Confessions of a Baby Boomer (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the inheritance tax proposal.  Not to say I have anything against Mr & Mrs Concerned – with tuition fees, housing costs, insecure employment, and poor social services (among other things). It’s a rough world out there and I can see why you’d want to do the best for your kids. I love my kids too, and I don’t want them exposed to the chill winds coming from the future. However I think the best way of future-proofing them doesn’t revolve around petty reforms like this. Unfortunately it is big picture time … or else.

As a baby boomer I’m one of the lucky ones. I and my peers grew up in a world where we were still carried on the tide of the post-war settlement which gave us a reasonably secure place to grow up in. Put aside the cold war (and the proxy third  world war being waged in Vietnam, Angola, etc) and the so-called industrial strife and there was a society which had plenty of jobs with often life-long security giving enough money to meet your needs and a little bit more; there was plenty of council housing; school places for all the children; cheap widespread public transport; predominantly free health service and not too much of a wait for treatment; free higher education with grants (remember those?). We weren’t bombarded with adverts reminding us of our inadequacies, to be solved by material acquisition or bodily adjustments.

I grew up in London where most of my friends were like me – in rented accommodation and none too affluent – and before you ask, about 50 percent  non-white UK. Learning in my first year of secondary school about pollution came as a bit of a shock to me: everything seemed fine so what a shame there was this issue. But despite the fact that it was known about in the late 60s, as we all know nothing of any significant value has been done about it; reckoning was still a long way off. The 60s and 70s, despite what the Tory rewrites of history tell you, were by comparison to today, fairly optimistic times: things did not get really dark until the 80s and Thatcher. Remember, prior to the Falklands and her magnificent PR exercise, hers was the most unpopular government that century, more unpopular than anyone else in the 70s.

Whilst I do think my parents’ generation have things to answer for, I think we possibly have more. What has happened since the 70s? An orgy of consumption, largely fuelled by debt. Surprise surprise, the wheels came off with the banking crisis. Which was then used as an excuse for a rightwing agenda that the Tories had all along: shrink the state and transfer more from the poor to the rich. But I get ahead of myself. What happened in those intervening years? I think we need to go back again, and the question is what happened since the 1945 Attlee government. The massive state welfare edifice they created came about for a number of temporally unique conditions. These include a memory of the 30s and the rise of fascism, both amongst the workers and the rich; a very powerful state able to enact massive change; a disposition of states to spend money; in England at least a cabinet-in-waiting who were able to plan everything in advance of office. Here’s the chance to create a ‘capitalism with an acceptable face’, and whilst I would argue that in fact they did not, nonetheless they created a society which gave us an attenuated version of it: some of the harsh corners had been blunted. Allied to this fact was the existence of the USSR which plainly offered an alternative view of the world; our society couldn’t be that rough as otherwise it might encourage the serfs to go over to the other side.

Reforming capitalism doesn’t work because you haven’t changed the power base. Sooner or later the power of money will reassert itself and this gradually happened over the next 35 years, although it was disguised by the economic growth associated with peacetime expansion and record defence spending. But even in the 70s differentials were not that great. I even recall the Tories arguing that the top rate of tax should be cut because high top rates meant that senior staff asked for greater pay rises as they saw less of it… (as history shows us, cutting the top rate in fact led to the explosion of top pay – greed once allowed knows no bounds, eh?). Labour’s ‘In Place of Strife’, and Heath’s Industrial Relations Act started to erode labour power, i.e. reassert the power of business. Then the Barber boom, leading to the start of the property market boom, and the IMF bail-out, slashing public sector spending – as ever with the IMF –, together with the nationalised industries withering on the vine of bad management and planning, and the clock is going backwards.

Enter Mrs Thatcher with her crusade of sweeping away the ‘nanny state’ and any vestiges of ‘socialism’ – the markets were let off the leash – and how many millions unemployed? The unemployed paid the price; the start of the increasing transfer of wealth from poor to rich and the creation of a large sub-working class. More importantly perhaps was the PR-isation of everything: selling the message that great wealth was nothing to be ashamed of, and poverty was to be sneered at – recall Lord Young: the homeless were something you trod on when you came out of the opera? A return to the Victorian values you can read about in Jayne Eyre and Hard Times.

And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the fall of the USSR. Don’t get me wrong I was not a fan: Leninism is a blind alley, as elites breed elites. However it was an alternative of sorts. When it was deservedly placed on the ash heap of history we get Fukuyama and the End of History; the triumph of capitalism… and then all restraint went. Hello debt-fuelled consumer-driven turbo capitalism replete with uber-rich movers and shakers at Davos and Bilderberg and their agents at WTO and GATT and IMF. Well there was never any such thing as society anyway, eh? Everyone for themselves. Spend, spend, spend and get, get, get: that’s the societal mores – the more you get the more you are. (Funny how I have never seen written on an epitaph ‘he had lots of stuff’ or ‘she was soooo wealthy’).

I quite liked the world I grew up in; I felt a kinship with most people I knew. Somehow that seems to have gone. People now seem to come together despite rather than because of the system, often in opposition to it. Game shows, celebs and loads of stuff; junk food and booze and legal highs; porn and more porn and endless pap on the multi-channel TV – 57 channels and nothing on, Springsteen said correctly. Zero hours contracts; poverty wages; housing crisis; student debts; most expensive rail fares in Europe; 4hrs+ waits in A&E; mis-selling PPI, worthless private pensions, and selling your own house to pay for your elderly care. And then there’s the environment.

This is the inheritance that matters; a dysfunctional world which is heading for an environmental disaster; where because of the power of big corporation PR, despite the overwhelming majority of those in the know agreeing about climate change, many of the public – perhaps even a majority – think it’s a con. The sea is become too acidic, our soil denuded of vital nutrients, our world in all senses becoming all used up and wrecked. Also we’re running out of clean water. The thing that tells you all you need to know is that when the North Pole melts due to climate change, instead of that being the alarm bell getting us to stop, business wants to dig it up for oil. Big business will only worry about things when it impacts on profits: the movers and shakers are so ideologically blinkered that they would rather the whole thing came down than they surrendered their power or changed courses - if they think about it at all. Probably too busy enjoying the fruits of enormous wealth.

So let’s stop for a moment and reflect (not popular I know). If you are really worried about your legacy to your children, a bit less tax here or there is tangible and looks nice but you are being sold a pup. With the magnitude of the storm coming their way, it is going to be of slight comfort. If however you reject this entire social structure – if you look to a socialist alternative – you might be bequeathing something of real value to your children and future generations.

Howard Pilott

Obituary: Toby Beasley (1973)

Obituary from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

"CEASED MEMBERSHIP" in the E.C. reports can stir the memory and bring back times that once were. Last month it was S. Beasley, Hackney, deceased: Toby!

I first met him at Bloom's Corner, bomb-site near teeming Petticoat Lane where we held Sunday-morning meetings. I was down as speaker, this bony little man arrived carrying the platform. Cloth cap, bright eyes, shrill Cockney voice announcing "I'm the chairman". When the meeting flagged he cleared off, came back, said "I'm the heckler now!" and launched a furious knockabout dialogue to bring the crowd back.

