Letter: Anti-socialism (2012)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

An enquirer from the United States has sent us the following piece of anti-socialist propaganda doing the rounds there and has asked us to comment on it, adding “why do so many people think Socialism is a dirty word?”

“An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, ‘Okay, we will have an experiment in this class’. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset, and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less, and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride, too, so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings, and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because, when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Socialism has never worked anywhere in the world. It cannot be any simpler than that. Please pass this on, and remember – there is a test coming up – the 2012 elections.”

Reply: 

Our enquirer is right: many people do regard socialism as a dirty word, and that’s because of the meaning they attribute to it. It’s often equated to the former Soviet Union or to Cuba or China or to social reforms by the state. But our  perspective on what socialism means is entirely different. So, predictably, the problem with what the ‘economics professor’ has to say about socialism is that he’s answering the wrong question. He takes on and tries to undermine the idea that in a socialist society everyone would be equal in all ways. But that’s not what socialism is about.

Socialism is a society in which everyone will be free to exercise and express their abilities and aptitudes whatever these may be and in which the whole idea of ‘failing’ or ‘passing’ would be absent. The important thing would be ‘contribution’. ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’ sums it up. All this would be   based on a moneyless, wageless society of voluntary work and co-operation, in which everyone would have equal access to all goods and services. So there would indeed be equality in the economic sense (‘no one would be poor and no one would be rich’) but, far from creating uniformity and mediocrity and a general lowering of standards as the professor suggests, this would be a basis upon which people could work to express themselves fully and fruitfully for their own satisfaction and the good of all. In fact, the professor’s idea that, ‘when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great’, fits in well with a socialist society, for what greater reward can there be than to contribute to the general wellbeing (even many rich people in today’s highly individualistic, competitive society feel that) and to earn the approbation of others? And of course there would be no government to take that reward away, since socialism by definition depends on people running their own society democratically, not on having any government structure to do it. Socialism has indeed never ‘worked anywhere in the world’. But that’s because it has never been tried.

Socialism will be a society in which there is no private ownership (or put another way, one in which everyone owns everything). It’s hard of course to lay down the exact details of how a society of common ownership will function, but, given appropriate safeguards, is there any problem (especially with the technology we now have) in people engaging in their chosen activities (be that fruit/vegetable growing, computer designing, airplane manufacture, etc.) and delivering or making those products or services part of a common store on which people can draw as and when needed?

Human beings want to and need to exploit their potential via work if the conditions for them to do so are congenial. The problem with the current system of society is that it so often forces people to do work they don’t want to do or can see no point in – all to get money to survive. We all (or nearly all) want to do work of some kind, but employment (which is what work is in the present society) is a different thing. Capitalism in fact has put a kind of curse on work making so many of us see it as by definition something unpleasant that we are forced to do. Finally, you can’t have the fully democratic society that socialism will be until the vast majority of people want it. In other words, you can’t impose it, and if you try to do that you’ll be defeating its whole purpose. It simply couldn’t work, since it is a society based on willing  cooperation.

– Editors

Editorial: Our Peace Manifesto: Why We Issued It. (1917)

Editorial from the July 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will be observed that elsewhere in this issue the Socialist Party of Great Britain have addressed a Manifesto to the proposed international Congress. We wish to state here briefly the reasons which have compelled the Party Executive to issue this pronouncement.

It will have struck our readers that since the war broke out the word "Socialism" has loomed large in the international Press, and that since the Russian Revolution this prominence has rapidly increased. Interested parties with chestnuts to pull out of the particularly fierce fire of current events, turn to that conglomeration of letters for an instrument to serve their various purposes. From the German emissaries Grimm and Scheidemann, to the British emissaries, Thorne and MacDonald, there is, all round, an endeavour to exploit the name of Socialism for the purpose of leading the working class in the different countries and their different local circumstances, to believe that the demands of the war-mad ruling class are in reality the demands of the people, expressed through their most democratic mouth-pieces, the Socialists. In Russia, we are told by the English newspapers on the morning these words are written, Socialist opinions dominate everything—a statement which is belied by the new Russian offensive. Kerensky as the Socialist saviour of Russia, whereas we know him to be merely the Russian Lloyd George, the embodiment of capitalist cunning, the capitalist revolutionary who brought the workers to the aid of the revolutionary capitalists under the cloak of Socialism, and now, under the same cloak, essays to save his capitalist masters from their wage-slaves on the one hand, and from their German enemies on the other.

In other countries the same tale is to tell. Everywhere the name of Socialism is being linked with the manoeuvres of the master class with the object of throwing dust in the eyes of their victims, and meantime the pseudo-Socialists are given ample opportunity to add their quota of support to the confusion, while the Socialists are denied the means of communication and therefore of effective expression.

In order to dissociate the Socialist name from the trickery of those who would besmirch it we place in record our attitude toward the war and show that the class-struggle basis of our organisation sufficed to keep our hands unsoiled by the blood of our fellow workers, and we ask any foreign comrade into whose hands our manifesto may come, to assist us by bringing it before the notice of the Executive of the Socialist organisation of his country.

Old People in America (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was reported in The Guardian (March 19th, 1965) that the recent Russian space success is going to spur America on in the race to be the first put a man on the moon. The cost of this project is estimated at between £7,000 millions and £14,000 millions.

A few days after this was announced, a film was shown by the BBC television of the plight of the aged people in America. Doctors run nursing homes as businesses, and some of them who were interviewed on television admitted that at present there was a boom in nursing homes. Elderly people who have no relatives to look after them go to these homes and have to hand over all their possessions—insurances, cash and (according to the commentator) their personal effects such as jewellery, wedding rings etc.

