Tussy - Eleanor Marx and the Early Socialist Movement in Great Britain (2012)

Eleanor Marx

From the Marx, the Cold War and the Spooks blog

In January, 1855, Karl and Jenny Marx, their daughters, Jenny and Laura, and their son, Edgar, were living in two rooms at 28 Dean St. Soho Square, London. In 1851, a third daughter had been born, but only lived for one year. But in January, 1855, a fourth daughter, who they named Eleanor, was born. In March, however, much to Karl and Jenny Marx's distress, the nine year old Edgar died. Nevertheless, the arrival of Eleanor was a great joy to them. "Tussy", as she was later called, was soon the "idolised darling of the whole house". And of her, Jenny Marx wrote in a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer in America, on the 11th of March, 1861:

"The child was born when our poor little Edgar died, and all the love and tenderness we bore him was transferred to his little sister, and the older girls looked after her and nursed her with almost motherly care. But then it would really be difficult to find a more lovable child, as pretty as a picture and sweet tempered...the child has learned German, and speaks it with remarkable accuracy and grammatical precision, and , naturally, she has learned English as a matter of course. The child is Karl's favourite, and her laughter and her merry chatter dispel any of his worries". 

Karl Marx was a great lover of children. He was no authoritarian. The girls treated him more as a playmate than a father; and they called him "the Moor", a nickname given to him on account of his jet-black hair and dark complexion. "Children must educate their parents", he would say. And during this period he remained completely aloof from all political activities, and concentrated on his studies and journalism.

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Marx would take his three daughters, Jenny, Laura, and young Eleanor, for outings into the country on Sundays; their favourite destination being Hampstead Heath, with a magnificent view of London, and the hills and valleys surrounding the city, from Jack Straw's Castle.

At home, Marx would read to Eleanor the stories of Bluebeard or Rumpelstilzchen by the brothers Grimm. And he would recount his version of the life of Jesus, in which he depicted Jesus as a poor carpenter's son who had been unjustly executed by the rich and powerful. In 1856, the Marx family moved to Grafton Terrace, Haverstock Hill, near Hampstead Heath.

When Eleanor was sixteen, a French radical, Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, who later wrote a history of the Paris Commune of 1871, in whose ranks he fought, fell in love with her , courted her, and proposed marriage. Eleanor seems to have been favourably inclined towards Lissagaray; but Karl was doubtful about his reliability, despite Eleanor's mother, Jenny, approved the match, and in the end, after much hesitation, nothing came of it. Eleanor was obliged to remain at home. As she got older, she became her father's secretary, and conducted much of Marx's correspondence with the International Workingmen's Association. Eleanor Marx loved to recite poetry and to act, and her father encouraged her to take dramatic lessons. In 1875, the family moved again, to Maitland Park Road, in the same area.

In autumn of 1878, Marx's wife Jenny, became dangerously ill. She was suffering from incurable cancer. In June 1881, Karl went down with a violent attack of pleurisy, complicated with bronchitis and pneumonia. Eleanor nursed them both. She wrote:

" Mother lay in the big front room and the Moor lay in the little room next to it. The two who had grown used to each other, whose lives had completely intertwined, could no longer be in the same room together. The Moor got over his illness once again. I shall never forget the morning when he felt himself strong enough to get up and go into my mother's room. It was as though they were young again together - she a loving girl, and he an ardent youth starting out together through life, and not an old man shattered by ill-health and a dying old lady taking leave of each other for ever"

And on the 2nd of December, 1881, Karl Marx's wife, Jenny died. There was no ceremony at her funeral, although Frederick Engels spoke at the graveside.

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In June, 1881, a small book, England for All, was published. It was written by Henry Myer Hyndman, who claimed it to represent the programme of an organisation called the Democratic Federation, which he had just formed. This annoyed Marx, as much of the book consisted of English translations of extracts from Marx's Capital, together with a few summaries of Marx's ideas; but Hyndman mentioned neither Capital or Marx, and merely commented at the conclusion of the Preface that he was indebted "to the work of a great thinker" for much of the material. Marx broke off all relations with Hyndman.

Following his wife's death, Karl Marx's health again deteriorated; his daughter, Jenny also died on the 11th of January, 1883, and in the afternoon of the 14th of March, whilst sitting in his easy chair, Karl Marx fell asleep for the last time. As with his wife, there as no ceremony at the funeral, but again Engels spoke at the graveside. Laura had married Paul Lafargue in 1867.

Eleanor Marx was now alone. She, therefore, soon became more socially and politically active. Shortly after the death of her father, Eleanor met Beatrice Potter (later to become Mrs Sidney Webb) who was involved in charity work and freethinking. In 1883, W.G. Foot, the editor of the The Freethinker, was jailed for blasphemy. Eleanor was, in the words of Potter, "very wrath". It was useless argueing with her, she noted in her diary:

"She refused to recognise the beauty of the Christian religion. She thought that Christ if he had ever existed, was a weak-headed individual, with a good deal of sweetness of character, but lacking in heroism...The aim of socialists was to make people disregard the mythical next world and live for this world, and insist on having what will make it pleasant for them."

Potter added that Eleanor Marx "lives alone, and is much connected with the Bradlaugh set". Charles Bradlaugh, although not a socialist, was a well-known radical, republican and freethinker. But within a year of Karl Marx's death, Eleanor had entered into a "free association", or liaison, with one of this "set", Dr. Edward Aveling, a physician and, at the time, a teacher of science, who with Bradlaugh and Annie Beasant, was a leading secularist. Eleanor had by then a secretarial job in "a better class boarding-school"; but when she openly announced the situation, they said that they regretted to have to sack her. "I need work much", she informed Havelock Ellis, " but find it difficult to get. 'Respectable' people won't employ me"

A number of Eleanor's friends tried to discourage her interest in Edward Aveling, but without success. But following their association, Aveling became active in the emerging socialist and social-democratic movement, and, in fits and starts, became a lecturer and writer, and later on a translator of some of Karl Marx's writings. But according to Edmund Wilson there was something odd about Aveling:

"...he was extremely undependable about money::he not only skipped out of hotels without paying the bills, but he borrowed money from his friends right and left, and even when he knew they had little, without ever paying it back; and he did not hesitate to use for his own purposes the funds which had been given to the cause"(To the Finland Station)

At one time, Aveling tried being an actor;he wrote several one-act plays, in which he and Eleanor acted. He also had luxurious tastes

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Eleanor Marx joined the Democratic Federation in 1883, as did William Morris who hoped that it would become a socialist organisation. And in August, 1884, at its conference, the Democratic Federation became the Social-Democratic Federation. Its "ultimate" objective was:

"The establishment of a free condition of society based on the principle of political equality with equal social rights for all and the complete emancipation of labour"

To this ultimate objective, the Social-Democratic Federation added a number of immediate demands which it called "palliatives"; these included the abolition of a standing army, free compulsory, secular education, and the means of production, distribution and exchange to be treated as collective or common property. But neither the SDF's immediate or ultimate objective included the abolition of the wages system as proposed by Karl Marx as early as 1865.