Everyone who set eyes on Toby thought they had seen him before. There was a reason for that" his living was selling newspapers in front of Liverpool Street Station. In conversation one always wanted to know more about his background. Once in a lecture I mentioned the Victorian poetess Eliza Cook as having doled out opiate philosophy, and at the end Toby bawled cheerfully: "You've insulted my great-aunt!"

Until age and ill-health got the better of him, Toby was a dedicated regular at the old Hackney Branch. He was, of course, a "character"; he was also a knowledgeable and kindly man, full of fortitude and humour, and many of us will remember him affectionately — his Socialist lifetime enriched our own.

Robert Barltrop 

Left Foot, Right Foot (1990)

From the January 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many a premature obituary was provoked by Michael Foot's announcement that he will not be standing for Parliament again. There was no dissension from the opinion that he is a learned, courteous and sincere man. Another thing provoked by the news would be a massive flutter in the ambitious hearts of all who hope to become a Labour MP in the near future, for down in his Blaenau Gwent constituency Tories are like a threatened species and Foot sits on a majority of nearly 28,000. As the late Richard Crossman pointed out in his Backbench Diaries, the comfort of an unassailable majority works wonders for an MP's morale and has a perceptive influence on how the lucky Member views the topics and crises of the day. Whoever gets the Blaenau Gwent nomination will be one of the most comfortable and morale-full in the Commons. 

But back to those obituaries, which said so many nice things about Foot, among them that he will be sadly missed in Westminister not just for his sincerity and courtesy but also because he is something called a "great parliamentarian". It is clear that "great parliamentarians" are pretty rare in all sorts of ways, for example a left-winger like Foot can be one and so can a right-winger like Enoch Powell. In fact between these two, who in theory should be sworn enemies until the end of time, there has long existed a state of mutual admiration. "He speaks beautiful English", said Powell of Foot. "The greatest master of clear exposition of British post-1945 politics", wrote Foot of Powell. Perhaps on the principle that it is not what you say that counts but how elegantly you say it, Great Parliamentarians stick together, offering the kind of speeches which bring MPs flocking from the tea-room and the bar. They know a lot about parliament's history and its arcane procedural devices. They deeply respect its power to uphold the private property system on the basis of popular votes from the working class. The question is, whose advantage does this serve and what is its relevance in the case of the soon-to-be-ex-Member for Blaneau Gwent? 　

Accustomed pose 

Except for those who are aware of how capitalist politics tames its rebels—in the case of the Labour Party, moving them smoothly from left to right—it is strange to recall the revulsion which Foot once provoked, in his own party as well as among its opponents. Only Aneurin Bevan was considered to be wilder and more threatening among the bogey-men who would nationalise everything in sight and so undermine the nation's morals that not a single Knightsbridge nanny would be safe. Foot was among the most restless and damaging of the critics of the Attlee government after the war, a moving influence in the operations of the Tribune Group which was named after the gadfly journal of which he became editor in 1948. 

From the time when he was first elected to parliament in 1945 until he became a Cabinet minister in the 1974 Labour government Foot could be relied on, whenever the Labour Party were under pressure to accept some inconvenient reality of capitalism, to strike his accustomed pose as the incorruptible guardian of Labour's virtue. He usually did this with some passion. which impressed those who agreed with him. At the 1959 Labour Conference, for example, when the party were being forced by their third successive defeat at a general election to consider how many of their supposedly eternal and cherished principles they should abandon if they were not to suffer yet another mauling at the polls. Foot came to the rostrum to defend nationalisation to, according to the Guardian, "a tremendous roar of applause". At their 1960 Conference, in the debate on nuclear disarmament when Gaitskell promised to fight and fight and fight again, Foot "was given a clapping, stamping, cheering ovation as he took the microphone". When the Labour whip was withdrawn from him, over the same issue of unilateralism, in 1961 it served only to reinforce the adoration in which he was held by Labour's tireless left-wingers. Here, they drooled, was a man who could always be trusted, a steadfast martyr in the defence of what they imagined were the principles of socialism. 　

In fact from the beginning Foot showed evidence that he was a lot more selective and flexible in his principles and his concern for working class interests. During his first spell as editor of Tribune (1948-52) the journal was critical of the Attlee government but as long as Bevan was a member of that government Tribune gave it general support. This stance caused it to support a number of obviously anti-working class measures, among them the NATO pact (the formal recognition of a nuclear-armed, European power bloc, dominated by American capitalism and aimed at Russian expansionism), the Berlin airlift (in response to an attempt by Russian capitalism to strengthen its position in Eastern Europe), and Britain joining the Korean War (a defence of the interests of western capitalism, in particular of America and Britain, against a threatened incursion by a developing capitalism in China). Anyone professing to be concerned with working class interests and with the international unity of the workers—especially anyone editing an influential journal like Tribune—had no argument for taking the side of any of the capitalist powers. They should have pointed out the nature of the conflicts and their underlying cause. They should have urged workers everywhere, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, to stay out of the disputes of their ruling classes and instead work for world-wide working class solidarity for socialism. 　

Of course, Foot joined CND and was one of the few bigwigs to actually to complete the Easter march, as distinct from joining it briefly at a place chosen for its photo opportunity. His rebellious stand against those bits of Labour policy which he found it inconvenient to support landed him in frequent trouble with the whips. According to Castle, in June 1966 he was complaining that the Wilson government should have applied a "soak the rich" budget policy and that people like judges and doctors should have had a pay cut while the seamen (who were in dispute with the Labour government over their wages) had a good cause. In February 1968 he was willing to risk a defeat for the government rather than support their proposed expenditure cuts which, among other things, abolished free milk in secondary schools. As a result there was a general assumption that Foot would never be a member of any government, that he would never sell his principles in exchange for office. 

Minister of Unemployment 

However in the 1970s it became apparent that Foot was not, after all, entirely lacking in ambition. He stood three times for the Deputy Leadership before, in 1974, he became a minister. By that time he was re-established as an MP, after inheriting the old seat at Ebbw Vaie of his hero Bevan. To bring Foot into the Cabinet was a typically Wilsonian masterstroke. After the three-day-week chaos of Heath's battle with the miners, who better to put in charge of the Department of Employment with the clear and simple brief of buying the miners' return to work? Wilson was trading on Foot's reputation with the grass-roots and, whether Foot was aware of it or not, the ruse worked. 

Two years later Wilson's successor as Prime Minister, Callaghan, pulled yet another stroke when he made Foot leader of the House of Commons. At other times this would have seemed the unlikeliest of alliances; Foot had once called his new boss PC Callaghan and Callaghan had been in favour of Foot's expulsion from the party. Those were difficult days for the Labour government as they struggled to weather some typical economic storms and to hold down wages, without the security of a reliable majority. It then became clear that Foot was not only a "great parliamentarian" but also a master of Commons procedure and of bending the rules in order to push through unpopular legislation. One trick he used to get approval for some cuts in expenditure was to make them the subject of a vote on the adjournment, the idea being that a defeat would have been interpreted as a rejection of the adjournment and not of the cuts. In 1978 Foot traded an extension of homosexual law reform—a concept which should have been dear to his libertarian heart—for the votes of the Ulster Unionists.

