Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker pt.2 (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the second part of our study of the work of Peter Watkins, we look at how his career as an independent film-maker challenged conventional trends. (Part 1 of the article is here.)

Frustrated by the poor reception to Privilege, Watkins left Britain for Sweden to make his next film. The Gladiators (1969) continued the theme of the elite using the media to divert aggression, but instead of music, as in Privilege, here violence is the catalyst. Soldiers representing different states are sent to arenas to fight and compete against each other in missions. These ‘Peace Games’ are televised to massive international audiences. From the comfort of a country mansion, the generals of each side sit together watching the battles and amiably take turns to influence what their soldiers do. One of the strongest messages in The Gladiators is that soldiers of any side have more in common with each other than they do with their leaders.

By the start of the 1970s, Watkins had relocated to America, where tensions between the state and the radical political scene were focused on the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, and threats to ‘civil rights’. Watkins’ response was to adapt the setting of The Gladiators – a remote arena run by the military – to create a scenario where the views of those disaffected and at risk from the state could be expressed.

Punishment Park (1971) followed two groups of militants – civil rights activists, poets, protest singers and draft-dodgers – held by the American police under the 1950 McCarran Act. This piece of real-life legislation allowed the government to detain people expected to cause subversion. Some of the characters were loosely based on those involved in the ‘Chicago Trials’ which followed countercultural protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the sets of militants is on trial from a nationalist tribunal already sure of their guilt. The other prisoners have been sentenced, and have chosen to spend three days in ‘punishment park’ instead of lengthy prison stays. This is a torturous trek through 53 miles of desert, to reach an American flag within three days while being hunted by trigger-happy cops.

The drama was improvised by non-professional actors, mostly giving their own views in character, whether playing activists, police or draft-board judges. This approach gives the film a raw authenticity which led some viewers to assume that it depicts real events. From this point in his career, Watkins’s films would feature only non-professional actors, often improvising their dialogue.

Punishment Park received mixed reviews, variously describing it as a ‘chilling prognosis’, ‘hypnotically gripping, and ‘the pornography of hate’ (pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm). Most film distributors decided that it would be too volatile to screen, and consequently it was denied the impact it deserved.

Watkins’ next film, released in 1974, was a biopic of Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch. He first discovered Munch’s work only a few years before, and felt that the marginalisation of his own work echoed Munch’s experiences. The anger of his earlier films is more measured, targeted against repression rather than oppression. Munch’s life and work was shaped by the strict social norms of the late 19^th Century, as well as a constant threat of illness. The pace is more sedate than in Watkins’ previous films, gradually building up a layered picture of what influenced Munch.

Watkins’ films acknowledge the presence of the camera crew, especially in Punishment Park where they influence events, and even when this would be impossible within the drama, as in Edvard Munch and Culloden. His intention here was to remind the viewer that film-makers don’t objectively and passively record events, but interpret them according to their own agendas. Watkins himself ‘appears’ in his films as a narrator.

Through the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, Watkins remained in Scandinavia, where he developed his theory of the ‘Monoform’ and produced films to counter its approach. The Monoform is the standard style of editing and directing films and television programmes, which only presents the film-maker’s capitalist ideology, and stifles alternative interpretations. His films in this period studied ‘modern stress’ among Danish families (The Seventies People, 1974), radioactive waste produced by consumerism (The Trap, 1975), protests against nuclear submarines (Evening Land, 1976), and public awareness of the threat of nuclear war (The Journey, 1987). As always, reviews and reactions were largely hostile, coming from those who supported the oppressive society which Watkins was attacking.

In the early 1990s, Watkins worked with students at the Nordens Folk High School in Sweden on a biopic of radical writer August Strindberg. The Freethinker ‘has a complex internal structure, and moves in an unpredictable and seemingly random way between’ different points in Strindberg’s life, offering ‘the audience an open-ended process allowing for individual and varied reaction’ (LINK).

His 1999 film La Commune (de Paris, 1871) is political cinema at its best, and here Watkins attempts to counter the Monoform. Watkins identified that ‘the Paris Commune has always been severely marginalised by the French education system, perhaps because it is a key event in the history of the European working class.’

Watkins shot the film in black and white using digital video cameras in 13 days in an abandoned factory on the eastern edge of Paris in July 1999. There were over 220 people in the cast with approximately 60 percent of them having no prior acting experience.