Edward Aveling had also applied for membership of the [Social-]Democratic Federation; and, although the Executive Council, and Hyndman, did not want him in the organisation, they deferred to pressure by Eleanor and a number of her French and German friends, who wrote letters to the Council on Aveling's behalf, and he was admitted. They, together with William Morris, Robert Banner, E Belfort Bax, and a number of other members of the Council, soon came into conflict with the autocratic leader, Hyndman, whom Frederick Engels called an "extreme chauvinist"

The break with Hyndman, and the Social-Democratic Federation, came at a stormy meeting on the 27th of December, 1884, at which Morris read out a statement which , in part, read:

"...We believe that to hold out as baits hopes of amelioration of the condition of the workers, to be rung out of the necessities of the rival factions of our privileged rulers, is delusive and mischievous. For carrying out our aim of education and organisation no over-shadowing and indispensable leader is required, but only a band of instructed men, each of whom can learn learn to fulfil, as occasion requires it, the simple functions of the leader of a party of principle.We say that on the other hand there has been in the ranks of the Social-Democratic Federation a tendency to political opportunism, which if developed would have involved us in alliances, however temporary, with one or other of the political factions, and would have weakened our propagandist force by driving us into electioneering, and possibly would have deprived us of the due services of some of our most energetic men, by sending them to our sham parliament, there to become either nonentities, or perhaps our masters, and it may be our betrayers. We say also that among those who favoured these views of political adventure, there was a tendency towards National assertion, the persistent foe of socialism; and it is easy to see how dangerous this might become in times like the present.Furthermore, these views have led, as they ere sure to lead, to attempts at arbitrary rule inside the Federation;for such a policy as above demands a skillful and shifty leader, to whom all persons and opinions must be subordinated, and who must be supported (if necessary) at the expense of fairness and fraternal openness...
....our view of duty to the cause of socialism forbids us to cease spreading its principles or to work as mere individuals. We have, therefore, set on foot an independent organisation, the Socialist League, with no intention of acting in hostility to the Social-Democratic Federation, but determined to spread the principles of socialism by the only means we deem effectual."

The first two signatories to the statement were those of Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx.

The Socialist League was formally founded on the 30th of December, 1884. Following the "To Socialists" statement, partly quoted above, " The Manifesto of the Socialist League", which as largely written by William Morris, was published in The Commonweal, which as edited by Morris with Aveling as sub-editor. The Manifesto set out in some detail the ideas of not just Morris, or Eleanor Marx, but the emerging, still contradictory, socialist movement of the 1880s in Britain. Its main arguments and conclusions are worth quoting.

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It begins :

"We come before you as a body advocating Revolutionary International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society - a change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.

As the civilised world is at present constituted there are two classes in society: the one possessing wealth and the instruments of production, the other producing wealth by means of those instruments, but only by the leave and the use of the possessing class.

The two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one another. The possessing class, or non-producers, can only live as a class on the unpaid labour of the producers - the more unpaid labour they can wring out of them, the richer they will be; therefore the producing class - the workers - are driven to strive to better themselves at the expense of the possessing class and the conflict between them is ceaseless."

And the Manifesto of the Socialist League continues:

"All the means of the production of wealth must be declared treated as the common property of all...Nationalisation of land alone, which many earnest and sincere persons are now preaching, would be useless so long as labour was subject to the fleecing of surplus value under the capitalist system.

No better solution would be State Socialism, by whatever name it may be called, whose aim it would be to make concessions to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages in operation: no number of merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of all political power, would make any real approach to Socialism

The Socialist League therefore aims at the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all civilisation...

...To the realisation of this change the Socialist League addresses itself with all earnestness. As a means thereto will do all in its power towards the education of the people in the principles of this great cause, and will strive to organise those who will accept this education...."

At the same time as the Manifesto of the Socialist League was written, a draft constitution was prepared, with encouragement by Engels, by Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling. It committed the Socialist League to "striving to conquer political power by promoting the election of Socialists to Local Governments, School Boards and other administrative bodies". Their draft, however, was rejected by a majority of the membership at the League's first annual conference in July, 1885

Despite the Socialist League's official policy of the working class conquering "political power", and opposition to "palliatives", or what socialists now refer to as "reformism", the organisation soon demonstrated that, among its active members, were anarchists whose main concern was the destruction of the state, and reformers whose policies included the passing of the Eight Hour Bill. Furthermore, the Socialist League was not entirely opposed to the idea of nationalisation; and socialists such as William Morris and Eleanor Marx, and the socialist movement generally, had not, as yet, completely rejected the notion of leadership as a principle, although they ere opposed to the "arbitrary" leadership of people like Hyndman; this was partly understandable at the time, and was due to the fact that many workers, including active Trade Unionists, were still illiterate or , at least, only semi-literate. Another weakness of such people as Eleanor Marx, William Morris and Edward Aveling, was that although they had left the Social-Democratic Federation, and formed the Socialist League, they had "no intention of acting in hostility to the Social-Democratic Federation". It was twenty years before socialists realised that a party organised solely for the establishment of socialism would have to oppose other parties, including the SDF.

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The Socialist League appeared to get off to a good start; indeed, just before its founding, Engels wrote to Karl Kautsky that Ernest Belfort Bax and Edward Aveling had "the best intentions and learn a lot too; but everything is confused and by themselves these literary people can do nothing; they are both thoroughly sound, intelligent and sincere although needing great assistance". However, by 1886, Engels noted that Bax was strongly influenced by the anarchists. Indeed, Engels wrote in April, 1886, that "...the anarchists are making rapid progress in the Socialist League". The main arguments were between those who considered that the working class, through a socialist organisation or party, could, or should, use parliament as a means to emancipation, which included Eleanor Marx, and those such as the anarchists, who did not. Morris attempted to reconcile both camps, writing in 1887:

" I am trying to get the League to make peace with each other, and hold together for another year. It is a tough job." 

Edward Aveling had already resigned as sub-editor of Commonweal early in 1886. He had been encouraged in this by Eleanor, who, by 1887, was calling the League "a swindle". And Bax, whom Engels had accused of being influenced by the anarchists, and who had succeeded Aveling as sub-editor of Commonweal also resigned, and supported the policy of the League contesting elections. William Morris was concerned with "making socialists", and considered that the only time that socialists should enter parliament was when a majority had become socialists and parliament should be abolished or "broken up". Morris was also opposed to the Socialist League advocating palliatives [he changed his mind some time later]

By the time of the 1888 conference, the various factions within the League had grown even more irreconcilable. However, while the various factions were tearing the League apart, working-class discontent was growing. John Quail comments:

"In the Trade Unions a sharper, more militant note was being struck. At the TUC conference the young Keir Hardie clashed with the Liberal's lap-dog, Broadhurst. A determined attempt to get an Eight Hour campaign under way in the Engineering Union and the TUC was made. John Burns and Tom Mann were active in this campaign. New organisations in the provinces, the Labour Federation on Tyneside and the Knights of Labour in the Midlands, proved surprisingly effective and grew rapidly. New organisational attempts also met with some success among the seamen. This new militancy was both spread by socialists and proved responsive to them" (The Slow Burning Fuse)

Not surprisingly, this included Eleanor Marx.

