Twilight world (1985)

Book Review from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tyranny of the Status Quo. Milton and Rose Friedman. Pelican Books, 1985, 2.95.

In all developed capitalist countries the same basic pattern has been followed. A take off in government spending, mostly accounted for by reformist welfare schemes, with a relative shift towards central government, away from local levels. In Britain and other European countries this trend started earlier. This leads us to the topic of inflation. The Friedmans are in no doubt that the main cause of inflation over the centuries of money economies has been deliberate acts by governments. This assertion is conclusively backed up by the statistics the authors offer. Noting that inflation in America took off not long after government spending, they show how the large and unpopular tax increases (unpopular to many workers as capitalists in general, although this feeling is based on a misunderstanding of how wages are determined) necessary to finance these programmes can be partially staved off by "deficit financing". Often a government will resort to borrowing as an alternative but problems generally arise about the repaying of loans with interest which increases the temptation to resort to the printing press.

As total supporters of capitalism the Friedmans understandably omit to mention an important advantage of inflation from a ruling class viewpoint. Between one wage settlement and another the workers' purchasing power is steadily eroded, leaving it to them to take the initiative in an attempt to rectify the situation. The mere fact that if deflation rather than inflation were to obtain all this would be reversed is a powerful disincentive restraining most capitalists from pressing for more than reduction in the inflation rate.

In dealing with proposals to bail out "lame ducks" (another allegedly progressive cause), the authors examine the case of the Chrysler Corporation, an example viewed with favour by many leftists. They point out that no change in the car market resulted from this action by the state. Instead of going out of business Chrysler continued to sell cars so there must have been a reduction in sales so there must have been a reduction in sales by their competitors. The jobs "saved" at Chrysler were lost elsewhere. Those who lost were diffused and largely unaware of the connection but wherever they live there was no net gain of jobs. That the Friedmans can see this so clearly puts into a pretty poor light those lefties who are endlessly calling for "job creation".

The authors raise an objection to capitalism being described as the "profit system". They say it is a profit and loss system, and identify the loss component as the more important as it is this, or the fear of it, which they believe enhances the efficiency of the system. Whatever merit there is in this observation, it puts the Friedman's out on a limb even among the open defenders of the present system. Capitalism would still be ugly and inefficient from any sane standpoint even if regular profits could be guaranteed. However, it is the loss factor and the reaction it forces on individual firms that activates the most objectionable features. It is fair to say that most reforms, whether initiated by capitalists themselves or forced from them under pressure, have been designed to mitigate these loss-induced features. From this as we have already seen arises a significant part of the big government and its big spending against which the Friedmans have been railing for so long. The efforts of "entrenched trade unions" (sic) to protect themselves by establishing minimum wages and some form of job security also earn a blast from the authors. Generally speaking the unions have no alternative, although care is required to see that action does not "save" one man's job by taking another's away.

Even with our somewhat charitable interpretation this exhausts the digestible parts of the book. Big government is the enemy and the answer is to reduce it, the authors say ad nauseum here and elsewhere. Exactly how far they wish to go along that road is not made clear, but at least they don't pretend to be advocating "socialism" or even to be benefitting all workers. Clearly they regard socialism (as we use the term( as pure fantasy, while liberally applying the word to other forms of capitalism. Some absurdly simplistic "solutions" are put forward. Crime, for instance, could be cut by from a third to a half by simply legalising the trade of narcotic drugs. Incidentally we are told that crime cannot be related to social conditions because if it were the rate in Bombay and Calcutta would be much higher than in American cities instead of the reverse being the case. The Friedmans' notion of who pays taxes is almost the complete inverse of reality. They deny that the capitalists pay any taxes, because they think they can pass the cost on to the customer, and see the whole tax burden as falling on individuals, mainly workers.

The Friedmans' arguments, given in more detail in their earlier works, are only a contribution to the continuous debate on how best capitalist can be run, a subject in which we have no interest. Unlike many others of their ilk, they have stuck to their views with some consistency which is why they occasionally make telling points which escape or are ignored by their rivals. If for instance a government increases tariffs on certain imported goods, it may well be, as the Friedmans imply, that in the long term more harm than good may come to the local capitalists as a whole. But those immediately threatened may well have gone out of business before the longer term effects are noticed and they will therefore press for all they are worth for a protectionist policy. When any harmful side effects manifest themselves other short-term crises will have arisen to divert attention from the cause. Not that sectional interests are not sacrificed, indeed even this oversimplified example shows that not all capitalists can be accommodated at once. It is this continuous cut and thrust from which the authors stand apart, seeing attempts by governments to follow a consensus line as weakness and lack of principle. The Friedmans point out that the Reagan and Thatcher governments were elected promising apparently sweeping changes of which they (for once) approved. However after a honeymoon period these administrators lost momentum. They are correct in thinking that this is a common occurrence, and the basic cause is as illustrated by the tariffs' example but multiplied to cover all capitalist interest who feel threatened. Usually the government is forced to pay attention to this clamour and modify many of its policies, although there have been some exceptional cases. What cheek it is to describe this process as a tyranny! Being forced to sell our labour power to an employer as the only way to make any kind of living, now that is a tyranny.

E. C. Edge 

Mixed Media: Steel City (2015)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield displays the industrial history of Sheffield, once known as the 'Steel City.' 

The painting The Wealth of England: The Bessemer Process of Making Steel (1895) by William Holt Yates Titcomb is on display to complement the impressive Bessemer Steel Converter (iron into steel), by Henry Bessemer which was licensed to Brown and Cammell, Sheffield steel makers in 1858. The Bessemer process involved the converter tilting down to pour molten pig iron in through the top, then swung back to a vertical position and a blast of air was blown through the base of the converter, flames and fountains shot out of the top of the converter, the converter was tilted again and the newly made steel was poured out. The first converters could make seven tons of steel in half an hour. The Bessemer steel was used for railways, ships, and bridges. This Bessemer Converter is one of only three converters left in the world. It was used by the British Steel Corporation in Workington until 1974 and produced the last Bessemer Steel made in Britain.

The 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park showcased Britain as the 'workshop of the world', and the triumph of capitalism. At the Great Exhibition, 158 Sheffield companies displayed their wares. Annual steel production grew from 49,000 tons in 1850 to 5 million tons in 1900. The alloy was given pride of place at the Crystal Palace, in the shape of an ingot of Sheffield steel, weighing over a ton.

The most impressive exhibit in the Museum is the River Don Engine, built in 1905, which worked in Sheffield until 1978, first at Cammell's mill then the British Steel Corporation River Don plant. This 12,000 horsepower engine powered a huge rolling mill, made armour plate for the first Dreadnought battleships, and rolled steel reactor shields for nuclear power stations towards the end of its working life. It is the most powerful surviving steam engine in Britain. The Bessemer Converter and the River Don Engine are testament to the Marx and Engels observation that 'the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production... it has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals' (Manifesto of the Communist Party).