The difficulties of that government were largely those of holding back the wage claims which came in a flood after the years of restraint under Heath. Labour's restraint had a different name; it was called a Pay Code and there were guidelines (that is, before the attempts at imposing the policy by law). The most active proponent of the government in its battles with the workers was Callaghan's Leader of the Commons, described by Castle as "more rigid than Jim Callaghan was in his Chancellor days". Obsessed with the need to keep in power a government which was industriously attacking working class living standards, Foot applied his ability to defuse and divert criticism. Castle recorded, whether in wonder or outrage is not clear, that at the 1975 Tribune rally Foot "even managed to make the pay policy sound like a socialist crusade". He did not manage to work the sane trick over unemployment, to make being out of work sound like a crusade; which was just as well because during his time as Secretary of State for Employment unemployment doubled. 

The Voters' Judgement 

When it came time for the voters to pass judgement on that Labour government it was clear that they did not have the same order of priorities as Foot. But was there really any need for the Labour Party to become so unhinged by their defeat as to elect Foot as their leader—as they hoped—for next Prime Minister? Was this what all those years of passionate rebellion had been for? Looked at in terms of the ugly game of capitalist politics this was arguably one of the most unwise decisions ever made, for whatever qualities Foot had they did not match up to what is considered necessary in a political leader. But Foot could not be accused of not trying; the aptitude for manoeuvring he showed in trying to keep his party In power was just as evident when he was trying to get them back in again. At the 1981 Labour Conference he assured cheering delegates that "nothing that I've seen persuades me that CND was wrong". But any hopes among Labour's unilateralists that at last they had a leader who would see to it that the British forces scrapped their nuclear weapons were soon dashed. Fifteen months later Foot was telling the Guardian (6 December 1982) that CND's policy of immediate unilateral nuclear disarmament was, if not wrong, then only something for a vague future: "We want to move towards a non-nuclear defence programrne". 

At the 1981 Conference, in a typical splurge of rhetoric, he described himself as "a peacemonger, an inveterate incurable peacemonger" but by the outbreak of the Falklands War in the following April his peacemongering had been cured enough for him to swallow the specious Tory propaganda about the war being in resistance to brutal Argentinian aggression and their repression of the islanders, assuring Thatcher in the Commons: 

"It is because I subscribe to that principle (sic) that I support the despatch of the task force". 

The militancy of his peacemongering was also measured by the revelation from the odious Robin Day that Foot had approved the sinking of the Belgrano which, as it cost the lives of a few hundred Argentinian rather than British workers, was not classified in this country as an act of brutal aggression. 

Foot's cynical groping for power came to its peak in the 1983 election when he enjoyed himself stumping the country, making fiery speeches to packed halls but not meeting with the approval of the image-conscious pros of his party. His legendary scruffiness had always been tolerated, for example by Callaghan who thought "that it springs from his unspoken assumption that these are but the trappings and that a man should be judged by the sincerity and passion of his convictions". How then should we judge Foot's submission to the image-makers who strove to create a more acceptable, a more voter-friendly appearance for him, barbering his hair, dressing him in smart suits and even replacing his famous spectacles with their blinkers with a more telegenic pair? It was, politically speaking, not a pretty sight and of course did not win the votes because Labour's defeat at that election was their heaviest since 1931. 

Squalid scene 

And what of Foot since he relinquished the leadership for the more easeful life of a back-bencher with a solidly comforting majority? Has he been reborn as a fanatical lefty, a looming threat to the tea-rooms of Bournemouth and Tunbridge Wells? Since he was succeeded by Neil Kinnock (who in his younger days as a left-wing rebel was a protégé of Foot's) the Labour Party has been trying, as much to Foot's dismay it had done in 1959 to look as much like the Tories as it can. Once again they are debasing what the membership are supposed to cherish as immutable principles without which there is no reason to be in politics. In 1983 the party at least professed to have a timescale, however loose, for running down British nuclear weapons; now there is no such thing. They have abandoned the policy of "squeezing the rich" through taxation and replaced it with vague discussion of "fair" taxation (as if it matters either way). To the trade unions they offer no commitment to scrap all the restrictive Tory legislation but float the idea of a "balanced package" which is another name for the Social Contract, Pay Code and all other such attempts to restrain pay claims. Whatever opposition to these changes there has been in the Labour Party it has not been warmed by any incendiary words from Foot. He has sat mute and compliant and when the time comes he will undoubtedly give the whole disreputable exercise his active support, in speeches which will convince the disappointed Labour supporters that anti-working class policies are steps towards the Promised Land when all people will be free and equal. 

Michael Foot is not unique, for there have been many other Labour leaders who have first established their credentials as heroes of the grass-roots and then exploited their popularity to justify policies which were clearly opposed to what they claimed to stand for. This is part of the continuing process in which the working class are deceived that this social system, and its political parties, do not have to be as they are but could be better under a different government, under more humane leaders. This is among the most dangerous of illusions, for it conceals the urgency of abolishing capitalism, at once and entirely. Foot is soon to leave this squalid scene and he has no cause to be proud of his contribution to it. 

Ivan

The end of Fukuyama (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A wise and confident-looking face gazes at us from beneath an article in the Guardian (7 September). The face is that of Francis Fukuyama, a consultant to the US State Department and the Rand Corporation. The article is his defence of his own essay 'The End of History', published last December. 

Fukuyama starts by complaining that he has been misunderstood. Critics have pointed to such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as evidence that he is wrong and history is not over. He explains that what he thinks is over is not "history" but merely "the history of ideas" and that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the overthrow of "communism" in Eastern Europe only back up his main argument that "liberal democracy is the only legitimate ideology left in the world". 

This type of thinking is not new. During the 1930s fascist and communist parties were convinced that "decadent democracy" was finished and would be replaced by their own creed. Fukuyama is as wrong now as they were then, but at least Hitler only gave the Third Reich a thousand years while he sees liberal democracy lasting for ever.

Ideology and war

We are also informed that the triumph of liberal democracy has been accompanied by "the victory of market principles, of market organisation" and that these two factors will lead to the creation of more and more liberal democracies practising free-market and free-trade economies and all living in harmony. The proof is that 

in the 200 or so years that modem liberal democracies have existed there is not one single instance of one liberal democracy lighting another.

According to Fukuyama the conflict between nations during most of this century 

was due to existence of serious ideological cleavages among the great powers, between liberalism on the one hand and fascism and communism on the other.

If Fukuyama's article in the Guardian had appeared on April 1st then it would have been taken for a joke, but he is serious. He actually believes that different political ideas are what produced World War Two, the Cold War, Korea, and so on. That these events were connected with the disputes between national ruling groups over such matters as control of markets, spheres of influence and vital raw materials has completely eluded him. 

For example, would America and Japan have gone to war if Japan hadn't threatened American interests in the Pacific? Of course not, their different political systems didn't matter one bit. Liberal democracies and dictatorships can co-exist very well so long as their interests do not seriously clash. Look at how Britain could for decades happily describe fascist Portugal as "our oldest ally". 

But even if the liberal democracies haven't fought one another this is only because they didn't need to, having agreed to carve up the world among themselves. Britain, France and the USA industrialised early and needed markets and raw materials for their mighty industries. The first two between them grabbed most of Africa and large parts of Asia while Central and South America were left to the USA. 