In an effort to counter the Monoform, Watkins engaged in a democratic / collective experience during the filming; his overall objective was to present a collective voice, while the cast was involved in the film’s preparation, and during the filming itself. Watkins rarely has the cast framed in close-up as individuals, usually there are at least two or three people in the frame at the same time thus allowing a group dynamic to develop. The cast step out of their roles from time to time to discuss the situation in 1999, and its links to the events of the Paris Commune, contributing to the telling of their own history, and bringing out the modernity of the Commune. They would also discuss what they would say, how they might feel, and how they would react to the events of the Commune which were about to be filmed, externalising their true personalities and becoming the men and women of 1871.

Watkins brings the class struggle to the screen in his film of an attempt to create a better world. The Commune is not seen as a failure but the beginning of an idea of solidarity amongst people; he celebrates the Commune but its errors and its weaknesses are not hidden. The 375 minutes length of La Commune which runs counter to the Monoform ensured its complete marginalisation.

After La Commune, Watkins concluded ‘We are now moving through a very bleak period in human history... , sheer greed engendered by the consumer society sweeping many people under its wing, human, economic and environmental catastrophe in the form of globalisation ... have synergistically created a world where ethics, morality, human collectivity, and commitment ... are considered “old fashioned”... In such a world as this, what happened in Paris in the spring of 1871 represented (and still represents) the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia.’ He felt that La Commune should be seen as a tool for others to use in challenging the dominance of the ‘Mass Audio Visual Media’ (MAVM) industry.

Watkins sees direct links between the hierarchy and centralisation of the contemporary manipulative role of the MAVM and the globalisation of capitalism.  He sees the rationale for the internal lengths and structures of the ‘Universal Clock’ (timing TV programmes according to adverts) as entirely commercial; they contribute to a loss of history, the increase of hierarchical forces, and the passive acceptance of global capitalism. Watkins speaks of ‘exploitative, morally corrupt free-market ideology sweeping aside everything before it.’ In his view, the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ won’t reach its full potential unless it challenges the MAVM.

Watkins published his theories as The Media Crisis (2004), a passionate critique of the Monoform and the lack of debate around the production of new audio visual media forms. His rejection of the dominant Monoform style, and his objections to the oppressive media industry which pushes it, has led to most of his films being marginalised and neglected. Consequently, his work hasn’t had the exposure or influence it deserves. Despite this, his approach is echoed in films such as the critically acclaimed holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann, which may be seen as counter to the Monoform. Shoah was 11 years in production and editing and released at a length of 613 minutes! Lanzmann used no historical footage, arranged many of the scenes, but not the testimony; the film was made without subtitles, voiceovers, questions and answers were kept on the soundtrack, along with the interpreters. Lanzmann matches the testimony to places, and the audience is encouraged to think about the historical actions of these men, but also the ethics of reflection.

With filming and editing technology now affordable to more people, and the internet as a means to distribute films without going through corporations with their own agendas, there is now more potential for people to produce films which express their own experiences and views.

Watkins should be recognised more among socialists not only for his critique of the power of the media, but also in suggesting a positive alternative style of film-making: docudramas largely improvised by non-professional actors, and a new way of organising society in opposition to global capitalism. His films concerning history, war, pop culture, the oppressive role of the state in capitalism, late 1960s radicalism, the Paris Commune, and the role of artists, are always relevant to socialists.

Mike Foster & Steve Clayton

Yawn in the USA (1992)

Editorial from the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

If it was not tragic it would be funny. With a mixture of anguish and amusement, socialists look on as the multi-million dollar campaigns to elect the most important political leader in the world drip down the middle of our TV screens.

The US Presidential contest is a sick, slick manipulation of what is declared to be a democratic election. To begin with, only millionaires or those backed by millionaires can afford to run televised, mass-appeal campaigns. Most US states have laws designed to prevent small parties from even being on the ballot paper: tens of thousands of nominations must be collected before you can even appeal to voters as an electoral contender. The TV networks and the press are subsumed by the petty irrelevancies of which candidate has the most extra-martial liaisons, whose wife looks cutest and which party can provide the catchiest ten-second sound bite.

The election is a farce. Rarely was this more clearly seen that at the Republican Convention when Bush and Quayle accepted their nominations; their speeches were of the emptiest rhetoric, but crowds of media men were placed in the audience to cheer at their every empty promise, laugh uproariously at their every semi-witty jest and, most sinister of all, burst into pre-arranged "spontaneous" bouts of slogan-chanting, Goodbye Gorbachev, but Stalinism is still alive and well in the Houston Astrodome.

