means of life and the production of goods for profit, it is inevitable that the non-owning majority will be the ones to suffer, in spite of all the politicians' promises.

The Labour Party does not want the abolition of this setup. However much Wilson may prattle about "government of the people, by the whole people, and for the whole people" the fact remains that his government will administer British capitalism in the only way open to them—in the interests of the British capitalist class. Take a look at the salient points in Labour's election programme. Up with production, increase exports, reduce imports, make British goods more competitive, work harder and keep wages in check. No capitalist would seriously quarrel with such a policy, and it does not differ in essentials from those of the other two parties.

Under the new Labour government, then, it will be very much business as usual for the ruling class—and for the man in the street as well. Workers will still have to struggle to make both ends meet amidst the increasing strains of a competitive world. They will have to put up with the inferior standards associated with working class existence, and when they come out on strike, they will be opposed just as much by Wilson as they have been by Home. That much we can gather from the Labour leader's words only two days before the poll, when he promised "much tougher action" from his government in dealing with such matters as the London Underground strike.

And just as surely the real issue—capitalism or Socialism—will still be as urgent as ever. The Socialist Party of Great Britain will continue to draw attention to it.

Proper Gander: Hunger For Anger (2014)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Angry customers! Angry motorists! Angry countryfolk! Angry couples!’, all set to an urgent techno soundtrack and growling narration. Watching Channel 5’s Angry Britain: Mean Streets is like getting a testosterone-and-adrenaline-fuelled smack in the mouth. The programme hits us with scenes of public violence filmed mostly on smartphones and camcorders. For example, to show that our roads are a ‘cesspit of hatred’, a vigilante cyclist records his various altercations with irate, bleeped-out drivers. The show is so eager to make the point that Britain is ‘a place where rage is all the rage’ that each piece of fury-footage is repeated five or six times. The programme tries to justify its voyeurism through its ‘Anger Expert’ talking heads. A disgruntled customer videoed trashing a mobile phone shop is said to be ‘taking on the faceless corporation’. Scaled up by several thousand is the wrath directed at another symbol of capitalism, the Tory HQ in Millbank, London. In 2010, protesting students stormed the building, and largely aimed their rage at private property rather than individuals, unlike the riot police.

There is also footage of hunt saboteurs in action, with most of the aggression coming from the huntsmen. This shows that political anger has a different target to anger directed at an individual, although the programme tends to conflate the two. All the anger is caused by the system, even when it’s not directed back at it. The woman shown chucking her shopping at a man is probably frustrated by being unable to live a fulfilled life, and road rage is surely caused by already stressed-out workers negotiating badly-planned streets. Even the way the scenes are recorded tells us something about how capitalism encourages people to relate to each other. The shopping-thrower is videoed through twitching curtains by an unseen giggler, much like the man in the phone shop is filmed by excited onlookers through a window. Ironically, watching Angry Britain is enough to make you fired-up about changing our alienating society.

Mike Foster

Feminist future (1979)

Book Review from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every piece of art can't contain everything everybody would like to say . . . That's the slogan mentality at work, as if there were certain holy words that must always be named.

Thus one of the characters in Marge Piercy's science fiction novel Woman On The Edge Of Time* sums up the author's approach to writing a political story about present and future society without the usual incantation of political jargon. The future society which she so desirably depicts, though not named as such, is socialist in our terms: a moneyless society of common ownership based upon voluntary co-operation, with people contributing according to ability and taking according to need.

The story focuses on an inmate of a mental 'hospital', Connie Ramos. A Mexican-American woman, she is a victim of both poverty and colour prejudice and so is easy prey for the authorities. Having been committed to the institution once, she is sent back on the evidence of a pimp who Connie attacked with a bottle to protect her niece from a beating. She was committed the first time for hitting her daughter Angie although, as she says, "Most people hit kids. But if you were on welfare and on probation and the whole social pigeon-holing establishment had the right to trek regularly through your kitchen looking in the closets and under the bed, counting the bedbugs and your shoes, you had better not hit your kid once."