The main occupation of working class women in South Yorkshire was in segregated areas doing tedious, monotonous, dirty and dangerous jobs such as feeding spoon blanks through rollers at Mappin and Webb's steel works. In 1911 4.8 million women were working in industry in South Yorkshire, and by 1931 this had risen to 5.6 million. Working class women have always had to work in capitalism. 'Buffing' was a main occupation for women in the steel industry. Mary Dyson was a 'buffer girl' in the 1930s, and later in 1971 as Lady Mayoress of Sheffield, she visited her old workplace, Viners Ltd. She was asked 'Did you enjoy working for us?' and replied  'No! The work was too hard and you didn't pay us enough!'

Sheffield, as a working class Labour city, was fully behind the Labour Party's 'Nationalisation' Clause IV 'to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry.'  The Labour Government's 1949 Iron and Steel Act established the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain which was effective in February 1951; the Corporation becoming the sole shareholder in 80 principal iron and steel companies. After 1952 it was returned to the private sector by the Tory Government. With Harold Wilson's 1963 speech on 'the Britain that is going to be forged in the White Heat of Technology' and the election in 1964 of a Labour Government, Sheffield steel workers looked forward to 'nationalisation'. The 1967 Iron and Steel Act established the British Steel Corporation which comprised 90 percent of the UK's steel making capacity, employing 268,500 workers, one of the world's largest steel making organisations.

Nationalisation promised the workers that industry would be 'managed on behalf of the people' but it was state capitalism, the wages system under new management. There was no industrial democracy or workers' self-management. British Steel was a public corporation to manage the industry on a commercial basis, as a profit-seeking business, not as a public service.

With changing market conditions, 'the anarchy of production' (Engels Anti-Duhring) in capitalism makes nonsense of all attempts to plan production, and nationalised industries have to earn a return on capital while competing in the market place. With crisis and recession in capitalism after 1973, and the election of Thatcher in 1979 capitalist re-structuring and de-industrialisation began which involved the closure of steel works, loss of steel jobs, and a rapid contraction of the steel industry. A national steel strike called by the British Iron and Steel Trades Confederation lasted 13 weeks from January to April 1980 but did not halt de-industrialisation. Between 1979-82, 20,000 steel jobs were lost in Sheffield and eventually the British Steel Corporation was 'privatised' in 1988.

Steve Clayton

Suffer little children (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Children, some as young as nine years old, clothed in war suits with distinctive red arm bands and brandishing plastic keys are a familiar sight in many Iranian cities. The red arm bands signify a willingness to die a martyr's death. The plastic key is to open the gates of paradise. Attracted from the more poverty stricken areas of Iran, these children are indoctrinated to a high pitch of religious madness, given a few weeks' military training and then moved up to the front line. Once they are in the thick of it, the children are used in suicide attacks, sent blindly and unarmed into the minefields to act as human mine-flails. They are sent on mindless mass attacks towards the Iraqi defence, to draw fire sp that the regular Iranian soldiers can pinpoint Iraqi firing positions. It has been estimated that well over 50,000 Iranian children have been slaughtered in this war since this war began. At a United Nations meeting an Iranian statement in their defence seemed based on the fact that the children are "volunteers" and that the Iranian leadership could not and would not deny children the right to be martyrs.

Child labour is supposed to have gone out with the last century. The sad reality is that the labour of millions of children throughout the world is still abused. This is the modern world of nine-year-old coal miners and eight-year-old prostitutes, of little girls who work twelve-hour shifts in factories and of small children abandoned to live by their wits on city streets. Employers all over the world see children as a source of cheap, obedient and profitable labour power.

Over 40,000 children under five die each day of hunger and disease. UNICEF estimate that between fifteen and seventeen million children under five die every year. This is before war, drought and other factors have taken their toll. In South Africa 90 per cent of people in the rural areas of Ciskei get their water from open sources shared with livestock. In one village in the Venda Bantustan, ten out of thirty babies born died because of contaminated water and 62 per cent of schoolchildren from the Ciskei Bantustan do not meet the World Health Organisation's nutritional standards, although "the money required to provide adequate food, water, health and housing for everyone in the world has been estimated at $17 billion a year . . . . About as much as the world spends on arms every two weeks" (Campaign Against the Arms Trade).

The future of children all over the world depends on us, the entire working class. Either they continue to suffer or we take steps to ensure a safer and more humane way of life for all of us.

J. Trainer

Sideline cynic (1983)

Book Review from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Go Fourth and Multiply — The British Left in 1983 (Dialogue of the Deaf, 60p).

This thirty-page pamphlet is a review of the various factions of the Left. In its descriptions of the pretensions and self-delusions of the would-be vanguards the pamphlet is historically accurate and frequently witty. Indeed, as a piece of light reading it is to be recommended, especially to sneering, politically inactive, non-aligned radicals who think they are cynics because they rejected the fallacies in their 'A' level sociology syllabus. Anyone who likes the "humour" of Private Eye will wet themselves reading this.

The section on the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to be found on pages 21-2. The first sentence gives a clue to the accuracy of the piece: "The SPGB, in some ways the most extreme of all left organisations, is the exclusive brethren of the labour movement". What is this supposed to mean? Within what spectrum are we extreme; what is a "left organisation"; in what sense are we exclusive? The fact is that the Socialist Party is neither "extreme" nor "moderate" (according to the third paragraph, "the SPGB can be seen as moderate") because we present a case which is opposed totally to capitalism and committed unequivocally to socialism. We are not part of the Left, which is merely a statist tendency within capitalism; we are not "exclusive" because we make clear that until the overwhelming majority of workers are included in the socialist movement there can be no revolution. How can the only party standing for democracy be called exclusive?

The superficial references to our history are reasonably accurate and the summary of the Socialist Party's political position is as good as one could expect from a writer who has clearly received her ideas as part of a journalistic exercise rather than as a serious political inquiry. As a result, she stresses points about the Party which can be picked up from anecdotes and omits those which need to be emphasised in order to distinguish the Socialist Party from the Leftist factions described on the other pages.

The political pundit or opinionated scribe on the sidelines is always a distasteful character in politics. It is very easy to giggle at those motivated to try to change society; do nothing and you will never be criticised.

Steve Coleman 

Who are "we"? (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Somebody once remarked that the most important word in the political vocabulary is “we”. It was a shrewd observation, since to get someone to use “we” in relation to some group of people is to get them to identify their interest as the interest of that group.

In the battle for “we”, socialists are trying to get all those excluded from ownership and control of means of production to recognise the fact of their common interest as one class within capitalist society, to regard themselves as “we” and to use “our” and “us” only in relation to that class and its interests.

Those who control one or other of the two hundred or so armed states into which the world is divided have to try to prevent this practice emerging, and deliberately seek to undermine it, in the interest of the other main class in capitalist society – those who do own and control means of production and who derive a privileged income from this. They seek to convince the people they rule over that the “we” they should identify with is “the nation” as the nation part of what they call the “nation-state” they rule.