The differences between the two big parties are negligible—more minute than ever. Like the British Labour Party, the US Democrats have adopted the view that the only way they might beat the Republicans is by kidding the voters that they are the Republicans. Bush or Clinton—who in their right mind cares? Certainly tens of millions of American workers don't, for it is anticipated that half the electorate will not vote next month.

As in Britain, liberal reformists are tempted by what they see as the lesser evil. The Nation, that journalistic symbol of wishy-washy niceness, hopes that Bush will lose, but its editorial of 14 September shows just how pathetic the case for the Democrats is: "in almost every category of capitalist economic growth—income, profit, gross domestic product, employment—Democratic administrations do better than Republican ones". As if that were a reason why workers, whose exploitation is the source of capitalist economic growth, should vote for their most efficient fleecers.

The truth is that US capitalism is in trouble, and social problems which they thought they could avoid are exploding all over the place. Vast numbers of homeless, a drug epidemic, 12 million hungry, over 20 million illiterates, riots in LA and more brewing in other deprived city areas, a multi-trillion dollar budget deficit and the collapse of welfare, huge numbers of bankruptcies. What American workers need to hear is the case for an alternative to the profit system: the case for production for use and not profit. There will be no Land of the Free until we have a world where all have free access to the abundant wealth that we can produce.

But instead of the voice of sanity, the Republicans have been infiltrated by crazy Christians, no more in possession of their reason than the Muslim fundamentalists. Their leader, and a definite Republican hopeful for 1996, is Pat Robertson who told the Convention in Houston that feminism "encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians". With God on their side these loony leaders are asking the millions to put their faith in them.

Russia Puts the Clock Back (1962)

From the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before 1914 Socialism had a definite meaning, understood by all who claimed to be Socialist. It meant the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. This was accepted by the Social Democratic Parties that were developing in different parts of the world, most of whom gave allegiance to Marxism.

In these parties there were writers who made first class theoretical contributions to Marxism. Writers such as Plechanov, Kautsky, Labriola, Lafargue, Bauer, Boudin, Luxemburg, and many others. All of these people were in the Second International along with Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolsheviks. In fact, in those days, Lenin had a great respect for Plechanov, from whom he had learnt much, and he described Kautsky as one of the best theoreticians in the Socialist movement.

Where, however, they all came to grief was on the question of reformism. In theory they were sound, but on the practical side they were weak. Whilst advocating and writing about Socialism they also felt it incumbent upon them to take steps to try and ameliorate the conditions of the workers by having a lengthy platform of reforms. They also looked upon state ownership as a stepping stone to Socialism. This attitude attracted to the ranks of the Social Democratic Parties large numbers of people who were only interested in particular reforms, and had no real understanding of the class division in society or the Socialist objective. They gave lip service to the ideas without understanding them, or even being interested in them.

Had this been all that had happened, it might have been possible to rescue something out of the confusion, and spread sound Socialist understanding, after the 1914-1918 war. Particularly as workers everywhere, feeling that they had been betrayed, were in a ferment of discontent. But the Bolsheviks, by corruption, distortion, betrayal and mud slinging, destroyed this possibility, setting out by lies, trickery and distortion to politically, and sometimes physically, destroy all the parties and individuals who were not prepared to be abject tools of the Bolshevik dictatorship.

In the first flush of Bolshevik victory radical parties all over the world acclaimed the victory and gave them generous support, even where they had doubts on some of the methods adopted. The German Social Democratic Party, when threatened, sent to Russia the writings of Marx and Engels and other archives for safe-keeping, believing that Russia was now a budding free Socialist state where writings and documents would be safe from interference. How wrong they were!

It soon became evident that Russia was not embarked upon even a democratic society. The secret police and the concentration camp were on the way.

The mass of the Russian people knew nothing about Socialism; most of them could not even read. The peasants, who formed the bulk of the population, wanted land, and all wanted peace and bread. It was on the basis of the peace, bread and land programme that the Bolsheviks were enabled to seize power.