This carve-up, and not ideological squabbles, also explains why from 1939 to 1945 the big liberal democracies engaged in war with dictatorships, or to be more accurate, those which felt strong enough to muscle in on them. Italy and Japan were late to industrialise and thus to colonise, while Germany had lost its colonies and markets through defeat in World War One, so each of them had considerable ground to make up. The only way open to them, once diplomacy and threats had failed, was by military means. 

Is liberal democracy secure? 

What has also eluded Fukuyama is the glaring evidence that many nations cannot simply become, or even remain, liberal democracies just because they wish to. This depends on whether or not it is acceptable to the powerful liberal democracies, especially the USA. Remember the fate of Chile, Latin America's oldest liberal democracy, in 1973 when it offended US capitalism. True the US Marines were not sent in to crush it but the local military were. 

Nor are free-trade policies open to all, as Fukuyama supposes. These same powerful liberal democracies often ensure that the exports of under-developed countries are faced with the very trade barriers which they claim to oppose. Chile's Minister of Finance has welcomed George Bush's plan for a free-trade zone covering the entire Western Hemisphere but added

Unfortunately, many countries of the world—including the US—do not always reflect in their actions the free-trade gospel they preach. (The Wall Street Journal 14 September). 

So Fukuyama's vision of the future is of liberal democracies, including the great powers, settling down to "peaceful" competition. Yes, they may well fight with undemocratic countries but will make only economic war on one another. Great power status will depend, he says, not on the ability to move armed forces around the world but on remaining competitive by growing and innovating. The main threat a united, liberal democratic Germany will pose

will take the form of precision machine tools and high-quality Mercedes rather than Panzers.

Isn't that reassuring! But wait, what will be the response of the USA or some other great power if, say, Germany and/or Japan become too competitive? Will they simply accept a disastrous loss of markets and power with a philosophic shrug? History shows that free-trade is something nations support only when it is to their advantage. And what will be the response of the populace in those great powers should mass unemployment and falling living standards come in the wake of economic defeat? Dictatorships can certainly become liberal democracies but the reverse can just as easily happen in a situation such as this. 

Fukuyama's view of the world is a naive and simplistic one as it ignores the Marxist view that capitalism, because of its never ending need for expansion and capitaI accumulation, is rooted in conflict. In the last resort the way for nations to settle their irreconcilable differences must be through armed force or at least the threat of it. This applies no matter what form of government or economics happens to be in vogue. 

The history of ideas has not ended but is, and must be, a continuing process. Ideologies will persist and the old ideas which Fukuyama thinks are dead will probably come round again just as, incidentally, long-discarded free-market economics have done. Indeed only three days after his own article appeared there were two others in the Guardian arguing for more regulation in banking and more government spending! 

In whatever way future events unfold we can be sure that Francis Fukuyama's wise and confident expression will be replaced by one of pained bewilderment as his unsound theory is exposed. We are even surer that far from Marx's socialist idea having been ended, its day has still to come. 

Vic Vanni

A culture of violence (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

On a summer day in August, Michael Ryan took to the streets of Hungerford armed with an assortment of lethal weapons and embarked on an orgy of terror and violence leaving in his wake a trail of dead and injured before, finally, turning a gun on himself. The media had a field day—a sensational story in the middle of the "silly season". After the sickening accounts of Ryan's massacre, came the instant diagnoses, remedies and pop psychology: Ryan was a madman, under the influence of too much violent television and films, with too easy an access to firearms. The "solution": ban violence on television and stop madmen from getting hold guns.

But the "solution" proposed not only does nothing to deal with the problem of violence but also fosters a dangerous illusion — that this incident was an exception, something out of the ordinary, the product of a deranged mind. Michael Ryan may or may not have been schizophrenic, psychotic or paranoid; he may or may not have been over-protected by his mother; he may or may not have had sexual hang-ups (there is, in any case, something grotesque about engaging in posthumous psychoanalysis), but some of this explains why the particular form his disturbance took was so violent and anti-social.

It is, no doubt, very comforting to some people struggling to make sense of what happened, to simply label Ryan as "mad". To do so gives the impression that his violence was an individual, pathological problem and in no way connected to the society in which we live. But in fact although the scale of the violence in this case was perhaps exceptional, the violence itself was not. It is part of a continuum of violence with Saturday night pub brawls, child abuse and wife battering at one end and war and genocide at the other. Each and every day numerous acts of violence are committed: they are so routine as to go largely unnoticed. In a violent society it takes a massacre for violence to hit the headlines.

Ryan, we were told, was, at the time of his attack, dressed in Rambo-style combat gear complete with headband. Doesn't this, they argue, prove that he was acting out a fantasy inspired by the film? Shouldn't we then ban depictions of violence in films and on television? Although the causal connection between violent images and violent behaviour remains unproved, what is clear is that films like Rambo and Death Wish, and television programmes like Miami Vice and the A Team are tremendously popular. Why? Could it be that, rather than causing the violence that exists in society, they are a part of, and contribute to, a culture that allows violence to flourish? The same newspapers that screamed "shock, horror" from their headlines the day after the events in Hungerford, routinely encourage and romanticise xenophobia, militarism and war and glorify "heroes" of the Rambo ilk.

And then, to add to the hypocrisy, having dismissed Ryan as a madman, they then call for gun laws to be tightened up to stop other lunatics from getting their hands on sub-machine guns. But gun laws, however restrictive, necessarily presuppose guns and guns are, by their very nature, weapons of violence — despite what the gun lobby might say about their "sporting" uses. The same culture of violence that makes films like Rambo successful also creates a market for real live guns that are manufactured and sold for profit through gun shops, arms dealers and mail order magazines, who have little interest in the state of mind of the buyer, or the use to which they might be put. There is after all money to be made from violence, as the state which permits and encourages arms dealing knows only too well.

The massacre in Hungerford might, momentarily, have shattered any cosy illusions that people might hold that we live in the best of all possible worlds but the "instant" analysis and irrelevant "solutions" quickly papered over the cracks with reassuring pap about it being an isolated incident, the actions of a crazed man who should never have been permitted a firearms certificate, allowing people to fall back into the complacent belief that "something" is being done. Gun laws are to be reviewed, television schedules were altered. Well that's alright then, isn't it?

Janie Percy-Smith

Who Will Do the Dangerous Work? (1982)

From the February 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is a question often asked when we explain that in socialist society the principle "from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs" will apply. In other words, that people will voluntarily contribute in terms of work what they can in order to produce the abundance of wealth to which they will then have free access according to their individual needs (of which they themselves will be the sole judge). 

The assumption behind the "dirty work" objection is that if work were voluntary nobody would choose to do the hard, the dangerous, the boring or the messy work because this would be "against human nature". We don't want to go here into all the scientific arguments which show that there is nothing in the nature of the animal homo sapiens that would prevent them living in a socialist society; quite the reverse in fact, human beings are animals which have evolved and survived only through their capacity to co-operate. All we will do is draw attention to the fact that the objection is not valid even for all work under capitalism. 

Work under capitalism mostly takes the form of employment—that is, work for an employer, under his control and for his profit, and it is therefore not surprising that most people consider "work" to be something unpleasant, to be avoided as much as possible. But when it comes to exercising their mental and physical energies—which is equally "working"—in their own time, as in digging their gardens, pursuing their hobbies and the like, it is a different matter. Because people enjoy this kind of work, many are not even prepared to consider such activities as work, to such an extent has capitalism associated work with work for an employer! Socialism, which will abolish employment, will also abolish this false distinction between "work " (unpleasant) and "play" (pleasant), People will be able to organise the necessary productive work in such away that everybody will be able to derive satisfaction from doing it. 

