Remembering the Past (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Next month will be the centenary of the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. To mark this, the Socialist Standard will be expanded to 48 pages (the price will remain the same), with articles about the activities of the Socialist Party over the decades and how others have seen these as well as on our specific contributions to the development of socialist theory. In anticipation, we publish below some of the contributions we have received.

Glasgow Branch

To say times were hard when Glasgow branch was formed in 1924 would be a serious understatement. The branch consisted of working men, only some of whom had jobs, and money was so scarce that in the early days branch meetings were sometimes held in the open because members couldn’t afford to rent a hall.

If funds were lacking then energy and commitment were not, so members threw themselves into making the party known in the city. John Higgins, the first branch secretary, was particularly effective at this and his meetings Glasgow Green gave many Glaswegians their first introduction to the party’s case.

To branch members knowledge meant everything and they were determined to have as much of it as they could, so classes on Marxist theory, logic, etc, were an essential feature, but the main activity was always indoor and, especially, outdoor meetings. Glasgow branch always had a reputation for having first-class speakers and even our opponents, whatever else they thought of us, conceded that.

Two outstanding examples of this were Alex Shaw and Tony Mulheron. Shaw was an old-time street corner orator with an ability to have his audiences in stitches – his lampooning of some of Glasgow’s left-wing folk heroes, especially the “Red Clydesiders”, was hilarious. Mulheron, by contrast, was in his element on the indoor platform. Tony was extremely articulate and had a witty, flamboyant speaking style that could turn even the driest-sounding theoretical subject into an entertainment.

During the war activities were stepped up. Ever more meetings were held and new, younger speakers came forward. The wartime scene was brightened by visits from London speakers taking a break from the Blitz and, later on, doodlebugs and V2 rockets.

After “peace” was declared the momentum was maintained and the branch’s biggest ever audiences attended meetings at the St. Andrew’s Halls and the Cosmo cinema. Membership increased and the branch even acquired its own premises. In 1949 a second branch was formed in the city and this lasted until 1961.

In the late 1950s an influx of younger members revitalised activities, and in the 1960s candidates were fielded in three parliamentary and five municipal elections. More outdoor speaking stances were opened and there were public debates aplenty with Labourites, Leninists and others.

Added to all this was a winter programme of Sunday evening indoor meetings which ran from October to April and continued for many years. This meant that members had to wrack their brains to come up with titles for around 30 meetings every winter!

Today the old propaganda methods, which were the branch’s strength, are all but finished. People will no longer come to indoor meetings or stop and listen to those held outdoors, and this means that the branch has had to adapt to the new situation. Now we organize day schools, discussion groups, hand out leaflets at demos, provide speakers and other assistance for party activities elsewhere in the country etc.

Glasgow branch has for eighty years played its part in the party’s activities. Its members have, in the past, given generously of their time, effort and abilities, and today’s members, despite very different and difficult conditions, strive to maintain this record.

 V.V.

Memories of Camberwell Branch

At the end of World War II and a landslide victory for the Labour Party, there was a greater public interest in politics. The Communist Party had a large number of members as a result of pro-Russia sentiment at the end of the war. During this period the Camberwell Branch was formed with about a dozen members. A decent room was hired from the Labour Party in Camberwell. The local MP Freda Corbett used to enter the room apologising for disturbing the meeting. She was unaware of the fact that we were not the Labour Party. When the SPGB contested Paddington North in 1945, realising we were not the Labour Party we were given notice to quit.

The branch held meetings on Sundays at East Street, Walworth market place. These took place at 12 o’clock midday. The local stall-holders regarded our arrival with suspicion and puzzlement. They could not figure out what was in it for us. However, when we sold Party literature and took collections they considered we were getting the proceeds.

The meetings were successful. Only one meeting could be held at a time because of Home Office regulations. The Communist Party who, locally, had many more members were competing with us for the pitch and on one or two occasions they succeeded. The Camberwell Branch forced a vote to get to the meeting site earlier in order to “book the pitch”. This resulted in us getting there at one o’clock in the morning, so the pitch could be occupied. The Communist Party stopped competing and disappeared from East Street for many months.

A handful of dedicated socialists saw off an organisation with several hundred local members. The Communist Party today is virtually non-existent . . . The Socialist Party is still alive.

T.L.

Sweden

Since the beginning of the 1970s there have been socialists in Sweden, sharing the ideas of the World Socialist Movement. For a number of years some of them produced a journal, Världssocialism (World Socialism). Many of the articles in it were translations from the Socialist Standard.

After several years of informal work with Världssocialism and other socialist activities a handful of socialists living in Uppsala and Stockholm decided to organise themselves formally as Världssocialistiska Gruppen (the World Socialist Group). At its first meeting in Uppsala on Saturday 20 January 1979 the group adopted a slightly modified version of the Object and Declaration of Principles of the Companion Parties of Socialism. The modifications had to do with the fact that the Group was not a political party, but had as its object to work for the formation of a Socialist Party in Sweden.

The work of the Group centred on the production of a series of pamphlets called Världssocialistiska häften. The first of these booklets was a translation of the SPGB-pamphlet Questions of the Day. Other issues of Världssocialistiska häften dealt with Soviet state capitalism, capitalism and war, Marxism 100 years after Marx´ death, and how life is in capitalism and can be in socialism.

Most of the members and a few sympathizers were in their twenties when the group was formed. After a few years, as some of them established families or got jobs in other places -- and one or two lost interest in socialism altogether - it became increasingly difficult to maintain organised activities. During the past ten years or so Världssocialistiska Gruppen, although not formally dissolved, has not carried out any organised activities. Individual members read the Socialist Standard and sometimes see each other.

Hopefully there are people in Sweden who in the not too distant future will find that they agree with the object and principles of the World Socialist Movement and then take action in order to reawaken the group. To achieve its object, the establishment of a Socialist Party in Sweden, will be a tiny task compared with bringing about the object of such a party.

Åke Spross, Uppsala, Sweden

Socialist jailed in Sweden - "Times" uninterested (1973)

From the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

We publish below a copy of a letter sent to the Editor of The Times but not published.

Sir,

Presumably it was the unexpectedness of the suggestion in the Freedom House study that civil rights are at risk in Sweden that led you to headline (2/1/73) this aspect of Peter Strafford's report from New York. It comes as no surprise to us. At this very moment our comrade Ake Spross, who shares our stand against all war whether classed as national defence or imperialist aggression, is in prison for refusing to join the army of a country much publicised as a haven for G.I.'s objections to their government's current war. His incarceration may be less harsh in other countries but the very efficiency of Swedish state-capitalism will ensure that upon release employment prospects in his chosen field will be considerably diminished.  Sweden as a refuge evidently does not extend to the Socialist objectors to service in her own forces.

Yours truly,

K. Knight,

2 January 1973                                                                                           General Secretary

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Someone else's fantasy (1987)

Film Review from the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rita, Sue and Bob Too! generated considerable local interest in Bradford where I saw the film. It was, after all, written by local dramatist Andrea Dunbar and set in and around Bradford's own Buttershaw estate. What I had expected was cinema vérité along the lines of Letter to Brezhnev - a witty, honest, warts-and-all look at working-class life in Kirkby. The two films do share some common features: both are concerned with two girls, loud-mouthed and looking for escape. In Letter to Brezhnev it was the kind of escape that comes when work ends and "life" begins; getting dressed up, night-clubbing and, ultimately, for one of them, "romance" with a Russian sailor and the irony of "escape" to a country that, according to western propaganda, most people want to escape from.

Rita and Sue (Siobhan Finneran and Michelle Holmes), by contrast, are schoolgirls seeking to escape from the deprived conditions of a rundown estate where they are variously subjected to drunken fatehrs, family violence and dismantled motorcycles in the kitchen (the contemporary equivalent of the "coal in the bath: stereotype of working-class life?). Their escape, at first, consists in little more than baby-sitting in a posh house where they can not only enjoy the home comforts on offer but get paid for it as well.