It is in this light that should be seen David Blunkett's White Paper last month on immigration and nationality, which proposes that people seeking British nationality should be required not just to have a knowledge of “the British way of life” but also to publicly swear allegiance to the queen. It is part of the ideological battle waged by the British ruling class to appropriate the word “we”.

Immigration causes a problem for them since immigrants, having been brought up under some other state, have not gone through the same process of brainwashing and conditioning as have the “native” population. Those born and brought up in Britain have been taught, through what's been drummed into them in school and through what they continuously read in the papers or hear on the radio or television, to regard themselves as British. In school they are taught the history of the kings and queens of England, and of the wars in which the British ruling class has been involved in over the centuries, and of the evolution of the British state. The media reinforce this by reporting news from an almost exclusively British angle and encourage identification with “the nation” via identification with “our” sports teams and performers.

It therefore comes almost as a reflex action for people born and brought up in Britain to use “we” in relation to the British state and to regard themselves as part of a British “nation”. So people spontaneously say such things as “we beat the French at Waterloo” or “we won the second world war” or “we got five gold medals at the olympics”. Even opponents of particular policies pursued by the British state, yesterday as well as today, fall into the same trap and say such things as “we should never have conquered India” or “we shouldn't join the euro”.

Such usage is music to the ears of the ruling class as they know it means they are on top in the battle for “we”. They have succeeded in getting their subjects to identify with them and their interests. Wage and salary workers, instead of seeing “we” as their class, have come to see it as “the nation”.

Nation-building

It wasn't always so easy. Historians such as Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm have demonstrated that a nation is not a natural community that existed before the state, but that it's the other way round: the state existed first and then proceeded to impose on those it ruled over the idea that they formed a “nation”. The longest-standing states of Western Europe – England, France and Spain – emerged at the end of the feudal era and then had to create a national feeling amongst the population living within their frontiers. These frontiers were accidental and had been determined by a number of key battles amongst dynastic rulers in feudal times. Had the outcome of these battles been different, then southern Britain might have been part of the same state as northern France, while northern Britain might have been part of a state with Scandinavia and southern France part of a state with Catalonia and northern Italy. That's not how things turned out, but the point is that they could have done. States pre-existed and in a very real sense created nations. Nations are groups of people ruled by a state or a would-be state.

States that have been formed more recently – and most of the world's states today were only formed in the last 80 or so years, i. e., have only been going for two or three generations – have had, and some still have, a serious problem in convincing all those they rule over that they form part of a single nation with a common interest. It is why their nationalism tends to be more shrill and authoritarian. It has to be, to overcome the tendency of some of their subjects, especially those speaking a minority language within their state, to identify themselves with some other nationalism particularly that of a neighbouring state.

Even a long-established state such as Britain has not solved this problem entirely, as witness Northern Ireland where a considerable proportion of the population use “we” not in relation to Britain but in relation to the Irish State and the “nation” it fosters. On the mainland the British state's problem in this respect has been amongst the immigrants from its former Empire, many of whom, notoriously to Norman Tebbitt's annoyance, refuse to support the English cricket team and continue to support that of their country of origin or that of their parents. More seriously, the ruling class were shocked by the number of immigrants from Pakistan and their descendants who supported the Taliban in the most recent Afghan War.

Until recently the dominant opinion amongst those in charge of the British state about how to deal with this was to make a virtue of necessity and pursue a policy of “multiculturalism”. It didn't work. In fact, it has encouraged division, by getting people to identify with their “culture” rather than with the British “nation”. (Socialists, too, see “multiculturalism” as divisive but for the different reason that it gets workers to identify with some other group over and above their class.) Now a change of policy is under way, as announced in Blunkett's White Paper, a swing to “assimilationism”.

Queen Capital

The first to experience this change of policy are to be applicants for British nationality. Blunkett wants them to be able to show some knowledge of the British state, its institutions and the history of its rulers, before being accepted into the British “nation”. The expectation is that they will say “we beat the French at Waterloo” and “we should/should not join the euro” as readily as any true-born Briton. Perhaps too they will support England in test matches.

There are also to be required to publicly pledge allegiance to the queen in ceremonies akin to the patriotic flag-worshipping that applicants for US citizenship have to go through. Such a ceremony would be a farcical revival of feudal times, but it brings out the importance of the royal family to the British ruling class. The royal family's role is to act as a focus for loyalty to the British state. The 19th Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, is credited with first having thought this up. The royal family may be a relic from feudalism but it is easier to get people to identify with it than with some abstraction like the constitution. Nor is any superannuated politician dubbed “the president” ever going to be able to act as such a focus.

It is also less hypocritical, because members of the British “nation” are called what they really are –”subjects”, people subjected to the rule of a ruling class. Tony Benn, old-fashioned radical liberal still fighting 19th century battles against Disraeli that he is, finds this abhorrent. He wants us to be called “citizens” not “subjects”, as people are in France. But the people of France are no less subjects of the French ruling class and its state for being called citizens. Let a spade continue to be called a spade. What we should object to is not to being called subjects, but to being subjects.

Benn is a dissident member of the ruling class who hasn't understood their interests properly (though republicanism and “citizenship” could become a useful alternative way of ensuring loyalty to the British capitalist state if ever the royal family becomes too unpopular). But even though royalty is much less popular than it was even 25 years ago, as the media is noting as the queen's golden jubilee celebrations falter, it is still an asset that the British ruling class want to hold on to and use to the full. It serves to get wage and salary workers to be loyal to the British state and to use “we” in relation to the interests of its ruling class. A revealing demonstration of its effectiveness in duping workers can be seen elsewhere in this issue, in the Fifty Years Ago column, where we recall that the print workers – not the printing firm – refused to typeset an article in our March 1952 issue on the death of King George VI which pointed this out.

Perhaps we should have gone to a firm of printers that only employed immigrant workers who had not yet been broken in to considering themselves loyal subjects of the crowned head of the British capitalist state.

Adam Buick

A weak brew (1982)

From the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Beveridge Report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, was published in December 1942; 70,000 copies were sold within hours and in a short time there were few adults who did not know of, and generally approve, its main recommendations. Produced in the depths of wartime, the Report promised to abolish want by solving the peacetime problems of poverty and unemployment, a prospect that was to inspire workers to improve their contribution to the war effort.

Sir William Beveridge was Chairman of an Interdepartmental Committee set up in June 1941 by Arthur Greenwood, a Labour Party Minister in the coalition government, to undertake a survey of "the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen's compensation, and to make recommendations". State run insurance schemes for the elderly and unemployed were not new: pensions for some old people were first paid in 1909 and were non-contributory until their scope was extended in 1925. A National Insurance Act in 1911 had introduced (for workers below a certain income) a restricted system of insurance for sickness and unemployment, with employees, employers and the state all contributing. There were also voluntary associations and schemes run by individual employers.

Most of the Beveridge Report was concerned with the reorganisation of social insurance into a more economic and comprehensive national scheme. Its specific proposals covered every aspect of life but did not include the practical details of how a comprehensive health service should be organised. 