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In 1883, in his The Historical Basis of Socialism, H.M. Hyndman explained his, and to some extent the SDF's, view of Trade Unions. he wrote:

"The waste of the Trade Union funds on strikes or petty benefits to the individuals who compose them is deplorable. Enormous sums have been lost, directly, or indirectly, in consequence of strikes which, if applied by Unionists to active propaganda against the existing system...would long since have produced a serious effect."

However, others, including Eleanor Marx, held a view that workers should resist the attempts by employers to depress their standards of living and, here circumstances were favourable, improve them, yet at the same time they should, through a political organisation or party, strive for the abolition of the system, capitalism, which exploits them.

Nevertheless, a "new" unionism was beginning to take over from the "old" unionism; the general from the craft. In 1888, the mainly female workers of the match factory of Bryant and May went on strike, which was largely successful. The dock strike of 1889 was probably the most dramatic conflict of th period, as it was a struggle of the most depressed section of the working-class who, hitherto, were considered unorganisable. The victory of the dockers was a victory for elementary Trade Union rights which led to a vast movement among both skilled and unskilled workers. The Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union was formed out of the strilke. Even agricultural workers revived their unions.

During the dock strike of I889, writes Tom Mann,

"Offers of clerical help were numerous during the strike. One of these volunteers who rendered valuable service was Eleanor Marx Aveling, the daughter of Karl Marx, a most capable oman. Possessing a complete masterly of economics, she was able alike in conversation and on a public platform, to hold her own with the best. Furthermore, she was ever ready, as in this case, to give close attention to detailed work, when by doing so she could help the movement" (Tom Mann Memoirs)

The Gasworkers and General Labourers Union was the first of the "new" unions for mainly unskilled workers. Formed in 1889, by sheer eight of numbers, the union exchanged their twelve-hour shifts for an eight hour day without a strike. Although, they subsequently lost it again, the old hours were never resumed. Shortly after the union's founding, Eleanor Marx became a member and, later, as a member of its first women's branch became a member of its Executive. Will Thorne, the union's general secretary, had no education as a child; and he recounted ho Eleanor helped him to improve his reading and writing, "which was very bad at the time"

In 1892, a Preamble To The Rules of the GGLU as drafted by Eleanor Marx and probably Edward Aveling. It reads:

"Trade Unionism has done excellent work in the past, and in it lies the hope of the workers for the future; that is the Trade Unionism which clearly recognises that today there are only two classes, the producing working-class and the possessing Master class. The interests of these two classes are opposed to each other. The Masters have known this a long time; the workers are beginning to see it, and so thay are forming Trade Unions to protect themselves, and to get as much as they can of the product of their labour. They are beginning to understand that their only hope lies in themselves, and that from the masters as a class they can expect no hope; that divided they fall, united they stand...the interests of all workers are one, and a wrong done to any kind of labour is a wrong done to the whole of the Working Class, and that victory or defeat of any portion of the Army of Labour is a gain or a loss to whole Army, which by its organisation and Union is marching steadily and irresistibly forward to its ultimate goal - the Emancipation of the Working Class - that Emancipation can only be brought about by the strenuous and united efforts of the Working Class itself. Workers Unite!

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Eleanor Marx was not, however, blind to the limitations of Trade Unionism; nor to the necessity of workers studying the economics of the system that exploited them. Far from it.

From the 16th of August, 1856, to the 1st of April, 1857, Karl Marx wrote a series of articles, under the title of "Revelations of Diplomatic History of the 18th Century" for the Free Press. These articles were later edited by Eleanor Marx in a book, "Secret Diplomatic History of the 18th Century" was published in 1899. Eleanor also published, under the title of the "Eastern Question", a series of articles Marx wrote in 1855 for the New York Tribune.

More importantly, from the working-class viewpoint however, was the debate that Karl Marx had with John Weston, a member of the General Council of the First International, in 1865, in which he read a paper on wages, profit, prices, value, labour and labour-power, and the production of surplus value. At the time, Marx did not agree to its publication, as he had not finished his studies on Capital. The manuscript was then forgotten until after Engel's death in 1895, when it was discovered by Eleanor Marx, who edited it, with assistance from Edward Aveling, under the title of Value, Price and Profit; and it was published early in 1899.

It was in the ultimate paragraph, and well-known to Eleanor, that Marx had expounded his view on Trade Unions, wherein he wrote:

"Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces a a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system"

It was during the mid-1890s that Eleanor Marx, again with some assistance from Aveling, conducted economics classes. These, or at least some of them, were held at 337 Strand, London, which at the time was the head office of the SDF. (see, for example, Eleanor's letter to Mary Gray, a prominent member of the SDF, dated, 25.9.96, regarding "classes" ) Indeed, it was at such classes that Jack Fitzgerald and two or three other younger members of the SDF, who later founded the Socialist Party, first learned their Marxian economics in general and the theory of value in particular

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Frederick Engels was devoted to "Tussy", as he called Eleanor, and often continued to entertain both Eleanor and Edward Aveling when other guests told him that if Aveling came they would not. Edward Bernstein seems to have found Aveling "very clever", and that he and Eleanor were of "great service to the socialist movement"; but Olive Schreiner wrote to Havelock Ellis, saying "I am beginning to have a horror of Dr. Aveling. To say I dislike him doesn't express it at all. I have a fear and horror of him when i am near. Every time I see him this shrinking grows stronger...I love her, but he makes me so unhappy".

He also made Eleanor unhappy; but she did not desert him. In 1893, the "disretable" Edward Aveling joined the newly-formed Independent Labour Party. Engels was, by then, living in London. He would have nothing to do with Hyndman, who he accused of taking money from the Tories. However, Engels enjoyed his remaining years in London; and he entertained freely. But by 1894, he was aware that he was suffering from cancer of the oesophagus, and was unable to speak, but could still write. He died on the 5th of August, 1895.

Aveling was unfaithful to Eleanor. Every so often he disappeared. Towards the end of 1897, he disappeared again. On the 24th of January, 1898, Eleanor Marx wrote to Mary Gray, in which she said:

" I would have been to see you, but as you know, Edward has been dangerously ill. He is now at Hastings, but though the lung trouble seems better, it seems certain that he must soon - in a year or so - undergo a most dangerous operation...the operation is so dangerous that there is the utmost danger. But without the operation there seems no hope at all."

Eleanor nursed him following his operation until he was well, although she was, by then, aware that he was in love with another woman. Aveling informed her that, during the time that he has been away in Hastings, he had - his first wife having in the meantime died - married a young actress. On receiving the news, Eleanor Marx committed suicide by taking poison. Aveling inherited the small amount of money that Engels had left Eleanor, and went to live with his new wife. A few months later he too died - in an easy-chair, in the sunshine , reading a book.

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Just four years after the death of Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, Jack Fitzgerald, who had been one of Eleanor's students at her economic classes, together with a number of other London members of the SDF, rebelled (they also had been, like Eleanor Marx holding economic classes!) and, by early 1904, had either been expelled or had resigned; and, together with around 150 others former members of the Social-Democratic Federation, founded the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which opposed the advocacy of reforms or palliatives. It adopted an object and declaration of principles, largely drawn up by Fitzgerald. It was socialism - and nothing else!