If they could afford it they had a room to themselves costing about £50 a week, but the majority had to share a room with as many others as could be packed in. Naturally they were fed inadequately, in the hope that they would not be too long dying. Medical attention was only obtainable if they could afford it, and doctors' fees were so high that this was impossible for most of them. The elderly, according to this BBC report, were being pillaged mercilessly.

It is more important to capitalism to land a man on the moon than to look after the aged who have given their energies in a lifetime of exploitation. Now that they cannot work and continue to make profits for capitalism, they can go on to the human scrap heap. Who cares?

Horace Jarvis

Socialist Party Meeting in London (2015)

Lambeth Socialist Group

'All Coppers are Workers: The Police, the State and the Working Class'

Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 7pm

Venue: The Socialist Party's premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Directions: About four minutes walk from Clapham North tube on the Northern line and three minutes walk from Clapham High Street station on the circular overground line

Free admission and refreshments

Letter: Not just political (2012)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

A friend recently brought to my attention the history of the turmoil that took place in GB following WWI when the principal unions had apparently coalesced for unified action and apparently got cold feet when confronted with the situation of the potential power of their organized resistance to capitalist exploitation. The dilemma was expressed in the statement made by the Prime Minister to the Triple Alliance accordingly:

 "Gentlemen, you have fashioned in the Triple Alliance of the unions represented by you, a most powerful instrument. I feel bound to tell you that in our opinion we are at your mercy. The Army is disaffected and cannot be relied upon... If you carry out your threat to strike, then you will defeat us... If you do so, have you weighed the consequences... if a force arises in the State which is stronger than the State itself, then it must be ready to take on the functions of the state, or withdraw and accept the authority of the State. Gentlemen, have you conferred and if you have, are you ready?" (David Lloyd George to Union Leaders in 1919) 

This seems to have taken the wind out of their sails.

If this statement and the history surrounding is accurate, it would suggest that tactically the idea of a parallel class conscious unified union organization to that of a political party is desirable and indeed, essential in order to use its power to back up the mandate of a socialist ballot plurality. That the Triple Alliance didn't have the mettle to act does not invalidate the potential tactical necessity of unified working class action. During the formation of the IWW Daniel De Leon wrote a series of responses to those who argued that either political or economic action alone were sufficient to create a socialist transformation ("As To Politics") demonstrating with decisive logic that both were essential.

Your Party has apparently steadfastly resisted the dual necessity of working class action, vague allusions notwithstanding, and has given the impression of pure and simple political action as being the sole necessity to transform society into the cooperative commonwealth. Yet David Lloyd George's comment seems to suggest the latent power of working class economic action is a decisive factor.

Perhaps you can enlighten me on the historical significance of what happened way back in 1919 and your reaction to those events and your subsequent applications of lessons learned.

Bernard Bortnick, 
Dallas, Texas

Reply:

The words you quote are taken from, In Place of Fear (1952) by the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan, and published many years after the events in question.  Bevan recounts that, the miners’ leader Robert Smillie, (who died in 1940) told him - and this must have been some years after 1919 - that this is what Lloyd George had said.  So this is a third-hand report - not that Lloyd George would not have said something like this but it can be doubted that these were his exact words.

If correct and Lloyd George wasn't just windbagging, this would illustrate precisely why a political party is essential - the unions had no programme to seize the power that supposedly lay at their feet and backed down. Contrary to what you keep on asserting, the Socialist Party doesn't reject industrial organisation as a key plank of a revolutionary strategy. We are dissimilar to Industrial Unionists and the like in refusing to cut one of our legs off before running the race. We are for the working class using all the resources at its disposal, both political and economic, and chasing the rulers into every centre of their power, wresting that power from them.

For the record, here is what the Socialist Standard of the time (April 1919) said (note the rather different approach taken by Bonar Law, who was the leader of the Conservative party and a Minister in Lloyd George‘s coalition government):

“It was when the Reports of the Commission were given to the Government that the great lesson for the workers emerged. In announcing that the Government had accepted and would act upon the Report of the Chairman's section of the Commission and referring to the possibility of a strike, Mr. Bonar Law said
‘If such a strike comes the Government—and no Government could do otherwise—will use all the resources of the State without the smallest hesitation.’

If such a strike came, the mine-owners, if they decided to fight it out, could win by simply pitting their immense resources of wealth, an indication of which is given by the figures above, against the few pounds the miners could gather together. On the economic field the masters are in a far stronger position than the workers and can beat them any time they decide to fight to a finish. Yet in this, as in so many other cases, they threaten to use the overwhelming power of the State for their purpose because it is so much more speedy and decisive.

But how comes it that they can use the State for this purpose? Because on 14th December, 1918, the miners, in conjunction with the large majority of the other workers, placed the State in the hands of the masters when they voted the latter into possession of political power.

While the workers accept the poisonous nonsense that ‘capital should have a fair profit,’ while they swallow the lies and humbug of the labour leaders like Thomas, Brace, Williams, and so on, that the interests of the master class are the interests of the ‘community,’ or ‘society,’ they will be easily led to vote their masters into possession of the power to rule society.

When the working class rids itself of this stupidity, and realises its weakness in the economic field against the power of the employers, then it will turn to the facts of its situation for a solution and find that the way to salvation lies through organisation for control of the political power. Not until that is assured can the workers own the means of life and operate them for their own benefit. When that lesson is learnt the day of Socialism will be dawning.”