However the baby-sitting quickly degenerates into an excuse for indulging someone else's fantasy (or so it seems) of the over-sexed older man and two insatiable under-aged girls. He is Bob (George Costigan) whose children Rita and Sue mind while he is out with his wife. While driving the girls home he makes a detour to take in a quick one (or, in this case, two) on the way. This sexual encounter is, we are supposed to believe, such an ecstatic experience for all concerned that the girls throw caution to the wind and take every opportunity to take turns at being first. If this sounds like the kind of sexual fantasy peddled by soft-porn newspapers, then Bob's wife is presented in equally hackneyed form as the reason for his peccadiloes—hysterical, uptight and disinterested in sex.

She discovers that hubby is screwing the babysitters, takes the kids and leaves him. Bob promptly installs Rita (or was it Sue)) who is by now pregnant, as his new housekeeper in the matrimonial home. At this point the story becomes as rapid as Bob's couplings. Sue, furious at what she sees as her best mate's betrayal, takes up with a romantically inclined Pakistani and quickly moves into an unromantic back-to-back with him and his sister's family. Rita has a miscarriage and Sue visits her in hospital. Bob gives her a lift home. They are seen by the Pakistani boyfriend who becomes jealous and violent. Sue kicks him in the balls and leaves him to return to the ménage à trois with Bob and Sue, in what we are supposed to see as a happy ending.

The film purports to be "progressive" although it's difficult to see why. It uses a number of pernicious stereotypes of working-class people—drunken, amoral, depraved—while at the same time the only too real squalor, deprivation and poverty of life at the bottom of the heap is portrayed as something that can be escaped from through sex. Now, it may well be the case that for some people some of the time, sex is a refuge from the harsh reality of capitalism. It is certainly "sold" to us in that way. But the depiction of sex in this film, while depressingly realistic, no doubt (we were treated to an extended lecture on condoms which would probably qualify as an AIDS commercial), was not an answer but very much part of the problem.

Janie Percy-Smith 

Letter From Europe: Communists in Government (1981)

The Letter From Europe Column from the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the zig . . . the zag. After denouncing for the past three years or so years Francois Mitterrand and his PS as reformists, who simply wanted to "manage the crisis" and run capitalism, the French Communist Party (PC) now has four Ministers in the government formed by Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy, following the sweeping PS victory in the June General Elections.

The PC will now itself be participating in the government of capitalism. Not for the first time though, since it also had Ministers from 1944 to 1947. At the time PC leaders toured the country urging workers to work harder and denouncing strikes as a "weapon of the trusts". It was probably partly in the hope that they will again do this that Mitterrand decided to admit them to his government (he didn't have to, since his party has an absolute majority in the National Assembly.)

In this respect there was a significant phrase in the agreement signed in the night of 22/3 June between the PS and the PC and which paved the way for the appointment of the PC Ministers. After stating that the two parties pledged themselves to apply Mitterrand's election programme with "flawless solidarity" at government level, it went on to state they would do the same at regional and local level and "in the enterprises". In other words, the PC cells in the factories are also committed to applying and defending the policies of the PS-PC government. Since its cells in the factories are the means by which the PC controls the main trade union federation, the CGT, in effect this organisation too will tend to become, in Lenin's contemptuous phrase describing his idea of the role of trade unions under the Bolsheviks, a "transmission belt" for the PS-PC government. Of course this won't be easy to implement and in the long run the workers will spontaneously kick against it, but once again it shows how being linked to a political party weakens the effectiveness of trade unions in the defence of their members' wages and conditions.

This pledge is also contrary to what the PC was saying right up to the first round of the presidential elections on 26 April, that "change" could only be imposed by the struggle of the workers and not left to a PS President. We could quote many passages to this effect from Charles Fiterman, the No. 2 in the PC hierarchy and now Minister of Transport. For instance, in Avancees No 5, March 1981), after warning against giving a blank cheque to Mitterrand and as a miracle man ("homme providentiel"), he wrote that the PC "calls on the workers not to delegate their responsibilities, but to struggle to impose change". It was certainly because the PC had employed such language that the PS used its immensely superior bargaining position after the General Election to impose the insertion of this reference to solidarity "in the enterprises" on the PC. Has the PC sincerely accepted this? We doubt it (people who change their line so often and so rapidly just can't be sincere), but then that's not our problem.

Reformist Euphoria
At the moment it is all euphoria in trade union circles and a number of measure have improved, for the time being at least, the situation of many workers. The minimum wage, family allowances, pensions, rent allowances have all been increased. The big question, however, is: will it last? Will this increase in workers' purchasing power be sustained or will it be eaten up by rising prices or taken away by austerity?

Unlike the Labour Party in Britain or the SPD in Germany, the PS in France has never really had any experience of governing capitalism, at least not on its own. This is why reformist illusions about the ability of the government to make the economy work in the interests of ordinary people are so strongly entrenched in the PS, at all levels including Ministers.

Take their economic thinking. It is simple and apparently logical: the way out of the crisis is to give workers more money to spend; their purchases will then stimulate production so starting off the process of recovery. This underconsumptionist view of the cause and way out of the crisis is shared by the PC, but is quite mistaken and a policy based upon it can only lead to one result: increased inflation while the crisis, which is a world crisis, continues.

The Minister of Finance, Jacques Delors (who had some experience of governing capitalism when he was adviser to a Gaullist Prime Minster between 1969 and 1972) understands a little more how capitalism works than most of his colleagues (relatively speaking that is, since although not a crude underconsumptionist he is still a Keynsian). He defends the new government's policy of increasing popular consumption, not as a way out of the crisis but as an anticipation of the recovery he sees coming in the world economy: "we are wanting to anticipate, but in a reasonable way, the recovery of the economy at world level" (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1 June).

The reflation measures already taken by the Government . . .  are a limited anticipation of the recovery of the world economy which the experts foresee for the end of this year or the beginning og the next. (The Times 24 June).

In other words, he at least recognises that the crisis in France is not caused by internal underconsumption (and so cannot be solved by increasing purchasing power) but that it is part of the general world capitalist crisis. This was in fact what ex-President Giscard and his Prime Minister Barre tried to explain during the presidential election campaign, but they weren't able to convince people. PS (and PC) propaganda to the effect that Barre deliberately chose to keep the crisis and unemployment going because they were heartless men was more successful. Now—poetic justice perhaps—they in turn have been given a chance to run capitalism in a crisis. They will discover that the policy a government pursues is not a question of the feelings or motives of its members—of being concerned—but of what the economic situation permits, and dictates.

Riding for a Fall
If Delors is proved wrong in his prediction/hope that the recovery in the world economy will begin within a year, where will the government be then?  Unemployment will not have been reduced (except by converting some of the into civil servants) but inflation will have increased. The government has proclaimed that its social reform measures will not be financed by the printing press, but partly by taxing the rich and partly from the extra tax and social security contributions that would result from the increased employment it hopes its policies will bring.

If unemployment remains at a high level, as it inevitably will of the world economy doesn't recover, they will be faced with a gaping budgetary deficit. They will then have a choice: cut back on the social reform measures or have recourse to the printing press. If other reformist governments who want to appear friendly to the trade unions are anything to go by, they will choose the latter. The resulting inflation will not only cut the value of the social benefits but also put up French export prices and make French goods less competitive on the world market, so aggravating the crisis and undermining the Franc.

This is the most likely result of the new PS-PC government's current policy. It will fail completely and within a year or so they will be faced with growing working class discontent over persisting unemployment and rising prices which they will not be able to satisfy, since the continuing crisis will force them to recognise that under capitalism priority must be given to profits and profit-making rather than to social reforms and popular consumption.