Peter E. Newell

Editorial: Prospects for 1966 (1966)

Editorial from the January 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist standing on the brink of 1966 must survey the social scene with mixed feelings. It is depressing that the landscape should still be dominated by the ugly facts of Capitalist society, with its inequalities, exploitation, poverty, violence and neuroses. From another point of view, there is relief that the scarred body of humanity has at least survived. By itself, survival creates a fresh opportunity to do better in the future, but it is only an opportunity. The bitter experience of the past guards against undue optimism.

It is a time of ferment. There is a general will towards a better life. Social consciousness is on the move. Controversy, frustration and discontent abound. There is one thing that cannot be done with Capitalism. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the whole community. In the context of history, Capitalism is a condemned society.

In spite of everything, there is encouragement. With modification of the crude assumptions of religion a dent is being made in the barrier of superstition. Organised religion is on the defensive. Recent discussions about homosexuality, abortion and contraception indicate that sexual attitudes are freer from taboo.

To embark on a full-scale war this year, the Government could not rely on crowds outside Buckingham Palace chanting "we want war". The propaganda machine would be required to work hard in producing convincing pseudo reasons for the fight. The politicians' watchword in his relations with the voter is caution. The technical gains of the sixties have extended man's control of his environment and emphasised the contradiction between the potential abundance and actual poverty of production. These are peripheral gains that help to create a more receptive atmosphere for Socialist ideas.

On the other hand frustrations still tend to be diverted into attitudes of hate. The incidence of racism is ominous. Above all, that steady statistic 10% of the population owns 90% of the wealth, still forms the background of class ownership that dominates life. To the modern commercial animal, profit still remains the yardstick of virtue and success. Property is his God. The lingo of advertising and the subtle mechanics of the hard sell is his new theology.

Even during the past weeks, drillers struck a reservoir of natural gas beneath the North Sea, and this is firmly in the control of private interests. The legal right of profiteers to monopolise the earth, its energy, its raw materials and the products of labour is still being extended. Man is still denied free access to the assets of his own planet by the barrier of class ownership.

Socialist ideas incorporates a theory of history. It is this historical understanding that links the past with the present and gives the possibilities for the courses of action open to man in the future. Poverty, war and frustration can be ended but only by welding the whole human family together about the common ownership of the earth's resources and the means of production. This is the prospect of the future that Socialists urge is the only one worth working for.

The other prospect is the continuance of Capitalism. Unfortunately, a knowledge of society, does not give us a precise prediction of the way Capitalism will go in the near future. By its very nature, Capitalism is unplanned that the prospects are as numerous as they are frightening. At their worst, prospects under Capitalism could include world war or world industrial depression.

Other prospects can be quite certain. In the coming year, the continuance of Capitalism will inevitably involve death by war, death by starvation, exploitation, misery and neurosis. In the absence of a majority demand for Socialism, the prospect is that Capitalism will go on, business as usual, and to hell with humanity.

Greasy Pole: Tessa Fails To Make It (2015)

The Greasy Pole Column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Denis Healey, who was the last surviving member of Harold Wilson's 1964 Labour Cabinet, revived a clutch of memorable catch-phrases but also some unflattering comparisons with the uninspiring bunch who now occupy the Labour benches. For example Jeremy Corbyn's recent opponents Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. Will any of these go down in history as 'the best prime Minister we never had'? Will they construct a description of attacks from one of their opponents as 'like being savaged by a dead sheep'? Or scorn the House of Lords (even while they are a member) as 'the home of the living dead' ? How do they measure up to the likes of Hugh Gaitskell, Roy Jenkins, James Callaghan, in their bygone struggles to organise the economy of British capitalism into some kind of election-winning discipline? And would they, like Healey, churn out this stuff as a diversion to their day-time job?

Casinos

One of the casualties of this situation has been the Right Honourable Dame Tessa Jowell who was recently giving herself a higher chance of being adopted as the Labour Party candidate in the coming election to succeed Boris Johnson as Mayor of London but was defeated by Sadiq Khan. Jowell came into Parliament as the MP for Dulwich, a seat which she won in the 1992 election after a couple of attempts in Ilford North. That was a barren time for Labour and in opposition Jowell was appointed to a succession of Shadow jobs including one which named her as Labour's Spokesperson for Women. Blair's runaway victory in 1997 brought her bigger responsibility until after the 2001 election she replaced Chris Smith, who had been sacked, as Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. Controversially, she proposed the establishment of a number of 'super-casinos', raising the temperature of the predictable row over her plans when she described her opponents as 'snobs' who were motivated by a resolve to deny 'ordinary people' the opportunity to gamble – a response dismissed by her fellow MP Frank Field as 'crass'.

Iraq

In this acrimonious stand-off it could not have diverted her opponents to hear that her devotion to Blair was such that she would 'jump under a bus' for him. In fact at the time – February 2006 – it was not unlikely that a substantial number of people would not have demurred if Jowell had taken Blair with her beneath the bus; for one thing there was the shock and outrage after the exposure of the 'dodgy dossier' with its blatant lies about the war in Iraq. Shortly before then a couple of Jowell's constituents, driven to despair by her eager compliance in that war with its deception, its destruction and casualties, had written to Chris Mullin who was an MP for Sunderland, to complain that, among other matters, Jowell was 'just a rubber stamp with “Tony Blair" incised on its bottom'. But it seems that Blair was not impressed by Jowell's worshipful meanderings; she would have been dismayed by his opinion that she was merely 'lukewarm' towards New Labour. All these events were being observed by the smoulderingly impatient Gordon Brown who, when he eventually made it to Labour leader, subjected Jowell to a succession of humiliatingly minor governmental posts until 2009 when he condescended to bring her back as Minister for the Cabinet Office. The entire process of events among those Labour leaders was a succession of cynical manoeuvres presented to us as examples of loyal consultancy and co-operation.

Corruption

In conflict with the reassuringly comforting titles of the ministries she was involved in, Jowell's domestic life was not notable for its enduring bliss. Her first marriage, to another Camden councillor, was dissolved in 1976 but she kept the marital surname. In 1979 she married David Mills, described as an international corporate solicitor in the shadows of which he represented none other than Silvio Berlusconi who was then the Italian Prime Minister and who was liable to be entertained by Mills at posh London Clubs. Mills was investigated by the Italian authorities on suspicion of involvement in money laundering and tax fraud; inevitably Jowell was also of interest in these matters, which moved Mills to describe himself as 'an idiot'. In March 2006, to protect her political standing, they separated and in 2009 a court in Italy sentenced Mills to four and a half years imprisonment for accepting a bribe from Berlusconi after giving false evidence in a trial for corruption. He appealed against this sentence and in 2010, after a series of applications, a Cassation Court dissolved the case under the Statute of Limitations and ordered Mills to pay €250,000 for damaging the reputation of the office of the Italian prime Minister. Meanwhile Blair predictably cleared Jowell of having any conflict of interest over the case. By 2012 Jowell and Mills were effectively back together again but the case, in one shape or another, rumbles on.