Editors

The Red Brigade (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The most serious political crime in the last 30 years", was the way an Italian newspaper described the kidnapping of leading conservative politician Aldo Moro. On March 16, in the middle of Rome, left-wing "guerrillas" murdered Moro's bodyguard, snatched him from his car and vanished without a trace. On May 9, Moro's bullet-ridden body was found in a car in Rome after, according to his captor's communiqué, he had been sentenced to death in a "proletarian trial". The secretary of the United Nations had intervened, so had the Pope, but to no avail. In return for Moro's life the "Red Brigade", the organisation which carried out the kidnapping demanded the freedom of other violent left-wingers at present being held in Italian gaols. The Italian government's refusal led to Moro's murder.

Just how politically "serious" was this terrorist act and the sequence of events that have followed it? Certainly at the time of the kidnapping the talk was of "civil war" (a leading politician of the Italian Republican Party) and of "armed attack on the heart of the state" (editorial in the Corriere della Sera). And when he was killed " . . . the First Italian Republic is ended" (former President Saragat). But this was not the first time political violence in Italy had provoked crisis rhetoric along these lines. The Red Brigade began their operations against the Italian state in 1970 gradually escalating their violence to the kidnappings, leg-shootings and murders of more recent times.

Judges, magistrates, journalists, business men, minor politicians and others considered to symbolise or uphold the power of a repressive state have been their victims. Each time the cry of "political crisis" has gone up — and each time, within a short period, the whole thing has been quietly forgotten, along with the individuals who have suffered in the affair. The plain fact is that the violent acts of a small band of fanatically determined individuals (the Red Brigade numbers a few hundred at the most), for all the media coverage they obtain and the temporary panic they provoke, pose no threat to a state that commands a superior potential for violence and above all the support and allegiance of the vast majority of the population.

The Moro affair may have caused a bigger stir than the others, dragged on longer and made politicians and other VIPs shiver in their shoes but in perspective, it will be seen, like the acts that precede it, to have been a mere surface feature of Italian capitalism, a wild ineffective lunge at the armour of the state not a blow at the heart of it.

The killers too are quite mistaken as to what will be the effect of their violence. When they talk about "striking at one man to educate a hundred" (Red Brigade slogan), they imagine that terror tactics will stir the population to a mood of insurrection which they can then harness to topple the state. The effect their activities have in fact is just the opposite. Far from persuading people to accept their ideas they frighten them into even greater solidarity with the powers-that-be (witness the spontaneous general strike of 15 million workers immediately following Moro's kidnapping and the demonstrations and strikes immediately after the discovery of his body) and make it possible for the tangible democratic rights and freedoms that do exist under capitalism to be eroded or removed.

The repressive laws passed by the Italian Parliament (easy interception of telephone calls, arrest on suspicion, interrogation without legal representation, random identity checks, compulsory notification to police of accommodation let or bought) several days after Moro's disappearance are of course what the Red Brigade were aiming at. They believe that measures of this kind following their acts of terror expose the repressive nature of the state and force it to "shed its mask" of liberalism and benevolence. They fail to see however that such measures will, given the circumstances have wide support among the working class and will not be condemned as being anti-democratic and repressive.

We should in fact have no illusions about the coercive nature of the state and should not attempt to provoke further repressive measures to illustrate the constraints it puts on the vast majority who sell their energies for a wage or salary. Instead of this we must, unlike the violent organisations on the Left, face up to the fact that for the moment the majority of wage and salary earners are quite willing to live with capitalism in its present form and realise that their minds will not be changed by acts of violence. Such violence can only strengthen their attachment to the established order and create an atmosphere of unreasoned emotional reaction in which it is all the more difficult to put Socialist ideas across.

The insurrectionists, the Red Brigades the world over, are right only about one thing — the capture of the state is a prerequisite for revolution. But not for a revolution of minority violence (which would anyway be just another replacement of one kind of repression by another), but for a revolution by the ballot-box in which a majority of convinced Socialists in all the advanced parts of the world will use their votes to establish a society of free access and democratic control. In Italy as elsewhere the left-wingers — both those who practice violence and those who tacitly approve it — would do well to think carefully on the consequences of minority action and decide whether there is not a more constructive way of expressing their dissatisfaction with life under capitalism.

Howard Moss

1984—Unthinkable? (1955)

TV Review from the January 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month an adaptation of George Orwell’s famous novel, “Nineteen-Eighty-Four” appeared as a television play. The impact on audiences was generally agreed to have been startling—too startling, according to newspaper complaints about unsuitability and lack of “entertainment value.” The intention of the author, however, was not to horrify people, but to make them think and reflect, and certainly the play must have succeeded to a large extent in doing just that.

The story is set in London of the future, which has become Airstrip One in Oceania, one of three States into which the world is divided. These states are permanently at war with each other, though the actual fighting takes place in remote parts, in the jungle or the desert. The social structure in Oceania is a  hierarchy consisting of the Proles, the Outer Party and the Inner Party. At the bottom are the Proles, people doing purely routine work, ignorant, stupefied by abysmal and degrading conditions. Not very different are the Outer Party members, without privileges, living and working like automata, named and numbered on their clothing, rationed—and ceaselessly spied on by the two-way tele-screen through which the Thought Police watch and rule.—By contrast, the Inner Party members are the privileged, the givers of orders, the only people with servants, with such luxuries as wine, and with freedom to switch off their tele-screens when they wish. Above all stands the figure of the leader, Big Brother. Whether he is a real person is immaterial—he is the “expression of the Party.” 