At a time when child battering is in the news, the author's fictional account shows how poverty can drive a loving parent to violence, and the palpable fact that they are as much victims of capitalist society as are the battered kids. Connie is living on welfare in a one-room flat following her husband's death in prison after a drug experiment. She wakes to Angie's screaming:

. . . She came staggering off the couch and saw that Angie, in kicking the table, in kicking the wall - every blow the blow of a hammer on her aching head - had kicked a hole in her lousy cheap shoes. Those were the only shoes Angie had, and where in hell was Connie going to get her another pair? Angie couldn't go out without shoes. There rose before Connie the long maze of conversations with her caseworker, of explanations, of pleas and forms in triplicate and quadruplicate and trips down to the welfare office to wait all day, first outside in the cold and then inside in line, for ever and ever for a lousy cheap pair of shoes to replace the lousy cheap pair Angie had just destroyed.
"You fucking kid!" she screamed, and hit her. Hit too hard. Knocked her across the room into the door. Angie's arm struck the heavy metal bolt of the police lock, and her wrist broke. The act was past in a moment. The consequences would go on as long as she breathed.

In the course of Connie's incarceration every protest is taken as 'a sign of sickness', and people in a so-called hospital are drugged into zombies. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that such institutions are used by the establishment against, in particular, underprivileged and inarticulate people as "just another way of getting busted', as a sort of warehouse fit only to 'store human machinery' broken by misuse. The story calls into question society's definition of madness.

Contrasted with today's sordid world is Mattapoisett, a village in a future time. Visions of the future often tend to depend almost totally on a 'back to nature' attitude. Unusually, this utopia encompasses both renewable, non-polluting energy sources of the 'small is beautiful' philosophy, and the application of advanced communications technology and machinery to carry out boring or repetitive work. Since unnecessary jobs like 'counting money and moving it about' have been abolished and necessary work is shared out, the workload is reduced to a minimum.

The most interesting aspect of this utopia is not the science fiction 'hardware' but the human relationships which are explored. Mattapoisett is a truly democratic society. Not only are the mechanics of decision-making democratic - local requirements are discussed with 'reps' chosen by lot each year who then meet, discuss and decide at planning councils - but social relationships are too. There are none of the hallmarks of authoritarianism or patriarchy here. No bosses, no leaders, no government. Gone too is that most pernicious institution, the nuclear family. School - that other fearsome institution - has also changed, with the artificial barriers between learning and doing in the real world removed. Children are treated as human beings, totally integrated and contributing to the community in their own right.

Since the characters are given unusual but charming names such as Morningstar, clues are rarely given to test sex role assumptions. Only Connie, the outsider, refers to the women and men as she or he, Mattapoisettians having no gender noun, using 'person' or 'per' for short. Assumptions about sexual and emotional relationships are also tested as the Mattapoisettians are no longer constrained by the concept of heterosexual monogamy.

There is little mention of how the author envisages change to a new society other than 'a thirty year war that culminated in a revolution'. A continuing war with the 'Richies' who have control of the 'space platforms, the moon, and Antarctica' supported by a population of androids, robots and cybernauts, is envisaged.

Utopian novels like Woman On The Edge Of Time are important for visualising a better future. By putting flesh on the theoretical bones of socialism they may inspire people to think about changing the world possibly as much a a library full of books on political science and economy. But there is another important reason. If socialism is to become more than a dream then all of us are going to be discussing how we each want to see the world shaped.

Finishing this book is like waking up thinking it's the weekend, only to find you've been dreaming and it's really Monday morning and WORK AGAIN! Capitalism is still with us, and the last thing to be complacent about is getting rid of it.

Those of your time who fought hard for change, often they had myths that a revolution was inevitable. But nothing is  . . . we are only one possible future. 

Paul Moody

*The Women's Press, paperback £1.95