Beveridge considered that practically all the acute poverty in Britain had two causes — the "interruption or loss of earning power and failure to relate family income to family needs". It was considered that, because so many wage earners were "far above want", poverty could be abolished by "a redistribution of income within the working classes at all". His solution was a "double redistribution of income" through social insurance and children's allowance.

The enthusiastic reception given to his Plan was, according to Beveridge (The Times, 9 November 1953) due to "the subsistence principle, the guaranteeing to every citizen, in virtue of contributions and irrespective of need or means, of an income in unemployment, sickness, accidental injury, old age, or other vicissitudes, sufficient without further resources, to provide for his basic needs and those of his dependants". (Quoted by J. C. Kincaid, Poverty and Equality in Britain.) This central idea, the subsistence principle, was what had made his Report more than just a rationalisation of existing services. Flat-rate benefits were to be linked to flat-rate contributions; the obligation to contribute would be the same for everyone regardless of income and adequate financial support, at a minimum subsistence level, obtained as of right and without the hated means test.

Beveridge was obliged by the Treasury Chiefs to give figures for subsistence incomes. His estimate of the minimum necessary for families to live on was based on calculations made by Seebohm Rowntree, for his research into poverty in York in 1936. Using contemporary knowledge of dietary requirements Rowntree had worked out a minimum budget for a family of 5 — the equivalent of £2.90 at 1938 prices. He was concerned to show that families on a lower income, no matter how efficiently it was managed or how restrained their behaviour, were unable to provide for their barest physiological needs. Seven per cent of working class families in York were suffering "primary poverty" — dreadful deprivation for which the sternest moralists could not say they were to blame. "Secondary" poverty included families whose income was so little above Rowntree's poverty line that "inefficient" budgeting put them in the same condition as those in primary poverty.

The benefit rates recommended by Beveridge ) for a family of five — £2.65 at 1938 prices) were at a lower level than Rowntree's "human needs" minimum budget, mainly because he did not allow for personal sundries like a newspaper, haircuts or birthday presents. He did allow a tiny margin (of one sixth) for "inefficiency in purchasing, and also for the certainty that people in receipt of the minimum income required for subsistence will in fact spend some of it on things not absolutely necessary". The rate for old people was even lower than for working adults. Beveridge thought if "dangerous to be in any way lavish to old age" until adequate provision had been made for the health of the young. The proportion of old people in the population was increasing and the aim should be to discourage retirement and the claiming of pension. The benefit paid widows and blind persons should be limited by the assumption that they could find work.

The low level of benefits was claimed as a merit of the scheme since it would not interfere with the freedom and responsibility of individuals to make their own provision above that level; it would not discourage "thrift". If the scheme were financed by contributions it would be convenient to administrate and the Social Insurance Fund could be self contained. People preferred to pay and, mindful of their moral welfare, citizens should realise that benefits linked to contributions provided a motive for supporting measures for prudent administration. They "should not be taught to regard the State as the dispenser of gifts for which no one needs to pay". However if employees had security and were properly maintained during inevitable intervals of unemployment or sickness, this would help to make them efficient producers.

The acceptance of the Report, by capitalists and politicians, as a basis for post-war planning was influenced by the belief that healthy, contented workers would make a more efficient labour force, and by the fear that without social reform there might be social disorder. It was widely thought that there would be unemployment in the post-war period — Beveridge assumed up to 1,500, 000 — and those fighting and working to win the war needed to know that "their" country would have something better to offer in the future than the pre-war means-tested poverty. Another merit from the capitalist point of view was that the proposals were "moderate enough to disarm any charge of indulgence" (The Times, 2 December 1942), though some criticism was still made on that ground.

The National Health and National Insurance Acts passed by the post-war Labour Government were along the lines recommended in the Beveridge Report. The scope of schemes already in existence was enlarged and extended, and made national in operation. The Bill for the one new measure, allowances for children, was presented in Parliament during the closing weeks of the coalition government and became law during the short Conservative Ministry of May-July 1945. Family allowances were paid at a lower rate that Beveridge had wanted but the school meals and milk service were counted as payment in kind.

Before the Report was published negotiations took place between Beveridge and Treasury Chiefs, including Keynes, who agreed to a scheme which limited the Treasury contribution to £100 million a year or 20 per cent  of the total costs of benefits paid out. In the interests of "financial soundness" the needs of poor people were to be measured according to an amount of money fixed by prior agreement. To satisfy Keynes' condition for support, and because he worked on insurance principles, Beveridge had planned for pensions to be paid at the full rate only after the scheme had been in operation for twenty years. (Those already near pensionable age could be covered by assistance pensions subject to a means test.) The Labour government decided to pay the full amount when the national insurance scheme began to operate in 1948, and also reduced the qualifying time to ten years. (Years of contributions made to earlier schemes were counted.) This intention had also been outlined in the 1944 White Paper.

When the National Insurance Act was passed in 1946 the figures for benefit rates and allowances were based on 1938 minimum needs with some allowance for the increase in prices between 1938 and 1946. James Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance, justified the rates as being "broadly in relation to the cost of living". The "subsistence" basis, so important to Beveridge, became a broad subsistence basis. By 1948 prices had risen still further and the actual purchasing power of insurance benefits paid to adults was 25 per cent lower than even the Beveridge minimum. The cost of living continued to rise and with only a small increase in National Insurance benefits the gap widened, so that means-tested national assistance benefits were actually higher than social insurance benefits. In 1953 Beveridge was calling on the Conservative government to raise the benefit rates to adequacy for subsistence, or to say "that they have formally abandoned security against want without a means test, and declare that they drop the Beveridge Report and the policy of 1946." (J. C. Kincaid.)

An important difference between the recommendations in the report and the policy accepted by both the Coalition and Attlee governments concerned unemployment. Benefit was made payable for only 30 weeks, with the possibility of a further limited period based on an exemplary employment record. Beveridge had wanted those out of work to receive benefit for the full term of their unemployment. After a certain period they might be obliged to attend a training centre, nor should those in receipt of unemployment benefit be allowed to hold out indefinitely "for work of the type to which they are used or in their present places of residence, or if there is work which they could do available at the standard rate for that work".

Compiled by a supporter of free enterprise capitalism, the Beveridge Plan for ending poverty by social insurance was a moralistic scheme whereby workers whose employment was interrupted or ended would be given support by the state at a minimum subsistence level, and as cheaply as possible. Cheese-paring social reform was used in the post-war years in support of argument for wage restraint. It is difficult to reconcile the extravagant claims made about the Welfare State with either the aims of Beveridge or the legislation passed in the years since the war. Poverty today is not the result of a decline in once effective services, the social security system never having been intended to give more than the minimum of support to members of the working class not provided for by employment. Trying to get means-tested benefits adds to the problems of the poor; but even if insurance benefits had been increased to take recipients above some poverty line, it would have made little difference.