Treachery and Terrorism

Once in power the Bolsheviks established what they misnamed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In fact, it was nothing of the kind. It was not even the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party (which again they misnamed the Communist Party), but the dictatorship of a small inner group with Lenin as the guiding star. They established a system of treachery and terrorism, first against opposing elements and eventually internally against those who would not abjectly submit to the dictates of the inner circle. In the end this led to members of the inner circle trying to destroy each other. It reproduced the position in the French Revolution when one group ate another until finally Napoleon was left at the top. First Trotsky, then Kamenev, Zinoviev and Radek fell victims to the terrorism they had built up. Fortunately for him, Lenin died before he could become a victim of the system in which he was the leading actor.

Money was lavished, in spite of Russian penury, to influence elements abroad to give abject submission to the dictates of the small group of Russian dictators. Unscrupulous adventurers, with no interest whatever in Socialism, were sent abroad armed with large sums of money, for the purpose of disrupting and destroying radical movements in other countries, and building up groups that acted as foreign agents of the Russian dictatorship. The old secret police of Czarism was copied in the building up of the OGPU, which infiltrated everywhere and set friends and families against each other. Finally, all freedom of expression was killed as no one dare voice any criticism of the despotism for fear of prison, the concentration camp or execution.

In attacking all who would not give unquestioning submission to their changing tactics and ruthless suppressions, the Russian dictators twisted Marxism into its opposite. State Capitalism, which the supporters of the Second International had only looked upon as a stepping stone to Socialism, was established in Russia and declared to be Socialism—thus giving the enemies of Socialism a much desired weapon.

The Third International, which the Russian dictatorship set up for the purpose of disorganising radical parties in the West, was abandoned as soon as its aim had been accomplished

Now, in the effort to build up Socialist parties, one supreme task has been added to the rest; the need to unveil the falsity of Russian propaganda and take the name of Socialism out of the mud in which the Russian leaders and their henchmen have immersed it. And still today the supporters of the Russian dictatorship everywhere carry out the intriguing, tortuous and hypocritical policy of their mentors.

The Bolsheviks have certainly put the clock back and, in the name of Socialism, have built up one of the most ruthless Capitalist states that have ever existed. Even the forms of democracy that exist in the Western world cannot be found there.

Evidence for the duplicity and ruthless-ness of the inner Bolshevik clique in the early days is given in profusion in Angelica Balabanoff's My Life as a Rebel. She went to Russia as to the shrine of Socialism, and she became the first secretary of the Third International; but later left Russia disillusioned and broken-hearted, severing her connection with the Russian group after what she had witnessed.

Critics, enemies, and anyone who displeased the inner circle or influential members of the bureaucracy were sent to concentration camps, mostly in Siberia, where they were ill-fed, ill-clothed, and overworked in the bitter cold. Thousands died, and many more became physical wrecks. The story is a horrible one of cold-hearted ruthlessness.

Claiming that the end justified the means, however perfidious, the Russian Autocracy are now firmly establishing a typical Capitalist state, armed with the most terrible means of human destruction and threatening, whilst their alleged end has disappeared into obscurity in face of diplomatic and blackmailing manoeuvres for better trading opportunities. But they have done more damage to the movement for Socialism than even the most ruthless avowed Capitalist states. The latter proclaimed their antagonism to Socialism and could be met in the light, whereas the Russian dictatorship claims to be sponsors of Socialism and works in the dark.

Hard as the road to Socialism always was, the Russians have made it harder, and have destroyed, or driven to despair, many genuine fighters for the workers' freedom from Capitalism, even if some of these have been mistaken in their methods.

The lesson to be drawn from the Russian experience is the impossibility of a small group of leaders, with a mass of blind supporters, ushering in anything other than some form of dictatorship; certainly not Socialism, The supreme need of the workers is an understanding of Socialism, what it is and what it implies, and organising together for the sole purpose of achieving it. Finally, that Socialism is an international system which cannot be achieved in one country alone, but requires the understanding and harmonious co-operation of all the workers of the world.

Gilmac.

Pathfinders: Jealous Guy (2012)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jealous Guy

Chemistry at school has always had a dismal reputation as the boring science, which only gets interesting when it scales down into physics or up into biology. But a recent BBC Horizon documentary on the history of materials did an excellent job of correcting this prejudice by showing how new cooking recipes have been behind some of the most revolutionary technologies, from silicon and superconductors to graphene and even silicone. But one story stood out above all for its strangeness, the story of a material called Starlite, recently also picked up by New Scientist (16 May). Take some flour, baking soda and a few other sundries, whisk them up in a food processor, then paint the white gunge onto any surface and it will magically become impervious to temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius. A raw egg, covered with a thin layer of the stuff and then blowtorched for three minutes, remains raw and in fact not even warm.