Against this background the story unfolds of one humble member of the Outer Party. Winston (why Winston?) Smith, perhaps the last of the rebels. He is a pitiable, harassed, uncertain and confused rebel, working in the Ministry of Truth, where information is "adjusted" as the State requires. He watches a propaganda film showing the enemy leader, Goldstein; and while the others shout hate at Goldstein, he hesitantly thinks "I hate Big Brother." He meets a member of the Inner Party who, he suspects, "works for" Goldstein, and offers his services as a conspirator. Questions are asked: Is he willing to lie to further the cause he believes in, to cheat, to murder—even to throw sulphuric acid in a baby's face if it will somehow help? He is willing.

A romantic interest is introduced when Winston meets a girl whose job is to operate a novel-writing machine that churns out stereotyped rubbish for the Proles to read. Since love is forbidden and marriage is by order of the Party, the couple meet in secret, at first in the country and later in a room above an antique shop in the Prole sector. Eventually, the shopkeeper betrays them to the Thought Police. There is a scene (perhaps unnecessarily long and detailed) showing the brutal methods used to break down the last vestiges of their resistance, so that they unquestioningly accept that 2 + 2 = 5 if the Party says it is right.

The elements in the story that most compel attention are the subtle touches of detail that illustrate the sort of world that the author suggests is possible three decades hence. The worker in the Ministry of Truth helping to compile a dictionary of Newspeak (the new distorted basic language) proudly claims that it will abolish shades of meaning and narrow the range of thought, that it will abolish ideas through the destruction of words to express them. This appalling outlook is seen in an Inner Party official's remark "We're not interested in the stupid crimes you've committed—only in the thought."

All the most detestable aspects of the world today are enlarged and caricatured; the slogans like  “Ignorance Is Strength,” “War Is Peace”; the Ministry of Plenty announcing ration reductions as increases, the Ministry of Peace proclaiming “another great victor over our enemies,” the Ministry of Truth adjusting the facts of past history and “amending all records accordingly.”

The newspaper critics of this television play generally assumed that it was to be taken as a warning against totalitarianism as exemplified by Hitler’s Germany and in Russia today. When he wrote the book in 1949, Orwell doubtless drew inspiration from the Nazi regime and “Big Brother” Stalin. Yet the warning is not really against the tendencies and conditions in one “bad” part of the world sullying the “good.” It is against the actual and potential denial of human qualities that is implicit in the world set-up today. The theme is a powerful condemnation of the whole system of privileged and subject classes, of governmental control to preserve the system by crushing out any opposing idea. More than anything, perhaps, it is a warning of the effect of the mass-production of ideas on those who lose the desire to think for themselves, and who leave everything to “Big Brother.”

Stan.

What is Freedom? (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In exchange for the Socialist Standard we receive from a library in East Berlin the GDR Review. This glossy, well produced journal covers a wide range of subjects, from politics, current affairs and economics to art, sport and various aspects of life in the German Democratic Republic—East Germany.

The December 1988 editorial was headed "What we mean by Freedom". We quote:

Everyone would like to be able to say they are free. Without freedom, life itself loses its value and meaning . . . Freedom cannot be won by an individual living in a vacuum . . . Being free does not mean doing only what you want to do, but rather wanting to do what has to be done. As Friedrich Engels put it: "Freedom is also the ability to make a knowledgeable decision." This requires that people be active, that they make use of the educational opportunities presented to them and that they work conscientiously for the wellbeing of society as a whole.

So far we could agree, but we soon come to a parting the ways:

Of course, freedom is always connected with what I can afford, both in intellectual and material terms. Some people tend to compare the "material" aspects with developed capitalist countries, and then use this as the sole measure of individual freedom. But when there are 16 million unemployed people in the leading EEC countries alone, we just have to ask: freedom for whom? What sort of freedom is it when you are not even guaranteed the right to provide for yourself and your family? The conclusion is obvious, namely that it is freedom at the expense of others. This however, is not the freedom we mean.

The kernel of our disagreement is in the statement "freedom . . . and material terms". It is an admission that, even if they call it socialism, East Germany operates state capitalism and there can be no freedom for workers under capitalism. The "freedom" enjoyed in East Germany is to go to work for wages, rather than the 16 million in the EEC who are "free" to apply to their governing bodies for "free" payments, often not sufficient to satisfy even the most basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. On the other hand, in Western Europe that worker (with or without work) is, more often than not, free to complain about his lot and criticise capitalists, politicians and the system, a freedom denied to his opposite number of the GDR.

When Engels wrote, he referred to freedom in co-operative socialist society where the wage labour/capital relationship between employee and employer has disappeared, and not attempted equation between (relative) freedom from want versus (relative) freedom of expression under state or private enterprise capitalism.

Eva Goodman

"Too many" bricks (1992)

From the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The notion that the price mechanism is the most efficient allocator of resources took a further blow recently with the confirmation that Britain has a massive "oversupply" of bricks, concrete blocks and other building materials and a deepening housing crisis.

Despite increased homelessness, record levels of house repossession and rising council house waiting lists throughout the country, figures released by the Department of the Environment and leading construction companies show the house-building industry to be still in severe slump.

The output of the construction industry is now five percent lower that it was in the second quarter of last year, itself a period of sharp downturn. Redundancies have escalated and the industry's workforce has fallen by a further 13 percent over the last year.

The brick-making sector of the construction industry has been particularly badly hit. According to the Daily Telegraph (12 September), the major construction firm Tarmac is to close four plants producing a total of 100 million bricks a year, while concrete block factories in Nuneaton, Dumfries, Fleet and Bracknell also face shutdown.