But what about the dirty work? Well, as the Penlee lifeboat disaster recently showed, even under capitalism people can be found to undertake work of the most dangerous kind voluntarily. These lifeboatmen were all volunteers to do a job they knew to be socially necessary. Despite the fuss they made of the disaster, the capitalist class were unable to understand this. "£3 for a start, then, £1 an hour—the price of lifeboat courage" headlined the Daily Telegraph (21/12/81) with the suggestion that lifeboatmen were not being paid enough. But, as any of the lifeboatmen could have told them, this was not the point; money (expenses) was not the motive. In fact, one RNLI official was quoted as saying "some do not bother to claim it". 

Then why do they do it, why do they voluntarily undertake such dangerous, dirty work? Why could more than enough volunteers be found from the same village to replace the eight men who died? Because, as we have said, they were aware that there was a socially necessary job to be done. If this can happen under capitalism where the cash nexus has corrupted nearly everything, how can it be imagined that in socialism there will be any problem to find people to undertake any "dirty" jobs that cannot be automated? 

Adam Buick

Little Brother is Watching You (1959)

From the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has always been fashionable for the champions of so-called Western Democracy to describe in horrifying detail the horrors perpetrated by Big Brother Stalin, Big Brother Khruschev and the other dictators, in order that we might be comforted by the thought that circumstances here might be a lot worse. When one looks around, though, the differences aren't as great as they are made out to be. Everywhere one looks there are myriads of little brothers—the petty bureaucrats and officials that are apparently indispensable to modem society. So vast and impersonal has the State machine become, that the sum total of all the little brothers appears to make a very big brother indeed. 

One of the most disturbing features about this is the way in which little-brotherdom has been taken for granted, few now questioning the supervisory rights exercised by the multitudes of little brothers. 

Practically every moment of our waking life is spent under the observation and control of these watchdogs, who themselves are oblivious to the nature of their task, that is to be the ruling class's minions who ensure that every dot and comma of the laws of property society are observed. 

Let us take a look at our lives and see how far we are dominated by little-brotherdom. We open our eyes in the morning, lift our heads from the pillow (Purchase Tax (Domestic Pillowslips) Order 1947, S.R. & O., 1876); and gaze around our cosy Council flat ("Tenants shall not keep cats, dogs, chickens, livestock or any animal whatsoever"). We lower our feet gently to the floor, careful not to wake the baby downstairs ("No musical instruments, radio, record-player or noisy instrument whatsoever shall be played or used between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7.30 a.m."). We pull on our cotton socks (Customs and Excise (Import Licences for Foreign Cotton Goods) Order 1954. S.T. No. 6764). 

The carpet we tread on is subject to Purchase Tax, Hire Purchase restrictions, Customs and Excise duty if it is imported, Police investigation if it is stolen, and some thousands of officials in various Ministries and Departments are concerned with all these qualities of the carpet. The only quality that they are not interested in is the one that concerns the owner, that is, its usefulness. Similarly the tea that we pop into the teapot is haggled over by harassed merchants, discussed by diplomats, preserved by security police, checked by Customs officials, weighed by weights and measures men, and litigated over by lawyers, all without reference or relevance to the need that it satisfies. 

And so the morning goes on; everything we do, everything we use, and even our conversations are affected in some way or other by regulations, statutes, restrictions, official decrees, taxes, tithes, fines, penalties, and the rest. 

Perhaps the postman has brought us some mail? Ah, yes, a kind letter from our obedient servant, the Inspector of Taxes, requesting us to complete and return Form A.63 forthwith or have our code number reduced to zero (almost a fate worse than death). What else—perhaps a billet-doux from the Postmaster-General reminding us that our television licence expires on the 31st proximo? Or a figure-studded form from the Town Clerk telling us that each pound of rates was divided up into such fascinating items as 3¾d. for roads: 4¼d. for schools; 9d. for himself as watcher-in-chief and for his myrmidons; and so on. In fact, one could hazard the guess that three-quarters of the average man's mail comes from the little brothers. 

And so it goes on—one is always subject to the restrictions, petty tyranny and feeling of soul-destroying impotence produced by constant surveillance—"Good morning, madam; may I see your wireless and television licences?"; and the rest of it. 

Even the forms of little-brotherdom that we take completely for granted -"Fares, please"; "May I see your ticket?"; "One and nines at the far paybox" — all these are the product of an irrational society which substitutes profit for human needs, money for human feelings, and cash registers for human lives. 

A whole army of people exists, whose only purpose is to restrict us, regulate our lives, keep us submissive, and preserve the sanctity of private property. This is not a criticism of the watchdogs themselves—the clerk in the tax office or the bus conductor is only carrying out a job, although the job itself is one that stultifies and inhibits. Millions of able-bodied men and women carry out these socially useless tasks for the purpose of keeping capitalism running efficiently and keeping the others in order. 

Capitalism requires an army, navy, air force, police force and judiciary to defend the rights of employers to exploit their propertyless employees. In order to do this efficiently in the modern world, an immense and complicated State machine grows up, which irons out the differences between individual capitalists and combines all their interests in what is complacently described as the "national interest." To maintain this top-heavy institution, hundreds of thousands of workers are required to staff the end less Ministries and Departments. The Inland Revenue Department rakes in the State's share of the profits exacted from workers, and the various Ministries spend it in the ways deemed best by the ruling class's administrators.

And yet, a large proportion of the tasks performed by this vast army of people are, from a rational point of view, socially worthless. The Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance keeps infirm and aged workers alive at the minimum expense; the Customs and Excise Department preserves the State monopolies of tobacco and alcohol and keeps the rapacious foreign capitalist from the door; the Defence Ministry and Foreign Office ensure that the British capitalist can hang on to what he has captured; and so on. No doubt this is all very desirable from the ruling class's point of view, but has little to do with the interests of the majority of people.

People's acceptance of these social fungi implies an acceptance of capitalism, with all the evils that go with it. Conversely, once one has rejected capitalism, it can be seen that this implies the rejection of all of its stupid paraphernalia - of which little brothers are a part. Little brothers are only a facet of a harmful social system which has long outlived its purpose; a facet which itself emphasises and demonstrates the irrational and undesirable nature of capitalist society. 

A society which turns in on itself in this way, which dominates and regiments humans instead of serving their interests—this is a world which is unworthy of human beings. The fact that people find life unthinkable without the little brothers proves just how unthinkable it has become with them. 

Albert Ivimey

Who needs money? (1990)

From the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a society where almost everything is bought and sold. That which you need in order to live is a commodity; you must buy it from someone who will make a profit out of selling it to you. Our minds are dominated by money. It is our passport to existence. No money, no access to what we need. Too little money, no comfort. Money drives people crazy: contrary to the words of the song, money does not make the world go round—money makes the world go mad. 