Forty years after Beveridge high unemployment, not to mention the plight of single parents, means so many people needing supplementary benefit that in some areas queues form outside DHSS offices before they open and the staff are unable to cope with the pressure of work. Many thousands of families live in deep poverty despite the father being in full time work, and are entitled to Family Income Supplement and other benefits. According to EEC official statistics 6.3 per cent of British households live below the poverty line, when poverty is defined as living on less than half the average income in this country (Guardian, 12 October 1982). Some conditions may be better now than forty years ago, but this can be of little comfort to the mother who in 1982 has to decide whether to get shoes for her child with the money from supplementary benefit meant for her own food. The patience—if that is the word—of reformers is such that an increase in child benefit is being out forward as the way to end family poverty.

Poverty is a working class problem. The vast majority, the working class, who do all of the work of society do not own the means of production. Working class lives are restricted by this fact even without the additional burdens borne in times of unemployment, old age and sickness.

Pat Deutz

Cooking the Books: Responsible Capitalism? No Such Thing (2012)

The Cooking the Book Column from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May we were interviewed to contribute to a short film on ‘responsible capitalism’ to be shown at a meeting of ‘investor relations’ professionals. Here are the answers we prepared to their set questions.

Why do you think capitalism is in crisis?

Capitalism is in the middle of an economic crisis because it goes through repeated cycles of boom and slump. It’s just that the present economic downturn is bigger and longer-lasting than the others since the 1930s. Despite what Keynes taught and what Gordon Brown claimed to have done, the boom/sump cycle cannot be eradicated. It is built-in to capitalism. There is another sense that capitalism is in crisis. The word ‘capitalism’ has become a dirty word. It has no inspiring vision of the future to offer. Its defenders no longer have the self-confidence they had 20-30 years ago. This is a good thing as capitalism really does have nothing to offer.

Are wealth creation and the good of society mutually exclusive concepts?

That depends on what you mean by ‘wealth creation’. Wealth is not created by entrepreneurs but by people working with their hands and brains to make things and provide services and, yes, profit-seeking and the pursuance of the good of society are mutually exclusive.

What's your opinion on banker bonuses and executive pay?

That some bankers and top executives are ripping off shareholders. But, as Socialists, we’re not worried about that. It’s for them to fight out amongst themselves. It’s of no concern to those who work for a wage or a salary.

What should be the role of corporates and business in wider society?

It’s not a question of what should be but of what, given capitalism, has to be. Legally as well as economically, corporations are obliged to try to maximise profits. If one corporation didn’t it wouldn’t generate enough funds to invest in innovations to keep up with the competition. It would go under. The role of corporations and business in a capitalist society is to make and accumulate profits. That’s actually reflected and enshrined in company law, so that if the executives of a business decided to pursue some philanthropic or charitable aim at the expense of profits they could be sued by the shareholders.

Can capitalism really have a core social purpose? (Capitalism is nature-prone to create divisions and social strata)

No, capitalism cannot have any other purpose than the economic one of making and accumulating profits. It cannot serve any other social purpose and cannot be made to. It is based on a division of society into those who own and control the places where wealth is produced and those who don’t. This may not be the 1 percent/99 percent division popularised by the Occupy Movement but it will be something near to that, maybe 5 percent/95 percent. Yes, capitalism is nature-prone to perpetuate this class divide. Profits and riches accumulate for the few while the rest of us are rationed by the size of our pay cheque. The rich always get richer even if the rest of us don’t always get poorer (as we are in the present economic downturn).

Next steps, how do you see things developing?

We know how we’d like to see things develop: a growing worldwide anti-capitalist movement that will eventually end capitalism and replace class ownership by common ownership and democratic control and production for profit by production directly to satisfy people’s needs. If this doesn’t happen then capitalism will just stagger on from crisis to crisis while social needs and the good of society continue to be neglected.

In these we trust? (1999)

From the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is it a coincidence that so many of capitalism's Great Men - its leaders and captains of industry - are so utterly unworthy as human beings?

By all accounts, including his own, Bill Clinton is a mendacious, sleazy rogue, whom you would trust to look after your shares but not your younger sister. Clinton's own analysis of his condition, after taking priestly counsel, is that he's a sinner. His process of repentance has involved dropping bombs on Iraq, for which he has been praised as a defender of global peace, and parading around America exhibiting his ubiquitous smirk. It is the insolent smirk reminiscent of a southern Baptist choirboy caught nicking the church collection whose only resource of defence, after months of righteously denying the charge, is to bite his lip and utter hoarsely "I was looking after it for Gaad".

Christopher Hitchens, who has watched the US President perform his political vaudeville routine for years, wonders aloud whether the White House is occupied by a psychopath; apparently, a group of leading US psychiatrists met to consider the President's condition and a majority arrived at this diagnosis. (London Evening Standard, 6 January). He is certainly a persistent liar whose personal affairs smack less of the liberated Sixties than of the latter days of the Roman Empire. And yet he is the twice-elected leader of the most powerful nation-state within global capitalism. It is perhaps fitting that a sterile, degenerate, obsolete social system, incapable of providing material comfort or security for the majority of the population, is presided over by a character who would not be appointed by anyone responsible to run a youth club or a school for girls.

Crowd of scoundrels

Is it a coincidence that so many of capitalism's Great Men—its leaders and captains of industry—are so utterly unworthy as human beings? In Britain we have witnessed the fall of Cabinet Ministers who, until their moments of disgrace, were depicted as the embodiments of political virtue. Mandelson, who was Batman to Blair's Robin, was caught borrowing money to fund his domestic mansion from a tax-evading millionaire whose business dealings Mandelson's own government department were supposed to be investigating. Robin Cook's ex-wife has described the Foreign Secretary as an adulterous drunk. Meanwhile, the European Parliament (in a bid to remind us of its existence in time for the June elections) has been feeling the collar of numerous cheats, frauds and criminals within the European Commission. The Commission's defenders have responded with the defence that, as a percentage of the EU budget, there is no more corruption there than in the governments of the fifteen member states. Oh, that's alright then.

It is surely unsurprising that capitalism's leaders should be such a disreputable crowd of scoundrels. After all, they are elected to run a system which thrives by robbing workers of the fruits of their labour and pursues competition by ruthless dishonesty, culminating in wars in which men, women and children are indiscriminately slaughtered upon the altar of profit. The system requires a certain brand of callousness at its nerve centre. To be elected, leaders need to tell complete lies with a straight face. Either that, or they must be dopes (Reagan) or masters of self-deception (Clinton). Running capitalism is not a career for an undamaged human being.

But let's not deceive ourselves. Even if capitalism was run by saints—and, according to New Labour, they don't come much more angelic than St Tony—it would not take long for the system to wipe away their virtuous intentions. The simple reason for this is that politicians do not manage capitalism but it manages them. Although they pose as leaders (and may sometimes imagine that they are actually in charge) their job is to justify before the public the results of the economic anarchy over which they have very little control. So, Blair might be committed morally to helping the poor and being kind to little children, but when the Treasury officials call for a callous attack on the benefits of single mothers and the disabled he does so with large doses of pious excuses; when the Pentagon ordered him to send British troops as bag-carriers in the Iraqi bombing Mr Nice suddenly became a cheerleader for a gang of contemptible thugs.