With the decline in paying demand total UK brick sales have fallen from a peak of 4,270 million in 1988 to an estimated 3,100 million for 1992. Meanwhile, as homelessness continued to rise 1,473 million of brick stocks built up last year, the price mechanism once again demonstrating its inability to marry production with real human demand—in hosing as in other sectors of the economy.

The gulf between the total productive capacity capable of meeting human needs and the actual utilization of productive forces to meet paying demand in capitalism has been highlighted by, ironically enough, stockbroking firm BZW. They have estimated that despite rising real needs for housing, paying market demand in the building sector for materials is back to the level of 1986, when construction was just emerging from the previous slump of the early 1980s.

Furthermore, BZW estimate there to be excess productive capacity of 20 percent in the brick industry, 42 percent in ready-mixed concrete, 38 percent in crushed rock, 35 percent in plasterboard, 26 percent in both concrete blocks and roof tiles, and 25 percent in cement.

Bizarre though it may seem to rational individuals, some supporters of capitalism consider their system to be highly efficient, incorporating the best system of distribution known to humankind. But what sort of efficiency piles up stocks of useful materials and imposes market penalties, i.e. loss of profitability, as a disincentive to utilize an artificially "excess" capacity?

Though it is a good example, the construction industry is not, of course, alone in demonstrating the absurdity of the capitalist system of production. Most spheres of manufacturing are now faced with declining or static market demand, with wholesalers and retailers cutting back on orders as stocks of unsold goods pile up. According to a recent CBI survey, 63 percent of wholesalers are cutting back on their orders from manufacturing, while 45 percent of retailers are reducing orders from their suppliers (Guardian, 11 September).

This crazy situation of overcapacity and falling paying demand for commodities amidst increasing need, poverty, homelessness, and—in the "Third World"—mass starvation, has to be ended. And the sooner the better. The madness of the market will have to give way to a co-ordinated system of production for use, with free access to the goods, materials and services available to society.

It's time to put capitalism out of its misery and thereby help put us—the world working class—out of ours.

Dave Perrin

Our Attitude to Elections (1954)

From the January 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vote for a Case not a Face

In our recent by-election campaign in North Paddington we laid stress on the fact that we attached no special significance to our choice of a candidate. We made it quite clear that we approached the electorate with an object in view—that of Socialism, which implies the complete dispossession of the entire capitalist class and the reorganisation of society on the basis of production solely for use.

We hold that when a majority understand the nature of Capitalism, understand the futility of electing leaders to reform it, and that a complete change of the basis of society is both necessary and possible, then they will democratically elect their representatives for this sole object.

If we take a look at elections today, we find that the candidates of other political parties pander to a variety of tastes and requirements, and play off one group of people against another. “Something for everybody” might well be their motto. It is an encouraging sign that our political opponents are recognising the fundamental difference between us and other parties, though their statement of the position is usually not quite as we would put it. Thus The Glasgow Herald (19.11.53) wrote that:

“ . . . they need not undertake all the degrading business of making him (the candidate) known to North Paddingtonians, cataloguing his virtues, giving him opportunities to kiss babies. Individuals count for nothing with the S.P.G.B., who acknowledge no leaders, have never swerved from the principles laid down in 1904, and proudly remain the only political party who implore the electors not to vote for them unless in full understanding and agreement with what they stand for.”

Since the majority of workers think along capitalist lines, it is quite simple for the Tory, Liberal, Labour, Communist and other candidates to come along with plenty of promises – promises that they can in no way fulfil. Knowing how workers identify themselves with “our country”, “our exports (or imports)”, these parties can always hold out the threat of “our interests” being at stake – when all that is meant is that capitalist interests are at stake.

“Working men have no country” is as true a statement today as when Marx first said it. When the worker realises that he possesses nothing but his ability to work, which he sells to the capitalist to enable him to live, then he will have different ideas about voting for someone to represent him. He will only elect a delegate to carry out his wishes and who would be powerless to do otherwise. Be that candidate painter or plumber, clerk or bus driver, typist or cook—it will not matter. That he undertakes to carry out what he will be democratically elected for will be the only concern; not as now, when candidates parade their “good looks”, “war records”, “homely backgrounds” and all the other dope that is used as what the Americans call “sucker bait”. 

We can understand how the press in general, seeking "news" in preference to stating facts, registers surprise at our reluctance to give a life-story of the candidate. How gladly its reporters mop up any little tit-bit to make news; how they pester  us all day long for photographs, age, profession or job, hobby and what not. As they and their employers all support the retention of a capitalist system of society, it is too much to expect that they will give much prominence to stating the case of a party that seeks its complete abolition. Nevertheless, they do make small mentions, usually by means of "selective suppression"—that is, the selection from what we well them of what they think they ought to print.

In such a way is the wider spread of our propaganda made difficult. Not having the vast resources of other parties for propaganda—giant press organisations, the B.B.C. with radio and television (both barred to us)—we have to depend on our monthly journal, occasional pamphlets, outdoor propaganda, and the voluntary help so tirelessly given by our members. Our funds are always inadequate for the amount of activity we would like to indulge in.

Sympathisers might take note of this and assist us financially and otherwise. There is always plenty to do for those anxious to help. You will be able to assist in a comradely atmosphere, and will find pleasure in doing something worthwhile, instead of just giving a blank cheque at election times to the supporters of Capitalism.

You will find no “Great Men” in the S.P.G.B. The parts that its members play are varied, but no attempt is made to measure one against the other—the keynote is co-operative effort, as it will be in socialist society. One of our objections to the existence of “Very Important Persons” is that it presupposes that some persons are accounted of little importance. We are a band of ordinary folk, but each is as unimportant (and therefore each is as important) as the other, whether chosen for speaker, secretary, organiser or by-election candidate.