Mayor

In 2013, after announcing that she was to stand for London mayor (and being popularly tipped as the favourite) Jowell unleashed an asterisk-laden verbal barrage to an interviewing Guardian reporter: 'Those a******es are so f****** rancid' … and she recalled being harassed by a cameraman with his 'f******, you know, penis-like lens… and I said You f**** off out of here ...' On a similar theme there is an old photograph of Tessa Jowell with Denis Healey. They are at a public meeting during an election, with the posters at the walls bellowing ‘Vote Jowell Labour’. They have serious faces, composed to encourage the audience to vote for their style of government to run British capitalism with its repression and violence and its deceit. Perhaps the photograph was taken when the voters were grateful for Jowell's support for their campaign to stop the closure of the local post offices, which would have affected any of them who had problems getting to another one a distance away. If so, they would have ignored the fact that she was a member of the government which was planning to impose those closures. There was a time when the word ‘promising’ might have been resorted to in any discussion of Jowell’s chances of eventually making it to the heights of the Greasy Pole. Parents in the medical profession, a good degree at Edinburgh, working as a psychiatric social worker then assistant director of the charity Mind. But her failure to persuade enough of the voters in London to make her their mayor consigns her to a place in history rather like those others who long ago orbited around Denis Healey and his caustic humour.

Ivan

Marxism and Democracy (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not possible to explain in an understandable way what the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to Marxism and democracy without first dismissing the mass of representations and half-truths surrounding the term Marxism, and distinguishing between widely differing concepts of democracy.

For us Marxism means essentially the mature, stated, view of Marx and Engels on the materialist conception of history, the economic analysis of capitalism and the way in which the working class must use the "parliamentary system" to achieve power as the necessary preliminary to the establishment of Socialism. This is the legitimate way in which the term should be used but it is not the way in which it is commonly used by the media or by numerous organisations all over the world that have chosen to label themselves Marxist. Leading politicians and commentators habitually use it as a term of abuse to blacken the Labour Party; like the description of that Party as "Marxist". Neither in that Party's aim, nor its economics (they are Keynesians) nor in its political propaganda can this usage be justified. Tackled about this, well-known columnists have taken refuge in a defence that amounts to no more than that "nowadays everybody does it", a complete abdication from their proclaimed role of providing genuine information for their readers.

As regards the organisations that style themselves Marxist, some do this in total ignorance of the writings of Marx and Engels while others make use of statements made before a lifetime of experience had brought maturity.

There is as much confusion about democracy as about Marxism. Hardly any organisation now admits to being anti-democratic; the National Front pays lip-service to democracy as does also the Russian dictatorship.

The formula used to justify the Russian system goes like this. "Democracy is majority rule. If the majority can be persuaded, pressurised or forced into placing the Communist Party leadership in power, that is democracy." It is of course a mockery. There is only one, officially endorsed, candidate in each constituency; through the censorship all information is government-controlled; and all political parties except the Communist Party are prohibited so that there is no legal way in which opponents' views can be put to the electorate. Bukharin once put it in a sentence: 'There is room in Russia for any number of political parties as long as one is in power and the others are in prison." In Russia it is possible for people to be arrested for openly refusing to vote (The Times 30 July 1978). Yet notwithstanding the risk involved, the official account of the last elections to the Supreme Soviet disclosed that some 330,000 people did vote against the official candidates.

All of this is far removed from the concept of democracy in socialist society. In socialism, objective information will be freely and fully available — no vested interests to give slanted versions. All will be able to hear and discuss different policy proposals. Decisions will be by majority vote; and will be accepted and operated by the minority, unless and until they can persuade the majority to change its views. Above all, because there will be no coercive state and all members of society will have free access to the means of life there can be no question of the minority being penalised in any way.

What about democracy in "parliamentary" countries like Great Britain? Objective information is not fully and freely available here but under normal conditions a socialist political party can operate legally and can answer capitalist propaganda. It can state the socialist case and contest elections, and as the overwhelming majority of the electors are working class it is open to the workers, through Parliament, to gain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, for the purpose of establishing Socialism when they so decide. Marx and Engels have always appreciated the value of the vote. In 1848, in the Communist Manifesto they wrote:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy. 

Looking back, half a century later, Frederick Engels said:

The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the struggle for the general franchise, for democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat . . . (Introduction to Class Struggles in France 1895)

Only four years after the Communist Manifesto Marx emphasised the point in an article in the New York Tribune (25 August 1852):

The carrying of universal suffrage in England would . . . be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent.
It's inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy of the working class.

In their early years of political activity Marx and Engels had been optimistic about the speed with which developments would take place. With greater experience they had to recognise that the obstacles — the resourcefulness of the ruling class, the adaptability of capitalism, and the slowness with which socialist ideas were accepted by the workers — were much greater than they had supposed.

Engels, in the work already mentioned summarised this:

"The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But so that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required  . . . Even in France the Socialists realise more and more that no durable success is possible unless they win over in advance the great mass of the people, which, in this case, means the peasants. The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are here also recognised as the next task of the party".

Engels, however, still underestimated the difficulties of the situation, this time through his misjudgment of the quality of membership of the social democratic parties. They were more and more being recruited, not for the socialist objective, but by the attraction of the "immediate demands" attached to the social-democratic programmes. They were still dependent on "leadership" and it remained for the Socialist Party of Great Britain to show that the whole leadership idea is alien to democracy and the socialist movement.

Edgar Hardcastle 

Action Replay: Online Gambling - Getting the Punters Hooked (2015)

The Action Replay column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

With online gambling amounting to over £2 billion a year, the number in danger of gambling addiction has grown. There could be as many as one million at risk.

Since online gambling was freed-up by Tony Blair's government in 2005 the gambling firms’ strategy has been to recruit new consumers from the professions (including women). Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, founder and director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, has said more women are gambling than ever before. ‘The introduction of online gambling has brought into the home an activity that was historically male-dominated.’

Betting firms still continue with their traditional working-class betting shop users but want to maximise profits by the introduction of fixed-odds gaming machines. Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins has said: ‘I have been very concerned about alcoholism for a long time, but problem gambling is just as bad.’

Microgaming Software Systems Ltd, created the world's first online casino 20 years ago, and now boasts a multimillion pound turnover. Their website states they are ‘the world's largest provider’ of online gaming software. Ladbrokes and 32Red are among the many online casino operators it supplies. Almost anything can be gambled online 24/7: lottery tickets, bingo, slot machine-style games, poker and football pools plus sporting events worldwide.

Ladbrokes chief executive Richard Glynn has boasted that his company offered up to 800 football matches per week for ‘bet in play’, leading the market with more games to gamble on than any of its rivals.

Ironically, the government risked missing out on increased tax revenues coming from this growth as most of the big-name bookies are based overseas. However, since the end of last year a change in the law has meant that the online business has been obliged to pay an estimated extra £300 million a year in UK taxes.