The crunch will then come and they will be forced, like all governments of capitalism sooner or later, to take openly anti-working class measures. The question will then be to see how the PC acts—will it swallow the austerity measures in the name of "flawless solidarity" or will Fitterman and his colleagues resign? This will be a problem not only for the PC Ministers but also for those from CRES wing of the PS, including its leader Jean-Pierre Chevenement, the Minister for Research, whose economic analysis is very close to that of the PC and who declared in a policy statement submitted to the 1977 PS Congress:

The Left must not allow itself to be caught in the cog-wheels of a supposed good management of capitalism, precisely when this problem has become insoluble. It must at the same time avoid letting itself become dragged into the spiral of inflation and external deficit which leads to subservience to international money-lenders and inevitably to the application of a policy of austerity, in short to a return in strength of the Right (Ceres par luimeme, p. 159. Our translation).

Since in fact there is no chance of the CERES/PC policy of a native French state capitalism behind tariff walls being adopted (which of course is no solution either), this is precisely what will happen. Will Chevenement and the others then resign or will they, like Tony Benn under Wilson and Callaghan, find some excuse for staying on?

If, on the other hand, by a stroke of luck, Delors' gamble comes off and the world economy does not recover within the next year this would not disprove the socialist case against reformism, even if Delors himself went down in French history as an economic wizard! In fact, it would not have been the policy of the PS-PC government that caused the recovery, but capitalism at world level as it naturally moved on from the crisis and slump stage, a process over which neither the French nor any other government has any control and which would have come about quite independently of their actions.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg) 

Syriza: The return of left-wing reformism? (2015)

From the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Syriza emerged from the recent Greek elections as the party with the most votes. But what is it? And what does it stand for?

Syriza is the acronym of the Greek for ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ and is made up of various left-wing and Green groups, including a part of the old Communist Party and some Trotskyists. It is a bit like Left Unity in this country which in fact aspires to be like them. Set up in 2004, it already emerged from the May 2012 elections as the main opposition party and topped the poll in Greece in last year’s Euro elections.

At the beginning of the campaign Counterfire (one of the SWP fragments) claimed that ‘Greece could be about to elect the most radical government of the left in Europe since the 1930s.’ This is presumably a reference to the Popular Front government that came to power in France in 1936 but the claim is open to question. If you examine Syriza’s programme it is far less radical than that of the government in Portugal that ruled immediately after the overthrow of the dictatorship there in 1974, than the ‘common programme’ of the PS/PCF government that came to power under Mitterrand in France in 1981, and arguably even than the British Labour Party’s 1945 election manifesto.

What is different is that some of the people who might end up as ministers and their top advisers are not the usual professional politicians and careerists but leftwing intellectuals like those behind Counterfire. Not that that will make any difference as to what they will be able to do in office.

One of them, John Milios, described as ‘chief economist of Syriza’ and one of their MPs, interviewed in the Guardian (23 December), declared ‘I am a Marxist … The majority [in Syriza] are.’ He himself is a Marx-scholar who has written extensively about Marx’s views, including his theory of crises. Presumably, then, he must have some idea of what’s involved in taking responsibility for governing within capitalism. In any event, the programme his interviewer recorded him as outlining accepted that a Syriza government would have to govern in the context of capitalism, and capitalism in a period of economic crisis and austerity:

‘Milios rolls off the party’s priorities one by one. It would make concerted efforts to help those hardest hit by the crisis – free electricity for Greeks who have had supplies cut off, food stamps distributed in schools, healthcare for those who need it, rents covered for the homeless, the restoration of the minimum wage to pre-crisis levels of €750 a month and a moratorium on private debt repayments to banks above 30% of disposable income.’

And, more generally, as he put it in another interview:

‘”We are going to boost growth and combat the humanitarian disaster.” Syriza’s recipe for boosting growth is through a fiscal stimulus, targeted at lower incomes in order to boost their spending power’(http://news.yahoo.com/greek-leftists-wont-run-deficits-policymaker-says-193856885.html).

Syriza is not even promising to run a budget deficit to ‘boost spending power’, only not to run a surplus as the outgoing government was planning. But it’s still based on Keynes’s discredited theory of ‘demand management’ which says that the problem in a slump is not enough spending rather than not enough prospects for profit-making.

A Syriza government might, by taking some of the measures outlined above by Milios, be able to mitigate a little the ‘humanitarian disaster’ in Greece where there’s been a massive increase in destitution leading to, among other things,  an increase in mental ill-health, suicides and the infant mortality rate. But it won’t be able to boost the accumulation of capital.

No Podeis
Meanwhile in Spain a similar party, Podemos (‘We Can’) has gone up in the opinion polls. Its policy is the same as Syriza’s, if perhaps a little bolder as it envisages some nationalisations. What they mainly have in common is a commitment to ‘boost growth’ by government action to boost consumer spending, as described in Left Flank (another SWP fragment):

‘Its analysis is that the crisis is fundamentally one of “under-consumption” (which [Podemos leader] Iglesias agrees is “the problem”) caused by mushrooming socio-economic inequalities under neoliberalism (including a sharp decline in wages’ share of GDP) – a view that overlaps with those of Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. The solution is thus to increase consumer demand through expansionist public spending (àla Keynes). They then neatly tot up how exactly this can be funded though measures such as combating relatively high levels of tax fraud (mostly carried out by the rich), reintroducing inheritance and property taxes, and debt restructuring.’

It is not as if this has not been tried before. The PS/PCF government in France tried to ‘relaunch’ the economy in 1981 by increasing ‘popular consumption’, putting up the minimum wage and other benefits. It didn’t work. In fact it failed miserably, leading to three devaluations in two years and ending in a U-turn to a policy of austerity.

The reason why it failed – and why a Syriza and Podemos government would fail too – is that capitalism is not a system geared to meeting people’s needs, not even those they can pay for. It is a profit-driven system in which priority has to be given to profits and profit-making. Since the government cannot just magic into existence the resources to increase ‘popular consumption’, and that in the end these have to come one way or the other (taxation, borrowing, currency inflation) from profits, such a policy undermines the driving force of the capitalist system, provoking an economic crisis. Which was what happened in France.

There is another aspect to the breakthroughs achieved by Syriza and Podemos. They represent a revival of the old Social Democratic tradition of a reformist party using some Marxist terminology, at least in the two countries concerned. The equivalent of the Labour Party in Spain, the PSOE, is still called, believe it or not, the ‘Socialist Workers Party’ but, like the Labour Party and similar parties in other countries, has long since given up any idea of replacing capitalism and has settled for offering itself as an alternative team for managing capitalism in Spain.

That millions of people in Spain and Greece are prepared to vote again for parties that say they are against capitalism must mean something. Of course these are not explicit and deliberate votes for socialism but only for the parties voted for to do something about the effects of capitalism. This, however, is not something these parties will be able to deliver because it is not in their power to do so. They have been set the impossible task of trying to reform capitalism so as to make it work other than as a system that has to put making profits before meeting people’s needs and which periodically plunges the economy into crisis and depression.

There is no alternative under capitalism. The only way out is to get rid of it altogether and replace it with a system based on productive resources being commonly owned and democratically controlled, so they can be used to provide what people need in accordance with the principle ‘from each according to ability, to each according to needs.’

Adam Buick

Editorial: Missed opportunities, shattered dreams (1991)

Editorial from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The turn of the Twentieth Century was a time of high political hopes. There was a sense that great progress was possible. The sciences were expanding and the machine age had brought increased powers of production. In the industrialised countries workers were winning the vote. In combination these means of creating abundant wealth and the entry of more people into the democratic process held out the prospect of a new age of enlightenment, peace and material security.

The working class debate about how its best interests could be served had been going on for over fifty years and by 1900 there was a clear choice between Revolution and Reform.

The arguments in favour of reform were fatally seductive; they appeared to present an easy way forward. In this view, all that was required was the election of a "working class government". Then, through a programme of reforms, such measures as nationalisation and "taxing the rich out of existence", the problems of poverty and unemployment would be solved, social privilege would be abolished and a new world of equality would be here to stay.