Capitalist politics, having run out of reform policies to waste its time upon, has now become largely a contest for popularity between various moral postures. In the USA the only mitigating factor on Clinton's side is the repulsive Christian dogmatism of his Republican prosecutors, whose complacent individualism and ethical authoritarianism has turned parts of their country into a cultural Bedlam inhabited by a hard minority of True Believers, others without any hope at all and a significant minority who will believe anything. And in Britain the best strategy for Blair in the midst of government disarray is to let Michael Howard appear on the TV saying how disgusted the Tories are by government corruption. The battle for power under capitalism is largely a matter of electing (to use Bob Hope's phrase about the 1988 presidential contest) the evil of two lessers.

Pathetic followers

One of the saddest things about leaders is not how they behave but how their followers are forced to behave. The political follower is a miserable, pathetic specimen. These are people—usually with no material stake in their leader's success—who will go the ends of the earth to defend the Great One's reputation. In America one has witnessed Democrat-supporting feminists who have had to appear on TV defending Clinton's sleazy relations with his young intern and arguing that women like Paula Jones, an employee who was sexually molested by the President, are unreliable witnesses. Just like the deluded leftists of the 1930s who were forced by their own blind loyalty to justify every brutal crime of "Comrade Stalin", so one has New Labour supporters today who will nod approvingly at Blair's new-Tory policies when they would have been marching in the streets had the Tories introduced them. (Would the National Union of Students have adopted such a belly-up approach to tuition fees if the Education Secretary had not been David Blunkett?) Capitalism's leaders disgrace themselves—and, as that's what they're paid to do, why should we throw our hands up in horror? But the way they diminish and degrade their supporters is truly loathsome.

So, Clinton falls on his knees before the American people and, smirk intact, asks Gaad and the gullible to forgive him. The gullible have shown themselves to be a majority in the (non-) opinion polls and Gaad has not responded—unless Hurricane Mitch can be regarded as a provisional comment from the all-loving deity.

There will come a day—unless our leaders blow us up before it comes—when people will look at film footage of Clinton and laugh at the comedy of our times. They will wonder how so many people were taken in by such a terribly bad act. They will wait for the hollow statements, the rehearsed gestures and the sterile clichés to be trotted out and they will mimic them in the way that a certain generation learned to copy catchphrases from Monty Python sketches. They will have no leaders and will look upon their ancestors who followed as poor, deluded creatures who were insufficiently educated to tell these con-men where to get off. How soon that day comes depends quite simply on how soon we develop sufficient consciousness and organisation to tell the leaders to get lost (as they invariably do anyway) and to replace the Rule of Leaders with a Society of Equals.

Steve Coleman

Socialist Meeting in Brighton: 'The Environment and Red/Green Politics' (2015)

Socialist Party Meeting

The Environment and Red/Green Politics

Speaker: Howard Pilott 

(SPGB former parliamentary candidate for the Brighton Pavilion constituency)

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

7:30pm - 9:30pm

The Brighthelm Centre (Activities Hall - Lower Ground Floor), North Road, 

Brighton BN1 1YD.

Website: SPGB

Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org

One person, one vote (1981)

From the December 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down the centuries upholders of privilege have recognised and feared the power of the masses to overthrow the rulers of society; but it took a poet to flip the coin of fear and turn it into a joke:

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest . . .
do it just to spit in their eye.
(D. H. Lawrence, A Sane Revolution.)

Fear, irony and humour characterise the responses of many who contemplate for long the oddity that rulers are few and the ruled are many. Plato thought about it a lot:

The third group is the mass of the people, who earn their own living, take little interest in politics, and aren't very well off. They are the largest class in a democracy, and once assembled are supreme.
(Plato, The Republic, p.385, Penguin, 1975)

His ironic response was to spin out an analogy between society and a bee-hive. He wanted all drones cleared out of the hive and replaced by three brainwashed classes of people, presided over by a philosopher-king, who alone stung everyone into submission with a venomous dialectic.

The fearful response to popular power sometimes contains a magical incantation, as when Edmund Burke tried to ward off the evil influence of the French Revolution from his English readers:

We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility.
(Revolutions 1775-1830. (ed) M. Williams, Penguin, 1971, pp. 108-9.)

It is indeed a heathenish thing for the masses to rise up and bite the hand that whips them!

Goodbye To All That

Fear is creeping into Margaret Thatcher's voice now; with unemployment rising to three million and bankruptcies soaring, and yet insists she's doing us good. Presumably she'll get booted out at the next election and replaced by an earnest Labourite, or a smarmy Liberal-Social Democrat, who'll play at ruling capitalism for a further five years.

What potential for revolution remains among the workers now that parliamentary democracy has made the barricade and the guillotine decadent, even absurd, as a way of removing and chastising Thatcher?

One person, one vote: the implication of this democratic slogan is that there is a revolutionary use for the cube of black-japanned metal — the ballot box. It would not have amused Lawrence, would have puzzled Plato and infuriated Burke; but is something Thatcher and the working class could come to terms with. The ballot can dictate the shape of society. Provided Thatcher displays only the usual amount of incompetence over the next two years, then not the fulminations of Foot, not the hysteria of left-wingers and not the self-starvation of all terrorists will remove her from office. Yet sometime in 1984 she will meekly accept the probable dictate of the ballot box and cease to rule with her usual bad grace. Capitalism could be deposed throughout the world in just the same way; after all, how could an "ism" fight back?

Individuals are the bearers or agents of ideologies. When you vote, you put a cross against the name of someone and the sum total of ideologies borne by the successful names yields the style of society around you — give or take a nuclear hiccup or two. Putting a cross on a ballot for revolution would be much the same — give or take a capitalist or two. What about a world-wide referendum, where the ballot paper reads "capitalism or socialism: place a cross against your choice"?

Hello New World

But the simplest revolutionary use of the ballot box would be to nominate and vote for individuals as bearers of the ideology of the masses — the working class. Theirs is a beautifully simple ideology, well-fitted for revolution. It goes something like this:

Politicians never do the workers any good.
If you want something done, do it yourself.
Labour is the source of wealth and only a fool says otherwise.
You'll never change the world until you get the vast majority to agree.

The political programme to fit this goes as follows:

One person, one vote;
therefore the last thing we need are politicians and leaders;
therefore if anything is to be done to the world all must do their bit;
therefore away with all that nonsense about banks,
advertising and invisible earnings creating wealth — it's brain and brawn that will do it all;
therefore you can stick your United Nations, your summit meetings, your social security plans and all the rest;
we've got to talk it out like we do down the pub — then pick our team.

Strange that a colossal social system like capitalism can be toppled by something as ordinary as the process used by a darts club to choose team members; by the method an angling club uses to select venues for a season; by the way the local women's institute decides who'll make the sausage rolls, make the cakes and cut the sandwiches for the next whist drive. Yet all socialism requires is that workers put their heads together and decide about society, stick their men and women in the parliaments of the world and stick their fingers up at all those who said it couldn't be done.