This white paste, called Starlite by its amateur inventor, is the most efficient heat-resisting material anyone has ever discovered, and simple to apply to any surface. Nobody is entirely sure how it works. The fact that an untrained, non-scientist working alone in his domestic kitchen was able to come up with a formula that trumps all known products from established professional labs is not even the strangest part of the story. Even more bizarre was what happened next. The inventor, Maurice Ward, refused to divulge the recipe, afraid of course that he would be stitched up by capitalist manufacturers and their sharp-suited lawyers. History is littered with stories of inventors and discoverers not getting their due and Ward was justifiably determined that that wasn’t going to happen to him. He rejected every overture and stymied every proposal, obsessed with protecting his intellectual property rights.

Well, he protected them alright. One day he dropped down dead, taking his secret recipe to the grave. To this day nobody knows what went into making Starlite. It may never be known. The world has lost a wonder material.

For socialists the lesson drawn scarcely needs spelling out. Capitalism’s obsession with ownership has in this case indisputably prevented significant technological progress. It’s no good blaming Ward’s paranoia. He had every right to be paranoid. He was the golden goose in the shark tank and he knew it. People close to him have commented that it wasn’t even about the money. Ward just couldn’t stand the idea of being taken advantage of.

In socialism, with its culture of free cooperation and sharing, there is no conception of private property ‘rights’ in the first place. While it is not strictly impossible that one scientist might try to rob the credit for another’s achievement, there would at least be no money or power incentive for doing so. Without the corporate muscle that accumulated property can muster, third parties could scarcely be bought or intimidated into silence, so it’s unlikely that any such intellectual larceny could get off the ground, much less be sustained. Ward would have got the credit in socialism, no question, and we would all have got the gain.

A quiet revolution

On a more encouraging note, the concept of free access – the complete antithesis of the property ethic described above – seems to be extending delicate tendrils beyond the parent growth of computer software into the world of higher education. Some US universities including Stanford and MIT are opening up certain online degree courses, free to all comers. Given that a Stanford degree normally costs in the region of $150,000 this is a significant step. The logic, though, is simple enough. Once the course is devised, written and put online, costs of delivery fall to zero if no interactive sessions or manual marking is required, so what’s to lose? Free online courses won’t threaten the existing market for taught courses since remote or ‘distance learning’ doesn’t suit everyone, but the idea is catching on fast and it surely can’t be long before other universities follow suit.

What is really interesting is how the cheapness and ubiquity of online delivery is ‘normalising’ the idea of free access.  The change is not so much in promoting the idea of freebie giveaways, with which the world is already familiar, but more importantly in marrying the terms ‘free’ with ‘high quality’, a concept we are certainly not used to. Free software these days is top of the range, not cheap junk written in BASIC. Free apps are as good as anything Apple still hides behind its paywalls. Free information, in the form of Wikipedia, has proven as reliable as anything in commercial online encyclopedias. So ‘free’ and ‘quality’ are no longer antonyms.

This normalisation process in turn is changing expectations, giving rise to a modified sense of entitlement. It is this sense of entitlement, not just over computer software but over all resources, which the world’s population currently lacks and which socialists say they should have. Socialist revolution won’t be caused by stirring polemic about how bad or inefficient or even immoral the existing system is. It will be caused – perhaps it is already being caused – by a changed sense of entitlement, of what ‘normal’ ought to be. People who think it is ‘normal’ to have to pay for everything will not struggle to abolish the paying system even if they themselves suffer dire poverty as a result. But change what is considered ‘normal’, so that people come to expect that if something is worth having at all then it ought to be free, and you have the stirrings of a revolutionary mindset. The Occupy movement have been helpful in focussing minds on the telling inequality statistic of 99:1 but that isn’t enough.  More exciting is the quiet development of a new social norm, in which charging money for important and socially useful things begins to be seen as selfish, distasteful and somehow increasingly old-fashioned and obstructive.

Paddy Shannon

Neither Westminster Nor Brussels But World Socialism (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The European Union (EU) is an institution for the economic interests of the European capitalist class, and their mantra is 'free movement of capital, goods, services and labour.' It was the European Round Table of Industrialists which included the chief executives of Daimler-Chrysler, Fiat, Nestlé, Renault, Siemens, BP, Rio Tinto and Rolls Royce who promoted further European integration in the 1980s and which led to the 1987 Single European Act.