Socialists said "no", by that route a new society was impossible. Such a "working class government" would be compelled to run the capitalist system and would have to yield to the vile priorities of profits before needs. Such a government would be trapped by economic forces which it could not control. Being in this position it would e forced to do things in opposition to its stated aims. It would not be able to solve social problems or alter the class-ridden nature of capitalist society. Socialists said that reformism would be a waste of time and would lead to disastrous consequences. Tragically, the socialist arguments were ignored.

A hundred years have passed since the choice between socialism and reformism was clarified. Soon, we will enter a new century, yet still reformist politicians appear like ghosts of their predecessors, mouthing slogans and empty promises, desperate to forget their past failures. They generate a phoney optimism which echoes back across a century in which more people have been killed in wars and more have starved to death than at any other time.

Land has been taken out of production, food has been destroyed, machinery has been left idle and the ravages of economic crises have meant countless billions of work-days lost through unemployment (under the last Labour government unemployment doubled). In a socialist society these productive resources would have been used to provide for needs. Instead, they have been squandered to protect class privilege and profit.

The human cost of the reformist choice has been high, with governments steering capitalism crisis to crisis whilst under the illusion that somehow they could make the profit system serve the needs of the whole community. As socialists said, and as bitter experience has shown, the reformists were always the impossibilists.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that if the socialist choice had been taken up at the beginning of the century by a majority of workers, since that time we would have created a society and a world fit for people to live in. Without doubt, a world of common ownership and cooperation organised solely for needs would have provided enough quality food, housing, clothing, clean water, sanitation, energy for heating, lighting cooking, health and education services, entertainment, communications, means of travel and recreation, for the entire human family. Freed from the economic constraints of capitalism, socialism would have provided these, and without destruction of the environment, through relationships of shared common goals.

For those who might still think that the building of world socialism is too big a job, and who therefore might still be attracted to what appears to be the "easier" reformist option, we say, look at the tragic consequences of the same decision made in the past. For those who want a better world the so-called reformist option is no option at all—it is a guarantee of continued disaster.

Action Replay: Football - The January Transfer Window (2015)

The Action Replay Column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In English football, the winter transfer window lasts from the 1st January - 31stJanuary. Football clubs can transfer home based and foreign players into their playing staff. Such a transfer is completed by registering the player into the new club through FIFA. ‘Transfer window’ is the unofficial term used by the media for ‘registration period’ as described in the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Player.

Steve Coppell, former manager of Reading called for the transfer window to be scrapped in favour of the previous system, where transfer deals could be made throughout the season. Coppell considered that the transfer window bred panic and encouraged ‘scurrilous’ transfer activity. Last season, Arsene Wenger the Arsenal manager asked for the January transfer window to be limited to two transfers per window and claimed it is ‘unfair’ in its current form. Manuel Pellegrini the Manchester City manager backed Wenger by saying that transfer window was unbalanced in favour of big clubs, and said ‘a club with money can take the best players from the other teams’. Rather ironic given that Manchester City are one of the biggest spending clubs in the transfer market.

Arsenal and Manchester City are examples of how supporters help fund their clubs. The cost of a season ticket at Manchester City is £860 whereas at Arsenal it’s a staggering £2,013. A Manchester City football shirt costs £55, while Hull City’s retail at £39.99.The overseas fan base of Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool benefit massively from shirts sales in the Far East e.g. Singapore.

People who complain that footballers in the Premier League are overpaid need to understand that Premiership football is big business where billions of pounds circulate throughout a season. Football under capitalism is shaped by the market, and revenue streams from season and match day tickets contribute to the large financial outlay required annually.

So now we await the latest scramble for ‘human flesh’ as clubs argue about a player’s value based on goals scored, shots blocked, assists, and clean sheets – all are phrases and statistics in football’s lexicon that serve to attribute the ‘value’ of a human being as a football commodity.

Kevin

Provincial Propaganda Tour (1933)

From the August 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few years ago splendid work was done in the provinces by a small party of London members touring from place to place. Apart from gaining new readers and sympathisers, and making the Party in areas where no propaganda has been carried on before, there is the very valuable encouragement such visits bring to provincial groups and isolated members.

On Friday, June 30th, a party of four—Comrades Bellingham, Turner, L. Otway and Mrs. Otway—left head office for a short motor tour, carrying camping equipment.

The first meeting was held in the Bull Ring at Birmingham, on June 30th, with an audience of 350, and literature sales of 2s. 11d.—a good start achieved against the obstacle of several rival meetings. Questions and Communist opposition were dealt with at considerable length.

Arriving at Manchester the next day, the party had to tackle four meetings, which had been advertised for Saturday and Sunday. At the Saturday meeting, although the audience was by no means large, keen interest was shown and literature to the value of 6s. 9d. was sold. All the Manchester meetings were not equally satisfactory, but the last, held in Platt's Field, drew an audience of 400. Manchester members assisted on the platform and the branch was very pleased with the results of the week-end visit.

On Monday a good meeting was held at Liverpool, and another on Tuesday at Birkenhead—two areas in which relatively little propaganda has been carried on by the S.P.G.B.

At Eccles, on Wednesday, a meeting was carried on from 7.20 to 11 p.m., amidst lively opposition from Communist and Labour Party supporters. The audience, however, listened sympathetically to our speakers.

Two meetings were held at Sheffield, on July 6th and 7th, with assistance from local comrades.

The tour ended with a good meeting at Hull on Saturday, July 8th.

Most of the time the party camped out and were thus enabled to cover much ground at a minimum cost, although, of course, the necessity of funding camping sites and making all preparations threw a great deal of work on the four members. All four assisted at meetings, either as speakers or chairmen, selling literature and taking up collections, etc.

The distance covered was about 550 miles, and the times and arrangements made in advance were kept to the letter. At a total of eleven meetings literature sales amounted to £2 3s. 10d. and collections to 18s. 7d.—a highly satisfactory result in face of the widespread unemployment and destitution in many places visited.

The members of the party greatly regretted that it was not possible to make their tour of longer duration. They, and the members of the branches visited on route, have no doubt that excellent work has been done in this short period.

It is impossible to mention by name all the local comrades who attended the meetings, gave hospitality, and helped the tour in every possible way. The four comrades greatly appreciated the welcome and assistance they everywhere received.

Spade Work in Hull

Much-needed propaganda has been carried on with good effect in Hull during recent weeks, by Comrade Cash, who is staying there at the invitation of a local comrade. In about two weeks, at the end of June and beginning of July, ten meetings were held, with an average audience of about 60 or 70, and with small but steady sales of literature. In view of the difficulty of gathering an audience almost single-handed, and in view of many unfavourable local conditions, the interest aroused has been quite satisfactory. With continuous propaganda good progress could be made here. Hull members and sympathisers are urged to give their support. 

Barcelona! (1909)

From the September 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The workers of Catalonia and of the industrial city of Barcelona have risen in revolt against their oppressors—and have been crushed. A shady mining concern with international capitalist interests involved had been established in the territory of the Riff tribes of Morocco, close by the town of Melilla, which is occupied by the Spaniards. The natives, suspecting that this forbode them no good, took steps to turn out the invaders, the representatives of the modern enslavers, the international capitalists. As a consequence the Spanish workers were called upon to turn out and, at the risk of life and limb, protect their masters property—were ordered to go to Africa and massacre a foreign people with who they have no quarrel. Now Barcelona, at least, has, like Paris, the revolutionary tradition, and there has been plenty of anti-militarist, direct-action, aye, Anarchist propaganda, there. Doubtless also many of its toilers argued that, since lives must be risked, 'twere better to risk them fighting the real enemy at home, the monopolisers of the means of life, rather then in fighting the brown-faced Moors against whom they had no enmity. And so after speeches and strikes came barricades. However, modern artillery and magazine rifles, handled as these were by often unwilling soldiers, made short work of all these and there is now a further collapse of "direct action" to record. Hitherto the Spanish workers, very generally, disdained Parliamentary action. Perhaps events will show them the need for using the means to hand, namely, the political machinery, however backward that machinery and however difficult the obstacles may be. It is good to note the spirit of revolt in the Spanish workers. When they have got over their present Anarchistic tendency they will make rapid strides, like the quick-witted people they are, to their freedom in Socialism. 