It turns the white-coated scientist into the unprincipled servant of commerce. It converts the caring doctor into the grasping private practioner. Money makes pathetic liars out of salesmen and robotic paper counters out of bank clerks. Money leads young men to beat up old women. Money is the source of the poor man's scheme to have a fat wallet which ends too often in a cold prison cell. Money is the rich man's god. Children beg for money. Not a day passes when we do not think about it. Have I enough money for . . . If only this cost less . . . I must now pay my money for . . . Bills, tokens, threatening reminders, final demands, security locks, bank queues, exchange rates, newsreaders announcing that the pound has fallen, as if it is the sun which has fallen out of the sky. It is a vast, mentally corrupting, emotionally destructive money madness. 

Why Money? 

Money is the universally accepted means of exchange. It is a universal equivalent. Instead of me giving you three toasters for your armchair, I pay in an accepted, legal currency. Sounds sensible. Who wants to return to the awkward system of bartering goods? It seems sensible as long as we have a property-based system of society where wealth is owned by some and sold to others. 

The two main uses of money by most people are for food and housing. You need money to buy food from the corner store, or, more probably, the supermarket. In effect, you are paying the owners of food production for the right to have access to what they possess. These millionaire food manufacturers did not produce the food. But you must buy if from them so that they may profit. You pay money for housing to the landlord or the building society. They own the land that you live on and they own the means of producing the buildings in which you dwell. Directors of building societies are not to be found on building sites making houses. They are too busy getting drunk in their clubs or playing golf. 

Now, imagine that all these things that you need were owned and controlled in common. By everyone. All of us—you included. There is nobody to buy food from—it is common property. There are no rents or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to us all. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). You would not need money. In a society of common ownership money would have no role. It would be like the tramlines in a city which has done away with trams. No longer would money exist. 

The money test I 

"But we need money—couldn't live without it". That is what most well-conditioned readers will say. In our society people learn to turn money into a fetish. In primitive societies certain objects were invested with magical powers. For example, in Ancient Egypt cats were regarded as sacred animals which had to be treated with great respect or they would turn the world upside-down. Modern people are taught to believe that money contains intrinsic powers. Where would we be without it? Beware of dethroning the money-god. Let us put this to the test. 

Take a pile of money. Three fivers and a couple of pound coins. Leave them in a dark room and see what happens. Will they dig coal? Will factories be built or homes furnished? Well. at least they could cook you a good dinner: you can get good food for seventeen quid. Nothing will happen. Humans make money powerful. Left to itself it is just a pile of tokens of no worth. Even the picture of the Queen is ugly. 

The money test II 

But is money that important to you? Perhaps it is less intrusive in your daily life than has been suggested. Try one more test. 

Stop selling yourself for money for three months. That is what you do every time you go out to work in return for a wage or salary. You put yourself on the shelf along with the baked beans and the canned tuna fish and you say 'Buy me!'. The wages system, which turns the vast majority of people into exploited workers, is a process of selling your mental and physical energies in return for some money. For most of us, if we do not sell ourselves we will have little or no access to what we need in order to live. We devote most of our waking lives to trying to obtain money. Our work is devalued by money: if we enjoy working, the pleasure is diminished by the knowledge that we are only really engaging in a sordid transaction—and how many workers hate the miserable work that they are forced to do in order to get money? 

Give it a try: stop selling your labour power for money. You will give up on the test long before three months—or three weeks—or even three days. Most wage slaves are too petrified of losing their jobs—their chance to be bought for money—to even contemplate such an exercise. And rightly so, for under the wages system we are lost if we do not sell ourselves for money. 

Abolish money 

Socialists stand for a world without money. All wealth will be commonly owned, so there will be no body to buy what you need from. The right to live, and to be comfortable and happy, will not depend upon your pocket-book. Freedom will not be costed by accountants who will only give you liberty if you can pay for it. 

In a socialist society people will work according to their abilities and take according to their needs. Who will decide what their needs are? Not their bosses or the state or a cunning advertising industry—none of these will exist. People will decide for themselves. Who but humans ourselves are able to decide what we need? 

There will be no "socialist market". Contrary to the economic babble of certain "theorists" on the Left, it is quite obvious that the market, which is a mechanism for buying and selling commodities and realising a profit for the sellers, will have absolutely no function in a community where nobody is buying or seiling or making profits. In a society where production is solely for use people will have free and equal access to take what they need from the common store. 

Are people capable of living in a society of free access without making a mess of it? Will they take too much? Will they all refuse ever to work? Will they go to sleep for a thousand years and refuse to move a muscle? These are the fears about the nature of human beings that we in this money-mad society are urged to have. Socialists do not share such fears. We know just how co-operative and sharing and intelligent workers are capable of being. After all, we are a party of workers. 

Given a society of moneyless, free access men, women and children will co-operate together to make and to take what they commonly need and desire. They will do so democratically. And we could do so tomorrow if the vision of a moneyless society grabs hold of enough imaginations and penetrates the consciousness of enough of those millions of workers who are currently crying out, openly or quietly to themselves, under the strain of the enormous and often unbearable pressures of the money system. Without money, humans will be free to relate in ways which we have forgotten or only half-remember. The banks can close down, the cash machines put in museums and the children who cry because their parents have too little money to pay for them to grow up can stop. 

Steve Coleman

The Theory of State Capitalism (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"The fact of the matter is that the credit for this particular form of state capitalism should go back to the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who taught Jock Haston his Marxism in the first place (cf Against the Stream, p. 251) and had promulgated the theory as far back as 1918. For it was Haston who first raised the question of state capitalism within the Revolutionary Communist Party, not only as a purely Russian phenomenon but in global terms, both in the group's internal bulletin (War and the International, pp. 182-5) and in a series of articles in Socialist Appeal (mid-August to mid-September 1947). In fact Cliff's remit from Mandel when he first came to Britain was specifically to argue against these 'state capitalist' heresies, and what happened was that in the course of the dispute the contestants changed sides. Anyone who wishes to make a serious investigation of the whole topic should consult the above sources, as well as the SPGB's position, which was reissued as a pamphlet in the same year as Cliff first published his own, though we have to admit that Cliff's logic is inferior to theirs, since they dated Russia's capitalist revolution back to 1917."

—from a review of Alex Callinicos's book Trotskyism in Revolutionary History, Autumn 1991.

Political Pathways (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Einstein and common sense (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watch out, all you believers in common sense. Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879 and it is interesting to consider the effect of the scientific revolution caused by his theories on the "common sense" view of the world. 

In 1905 (while working in a patent office), Einstein published his first paper on Special Relativity ("On the electrodynamics of moving bodies"—Annalen der Physik). From two beautifully simple axioms (the principle of relativity and the constancy of the velocity of light), Einstein was able to come up with some startling results. One of the best known is the prediction that moving clocks run slow. To quote his original example: "Thence we conclude that a balance clock at the equator must go more slowly by a very small amount than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions". 

Another prediction that violates "common sense" is that the relative velocity of two observers moving directly away from each other, is not equal to the sum of their velocities. For example, if two spaceships move off from the earth in opposite directions at half the speed of light (relative to the earth) then their relative velocity will not be equal to the velocity of light (the answer predicted by classical physics and "common sense") but only 80 per cent of it. The original reactions to these apparently nonsensical theories were mainly hostile. W.P. Magie in his Presidential Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science dismissed relativity theory, saying: 

"I do not believe there is any man living who can assert with truth that he can conceive of time which is a function of velocity or is willing to go to the stake for the conviction that his "now" is another man's future or yet another man's past."