The dominant elements of the capitalist class in Europe see an advantage in organising the economy of Europe on a continent-wide basis because the EU is an attempt to overcome the limits of developing the productive forces within Europe's nation-states. The EU comprises 28 states and 500 million people, trades as a single market with eventually a single currency, and represents one-fifth of the world’s GDP. The EU enables Europe to compete better with other global capitalist powers such as the USA, Russia, India, and China.

The EU and the EEC before it, was an attempt to move beyond war after two world wars had ravaged Europe. EEC founder Robert Schumann said 'make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible', and he proposed Franco-German co-production of coal and steel. The 1951 Treaty of Paris established the European Coal and Steel Community of France, West Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The European Coal and Steel Community would lead to the European Economic Community (EEC) also known as the 'Common Market', established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

Social Charter

It is the concept of ‘Social Europe’ promoted by Jacques Delors (President of the European Commission 1985-95), which sections of the British capitalist class are opposed to. Delors even came to Britain to address the 1988 TUC conference where he stressed economic union must be matched by social union. The 'Social Charter', a Keynesian welfare state model based on full employment in capitalism was adopted at the 1989 European Council.

The Social Charter promoted improved living and working conditions, dialogue between management and labour, health and safety in working conditions, sex equality with regard to job opportunities and treatment at work, protection of pensioners and the unemployed, increased statutory maternity leave, a 48-hour maximum working week, and employment rights for part-time and temporary staff.

Delors and his Social Charter provoked Thatcher into her infamous Bruges speech on the future of Europe in September 1988 which would lead to the formation of the anti-EU Tory Bruges Group which would mutate into the Anti-Federalist League, and ultimately UKIP. The Thatcher Tory government refused to sign the EU Social Charter, and in October 1990 Thatcher spoke out firmly against the vision of European integration, including a 'single currency.' The capitalist class would remove Thatcher from power in November 1990. The Major Tory government signed the Maastricht Treaty on 7 February 1992 and the European Union came into effect on 1 November 1993.

A 2005 European Court of Justice decision in Pfeiffer v Deutsches Rotes Kreu is explicit about the economic relationship between capital and labour: 'the worker must be regarded as the weaker party to the employment contract and it is therefore necessary to prevent the employer being in a position to disregard the intentions of the other party to the contract or to impose on that party a restriction of his rights without him having expressly given his consent in that regard...'

Such pro-worker decisions of a boom-time capitalism are threatened because of the world capitalist recession and Euro-zone crisis which began in 2008. Since the recent capitalist crisis began, a series of decisions determined by the European Court of Justice stress that industrial action by workers violates the employer’s rights to freedom to provide services, as provided in the EU Treaty. The Court has also been intervening on the side of the capitalist class by using provisions on free movement against collective industrial action.

Split in the capitalist class

The split in the capitalist class in Britain over membership of the EU is exemplified in the main UKIP policy which is to leave the EU. UKIP leader Nigel Farage is a former City commodity broker, and UKIP want the City of London excluded from EU controls, and the repeal of an EU directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers which seeks to regulate hedge funds/private equity companies in the City. The EU generates such political heat because it brings no advantages to some elements of the capitalist class in Britain. On 8 August 2013 the Times reported on Business for Britain which claimed to have the backing of 500 influential figures, including FTSE 100 directors and the owners of smaller businesses. These supporters include  Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, parent company of B&Q, Lord Wolfson, CEO of Next, John Caudwell, founder of Phones4U, Sir Rocco Forte, executive chairman of Rocco Forte Hotels, Tim Martin, chairman of pub group JD Wetherspoon, and Charlie Mullins, managing director of Pimlico Plumbers. They are all bosses of firms producing for the home market.