Charities are critical of celebrities glamorising gambling. The Australian cricketer Shane Warne promotes gambling via twitter while Ray Winstone, the face of Bet 65, regularly features at half-time intervals urging punters to ‘bet in play, now’.

Want an example of the human cost of on line gambling? In 2013 Jack Keylock, 22, from Cheltenham was jailed for 18 months at Gloucester Crown Court. Jack had resorted to burglary to pay debts run up while gambling online.

Kevin.

Will Hutton: Back to the Future, part 3/3 (2015)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Hutton’s prescription for the global economy is a Keynesian one with a ‘credit creationist’ twist, attempting to iron out the boom and bust inherent in capitalist production.  J.M. Keynes (writing in the slump of the 1930s) saw the instability of capitalist production, its tendency to boom and bust, as due to the fact that investment tends to stall because not every seller in a market becomes a buyer as there is a tendency for businesses to hoard a portion of profits rather than to reinvest it all in new production, which creates a deficit in market demand.  For Keynes, the state needed to step in order to provide the demand that was missing through direct investment and through redistributive taxation. 

To overcome the crises such as that of 2008 and the current crisis in China and other ‘emerging market economies’, Hutton urges international banking reform and demand stimulation in western economies.  He argues that global banking needs to be regulated by a ‘reinvigorated IMF’, reconfigured so as not to be dominated by western political right (those marauding Anglo-Saxons) in order to ensure ‘proper surveillance of global finance’.  This would involve restrictions on capital flows between countries and ensure that central banks regulate banks reserves to prevent banks ‘creating money’ by lending multiples of what they hold as fractional reserves.  This assumes that global banking has not arisen hand in glove with global trade and that banks can lend what they don’t have (which they can’t). 

 In order to divert ‘excess credit’ from flooding ‘emerging market economies’ Hutton also calls for western governments to ‘launch massive economic stimuli, centred on infrastructure’ and ‘new smart monetary policies that allow negative interest rates.’  This is Keynesian economics designed to stimulate demand by direct government investment and kick-starting investment by making it expensive for banks not to lend.  The problem with the first suggestion is that Quantitative Easing inflated the value of asset prices (stock-market prices) without stimulating inflation (because the new money created – by the Bank of England which can create money - did not enter general circulation as notes and coins).  The ‘economic stimuli’ mentioned by Hutton (what has been called ‘People’s QE’ by Jeremy Corbyn), on the other hand, would involve the creation of new money that would enter circulation as notes and money and therefore run the risk of creating high inflation (a rapid rise in the general price level).  The problem with the second proposal of negative interest rates (which is happening in several European countries) is that in the absence of the opportunities for profitable investment (i.e., in a recession) banks may not lend more but simply hoard, accentuating the fall in investment.

Keynesian economists often point to the post World War 2 period as evidence of the success of their policies of state intervention in the economy to increase demand.  However, sustained post war growth was due to the recovery of the global economy following the slump of the 1930s and reconstruction following the World War 2.  When this growth stalled in the 1970s Keynesian attempts to stimulate demand created double digit inflation.  This and high rates of taxation tended to stall investment even further and state borrowing came with conditions to reduce the policies that necessitated the borrowing.  These problems were faced by all governments following Keynesian strategies once the post war boom was over.  It was not Thatcher but Dennis Healey who started the process of spending cuts in the late 1970s.  In France Mitterand was elected in 1981 on a platform of increasing consumption through state intervention.  The higher taxation, government borrowing and inflation led not to stimulation of the economy but to lower growth - by 1983 the Mitterand government had taken the ‘austerity turn’ in an attempt to restore favourable conditions for profitable investment.  Bang up to date the failure of the Syriza government in Greece to reverse austerity in Greece by renegotiating the terms of its borrowing failed ignominiously, the government backing down rather than face even more uncertain prospects outside of the EU.  Austerity is not being imposed by the political right as Hutton would have it.  It is being enforced by the need to create conditions favourable to profitable investment.  Trying to go back to a time before Thatcher and Reagan to get to a non-austerity future is going back in time to face the same problems, pursuing policies that will require the same policy reversals enacted by Healey and Mitterand.  Hutton’s Keynesian and currency proposals to calm global economic turbulence could not be enacted (say by a Corbyn Labour government) without worsening the prospects for productive investment, requiring a return to the very policies blamed by the left for causing current economic stagnation.   A real end to austerity requires the success of the socialist campaign to abolish capitalism itself not repeating the disillusion of past attempts to save capitalism from itself.

CSK

Growing Old, Growing Old (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

We look at the way the older generation fare under capitalism, with poverty dominating the lives of so many.

A recent report by the Intergenerational Foundation pointed out how badly young people have fared over the last five years or so (Guardian Online, 11 July). The ‘living wage’ in Osborne’s budget, for instance, will not apply to those under 25, and people under 21 will no longer automatically be entitled to housing benefit. The cost of getting a university degree is sky-rocketing, and the relatively small number of houses being built is a crucial reason why so many young people have little chance of buying their own homes. At the same time, people are living longer and the number of those over 65 is increasing, so the younger generation are supposedly being forced to pay for the pensions and other benefits of the elderly.

Setting one group of workers against another is a standard capitalist tactic to divert attention away from the real clash of interest in society, that between the tiny class of people who own the means of production and distribution and the rest of us. If workers’ anger and resentment can be channelled towards immigrants or welfare scroungers or strikers, they are far less likely to hold the social system responsible for their problems. We are not saying that it is explicitly intended this way, but it fits into this whole paradigm to claim that the elderly are doing very nicely, while the young are in many cases mired in poverty with few prospects.

For the elderly suffer greatly under capitalism too. While there are retired workers who live reasonably on a workplace pension (having paid into it for thirty-odd years, mind), there are more who struggle to get by on the state pension and experience loneliness, isolation and poor health. The state currently pays a maximum of just £115.95 per week before tax, though there will be changes from April next year.

Back in 2002 a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that redundancy or early retirement could have a devastating influence on how people fared in old age. This applied particularly to men who worked for fewer than five years in their fifties and who worked in jobs such as clerical or sales staff. Many of these were among the lowest-paid and also their employment was the most precarious. Things will hardly have changed for the better since then.

According to Age UK, just over a million people have a care need – perhaps as basic as assistance getting out of bed – but receive no help from the state or other agencies. Government funding for local councils’ adult care budgets has been cut by a third since 2005–06, and further cuts are in the pipeline. These ‘savings’ may result in increased pressure on the NHS, as more elderly people go to hospital for emergency care. The government has now announced that it will not after all introduce rules to cap care costs, which means many elderly people will have to sell their homes in order to pay for care.

Towards the end of last year, Age UK reported that 1.6 million pensioners are living below the poverty line; many are entitled to extra state benefits but do not claim, whether through ignorance or pride. Bus passes and free medical prescriptions do not make up for this kind of suffering. In 2011 they produced a report Living on a low income in later life, which noted, for instance, that many people ‘went without holidays, stopped going out, did not replace household goods, and some took drastic action to reduce their heating and energy costs.’