G. Hilbinger

The Passing Show: Labour rebels (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Rebels

A letter in the Guardian (24/6/60) read in part as follows:

What I should like to know, however, is whether those members of Parliament who are now calling for the resignation of Hugh Gaitskell have ever themselves thought of resigning. If they are dissatisfied with the policies and leadership of the Labour Party, let them join say "The Socialist Party of Great Britain," and see how they get on there.

The letter is signed by Silvan Jones, the chairman of the Conway constituency Labour Party.

We are grateful to Mr. Jones for his interest in the Socialist Party, but it seems that he is under a misapprehension. While we are always glad to receive applications for membership, in order to keep the party as a Socialist party, we only allow Socialists to join. In this we are unlike Mr Jones' party, which the most convinced upholder of the capitalist system could join merely by signing an application form. The results may be seen in the political history of the twentieth century: the Labour Party's erratic pursuit of one reform after another, contrasted with the Socialist Party's consistent advocacy of Socialism.

Harry Pollitt

What a tragedy was the life of Harry Pollitt! Here was a man who, horrified by the conditions of the working class as he had known them in his youth, set out in a genuine attempt to improve those conditions. He conceived a personal dislike of "the bosses," and was determined to "make them pay" for what the workers had had to suffer. Yet Harry Pollitt never gained a thorough understanding of the forces that mould modern society, in Russia as well as in Britain. As a result, his deeply-felt hostility to the ruling class in Britain simply resulted in his becoming, indirectly, an overseas ally of the Russian ruling class. It is not enough merely to oppose capitalism, as one has known it: one must be for its alternative, Socialism. Had Harry Pollitt succeeded in his efforts, he would merely have been instrumental in establishing state capitalism in Britain, in place of the variety we have at present. And that would have left the workers exactly where they  are  now.

Curiously enough, many of the obituary notices which have appeared in the papers after Harry Pollitt's death expressed some regard for him—curiously, because the British newspapers are the propaganda organs of the British ruling class. The obituaries recalled with approval that Pollitt, after supporting the 1939 war against Germany at its outbreak, showed more reluctance than the other members of the Communist Party to come out against the war when Stalin and Hitler concluded their pact.

The Times obituary (30/6/60) was an example. It was written by a clergyman, a former member of Scotland Yard's Special Branch who once had the job of shadowing Pollitt. This writer could claim to understand the interests of the British ruling class: he recounts that when, after the Russo-German Pact, he asked Pollitt. "Are you going to let Hitler smash Britain?" Pollitt replied "No, we shall not do that." The fact that Pollitt was able to talk about the war (which was a struggle between German capitalist class and the British capitalist class) in those terms shows how little he understood the world in which he lived.

Alwyn Edgar

Cooking the Books: Labour and labour-power (2010)

The Cooking the Books Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In part two of his article “Is Marx’s analysis of capitalism still valid today?” (Freedom 31 July) Jonny Ball tackles Marx’s theory of surplus value which he correctly says is central to this analysis. This is how he presents it:

“Its basic premise is that in order to make a profit, the capitalist must pay the worker a sum lower than the amount the worker actually produces. The owners of the means of production, of Capital, will always try to keep costs, such as wages, to a minimum in order to extract the maximum amount of surplus value from their workforce, while those who do not own capital are obliged to sell their labour in order to live at a price that is determined not so much by the value they produce, but by the whims of an employer, who will receive the bulk of their workers' produce in the form of profit.”

No doubt Ball was trying to be sympathetic to Marx but, unfortunately, this is not a satisfactory depiction of Marx’s theory. Marx did see the source of surplus value as the unpaid labour of workers, but he never held the view that what workers were paid was determined “by the whims of an employer”.

Even when, in the 1840s, Marx spoke in terms of workers selling their “labour”, he argued the value of the commodity they sold was determined, as in the case of all other commodities, by the amount of labour-time required to produce and reproduce it and that its price fluctuated with supply and demand.

Later, in exile in Britain in the 1850s, when he had more time to study the workings of capitalism, Marx came to draw a distinction between “labour” and “labour-power”. Labour-power was the ability to work, the skill to produce something, while “labour” was the result of the exercise of these skills, the expenditure of labour-power. What workers sold to their employers was their “labour-power” not labour. Labour in fact couldn’t be bought and sold, only the commodities in which it was embodied could be.

So crucial was this distinction to Marx’s considered analysis of capitalism that when in 1891 Engels republished Marx’s 1849 article Wage Labour and Capital (still a basic introductory text to Marxian economics) he corrected the text on this point, explaining in his Introduction, “According to the original, the worker sells his labour to the capitalist for wages; according to the present text he sells his labour power” (Engels’s emphasis).

This distinction solved the problem of exactly how profit arose from the exploitation of workers. Workers were paid (generally and more or less) the full value of what they sold – their labour-power – yet were still exploited because the exercise of their labour-power produced a greater value than that of their labour-power. This “surplus value” was the source of their employer’s profit and of all capitalist property incomes.

Up until then pro-working-class thinkers and activists had tended to see profits as arising either from employers paying workers less than the value of what they sold (i.e. by cheating or swindling them) or from them selling what workers produced above its value (i.e. through profiteering or ripping off their customers).

Both these do go on under capitalism but Marx held that, as explanations of working class exploitation, they were unsatisfactory as they suggest that this has its origin in exchange not production and that it could be ended by “fair wages” or “fair trade” rather than by making the means of production the common property of all.