H. J. H.

A "Red" Recants (1934)

Book Review from the August 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Preparing for Power. by J. T. Murphy. Jonathan Cape. 6s.

The author above named obtained a certain amount of notoriety in connection with the shop stewards' movement during the war. He became a member of the S.L.P., and sat for a while on the executive until expelled along with MacManus and others for intriguing with the B.S.P. Mr. Murphy states on page 15 of the above volume that the S.L.P. 'merged with the B.S.P." to form the Communist Party. It is pretty common knowledge amongst students of political history during the past twelve years that the S.L.P. maintained a separate existence for several years after the formation of the C.P., and ran its paper, "The Socialist," until 1925 or thereabouts.

After occupying a prominent position in the C.P. the author was expelled from that party about two years ago. Says he: "I therefore determined on a restudy of the history of the working class movement and Marxism. The first result was my decision to join the Labour Party as the mass political party of the workers, to subscribe even to what I regard as errors and mistakes, confident that the dynamics of the class struggle will force the revolutionary changes necessary to the fulfillment of the historic destiny of the working class." Page 16.

He attempts to derive theoretical support for this attitude from the passage in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, which refers to the fact that "the Communists do not form a separate party conflicting with other working class parties." (On page 56 he says this principle conflicts with the present relation of communists to the Labour movement.)

The C.P. have never been consistent in their hostility to the Labour Party, nor is their present attitude based upon any fundamental and revolutionary principle. Nevertheless, it is clear that Murphy has overlooked the point in Engels' preface (quoted from the joint preface to the German edition of 1872) that the political situation has been entirely changed and the progress of history has swept from of the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.

In spite of their limited outlook these parties (such as the Chartists of England) at the time appeared to hold prospects of the conquest of political power for revolutionary objects. Nowhere in the course of this book does the author show that the Labour Party has ever given any such hope. On the contrary, he quotes innumerable examples of the utter subservience of the Labour Party to the interests of the capitalist industrialists, mainly of the Liberal stamp.

So long as the workers had to win the franchise it would have been the height of folly for Marx and Engels to have opposed parties having this as their object. This issue once settled, however, the next step was obviously to set on foot the independent political party of the working class having Socialism as its conscious object.

Apart from the S.P.G.B. no party fulfils this essential condition of independence, least of all the Labour Party.

Writing of the general strike as a weapon (on page 50) Murphy says: "If it is an action to impose terms, whether economic or political, upon the powers that be, then it means an unarmed proletariat faces an armed State, which must either capitulate or defeat the strike." Compare this with his confident declaration in his pamphlet, "The Revolutionary Workers' Government," written while he was still in the C.P. "The general strike demonstrated before our eyes how the working class comes to power." Page 14.

Reviewing its past associations, Murphy repudiates Industrial Unionism (pages 88-90), and shows that the shop stewards' success were confined to local issues of minor importance. "Workers' control of industry is utterly impossible. The change of ownership is a political question, indeed the outstanding political question of our time" (page 159); and he says on the same page that "the central question of the conquest of political power by the working class was entirely overlooked. The shop stewards did not discuss it."

Mr. Murphy is far from having shed all his illusions. He still clings to the notion that Socialism is being built up in Russia (page 69), and objects to the clause in the preamble of the First International (drawn up by Marx) which declares "that the emancipation of labour . . . depends upon the concurrence, practical and theoretical,  of the most advanced countries." This he describes as "a point of view which was completely disproved by the Russian Revolution in 1917." Yet, strange to say, he makes the following confession on page 201: Referring to the second congress of the Third International, held in Moscow during July, 1920, he says: "The writer participated in this congress and was party to its decisions. Thirteen years have passed. Looking back over the experience of these years it appears clear to him that there was an overestimation of the rapidity of the development of the world revolution and a consequent underestimation of the strength of the leaders of the Second International in many countries . . . At the time of the congress itself the revolutionary wave that had swept Europe had already passed its zenith and nobody recognised the fact."

Mr. Murphy means, of course, nobody in the Communist Party. The S.P.G.B. repeatedly stressed the point that no world revolution was possible without a Socialist working class. Mr. Murphy, however, regarded the S.P.G.B. as a "counter-revolutionary" body in 1930. It would be interesting to learn how he regards them now that he has succeeded in persuading Sir Stafford Cripps (God bless him!) to write an introduction to his book. For another illusion which he has not shed is his faith in leaders. "Changes in the leadership of the Labour movement from bottom to top is thus the all-important issue." says he on page 285. One can readily understand why it is all-important to Mr. Murphy.

Eric Boden

The Socialist Party and the Labour Movement. (1925)

From the December 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

A LITTLE ARGUMENT

"I've read your article in the Socialist Standard."

"I am honoured."

"And I don't think much of it."

"I am flattered."

"Don't try to be smart. That is one of the besetting sins of your party."

"What? being smart, or trying to be?"

"There you are, twisting again. You know what I mean."

"Now, don't get angry, friend. Angry people cannot reason."

"You ought to talk of reason, you did: always savagely attacking the Labour Party. Why don't you devote your energies to attacking the common enemy, instead of other sections of the 'movement'?"

'The movement? What is this you call the 'movement'?"

"There you go again! Twist and wriggle, wriggle and twist. You know my meaning as well as myself. I mean the Socialist movement, the Labour movement."

"But you have just mentioned two movements, my friend. You just now only referred to 'the movement.' Which of them has the honour of being the movement?"

"Don't haggle and try to trip me up. They are each part of the same movement; they—"

"But why the distinction if they are the same?"

"They are not the same. The one is part of the other."

"Then which is the one and which the other? Let me put it this way to you: To which do you belong?"

"I belong to the Labour Party, and I claim to be as good a Socialist as you."

"We will examine your claim later. Why do you not belong to the Socialist Party?"

"What! Your lot? I wouldn't be found dead with them! A handful of spiteful, vituperative calumniators; full of spleen, venom and malice: jealous of—"

"Whoa! whoa! Hold hard. Will you admit that I am a Socialist?"

"Oh, yes! I won't deny that."

"Then don't you think you had better reserve your attacks for the common enemy, rather than—"

"All right! I give in. That's one to you. I am afraid my tongue ran away with me."

"Don't think I am trying to rub it in, but have you ever seen an article in the Socialist Standard which described a man or a movement by a long string of epithets?"

"I do not recollect one."

"Then precisely what is your grumble about?"

"My point is that you and the cause of the workers would be better served if you confined your criticism to the capitalist parties, and left the Labour Party alone."

"You will think I'm a "wriggling' again, as you call it, but our contention is that your Labour Party is also a capitalist party."

"Oh, don't, for goodness' sake don't trot that out gain. Why don't you think of something fresh?"

"Hardly a helpful remark, do you think? Why something fresh? The truth will bear repetition—unless you prefer something else. Why will you so persistently beg the question? Let me save your time and mine by giving you an instance. I will only give you one, but it will perhaps show you what I mean."

"Go ahead!"

"Now then! Do you believe that unemployment is the direct result of capitalism?"

"I do."

"Do you believe that unemployment in Great Britain arises from fundamentally different causes from those in, say, France, Germany or the United States of America?"

"Certainly not. They are all capitalist countries."

"Good! Would you agree that the corner stone—the corner stone mind you—of our troubles is the fact that we are a manufacturing rather than an agricultural nation?"

"No! I should not. I would rather say that capitalism, the private ownership of the means of life, was the corner stone as you call it."