The hostile reception to his theories meant that Einstein had to work for another four years in the patent office before he got a job as a physicist. 

The first experimental tests of relativity theory (Kaufman, Annalen der Physik 1906) were not compatible with Einstein's theory and favoured rival theories. But Einstein was not unduly worried: 

"In my opinion both theories have a rather small probability because their fundamental assumptions concerning the mass of moving electrons are not explained in terms of theoretical systems which embrace a greater complex of phenomena." (Mach, Einstein and the Search for Reality by G. Holton, p 651/2). 

In other words, Einstein was convinced of the correctness of his theories not because of the empirical "facts" but because of subjective factors such as the simplicity and beauty of the equations. Of course, later experiments revealed flaws in the earlier ones, and gave results compatible with relativity However, the opposition to the theory continued and even when Einstein won a Nobel Prize in 1921 it was only partly for his theory and partly for same comparatively minor work. 

There was also some more fanatical opposition, particularly in Germany and largely on political grounds (partly because he was a Jew and partly because be was thought to be attacking the great German philosophers like Kant). In 1934, twenty five years after the publication of his first paper on relativity, a book was published in Germany called 100 Authors Against Einstein. Typical of the relativity "sensible" attack was that by Professor Strehl: 

"The theory of Einstein is for me a functional deformation of reality, his framework of references, variable space and time coordinates, invariant velocity of light (in spite of variable limiting value) is not to my taste." (Die Naturwissenschaften II (1931) p 234/6). 

The relevant point is that "common sense" is based on generalisation of everyday experience in which bodies move very much more slowly than light, and that therefore the effects of special relativity are negligibly small. Attempts to extrapolate these laws to velocities approaching that of light (300,000 kms per sec) give results which are qualitatively wrong. To physicists working with particles moving with velocities within a fraction of a percent of the velocity of light, the effects of special relativity are so common that the laws of relativity become part of their "common sense". 

An analogy between relativity and socialism should not be taken too literally, but what should be remembered is that the history of science is full of revolutions which violated the prevailing "common sense" view of human nature (humans are innately greedy, aggressive and so on) because this view is based on generalisations made in capitalist society. The extrapolation of this view of human nature to a qualitatively different society — socialism — is therefore completely unscientific. Those people who reject socialism on these grounds are making just as big a mistake as those philosophers who rejected relativity because it violated the internal infallibility of Kant. 

Tony Weidberg

National Liberation (1992)

Book Review from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Liberation by Nigel Harris. (I B Tauris, £24.95.)

Capitalism, argues Harris, has now become a single world economy in which international capital finds the frontiers which divide the world into 170 or so political states irrelevant. Governments are forced to take this economic reality into account by pursuing policies that allow the free movement of capital and commodities. 

A similar view was expressed by many in the Marxist tradition before the First World War. In fact, it was almost the mainstream Marxist view, though only a few like Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek and Bukharin drew the conclusion that this meant that nationalism no longer had any progressive role to play and so should be opposed by socialists. Harris, of course, is well aware of this, and his first chapter is an analysis and debunking of nationalism and its myths. He sees nationalism as we do—as a political creation imposed on people by states (and movements seeking to set up states) in the interest of the ruling class (or would-be ruling class) of those states. 

But in a sense, says Harris, the pre-First World War Marxists were proved wrong in that the war was followed by an increase in economic and political nationalism, not the decline that their theories implied. Indeed, "Marxism" itself came to be associated with economic nationalism so that today most of those in the world who call themselves "Marxists" are nationalists of one sort or another. 

Harris is a long-standing member of the SWP, but his book has been severely criticised by the leadership of that organisation who find its political implications disturbing. For if you hold that capitalism has become a single world economy in which national frontiers are irrelevant, this implies that you should also regard the nationalist programme of economic "independence" as reactionary. Harris, himself, does not explicitly argue that socialists should no longer support nationalist movements, but he does cautiously say that we can expect nationalism to slowly decline and implying that this would be a good thing: 

Thus, if politics were no more than a reflex of economics—as some of the cruder Marxists seemed to imply—the world ought to be within sight of the end of nationalism as a political force. On such a reading, it might survive as a cultural-linguistic concern, but the economic and political issue would be over for all except the economically least developed. Such an eventuality would once more restore the pre-1914 theorization. 

To adopt the pre-1914 Marxist position of opposition to nationalism as economically reactionary is the last thing the SWP leaders want, as it undermines their whole case of supporting such groups as the IRA, the Sandinistas, Pan-Arab Nationalism and the like, as well as support of countries like Iraq when at war with more powerful capitalist powers. They are forced to stand by their dogma that nationalism has some progressive role to play and that state capitalism in one country is something to be supported, so placing themselves amongst those Harris calls "the last quixotic defenders of a world of national State capitalisms, replacing the tyranny of the market with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy". 

Adam Buick

Southern discomfort (1989)

Film Review from the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

By any standards Mississippi Burning directed by Alan Parker is a very forceful piece of cinema and watching it made me realise that the horror and despair I experienced, when the three young Civil Rights activists were murdered in Mississippi in the 1960s, were still there.

The three were arrested on a trumped up speeding charge when in fact their 'offence' was to encourage the blacks to take what was in constitutional theory their right—to register to vote. They were held by the police until the local Ku Klux Klan could organise a lynching party and then they were released for the klan to murder them and bury their bodies in the earthworks of a dam. The FBI came down to investigate (the suspected crime was not murder, which had to be left to the State police, but violation of federal rights), found the bodies and brought a number of people to court among them the town's sheriff and his deputy. The sheriff was acquitted, the others went to prison.

Mississippi Burning—Hollywood's version of that gruesome incident—has been criticised for the way it it embroiders and distorts the facts, introducing elements of heroism into a story that was sordidly drab. For example, in the film the case is cracked—the FBI break open the cocoon of silence woven around the murderers by local people—through some subtle ingratiation by Gene Hackman and some not-so-subtle intimidation by his henchmen, which makes for a watchable film but does not fit the reality that it happened through the unheroic process of bribing witnesses. A lot of the film is concerned with the struggle between Hackman, a rough, tough ex-sheriff turned FBI agent, and his boss played by Willem Dafoe who is a serious, sharp-suited college boy. Dafoe tries to insist that the investigation sticks to 'Bureau procedure' while Hackman itches to behave more like Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. There are no prizes for guessing who comes out on top and whose methods are eventually used. If it didn't turn out that way it would not have been half as gripping a film and there wouldn't have been so many opportunities for the audience to relieve its tension in vengeful laughter, which swamped out any doubts about means and ends.

Case Against Racism

Among the film's bits of fable—like Hackman silencing and humiliating the town's most rampant racist thug by grabbing and squeezing his balls (at which more of that laughter)—it makes out its case against racism. Dafoe reminds us that racism is not a local problem but a social curse, rooted in widespread ignorance. Hackman remembers his father, a poor white farmer who enviously poisoned the mule of a more successful black neighbour. Revealing himself in this way helps him win the confidence of the deputy sheriff's wife, so she feels able to burst out with the frustration of trying to be humane when she was surrounded by a bigoted hatred which she had grown up with, and had married.