One appalling indication of the extent of poverty among the elderly and their families is the rise in pauper’s funerals, or public health funerals, to give them their official and less unsettling name (Guardian Online, 20 October 2014). The state funeral grant is means-tested and is just £700; with the average funeral costing around £4,000, many people cannot afford that or have to go to pay-day lenders to pay for a loved one’s funeral. It’s all very well saying that people can take out insurance, but frankly people don’t, as this is hardly a priority for someone who is struggling to make ends meet anyway. Around one in seven have trouble meeting the costs of a funeral, and a pauper’s funeral is the last resort for those who have no family or whose relatives are too poor.

The background is that all this care for the elderly costs the capitalist class, via the state, money. There were fewer than seven million pensioners in 1951, over ten million in 1992 and over twelve million now, with around six per cent of GDP paid out as state pensions. People are simply living longer, thus drawing their pensions for longer. One person in six is over sixty-five, and there are more pensioners than children under sixteen. One response has been to increase the state pension age: the 1995 Pensions Act meant that the pension age for women would increase gradually from sixty to (if you were born in March 1953) sixty-three. More recent acts speeded up this increase, and the traditional pension age of sixty-five will also be scrapped, so that anyone born after 6 March 1961 will have to be sixty-seven before they qualify for a state pension. So the wage slavery of employment will last longer in future (provided you can get a job at all). And even receiving a pension may not mean the end of working: in 2011, 1.4 million people above the pension age were still working, primarily on grounds of poverty (up from 750,000 in 1993).

Moreover, increases to non-state pensions have since 2010 been based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), not the Retail Price Index (RPI). These both measure the ups and downs of prices but, because of subtleties in the way the two indices are calculated, CPI is generally lower than RPI. As a result, pensioners are likely to lose out substantially over a period of several years. And final-salary pension schemes are becoming rarer, so the basis for calculating what a works pension will be worth is being reduced.

So it seems that, while the younger generation struggle with benefits, pay, education and housing, the elderly encounter comparable problems, of low incomes, poor health, choosing between eating and heating, isolation and loneliness. Traditional societies valued older people as a store of knowledge and experience, but under capitalism the elderly are seen as little more than unpaid child-minders for grandkids, and as a burden to be looked after as cheaply as possible. 

Paul Bennett

Will Hutton: Back to the Future, part 2/3 (2015)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Part 1 here

Hutton’s view is that lax regulation around the cash reserves that banks are required by law to hold (the fractional reserve) and the abandonment of other controls on capital flows between countries (previously part of the responsibilities of central banks) are responsible for an excess of credit being ‘created’ in the global economy.  Hutton argues that the ‘emergence of a global banking system’ means that ‘central banks are much less able to monitor and control what is going on’.  Because ‘few countries now limit capital flows’ the result, says Hutton, is that ‘cash generated out of nothing can be lent in countries where the economic prospects look superficially good.’  This leads to a ‘false boom’:

‘Property prices rise. Companies and households grow overconfident about their prospects and borrow freely… all seems well until something – a collapse in property or commodity prices – unravels the whole process.  The money floods out as quickly as it flooded in, leaving bust banks and governments desperately picking up the pieces.’ 

Hutton argues that the current problems in China follow on from the financially induced crisis in 2008 and that crises in other ‘emerging market economies’ are a knock on of the same process of ‘sky-high commodity prices… fuelled by wild lending’ that create ‘super-high but illusory growth rates.’

But the crash of 2008 was not a ‘false boom’ caused by finance but a particularly far-reaching crisis in the history of the business cycle that is inherent in capitalist production.   This cycle has played out numerous times in the past couple of centuries in capitalist economies, a process of capitalist production that Marx described as moving ‘through periodical cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis and stagnation.’  In an expanding economy banks see a plethora of opportunities to lend at relatively low risk.  This lending greases the wheels of the productive economy which continues to expand at an even faster rate.  At some point in the process of expansion a sector of the economy overproduces relative to the demand.  Production slows in this sector, questions are asked and glances are exchanged.  Production slowing in one sector knocks on to another and then another, doubts begin to grow and confidence is dented.  Before long what seemed like a never-ending process of expansion turns into economic contraction as panic sets in and investment slows or stops.  This is what happened in 2008 as house building in the US outstripped demand leading to a collapse in prices.  This knocked on to the global financial system because the risks of default for US mortgages were bundled up in financial institutions around the world, a contagion that caused panic to ripple around financial markets and confidence to collapse.  Lending contracted, investment stalled.  It wasn’t caused by banks and credit but the global nature of banking did allow the results of overproduction to spread widely and rapidly (just as global banking facilitates investment and economic expansion widely and rapidly). 

The cause of the crisis then is not banks or even overproduction as such but production as it is carried on in capitalism.  Goods are produced not for direct use but for exchange, for sale on the market, rather than being consciously planned in the light of social need.  Inevitably, at some point, more goods will be produced than can be sold at a profitable price causing a dislocation in the expansion of production, the consequences of which (depending on its magnitude and inter-connections) may remain only local or may ripple out to affect regional, national or even the global economy. Frederick Engels referred to this process of production in capitalism as the ‘anarchy of social production’.   The situation is not caused by banks ‘creating credit’ but rather the opposite, an increase in investment in the productive economy causes a rise in lending, which facilitates and accelerates this growth by lending to apparently relatively risk-free borrowers.  Conversely the restriction of credit does not cause an economic downturn but is a reflection of it as borrowing for investment declines and lending is relatively more risky.  Credit accentuates the business cycle by inflating bubbles in times of growth and deepening downturns by restricting credit but it does not cause it. 

So too, the Chinese financial downturn is a tale many times told of rapid growth followed by a crisis and a recession (establishing the conditions for renewed growth).  In an attempt to reverse a slow-down in the productive economy the Chinese government cut interest rates in an effort to stimulate the economy.  Borrowing increased and the Chinese stock-market boomed for a while.  All that happened was that the gap between the reality of a slowing productive economy and stock-market prices grew larger.  At some point the two had to come together again and so they have. Banks did not cause the crisis by creating credit they only delayed and accentuated it.  More regulation of banks will not solve the problem of the cycle of boom and bust inherent in capitalist production.  Banking regulations of the sort that Hutton want aim to reinstate, it is argued, prevented crises in the past and will iron out the instability caused by the psychological flaws of bankers who ‘create money’.  It did not work before and it attributes to banking a power of the economy that it does not have.  Like many on the left Hutton wants to return to a time before Keynesian interventionism was ousted by free market ideologues.  Socialists argue that capitalism, not the form that it takes, that is the problem.  The future lies not in going back in time to a world of more regulated banking but forward to a world where the anarchy of production (indirect social production where goods and services are for sale and realised only when exchanged for money) is replaced by consciously planned production for meeting human needs (directly social production where goods and services are consumed without exchange) and where the conditions of production that give rise to banks will have been abolished.

CSK

Cooking the Books: Moore on Marx (2015)

The Cooking the Books Column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Marx did have an insight about the disproportionate power of the ownership of capital. The owner of capital decides where the money goes, whereas the people who sell only their labour lack that power. This makes it harder for society to be shaped by their interests.’ So wrote Charles Moore, Thatcher’s biographer and former editor of the Daily Telegraph in the World Street Journal on 25 September.