"You are getting on, friend. I have hopes of you yet. But to resume. Would you agree with this statement? 'The simple truth is that when our export trade languishes we have an unemployed problem.'"

"Well, it is true—in a  sense."

"In what sense?"

"In a capitalist sense. I mean it takes the continuance of capitalism for granted."

"That's right. It leaves a lot out. What we would term, a half-truth."

"I agree. Some crafty Liberal Free-Trader, I shouldn't wonder."

"Don't be abusive, friend. Remember how you were going for me a few minutes ago."

"Oh, stow it. This chap is obviously in the other camp. I was only objecting to your knocking your friends about."

"I see. Well, we'll get on. What do you understand by the term 'over-production'?"

"I should say over-production existed when more commodities were produced than the market could absorb. That often happens."

"Would you consider over-production a cause of unemployment?"

"Oh, yes! I should say that was how capitalism created unemployment—through over-production."

"You would not call such a statement a 'lie' or a "most tragical absurdity.'?

"Not if I retained my sober senses."

"Let me read this little bit to you: —'For instance, in Northampton, there are thousands of people who want boots, but cannot buy them, and factories with thousands of boots which they cannot sell, and manufacturers with idle machinery capable of turning out thousands of boots which they dare not make, and hundreds of thousands of people unemployed capable of making boots who are not allowed to do so, even for themselves.'"

"That is quite right, too. What is the matter with that?"

"Very little. A trifle loose here and there, but we'll let that go. What is the cause of the state of things depicted?"

"Capitalism, of course. I don't need you to tell me that."

"You may be surprised to learn the writer does not agree. He anticipates people like you. He says: 'Many people will automatically answer, "The evils of the capitalistic system." But the destruction of capitalism would not cure unemployment, because the manufacturer is as anxious to produce as the worker is to consume, and yet both find themselves prevented by the so-called law of supply and demand, which as applied is not a law but a lie.'"

"I say, who is the writer of all this guff? How long has he left school?"

"Don't be impatient friend. You must be dying to hear the real explanation. Here it is: 'No! The explanation of all this failure to link up consumption and production intelligently lies in the control and exploitation of our industry, character, national genius, wealth and goodwill, that is our national credit, by the financiers behind our principal banks.'"

"Oh, dry up, who is this froth merchant? What does he do for a living?"

"Patience, friend; do not be abusive. As I keep reminding you, epithets are not argument. Let us see what is said as to the remedy."

"He says: 'Until, therefore, our national credit is nationally owned and controlled for the benefit of the nation, instead of being exploited and treated as private property of a mere handful of people, many of whom are not even British —'"

"Does he say that?"

"He does."

"What a filthy remark! Some putrid, anti-alien, Jew-baiter, I suppose."

"What an abusive person you are to be sure. You must learn —"

"All right! I know what you are going to say. Get on with the business. Sorry I spoke."

"Let us see! Where have we got to? After 'British,' the sentence peters out. Then it says: 'The League of the British Commonwealth demands, therefore, the nationalisation of our principal banks as the only permanent remedy for unemployment —'"

"Oh! don't, for goodness sake, don't read any more. What is this precious League of the British Commonwealth? Who are they?"

"Don't be impatient, friend. I must read you this. Remember we have just been told the only permanent remedy for unemployment is nationalisation of banks. After three paragraphs of utter flatulence the pamphlet concludes: — 'The League of the British Commonwealth declares, therefore, that there is no other solution for our industrial troubles under present conditions in connection with hours, wages, management, etc, except for the workers and their employers to become equal and self-respecting partners.'"

"Oh, what rubbish! Is it possible that—but stay. Is there a catch in this somewhere? Are you pulling my leg? Do you know whom this precious League consists of?"

"I don't! But you may recognise the name of its President."

"Pray who is it?"

"His full title is The Rt. Hon. J. R. Clynes, P.C., M.P. Now don't get abusive, friend. Remember what you said at starting."

"But, oh! This is the limit. He is one of our tried and trusted members. I'll admit we are somewhat elastic, but even rubber has a breaking-point."

"Yes! But I don't think your Labour Party has. Why! He is your deputy leader. Now tell me: What do you think we ought to do with people who insist that we are all part of the same 'Movement' and yet who tolerate leaders of that sort. You object to our criticising them as quarrelling with our friends. save us from our friends! May I point out that criticism will not hurt the truth. May I further point out that this pamphlet was not an obscure, hole and corner affair, but was broadcast by the thousand at the last General Election. They even invite you to write for supplies of the pamphlet from their headquarters. Get a copy. Read it, and if you tolerate the ineffable Clynes in your organisation for a week after doing so—well, I must not be abusive, must I?"

"You made me think."

"Keep on doing it. It hurts at first, but if you do enough of it, you will join the Socialist Party. Cheerio!"

W. T. Hopley

Saturday afternoon fix (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May 1647 the supporters of Oliver Cromwell warned Parliament that "under pretence of football matches and cudgel playing and the like, have been lately suspicious meetings and assemblies at several places made up of disaffected persons" (D. Brailsford, Sport and Society, 1969, p.135). Today the ruling class need not fear subversion at Arsenal-Chelsea derbies or the dog tracks; indeed, organised sport is a necessary cement in the struggle to patch up the "nation's morale." A society that exudes boredom has to be able to provide its members with amusements. and you can safely bet that reading about, discussing, watching and engaging in sport wile away more hours of the day, for millions of people, than any other activity apart from eating, sleeping or working.

Sports are pursued today with the same tenacious ferocity with which wars are fought. Winning is everything, drawing is like kissing your sister and losing is nothing. In sport, as in the rat race, the aim is to accumulate assets—in society called capital; in football, baseball and rugby "points". Playfulness, improvisation and spontaneity are increasingly abandoned in favour of obedience to strict rules, discipline, efficiency and record times. Training, especially ay the higher levels, turns people into efficient machines who know no other satisfaction than the mastering of their own bodies.

The rules of the game in capitalist society are assumed to be perfectly natural, so that success—whether in sport or work—depends fundamentally on your attitude. If you follow the rules—or play the game—compete hard and never give up, you can be a winner. The others must learn to be good losers. The sporting concepts of "fair play" and "team spirit" have their direct equivalents  in the world of business, where "free enterprise", the "national interest", the "Dunkirk spirit" and "equality before the law" are in daily use. Both sides of industry are supposed to play the game according to a sort of sporting social contract governed by an impartial referee — the State. The fan, like the consumer and voter, has learned to take in more or less passively a product assembled by the other people—be it a sports spectacle, consumer good or candidate. All three "games" have their statistics and stars and nobody but the socialist questions all the rules.

CLASS NEEDS

Mass sport is the product of the reduction of working hours, urbanisation and the development of transport. Only in the last century have the activities we call sports occupied the time of any substantial section of the population. In the city states of ancient Greece or the kingdoms of mediaeval Christendom, the labour of the overwhelming majority did not provide an economic surplus large enough for more than a small elite to take part in organised games. Also, as long as most workmen were engaged in crafts or agriculture, in which they produced the whole product for the purpose of satisfying clear needs, they had less urge for systematic diversions to keep them in humour.

Team sports developed in the elite private schools of those who controlled 19th century English society and were shaped to fit the ideological and socialising needs of the class which was establishing its power at home and abroad. The split between the field and the stands developed at the same time as that between factory managers controlling production and the worker performing the fragmented tasks on the assembly line. Sport follows on directly from mechanical work, and is a factor for reducing the population to a mass and exercising discipline. When a man leaves work he finds in sport the same mentality, the same criteria, the same morality, the same movements and the same objectives—all the laws and habits required by technical organisation—which he has only just left behind at the office or factory. As in society generally, sport ignores questions of quality and focuses exclusively on what is measurable and quantifiable.