B. K. McNeeney

Party News: Conway Hall Meeting (1980)

From the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bomb and the Dole Queue—Abolish the Cause, brought 110 people on November 10 to Conway Hall. Three speakers dealt with the subject matter. Steve Coleman, referring to the weapons of mass destruction, denied the relevance of a new-born CND in dealing with this issue. Socialists were not discriminatory; they opposed war in all its forms. E. Hardy showed the absurdity of Labour and Tory Government schemes to deal with unemployment. More, or less, government expenditure had little impact on the dole queue. This was an in-built feature of a system based on production for profit. Dick Donnelly from Glasgow Branch posed the socialist alternative to capitalism that gives rise not only to the problems dealt with by the other speakers but additional problems that were a chunk of working class life. He rammed home the need for workers to reject all leaders and media imposed ideas, and work for socialism where human needs will be the determining factor. A world of co-operation with social conditions that allowed men and women to realise their potential.

Nearly an hour of questions and discussion followed. Dick Donnelly rounded the meeting off with a moving and lucid exhortation to workers to join us now in establishing a harmonious, classless society, quoting Marx's message to the working class, "You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain".

Capitalism — No (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Class War goes on without respite; this relentless struggle between us and our masters brings with it industrial conflict, poverty, humiliation, insanity and the wars which are fought for the world markets.

In the quest for profit all decent human feelings are pushed aside. Millions starve while mountains of food are burnt or dumped into the sea. If it is more profitable to produce arms than food, then so be it. People live in slums while luxurious flats stand empty because no one can afford to pay the rents.

All this happens because of the system under which we live. Capitalism's wealth is not produced for need but to make a profit. A tiny minority of the population live off the surplus value produced by the majority. These parasites are the owners of the means of production (mines, factories, land, machinery). With the help of the State (police, army and so on) they suppress and exploit the workers. It is the workers who toil all day in the mines and factories and on the land to produce the food, clothing and the other goods we need to live.

After they have produced all this wealth, the workers meekly let the capitalist class steal it from them (legally). This theft takes place at the point of production. The workers are paid a wage which is far below the value of what they actually produce. Their wages will only buy enough food, clothing and fuel to keep them in reasonable "working order".

Under capitalism the people who contribute nothing to society receive the greatest rewards and live a life of idle luxury. The workers are forced to live in poverty while progress and technology are held back until it is 'profitable' and human need and welfare come a poor second to profit. The only solution is socialism, where we will produce for need, not profit, and human welfare will be the prime consideration. We will see an end to misery, starvation and wars; all will work to the best of their ability and will be able to satisfy their needs. Only then will men and women be able to live their lives with satisfaction and dignity.

P. Maratty

Letters: 'Corbyn for Leader?' (2015)

Letters to the Editors from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corbyn for Leader?

Dear Editors,

There are several good reasons why World Socialists should welcome the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the role of Labour Party Leader or Her Majesty’s Opposition Leader in the UK, if in indeed he makes it beyond any dirty tricks from his opponents in the party. Corbyn win or lose, his success now marks the end of the long ‘politically repressive’ Thatcher period.

Bill Martin’s little piece on Corbyn (Socialist Standard, August) rather missed the points, unfortunately!  Sure, Corbyn’s socialism is not our Socialism and that’s not the point either.

In the USA Obama was called a socialist (laughingly!) and now there is a candidate Bernie Sanders, A self-described ‘democratic socialist’ on a Corbyn-like ticket doing well so far in the US Presidential Election Party Primaries. If he doesn’t win the Democratic nomination he’ll force Hillary Clinton leftwards to beat him, much as Corbyn here has done with both Burnham and Copper. Most would agree that for a person in the USA (of all places) to be doing well in a national poll and openly calling himself a ‘socialist’, of any kind, is pretty good progress for politics there. Not since Upton Sinclair in the 1930’s.

What has that got to do with Corbyn?

Well ‘Socialist Standard’ regulars (World Socialists) know that Corbyn’s socialism is not ours, but his popularity and success and should he win here will definitely (no doubts about it) legitimize and popularize the word ‘socialism’ again in the UK politics. This word since Thatcher has all but been banned and junked by the media (TV, radio and newspapers) and these outlets are where most of the public/voters still get their politics. Also junked by Labour Leaders.

Therefore, the same effect as with Sanders in the USA will likely happen here in the UK. But more again will happen here as it will likely happen in the USA. What? The word ‘socialism’ being currency again (sorry for the association) will lead some to research socialism and they’ll come up with the SPGB & WSPUSA (World Socialist Party of the United States) in their results page!

There is another reason in that World Socialists welcome working people getting a better share of the wealth in the meantime and Corbyn as British Prime Minister will achieve this for workers.

A third reason will prove that the left cannot solve the problem of the disintegrating capitalist society - a society to which the term ‘impossibilism’ is better now applied to than to World Socialism. Thus Corbyn is merely a prelude to much more meaningful discussions about capitalism and socialism.

Finally, Bill Martin, a more positive outlook is required from you sir, and not to stick to ‘political elitism’ which is exactly the outlook of British Labour Party leaders now in their tirade against Corbyn!

William Dunn, 

Glasgow

Reply:

We were careful in choosing our description of Jeremy Corbyn as being 'Harold Wilson' warmed up.' In the 1960s policies very like the ones Corbyn is advocating were tried. They didn't aid the course of socialism; they led to disillusionment and workers voting for Margaret Thatcher.

It is no good getting the word socialism back on the political agenda if it is again to be associated with statism, taxation and nationalisation. If there has been one consistent theme to the Socialist Party's campaigning it has been that we need to be clear about what socialism is and what is needed to achieve it, and we cannot welcome anything that will create confusion and muddle, however well intentioned.

We recognised that much of the ‘Corbynmania’ phenomenon is that 'the desires of workers (however misinformed and locked into the logic of markets) will have forced their way into the halls of power.' What that means, though, is that we have to continue to work hard to put forward and explain the socialist case to dispel the misinformation. There are no short cuts, and whether the workers support Thatcher or Corbyn doesn't change the need for clear socialist agitation.

That is not elitist at all, it is the democratic approach. – Editors.

************************************************************

Blacklisted

Dear Editors,

In the mid-1970s the Mail and the Sun attacked the ‘left’ in my union branch of the CPSA (now PCS), Department of Environment and Transport HQ, for 'concealing' their political views before standing for election to the Branch Committee. They could not charge me with dissembling' – because I was an open Communist and the papers' report noted this, without naming me. In fact, against trusted and CPSA ‘Moderators’, Janet Daly of the Tory Party, and Militant Tendency, I won three successive elections for Branch Secretary.

In 1984 Gordon Leake of the Express (a self-confessed ex-BOSS member-turned-journalist) claimed that the CPSA branch at GCHQ did not exist. In fact, Diane Green, its branch secretary, a member of the BL84 faction (the one in which Communists and Socialist caucuses and non-Militant members participated) was elected to CPSA’s National Executive.