Compared to the millions wiped out by capitalism every year, compared to what the Nazi and Stalinist dictatorships did, compared to what was being unleashed in Vietnam at the time, three deaths seem of little numerical account. The horror stems from the fact that they were part of a long history of repression which had conditioned the people of the South into accepting that anyone with a black skin was fair game for anything white people chose to do them. It stems from the tension in the communal condonement of the murders and in the savage intimidation of any possible witnesses. It is a response to the ruthlessly destructive passion in defence of a diseased and doomed limb of prejudice.

Right to Vote Not Enough

And the despair is born of what has happened since then. In the 1960s segregation was crumbling under pressure from the economic, commercial and military needs of American capitalism. It still needed massive courage by the Civil Rights workers (the three in Mississippi knew exactly how terrible were the risks they ran) until now the American blacks are pretty well established as a voting force, which has had its effect on the face of politics there. All over the country, including the South, blacks are elected to public office. But it is not enough, just to win the vote; it must be used with an awareness of why society operates as it does and a will to change it. The case of the American Negro offers plenty of evidence in support of that argument.

Mississippi Burning is a powerful indictment of racist bigotry but it leaves us with the question: if there was indeed some kind of triumph of human qualities in Mississippi in those awful days, is it really represented now by the likes of Jesse Jackson?"

Ivan

Blood on their hands (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 7 January this year Pol Pot was toppled from power, and a few days later the founding of the People's Republic of Kampuchea was announced, the president being Heng Samrin. The new government was installed in power with the help of Vietnamese troops, and was very much a Vietnamese creation. The Heng Samrin regime was immediately recognised by the Russian-bloc states, but most countries still regard the Khmers Rouges as the "legitimate" rulers, in spite of the horrors they inflicted on the country and manifest fact that they control no more than a small part of its territory. Norodom Sihanouk, who has distinguished himself solely by often and abruptly changing sides. has prostrated himself before the United Nations, begging for international assistance and support for the barbarians who helped destroy his country. Kampuchea and its people have become entangled in a web of hypocrisy, deceit and suffering which is remarkable even by capitalism's gruesome standards.

China supported and supports the Khmers Rouges, hence those western capitalist states which are becoming increasingly friendly with China and foresee better trade opportunities there are unwilling to upset them by supporting Heng Samrin. The Americans, having done their best to "bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age", as one of their more candid generals put it, raise their hands in horror at the sudden discovery that wars kill people. Meanwhile the Vietnamese rulers have taken a leaf out of Uncle Sam's book and installed a puppet regime in Kampuchea. A treaty signed in March allows Vietnamese troops to be stationed in Laos and Kampuchea, enabling Vietnam (and its Russian mentor) to dominate Indo-China. This is basically what the dispute is about: over the last thirty years a succession of ruling classes have striven for control of Southeast Asia. After the defeat of the French and then of the Americans, the region was up for grabs between Russia and China. In spite of the Chinese attempt to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from Kampuchea by invading Vietnam, the Russians and their satellites have, for the moment at least, won the contest.

The losers, as ever, are the ordinary people, the peasants and workers of Kampuchea. Out of a 1975 population of around seven million, about three million are now believed to have died under Pol Pot. A further two million are currently starving as a result of the disruptions caused by evacuation and fighting. Only five per cent of the the country's arable land is under cultivation, and the food situation is likely to be even worse next year. Millions of pounds' worth of aid has been sitting around unused while presidents and prime ministers play their deadly games. Heng Samrin's regime has refused to allow the Red Cross to distribute aid to the Kampuchean population, on the grounds that this would mean sharing it with the Khmers Rouges and their supporters. And all the while, countless human beings die and suffer horribly, with their safest place the overcrowded and insanitary refugee camps in Thailand.

Anyone who thought that the defeat of American imperialism would lead to peace and prosperity for Southeast Asia has now been disillusioned. Post-"liberation" Vietnam has turned into such a paradise that hundreds have been prepared to risk drowning in order to escape, after the government has thoughtfully reduced the weight of the ships by relieving them of large sums of gold. Capitalist states like Vietnam and China are now exposed, to all but the willfully blind, as hypocritical murderers and oppressors no more deserving of support than Britain or the United States.

An "independent" country is simply one where a home-grown ruling class lord it over their subjects, to whom the nationality of their exploiters should be of no concern at all. Under capitalism, all countries are forced to behave like predators, including those that have but recently thrown off the "imperialist yoke".

No one who has seen, on their television, or in newspapers, the walking skeletons of Kampuchean children could fail to be moved. The instinctive response may be to dig into one's pocket, but charity will not prevent such horrors happening again and again. Starvation may be rare in industrialised countries nowadays, but for a large proportion of humanity it is it is either an everyday experience or an ever-present threat. It is capitalism, with its inequalities and its wars and its artificial shortages, that is responsible for this situation.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Capitalism unleashes war (1991)

Editorial from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

So capitalism has again unleashed the horrors of war. The Socialist attitude is clear. Wars are never justified from a working class point of view. They are fought by capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investments. None of these are issues of concern to wage and salary workers, the majority in society.

The present war in is a particularly blatant example of the sort of issue wars are fought over under capitalism. What is at stake for both sides is quite clearly control over oil supplies and trade routes. Everybody knows this, and the propaganda machines of the Western powers are having great difficulty in portraying it as a war for "democracy" and "our way of life". With the official war aim being to restore the filthy-rich Al Sabah dynasty to rule over and exploit the the people in the puppet-state of Kuwait and with mediaeval and religious fundamentalist Saudi Arabia where women are not even allowed to drive cars as the main local ally, this is hardly surprising.

Iraq is being attacked, under the flag of convenience of the United Nations, because its emergence as a strong regional power with expansionist ambitions represents a threat to Western domination of the area and a challenge to the security and free flow of Western oil supplies "at market prices".

This gives the Iraqi ruling class a propaganda advantage. They can truthfully present the war as one waged by Western powers to protect and further their imperialist interests. But Iraqi workers should not be fooled. They are members of the international working class who have been conscripted by a particularly brutal local ruling class to fight for its interest in having a secure trade outlet to the sea and in building itself up as the dominant regional power. Issues, once again, that are not ones of concern to them as wage and salary workers. Iraqi workers, like those of the Western countries and their local allies, will be dying for interests which are not theirs.

The outbreak of any war is an unmitigated disaster for the working class. It is the workers who are hired or conscripted to do the fighting, the destroying, the killing - and the dying. It is workers and their families who suffer from the bombings, the destruction, the restrictions, the famines and the epidemics that accompany all wars. War brings nothing but suffering and misery.

This is why, as Socialists representing the working class interest, we are opposed to all wars. always. We are not prepared to support under any circumstances the killing and maiming of our fellow workers in the pursuit of capitalist profits. Ideally, from the point of view of the working class within capitalism, it would have been better if the capitalists had settled this conflict peacefully and, now that the war has started, it should stop immediately. Unfortunately this can only be wishful thinking. Capitalism does not work that way. War will always be a policy option invoked by capitalist states from time to time.

We denounce the war as yet another example of the barbarous nature of the capitalist system and call upon our fellow workers in all countries to unite even more urgently to bring the war-causing capitalist system to a speedy end by establishing in its place a world socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth's resources by all the people of the Earth.