MANUFACTURING CHAMPIONS

An important feature of present-day professional sport is the manipulation of athletes by doctors, psychologists, bio-chemists and trainers. In the drive to push back the limits of human capacity, technological discoveries are used to bring about organic mutations, changes in the structure of muscular growth, brain functioning, psychological equilibrium and so on. Top class distance runners think nothing of a quick change of blood before a race, thus raising the level of haemoglobin retention and endurance. For years now the sex of sportswomen suspected of being too virile has been checked with male hormonal injections and the most intimate of their metabolic functions submitted to the urine managers. In track and field circles it is next to impossible to get to the top without the use of anabolic steroids. While these add plastic muscle to the athletes frame, in many cases they have the side effect of shrinking the testes—of producing plastic supermen with no balls. The virtues of suffering and labour are inculcated into increasingly younger recruits, trained to run, jump and swim like machines and generally "produce the goods" when required.

As a noble attempt to promote friendship, understanding and reconciliation between people, sport fails with flying colours. The attitudes and norms of day to day life under capitalism carry over onto the sportsfield, with violence and deliberate brutality becoming increasingly frequent. Even chess is getting physical. A survey on the attitudes of English professional footballers was recently published, which revealed that 62 per cent thought it proper to upset a temperamental member of the opposing team; 69 per cent considered that in a match a player may attempt anything provided he is not caught; and only 16 per cent thought it necessary to behave according to the spirit of fair play. (P. McIntosh, Fair Play: Ethics in Sport and Education, 1979).

PATRIOTISM

In the years that followed the Napoleonic Wars the connection between successful warfare and sport was popularised, the latter becoming an integral part of Prussian militarism. Following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 French nationalists, including the founder of the Olympics, Baron de Coubertin, sought to convince ruling elites that sport for the masses had a paramilitary value. In Britain the Conservatives introduced what was to be the Physical Training and Recreation Bill of 1937, providing physical jerks at school to get the nation in shape for the approaching slaughter. Similarly, in Canada the onset of war led to the passage of the 1943 Physical Fitness Act. In England "muscular Christians" such as Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown's School Days, forged the connection between team sports and building national consciousness. Today the institution serves the same function, with ministers for sport, "Sport for All" campaigns and the regular feasts of nationalism served up at Olympics and World Cups. Douglas MacArthur, war hero and general of the United States army, summed up the relationship on one of his lesser known lyrical poems.

Upon the fields of friendly strife
Are sown the seeds
That, upon other fields, on other days
Will bear the fruits of victory

It is through sport that workers can submerge themselves, if only as screaming fans willing "their" team to victory. Spectating (even from an armchair) acts as a kind of encounter group therapy, with each person experiencing a community absent in the routine of work under capitalism. It is much easier to get worked up about the Big match than about big unemployment or big price rises, and a temporary 'high' on Saturday serves as a tonic to face another week's work. To some the Saturday game is not a matter of life and death—it is much more important than that.

The frustrations and emptiness of existence in our society encourage the development of more and more techniques of relaxation and diversion. Sport, however, cannot successfully combat these effects so long as it plays the role of temporary escape or pleasant change of pace from meaningless work. In socialism, sport as we know it will no longer exist . . . but there will be football at Craven Cottage.

Melvin Tenner 

Sunrise capitalism (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Japan is often cited as an example of how capitalism can work, if only all workers were hard-working and loyal. Its low unemployment, high growth rate and high wages are apparently what we should all be striving for. Indeed, when he was describing Labour's economic policy recently, Neil Kinnock said that Labour was after a Japanese-type economy.

It is not only in this country that Japan is held up as a shining example of "successful" capitalism. In the United States, competition from Japan has led to many industries closing down - especially car and steel plants - which in turn has resulted in some American workers mistakenly blaming "dirty foreigners" for their unemployment. Russian leaders have also been pointing to Japan's economy, and the quality of their goods, as an example of what their workers should be aspiring to.

Despite the fact that in Japan unemployment is one fifth of Britain's, that wages are on average one third higher and that the economy is growing at a relatively high rate - conditions which are supposedly the best that capitalism can achieve - Japanese workers face problems and conditions that are bad even by British standards.

Housing in Japan is generally very poor and costly in comparison with Britain. It costs three times as much, which makes a nonsense of directly comparing wage rates. In the late seventies, one third of Japanese houses averaged 11 feet by 11 feet, and are often referred to as "rabbit hutches". Nearly one half of the 34 million homes in Japan have no flushing toilet and 6 per cent have no piped water. Within the three main metropolitan areas, 50 million of Japan's 120 million people are crushed; Tokyo has very few parks or gardens.

The old and sick in Japan are in a precarious position. Pensions are usually low, and some workers do not even get one. Many have to rely on savings or charity from their families, although less old people are now being looked after in this way. Some old workers are retired by companies at 55 years old, although pensions don't usually start until they are 60. On the other hand, many small businesses in Japan employ old workers who have to work until they drop.

It is not advisable to fall ill in Japan. Although there is health insurance, it is not comprehensive, and up to 30 per cent of the bill may have to be paid by the patient himself.

Unemployment in Japan may be lower, but if you are out of work then you are in trouble. Unemployment benefits usually lasts for only 90 days, although older workers at the bigger companies might get a maximum of eight months' benefit. After this, workers who cannot get a job have to rely on any savings they may have, or on their families, as there is no supplementary benefit.

Although security of employment is better in Japan (at least in the bigger companies), when companies do make workers redundant it is the 45-55 year age group that is most vulnerable. Pay rates in Japan are linked to age and workers may get as much as three times more than their colleagues in their twenties which, apart from dividing the workforce, makes them a ready target for cost-cutting employers.

Employment in Japan is not an altogether pleasant experience, and workers there have less protection than their European counterparts. Independent unions are discouraged and instead workers join company unions. These unions preach subservience and loyalty to the company, which is like cattle preaching loyalty to the butcher.

In the bigger companies workers do have relatively high wages and security (of exploitation). Long hours are expected, however, and overtime is often little short of compulsory. Many Japanese workers, however, are employed in smaller firms, where wages are much lower (up to a third), and conditions and job security are much poorer. This is most noticeable in the car industry, where the further down the sub-contracting line the worse the working conditions tend to be. Temporary labour is used a lot, with the advantage to the capitalists of being cheap and disposable.

Workers in Japan are cajoled and exhorted to work hard and be loyal to "their" company. A strict labour discipline which is instilled in workers at an early age. The school system in Japan can be brutal. Strict codes define all aspects of a child's behaviour throughout the day. The uniformed nonentities found in Japanese factories are found in the schools, where rules of dress are strict.

Large classes are geared towards passing exams, which are themselves geared to the needs of their future employers (pronounced exploiters). Failure is not tolerated. The creating of a compliant, docile workforce, suitable for the profit requirements of capital, leaves its mark on the children. Violence, bullying, absenteeism and delinquency are on the increase. Those children whose academic achievements are poor or appear different are the main targets for bullying in the classroom jungle.

In 1984, 572 people under the age of 19 committed suicide. The figure was 62 for those under 14, compared to two in Britain. The "success" of Japanese capitalism has its price.

Japan's economy is now the second biggest in the world, after the United States. But the problems facing workers in Japan, who created this wealth, have not disappeared. In fact, you could argue that they are relatively worse off, in that the wealth they have created has increased faster than their wages, becoming an oppressive, alienated force in the hands of capital. Certainly, Japanese workers do face similar problems to those elsewhere.

When capitalism is a "success", as we are led to believe it is in Japan, it is only the capitalists who benefit. It is clear that those who express an admiration for, and desire to emulate, Japan are only wanting capitalism to be "successful" in their countries. The lot of the working class is not substantially changed by capitalist success or failure. It will only be changed by its abolition.