In 1996, the GCHQ Staff Association (formed after Thatcher had barred GCHQ unions), lost its appeal to the Certification Officer (a Thatcherite creation), for funds from the Thatcher fund for union postal ballots. The reason was the heavy dependence of the 'union' on Peter Marychurch, the GCHQ director, for facility time, accommodation and telephone.

D. Shepherd, 

London NW4

They Shoot Cowards, Don't They? (1997)

From the November 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago, some ten million lives were lost in World War One. Among these countless casualties was a small group of about three hundred and fifty who are not remembered each November when the dignitaries assemble at the Cenotaph and lay their patronising wreaths of poppies.

Recently, this select few have been in the news, and not for the first time; their deaths were, and still are, the subject of controversy. Readers of the Socialist Standard would no doubt consider the death of any human being in the pursuit of property and resources highly controversial. However, the reason the fate of this tiny proportion of those who died so long ago continues to be debated today is because they didn't die a "heroic" death at the hands of the enemy. They were shot by their own comrades.

To the uninitiated, or the naive, or just the logically-minded, this may come as a shock. Surely the job of an army is to slaughter marauding foreigners, not its own troops? Wrong. The job of an army is to do the state's dirty work, that is to plunder land, wealth and raw materials, as well as secure routes for international trade, or to prevent another state from doing same. This definition of any army's role does not preclude murder within the ranks. Granted, killing your own chaps doesn't sound like an efficient way to run an army, but the legally-sanctioned execution of comrades-in-arms during World War One was not only efficient, it was absolutely necessary.

Those who died by the bullets of their fellow troops were not ordinary soldiers, not normal men. They were of that rare perverted persuasion which knew fear and a sense of self-preservation. It may sound obtuse to suggest that a soldier who is afraid of going into battle is some sort of oddity, but that is precisely what the army wanted the average Tommy to think. If you suppose that fear probably comes as naturally to a soldier as brown paper bags to a Tory MP, you'd surely be right. But the army has a special term for people who respond rationally to this entirely natural emotion: they are known as "cowards".

The issue of those who were branded and shamed with this term during the First World War has come to the fore once again presumably because of the election of the new Labour government; there is apparently new hope for campaigners of obtaining pardons for their relatives. They have reiterated that there is evidence and expert opinion which now points to the likelihood that the majority of "cowards" were in fact suffering from some form of mental illness, and not in full command of their senses. It would seem more likely however that anyone who wishes to avoid almost certain death is in an absolutely sound state of mind.

Irrevocable punishment

The fact that advocates for these men are relying on the "shell shock" defence suggests one of two things. Either they genuinely believe that anyone in his or her right mind should willingly and dutifully have gone into battle in a war which took senseless carnage and breathtaking incompetence to new pinnacles; or they simply believe that this is the only chance of restoring the tarnished reputation of the family name. It's interesting that nobody seems to have questioned the morality of executing a man for refusing to endanger his own life; or recognising that he may have been averse to murdering his "enemies", who were terrified soldiers like himself, strangers against whom he had no grudge. That, surely, is justification in itself for laying down arms.

It seems astonishing now, in slightly more lenient times, that the government of the day could have permitted such summary and irrevocable punishment for its own servicemen, especially as the accused had no representation and no right of appeal. However, the practice has to be viewed in the light of the circumstances in which much of World War One was fought, particularly in the trenches. This essentially involved massing thousands of men and then sending them like lemmings towards the enemy lines, resulting in catastrophic casualties, often in order to gain just a few yards of ground, if any. Given that such behaviour, except to the seriously mentally unbalanced or the suicidal, naturally appeared to be utter lunacy, the politicians had to provide some incentive to persuade the potentially sceptical recruits to act like madmen. The principal methods of course were propaganda and flattery. After character defamation of the enemy, using easily understood terms such as "evil Bosch" or "filthy Hun", conscripts were told that it was their duty and privilege to rid the world of such despicable degenerates. Having preserved democracy and fair play, and saved England for all decent, God-fearing citizens, the troops would then be welcomed home as heroes and be forever intoxicated by the eternal gratitude of their countrymen.

Not surprisingly, it occurred to the top brass in the army that such shameless patronising might not wash with a few who cared to examine even cursorily their justification for mass slaughter of innocent human beings. And if only a few sceptics concluded that they were being duped, they might well persuade many others to lay down their arms and take up flower pressing instead. Therefore, an extra "incentive" was required, and this was where the ruthless efficiency of the military came into its own. It would have done no good to tell a dissenter that he was a naughty boy and to sit in the corner for the rest of the day; nor would there have been any point in threatening to send him to prison for life. After all, he would still have his life. No, the only way to ensure that insanity prevailed was to offer a Hobson's Choice: either go over the top and face almost certain death, or refuse and face certain death.

Madness of war

The fact that some three hundred or more soldiers, who were presumably aware of the penalties for cowardice, still refused to fight begs an important question. As the punishment was the ultimate penalty of death, and given that actually going into battle at least provided a chance of survival, doesn't it seem likely that these men were, as the campaigners claim, suffering from severe psychological trauma, be it shell-shock, or just the horror of seeing the gruesome demise of their comrades? In that case there would have been grounds for clemency, because these men were clearly not "cowards", but were deeply disturbed. Alas, such a distinction would have been irrelevant, because these unfortunate few had to be made examples to all the others of what happens to those who refuse to obey suicidal orders. Little surprise then that there was no right of appeal.

To some, war is heroic; to others, it is anathema. There is only one thing that can be said for certain about wars: they are never fought in the interest of those who die in them. Today, Britain has a professional volunteer army, and technical advances mean that modern warfare is a much more scientific affair. The Gulf War was a high profile example of how ever more sophisticated weapons are able to accurately target enemy weaknesses. Now there are no poorly trained conscripts, and no need for battalions of troops to go "over the top", and so there is no need for summary executions to enforce discipline. The naive and innocent victims of the firing squads of eighty years ago had the misfortune to be born into a very different stage of capitalism's destructive development, when daily casualties could wipe out entire regiments.

It's difficult to imagine what must have gone through the minds of those conscripts as they huddled in their cold, damp, dirty trenches, waiting for the order to ascend into no-man's-land with only a tin hat and a rifle for protection against a phalanx of machine guns and mortars. It was a different world then, not only in the way wars were fought, but also in the way minds were moulded. Many men were no doubt torn between the love for "their" country and the love for their families. Perhaps some thought of the men on the other side of the lines whom they would be required to massacre--men with the same fears and hopes, with families waiting anxiously at home; ordinary men, no different except that they just happened to be born under another flag. Perhaps some even entertained the idea that one day the world might be free of artificial economic divisions, when co-operation would replace conflict. Alas, such fanciful ideas were for future generations to enjoy. The soldiers of the Great War were unfortunate to live in an era when courage, however you defined it, equalled death.

Nick Brunskill