Soft soap opera (1981)

From the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a mark of the level at which political journalism is conducted when what seems to loom largest in the minds of some press commentators is the dress-sense, hairstyle, and love-life, of Shirley Williams. While all manner of things may be germane to our political and social condition, does the existence in William's one-time Oxford rooms, of seven photographs of Peter Parker, (Guardian, 10 February), have any possible bearing on that condition? What, one is entitled to ask, will these newspaper hacks cobble up for us next?

The reason for printing such irrelevant hogwash is a determination in Fleet Street and broadcasting to build up the Labour Party's latest defectors as the beautiful people of British politics (even if that means the inclusion of Roy Jenkins). We are to be persuaded that these dilettantes are more concerned with the "moderate" decencies of political life than with its intrigue and infighting. In fact, what primarily motivates the media is the perpetuation of privilege and patronage among an "in" group who are assured of a comfortable ride on one or other of the band-waggons operated in the interests of our masters (who can recognise a loyal servant when they see one.)

The "sacrifices" such as Shirley Williams and her friends are flaunting in our less-than-terstained faces are those of the true class -collaborator, who would be (Roy Jenkins and Lazards, for example) received into almost any boardroom in the country. Neither would such people have much difficulty in being accepted by their Fleet Street friends, or by the BBC or IBA. To these latter they are very much a commodity, produced for sale with a view (that of the media) to profit. So naturally they can afford to play ducks and drakes with the organisation which provided them with so very lucrative a platform from which to mislead, and betray, the class they purported to represent.

The point about the whole sorry mess is that the defection from the Labour Party of a handful of disaffected class collaborators must essentially be a matter of indifference to us of the working class. It is a true measure of the sort of organisation the Labour Party is (and always was) that it can contain so motley a crew of the misguided, the careerist, the opportunistic and the sycophantic. The real surprise is that Williams and Co. have decided that their political fortunes lie elsewhere. After all, as will become increasingly plain as the months pass by, the Labour Party will revert to type: a reformist hotch-potch; a "broad church", complete with its pocket-lining priesthood, offering the working class nothing more nourishing than the same old mixture of pious platitudes and shop-soiled placebos. Right up Shirley Williams' street, one would have thought: but no—she's off; even if she has to be seen standing an awful long time upon the order of her going. (But then she would no doubt wish to maximise both the damage to her erstwhile colleagues and the publicity to herself.)

It is certain, should the beautiful quartet represented by Williams, Owen, Rogers and Jenkins, manage to play in tune, we shall shortly discover that their music has a remarkably familiar ring. Before so very long the cynical rhetoric will begin to fly. No amount of thumbing through Roget's Thesaurus will disguise the old shibboleths: the inevitable "incomes policy", even should it be further euphemised as, say, "rational rewards", or "restructured reimbursements", will remain an attempt strictly to control wages. A Centre Party, or as they may prefer to call it, a "Social Democratic Alliance", will, willingly or unwillingly—wittingly or unwittingly—run capitalism in the interests of those who primarily benefit from it: the capitalists. And if this means—as it will—a continued toleration of all the inequalities, frustrations and miseries so familiar to those who collectively produce all wealth, then our "social democrats" may confidently be expected to remain dry-eyed as they toast each other in their Limehouse redoubt.

Rodgers, Jenkins, Williams and Owen.

For make no mistake about it, Williams and Co. are quite unable to do anything more effective than jerk on the ends of the strings the ruling class have strung them with. The nearest mention of Karl Marx's name would be enough to send our Shirl scurrying for her crucifix (or whatever equivalent she might prefer). These people have deliberately chosen not to arm themselves with the sharpest weapons available to us. Again this is natural enough, for there is no career to be carved out of the ripping away of the mask from the face of capitalistic exploitation. So they turn to the likes of John Maynard Keynes and, using his tool-kit, they tinker with what has manifestly become a clapped-out old banger. Oh, yes: it can be made to cough and stutter on almost indefinitely; but how many of us are to be asphyxiated along the way?

So, should a "Social Democratic" Party start to roll it must merely mean that the politics of capitalism will have been further fragmented. The divisions and sub-divisions; the shades of meaning already virtually numberless, and to be found both within the parties and outside them, will have been further increased. Understanding of our class position will have been even further confused. Workers, offered once again a multiplicity of predictably mendacious "solutions" to the inevitable crises of capitalism, may well be tempted to turn to a shiny new grouping; (well, dusted off and refurbished, anyway). They might as well resort to a chiropodist to cure a hopelessly gangrenous leg. For it is the capitalist system itself which is solely responsible for the contradictions and absurdities, the cruelty and waste we see all around us. Capitalism works on a cold and irrational cruelty which leads to a total disregard of the cost as measured in human lives; it is under a compulsion to behave in this way. And capitalists, while exploiting the working class, must also gobble up each other: it is their only way "forward".

Labour's Gang of Four (or however many they are by now) may be the beautiful people of British politics but they are trying to do the same ugly job as all the others.

Richard Cooper

Another question, Mr Morris (2006)

Book Review from the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Pinkney, ed: We Met Morris: Interviews with William Morris, 1885-96. Spire Books £19.95.

In the 1880s the interview was a fairly new journalist technique, and a range of publications, from Justice to the Daily News and Bookselling, wanted to have William Morris’s views on a variety of topics. Most of the thirteen interviews gathered here took place in Kelmscott House, his residence in Hammersmith. The result is an interesting view of Morris as a person (generally dressed in a blue serge suit and smoking incessantly) as well as an insight into his opinions on political and other matters.