Ian Ratcliffe

Backwaters of History - 9 (1954)

From the July 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Knights of Labour

America in 1869. Abraham Lincoln had been deal four years and Andrew Johnson was president, to be ousted in that year by the famous General Ulysses Simpson Grant. Brigham Young, who had proclaimed the doctrine of polygamy in 1852, was prophet and president of the Mormon state of Utah, to which he had led his persecuted followers five years earlier. In San Francisco the infamous Barbary Coast was at the height of its notoriety. Indian wars were being fought in Colorado. There was gold in Nevada. The westward flowing traffic on the Oregon trail was passing to the newly built Union Pacific Railway. Gun-slingers were rampant on Kansas. In the southern states, recently devastated by the civil war, the negroes, released from their chattel slavery, were being coerced into a form of serfdom through the medium of "protective legislation" and vagrancy laws. "Carpet-baggers" from the north and "Scallywags" from the south, were muscling-in on the war-torn states and creating the rackets that furnished the foundations for more than a few American family fortunes. In the northern states industry was flourishing. The European agents of American manufacturers were gathering together hundreds of thousands of willing worker emigrants, making contracts with them and herding them across the Atlantic to satisfy the hungry maw of the American labour market for cheap labour power.

Philadelphia—"city of brotherly love"—founded by William Penn, the Quaker, in 1682 as a city in which men of all races might live, each following, unpersecuted, his own religion. Philadelphia, with its growing industries, received its share of immigrants. Amongst them were many Germans, some of whom were political exiles and refugees and had experience with the International Working Men's Association.

The condition of the American workers in 1869 was vile. Tens of thousands of women and children were working eleven and twelve hours a day. Overcrowded, ill ventilated, damp, insalubrious tenements and dwelling houses were a prolific cause of disease. Wages were kept low and strikes were smashed by the importation of more and more cheap labourers from Europe and Asia. Workers were imported from China for $100 each and paid wages of from $8 to $12 a month.

"A shoe manufacturer in North Adams, Massachusetts imported 75 Chinese to displace striking members of the Knights of St. Crispin in 1870"— (The Workers in American History, James Oneal, p. 175.)

It required courage to stand up to the persecution and the outlawing black-list that threatened every worker who attempted to organise with his fellows, yet, despite these conditions, there arose some powerful working class organisations.

Amongst the garment workers of Philadelphia were some courageous men, including some of the German exiles. They were organised by Uriah S. Stephens into a secret society the name of which was not written but indicated by five stars whenever it was necessary to refer to it in print or writing. For nine years it preserved its secrecy with its passwords, handgrips and queer cabalistic signs chalked on the sidewalks and fences. Its ritual declared that,

" . . . open and public association having failed after a struggle of centuries to protect or advance the interests of labour, we have lawfully constituted this assembly and in using this power of organised effort and co-operation we but imitate the example of capital, for in all the multifarious branches of trade, capital has its combinations and whether intended or not it crushes the manly hopes of labour and tramples poor humanity into the dust."— (Quoted by Mary Beard in A Short History of the American Labour Movement. pp. 116-117.)

In 1878 this society came into the open as the Noble Order of the Knights of Labour, called its first general assembly and elected its founder as Grand Master Workman. Stephens resigned shortly afterwards and was succeeded by Terrence V. Powderley.  

The Knights of Labour proclaimed a concern for all workers regardless of skill, sex or race. It took as its slogan, "An injury to one is the concern of all." It refused to countenance craft exclusiveness, claiming that the solidarity of the workers could bridge all differences and secure "the physical well-being, the mental development and the moral elevation of mankind." Anyone who worked for wages could become a member. Only saloon keepers, lawyers, doctors and bankers were prohibited from joining.

The organisation spread all over the United States. It was organised into locals of two kinds; trade locals comprising members of one trade only, and mixed locals with membership available to all. Delegates from five locals constituted a district assembly and delegates from the districts formed the general assembly which had the over-riding authority.

The aims of the K. of L. were not revolutionary and it did not recognise the class struggle. Amongst its aims were these: —

" . . . no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital . . . "
"We shall with all our strength support laws made to harmonise the interests of labour and capital and also those laws which tend to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil." — (Quoted by A. Bimba in The History of the American Working Class. pp. 173-174.)

The Knights did not start out to encourage strikes and the leaders frequently tried to suppress them. They aimed to replace a competitive society by a co-operative one which would give the workers the opportunity to enjoy fully the wealth they created. This was to be done by reducing the "money power" of the banks. They also aimed to secure the eight hour day, equal pay for equal work by women, abolition of child and convict labour, public ownership of mines, railways and other utilities, and the establishment of co-operatives.

The religious fervour with which the campaign for the eight hour day was conducted drew thousands of workers to the ranks of K. of L. Despite its original aims it was forced to participate in strikes and it entered into wage agreements with employers. Its locals organised stay-in strikes amongst miners, boycotts and sent funds to strikers.

On February 26th, 1886, the shopmen on the Wabash Railroad suffered a 10 per cent. cut in pay. The following day they were out on strike and were joined on March 9th by the shopmen of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, who had received a wage cut the previous October. Shortly there were 4,500 workers on strike. The Knights sent their Union Pacific Railroad man, Buckman, with $30,000 to lead and finance the strike and locomotives were immobilised by the removal of vital parts. The railway companies gave in but later that year they tried to break the power of the K. of L. by dismissing them from their employ. They were immediately faced with a threat of strike action by 20,000 workers, and Jay Gould, the owner of the south west railway system, surrendered.

Successes like this caused workers to flock to the K. of L. and its membership increased seven-fold in one year reaching the peak of 700,000, almost 10 per cent. of the industrial wage workers.

Later strike efforts were sabotaged by the Knight's leaders on the plea that prolonged strikes caused suffering to the workers and their families. Strikes were even called off when they had been waged to the point of success. There was an instance in Chicago. In October, 1886, 20,000 butchers were locked out by the owners of the meat packing industry in an effort to re-establish the ten hour working day, the workers having achieved an eight hour day some time previously. Two regiments of militia were sent by the State governor to force the workers into submission and the packers association employed hundreds of Pinkerton agents and provocateurs to the same end. Organised by District Assemblies 27 and 54 of the K. of L., the men held firm till the employers weakened and offered concessions. On the eve of victory Terrence V. Powderley sent a telegram ordering the men back to work and so demoralised the ranks that the workers finally submitted to the employers' demands.

In 1881 there had been formed the Federation of Organised Trades and Labour which in 1886 gave way to the American Federation of Labour with Samuel Gompers of the Cigarmakers; Union as its first president. It set out to organise the skilled workers on a craft basis based on ideas directly opposite to those held by the Knights. The A. F. of L. began to draw members from the K. of L. and a struggle began between the two organisations. At the height of its strength a rot set in in the Knights of Labour. It became the victim of that most destructive element, the labour fakir and job-seeker. When the American capitalist class was getting its biggest fright from the K. of L., that body began to crack. It had attracted to its ranks all kinds of cranks, reformers, careerists, anarchists, professional people and even a few employers. It became a battleground for all sorts of ideas. When the eight hour campaign fizzled out and the opposition of the A. F. of L. had to be met the Knights declined rapidly. The employers took advantage of their plight and with blacklist, ironclad and Pinkerton detectives set out to smash them. As the Knights crumbled the A. F. of L. rose on its ruins.

By 1900 the Knights of Labour had ceased to exist as a national organisation with any influence, although it continued in some localities until 1917. So the all inclusive "grand national union of industrial workers" passed into the limbo of dead experiments. Such is the fate of all organisations that set themselves a political objective and try to solve the problems of capitalism without aiming at its abolition. They have their day of popularity, gathering support from all kinds of people with varying ideas who will either divert it from its object or desert it, or both.

Books to read:

Class Struggles in America, by A. M. Simons.

The Workers in American History, by James Oneal.

The History of the American Working Class, by Anthony Bimba.

History of Trade Unionism in the United States, by Selig Perlman.

A Short History of the American Labour Movement, by Mary Beard.

Brief History of the American Labour Movement, by the United States Department of Labour.

W. Waters