The majority of the capitalist class in Britain are export orientated businesses. In April 2013, the British Chambers of Commerce poll of 4,380 companies reported in Bloomberg Business Week that 18 percent felt leaving would be positive but 64 percent favoured Cameron renegotiating terms, 60 percent felt exiting would harm business, and even 23 percent wanted further EU integration. In May 2013 leading capitalists Martin Sorrel and Richard Branson opposed EU exit. Sorrell said 'Investors choose to build factories and locate their business here because of our access, not proximity to, but access to the single market.' John Cridland, Director-General of the CBI added 'the UK is best served inside a reformed EU, rather than outside with no influence. Access to the single market has also been a magnet for investment from around the world. Being part of the EU has helped to make the UK one of the leading locations for investment, in part because of our direct access to a market of more than 500 million people and an EU economy with a GDP of £9.75 trillion.' (Guardian 18 January 2014)

Away from the Nation-State

Marx and Engels identified that 'the bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country' (Manifesto of the Communist Party) The 1995 European Court of Justice decision on free movement of labour for football players known as the Bosman Ruling means football clubs can sign any number of players from EU countries. The ECJ decision was based on EU Articles 45-48 where workers have the right to move freely and work anywhere in the EU without discrimination on grounds of nationality. It is very probable that Bosman helped Manchester United win the Champions League in 1999. British football pre-Bosman found themselves at a huge disadvantage in European competitions, they could only field three foreign players per match. Only five of the thirteen players who featured in Manchester United's 1999 Champions League victory were English. Before Bosman that team could never have set foot on the pitch.

European cinema of the 1980s and 90s is another testament to the 'cosmopolitan character to production and consumption' with the popularity of French films such as Diva, Betty Blue,Subway, The Big Blue, Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, Nikita, Delicatessen, the Three Colours trilogy, Leon, and La Haine; the Yugoslavian film When Father was Away On Business; Scandinavian films My Life as a Dog, Babette's Feast, and Pelle the Conqueror, and the Spanish cinema of Pedro Almodovar.

The EU established the Schengen Area where passport controls are abolished although no surprise the UK opted out of this. On 1 January 2002, the EU introduced the Esperantist-named 'Euro' as the EU currency, again Britain opted out of this. As members of the EU Britons are entitled to the European Health Insurance Card which provides free health care in EU countries.  Britain is already a semi-detached member of Europe but to exit entirely would possibly be to surrender to xenophobia and parochialism completely.

Marx in Brussels in his January 1848 speech On the Question of Free Trade said 'the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution.' Earlier, Marx had attended a free trade congress in Brussels in September 1847 for which he prepared a speech (which was never delivered). Engels wrote an account of the conference, summarising Marx's view, and a fragment of the speech dealing with protectionism has survived: 'If they (the protectionists) speak consciously and openly to the working class, then they summarise their philanthropy in the following words: It is better to be exploited by one's fellow-countrymen than by foreigners.' (The Protectionists, the Free Traders and the Working Class)

There are small benefits for some of the working class in Britain and those living abroad in the EU, other sections of the working class in Britain may benefit from leaving EU, but the majority of the working class will be unaffected by the dispute over the EU. The dispute within the British capitalist class has no class interest for workers. Whether British capitalism is in or out of the EU will make no real difference to their position as a class forced to work for a wage or a salary.

Steve Clayton

Death of a "Superman" (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

That George Bernard Shaw succeeded in living to 94 years of age might be looked upon as a minor Shavian achievement. During that time he gained eminence as a playwright. As such he may rank with Marlowe, Ben Johnson or Moliere. As a writer of English he may challenge comparison with that master of supple and virile prose, Jonathan Swift. Be that as it may. Our purpose is to evaluate his claims to be a socialist (or, as he later called himself, a communist), and to be regarded by many as the accredited spokesman of socialism. Of all Shavian legends this is the most grotesque.

Shaw combined in his one person many creeds; anti-vivisectionist, anti-romanticist, non-smoker, alcoholic abstainer and vegetarian. Philosophically he subscribed to a belief in creative evolution. In politics he was first an anarchist then a Fabian and later a fascist.

It has been claimed that his "socialism" was designed for the educated. That he could pass off his particular brand of blatant totalitarianism as socialism only shows how much the "educated" need educating.

Shaw is one reported to have said "Marx made a man of me." It need not be taken seriously. Shaw and the early Fabians never honoured the world with any systematic exposition of Marxism or for that matter any systematic rejection of it. Instead they chose to by-pass it.

His first Fabian essay (1889) is proof enough of his own confession in the Fabian tract 41 that "he and the early Fabians had no true knowledge of socialism." There was little of socialism in it but much of Henry George combined with Jevons' economic theory of final utility and a sprinkling of John Stuart Mill's humanitarianism.

Even this early pamphlet revealed incipient elements of a later Shavian "philosophy." There is no recognition in it that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class. Instead the wealthy are asked to change their hearts and renounce their wicked ways. Later came the contention that only through Fabian bureaucracy could capitalist society be regenerated.