In 1885, Morris gave his reasons for leaving the Social Democratic Federation to help form the Socialist League. The SDF had been run ‘arbitrarily’, and it was heading towards ‘political opportunism tinctured with Jingoism’. The League, in contrast, would ‘uphold the purest doctrines of scientific Socialism, and + educate and organize towards the fundamental change in society’. In an interview from 1890, Marx is given credit for starting off the Socialist movement on scientific lines, and for showing that Socialism is ‘the natural outcome of the past’. There is a pleasant image of Socialism having ‘a public library at each street corner, where everybody should read all the best books, printed in the best and most beautiful type’. An 1894 criticism of anarchism is backed up by the argument that it is important to get control of parliament rather than attempting an insurrection (a contrast with his earlier opposition to parliamentary methods).

But this same interview acknowledges ‘the wisdom of the S.D.F. in drawing up that list of palliative measures’, i.e. a policy of reformism, something which Morris himself had previously rejected. In 1885 he also talked of the need for leaders, though it is not entirely clear what they are to do other than explain Socialist ideas, so this can hardly be taken as support for a Bolshevik-style vanguard. An interview with a woman journalist reveals some views which, to put it kindly, show that Morris was a man of his time: ‘I feel very strongly that a working man’s wife is needed in her home, and it is a pity when she has to leave it to compete in the labour market.’ (Shades of News from Nowhere, where it seems to be the women who do the housekeeping.)

It helps to have some previous acquaintance with Morris’ ideas and writings, but this is a well-produced volume which shows him in an unfamiliar and revealing light.

Paul Bennett

Sports Results (1949)

From the February 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

1948 was a year that will remain long in the memories of English sports fans. The Olympic Games were held here, an Australian cricket team visited and toured the country and the usual football, cricket, horse racing, dog racing, speedway and other sporting features had their place. The relative merits of prominent footballers and first-class cricketers have been hotly discussed. The abilities of various race horses and jockeys have been the subject of much argument. The Olympic contestants from all over the world have been cheered and applauded. Evenings have been devoted to the weekly ritual of completing the football pool coupons.

Late in the year a controversy arose over the business of the transfer of football players from one club to another. Football clubs will pay thousands of pounds to other clubs to obtain the transfer of a top-line player. The players become tied to the clubs that buy them. If they leave the club with which they are registered, they are barred from earning a living as professional footballers by playing for any other club.

Capitalism has converted to its own ends the many institutions thrown up by society in the course of its development and the sporting institutions have certainly not escaped. Sports and games, once the care-free expression of the joy of living, have become, for most of us, an entertainment to relieve the monotony of living.

At one time, man's sport was centred in the struggle to wrest from nature the means of life. Exceptional prowess in the hunt, etc., was the pinnacle of achievement. But now, except for those whose livelihood is derived from it, sport is practically divorced from the business of producing life's necessities. In a few rare instances, men cling to the old forms of enjoyment connected with the tussle with nature, instance fishing. In the main, sports have taken on a new aspect with each change in the social structure. The games and pastimes of the medieval village differ greatly from the more vigorous pursuits of barbarians before them, and the pay-at-the-gate type of game that we get today.

For the majority of workers nowadays, life is a continual round of drudgery and toil and monotony. They have no control over their labour—no interest in their products. There is no "joy of workmanship" for them. Home comfort  for many is more of an ideal than a fact. They have but few opportunities and little inclination to leave the towns and cities to enjoy the countryside. Too tired after their toil to engage in active recreation, the majority of workers seek a little respite in the entertainments offered them.

This condition of affairs offers a fruitful field for investment to those with wealth to spare. The institution of sport is seized upon and corrupted in the interest of capital. It becomes an industry. We see the amateur displaced by the professional and gate receipts become the motive for organising games. Even the remaining amateurs must play to the gallery to ensure patronage—or just get squeezed out. The players are subject to exploitation and intensification just as are other workers. Players who are at the top of their class are a money-making attraction and the clubs that employ them bind them in a form of slavery.

In a drab and unromantic world people seek thrills and excitement. These are provided by profit seekers whose interest is not in "sport for sport's sake," but in balance sheets and dividends.

Here is an instance of an institution, drawing its vitality from a deep social need, being converted to an instrument for producing profit. That it is used as a means for retarding the spread of revolutionary ideas, we are well aware. Although it may not be a conscious intention to do so, yet the organised professional sports of today serve the same purpose as the gladiatorial contests of the days of the declining Roman Empire. Whilst the exploited populace is applauding the contestants, in either greaves or shin-guards battling with either trident or tennis racquet, they are giving no thought to their exploitation or the means to end it. In this way sport serves a dual purpose. It produces profit for a few and it keeps the minds of the workers filled with thoughts of league matches and cup ties, winners for the 2.30, featherweights and heavyweights, Oxford and Cambridge, greyhounds and hares, holes, goals, tries, l.b.w.'s and all the other jargon and paraphernalia of present-day sport. Not forgetting totalisators and permutations.

Socialism, by ending exploitation, will end drudgery; by abolishing poverty it will abolish sordidness. Men and women will find life more interesting, they will find that it can be an adventure in itself. They will not be driven to seek artificial excitement. Friendly rivalry will take the place of cut-throat competition, on the sports ground as elsewhere. Sport can then be the means of allowing men to exhibit their physical strength, their fleetness of foot, their keenness of eye, their powers of endurance and their agility. It can satisfy man's desire to play. That was its original function. Capitalism has degraded it. Socialism can amend it. Socialism can make life entertaining so that men can use sports as a means of recreation, so that they will not be so tired and bored that they need to make of it a form of "pass-time."

W. Waters