He had already assured his readers that ‘no one should worry that I have become a late convert to Marxism’ and went on: ‘In recent years, that disproportion has reached destructive levels, so if we don’t want to be a Marxist society, we need to put it right.’

As a fan of Thatcher his way of putting it right is to create a so-called ‘property-owning democracy’ where ‘people who sell only their labour’ come to own their home and some stocks and shares. Quite a few are already in this position, especially in the US with regard to stocks and shares.  But the assumption that this gives them any more power to decide where the money goes or to shape society in their interest is preposterous.

In fact being burdened with a loan to buy a house over decades weakens a person’s bargaining power vis-à-vis their employer as they can’t afford to lose money by striking or their job through being militant as they need to keep their mortgage payments up or risk losing their house. If ‘people who sell only their labour’ have a steady income from stocks and shares, as up to a third are said to in the US, this means that their employers don’t have to pay them so much to keep fit to work.  So what’s the gain there? It’s just swings and roundabouts.

Moore needn’t have worried about being taken for a convert to Marxism as elsewhere in his article he displayed an ignorance of what Marx thought. According to him, Marx ‘did not understand markets or respect political institutions, and he thought liberty was a sham.’

On the contrary, Marx well understood how the market works. In fact Moore himself recognised this earlier in his article when he commended three passages which he later revealed were from the Communist Manifesto:

‘Where might one find a useful analysis of what is happening today in the market democracies of the West? How about this: “The executive committee of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.” Or this: “Modern bourgeois society … is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the nether world which he has called up by his spells.” Or this: “The productive forces no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions … [and] they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.”’

And why should Marx have respected the political institutions of capitalist society if they were there to manage the common affairs of the capitalist class? And isn’t ‘Liberty’ a sham if the ‘owners of capital’ exercise ‘disproportionate power’? Not that Marx was against the limited, political democracy that can exist under capitalism. He was all for it but regarded it not as amounting to freedom for ‘people who sell only their labour’ but only as an instrument to this, or as he put it, a ‘means of emancipation.’

Sting in the Tail: Fine in theory (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fine in theory

What lay behind the desire of all those governments to bring about the recent GATT agreement? One of the main reasons was, we were told, "the need to stimulate competition".

In Australia a new football boot, "Blades", has been designed. It has diagonal rubber blades on the soles and heals instead of studs and the makers claim it will improve grip and reduce injuries. Eighty percent of Australian rugby league players now use it.

Glad cries all round then? No, in fact every obstacle is being put in the way of this competitor by the multinational football boot makers:

"A club sponsored by one took out a Supreme Court injunction to try to stop the Nine Network's "A Current Affair" programme showing its results of boot trials. It failed. In another incident subcontractors of a rival company stopped Blades' production by removing equipment from the factory. Power struggle and patent intrigues lie ahead." (Guardian, 11 December)

The fiercest opposition is what always faces those who try to put rhetoric about competition into practice.

Patching them up

An advert in the national press by the charity St. Christopher's Fellowship (31 December) announced that: "Christmas is over! In a few hours she'll be back on the streets." It told of a young woman who "is counting the hours until her temporary Christmas-time refuge is closed down".

She was not alone. Two thousand single homeless people in London hit the streets again after Christmas as temporary shelters closed. A week of being fed, given medical check-ups and even haircuts only highlighted for some the misery of the other 51 weeks and suicide attempts were reported.

And what did all this achieve? Crisis, one of the major charities, claimed:

"most of the homeless people who passed through its temporary hostels this Christmas emerged refreshed and better able to cope with life on the streets."

Could anything better demonstrate the utter futility of charity than this?

Segregated again

Remember the tremendous effort and sacrifice that went into the civil rights campaign to desegregate schools in the USA? Eventually schools were legally integrated.

But now a study by Harvard University reveals that 66 percent of black and 74 percent of Hispanic youngsters attend schools which have few white classmates. The prediction is that within 20 years half of US state schools will be predominantly black or Hispanic.

The Harvard report's director concluded:

"The civil rights impulse of the 1960s is dead in the water and the ship is floating back towards the shoals of racial segregation." (Guardian, 15 December)

What has happened is that poverty-stricken blacks and Hispanics have moved to the towns and cities and become concentrated in areas where those whites who can afford to have moved out.

So population drift has replaced overt racism as the cause of segregated schools: that may have changed, but the poverty factor remains constant and that is something the reformists can do nothing about.

The truth hurts

What politicians will do just to "get in" is exceeded only by what they will do to stay in. An example of this is the suppression of information which will be politically embarrassing.

The Black Report was commissioned in 1977 to inquire into inequalities in people's health. When it was ready in 1980 the Tory government did not publish it. Instead, 200 duplicated copies of the typescript were made available on August bank holiday in the hope that it would never be noticed.

The reason is clear:

"The report laid out a mass of evidence pointing out that social class and economic deprivation had a profound effect on health, with the inequalities of childhood persisting so that ill-health was worse, and death rates higher, at every stage of life the poorer the person was." (Guardian, 17 December)

London's yo-yo

London share prices have reached record levels - the FTSE share index rose by 22 percent in 1993 and another big rise is forecast for 1994.

What is causing this? Current low interest and inflation rates will encourage business to think they can plan ahead with more certainty. This, plus a feeling that the recession is now over, has pushed shares up, but there are other less rational reasons for the rise.

For instance, London prices usually follow prices on Wall Street and Far East markets and these have been rising (Tokyo is the exception). Then there is the fact that many investors buy on a rising market simply because they are afraid of being left out of what they think must be a good thing.

Of course, the last budget's tax rises may reduce consumer spending and the recession on the continent, which is British capitalism's biggest customer, may slow down the recovery and send the FTSE tumbling again.

The last emperor

Mao's centenary gave the media the chance to disclose some awful truths about the old tyrant. For example, on one TV programme his megalomania was on display. He saw himself as the greatest of China's Emperors and boasted how he had more power and killed more "enemies" than any previous Emperor.

And he was completely ignorant of even basic economics. His "Great Leap Forward" in the 1950s had an officially estimated 100 million peasants taken out of the fields to produce steel, of which they knew nothing, and resulted in tens of millions dying in the inevitable famine. Incidentally, Mao the "Marxist" had read very little of Marx's writings.

What, we wonder, were those British Maoists, past and present, thinking as they watched or read about the monstrous crimes committed by the man they so idolized?

That's them that is

"In this edition of 'History Today' Professor Lewis and I will be discussing the question 'Is there really a working class in contemporary capitalism?' Professor Lewis, what is your view?"

"See a boring old fart who thinks history is all about kings, queens, military commanders, politicians and other useless parasites?"

"I suppose there may be such a person."

"That's you, that is."

"Perhaps, Professor Lewis, but who are the working class today?"

"See those millions of people all over the world who must work for a wage or salary in order to live, who produce all of society's wealth and fight and die in wars which have nothing to do with them?"

"I have heard that there are such persons."

"Well that's THEM, THAT IS!"

(Acknowledgements to Newman and Baddiel)