Shaw's Fabianism finally hardened into a belief that only in a planned utopia imposed from above by an elite was there any hope for the world. It would consist of a communist priesthood with unlimited powers. Rulers would be removable on grounds of inefficiency. There would be only one crime in society, that of disobedience, with death as the penalty. He approved the Russian method of liquidating those who show any sign of working against state authority. In an article in "The Labour Monthly" (15.10.21) he condemned British miners for striking but praised the Russian Government for shooting men for slacking and shirking at their work. Thus we have the paradox of the anti-vivisectionist who, according to Chesterton, "would wear himself to a shadow to save a shark in an aquarium from inconvenience or add any little comforts to the life of a carrion crow," and the social theorist who could dismiss the enormous human costs involved in "the Russian experiment" as of little account.

Because Shaw and Fabians had no knowledge of the laws of capitalist development the "major events" of capitalism often caught the Fabians on the wrong foot. On the first world war Mr. Pease the Fabian historian writing in 1915 could say "The Fabian Society has made no pronouncement and adopted no policy." Shaw supported the war, declaring that "England is a guardian of the world's liberty."

He had also supported the Boer War. He made up the mind of the Fabians who were at sixes and sevens over it by writing for them a pamphlet "Fabianism and the Empire." It advocated the right of a capitalist state to acquire territory which it may consider backward, in the name of efficiency.

He constantly beat the imperialist drum for bigger armaments; advocated a large army and military conscription. He lived to see the last put into effect by a party he and his Fabian colleagues had not inconsiderably inspired and helped. In the Daily Herald (7th and 8th April, 1941) appeared instalments of an article in which he advocated industrial conscription; but this advocate of military and industrial conscription was opposed in 1919 to "conscription of capital" in a current advocacy of a "capital levy." In the Times (1.2.44) he wrote complaining of the excessive taxation of the rich of whom he was one.

Because Shaw had identified himself politically and socially with capitalism he refused to believe it would pass. He took refuge in the belief that the vast mass of people were political nit-wits incapable of controlling their own destiny. He believed the capitalist class were also incompetent. So he invented a compromise by which a political elite would impose its will on workers and capitalist alike.

Because he isolated himself in theory as one of the privileged few he isolated himself in practice from concrete social activity and shut himself up in the ivory tower of absolute categories and lifeless abstractions. This could only lead to a sense of false detachment and disillusionment.

It was this false detachment perhaps that forced him to bolster up his belief in great men as the engines of social progress. For "the Materialist Conception of History" he offered a crude metaphysical substitute called "The Life Force." This Life Force was pure energy which activated matter. One day it would dissolve matter or cast it aside and emerge as pure thought. The only object in life then will apparently be contemplation. Although what it will contemplate Shaw does not explicitise.

In the meantime great men and supermen are the instruments which serve the Life Force's end.

Two of Shaw's great men were Caesar and Napoleon, both military adventurers. Two more to whom he extended his welcome in that role were Mussolini and Hitler whom he regarded as a born leader. These men, he argued, were more efficient. They got things done. They certainly did but it was of no benefit to the majority of the population. They were as powerless in preventing their respective capitalist countries from going to was as were a Chamberlain and Roosevelt. When they left the political scene they left capitalism basically the same as the parliamentary politicians—whom Shaw despised —and whom the dictators had replaced. Stalin, whom Shaw honoured by the title of the arch-Fabian, was another of his supermen. In spite of his long term of dictatorial power he has not only been unable to realise Lenin's dictum of approximate equal wages for all sections of society but has been unable to prevent the growing inequalities of wealth in Russia which is a characteristic of capitalism.

It might be said that Shaw did at least expose much of the hollowness and sham of capitalist conventions and institutions. But because he had no real alternative to offer his criticisms are negative and sterile.

The British ruling class never viewed him in the light of a social revolutionary but rather as a clown and court jester. They could treat him with indulgence because they found him eccentric and amusing.

Shaw as a political thinker failed to have any real impact on those who came to maturity after the first world war. Like many other advocates of reforms he lived to see many of his own taken by capitalism in its stride and none the worse for it. His championing of votes for women, Irish self-government, nationalisation and municipal enterprise have come to pass. Many of Shaw's and his fellow Fabians' proposals have long been on the statute book. Some of them provide the furnishings for Labour's utility utopia. Even his daring attacks on conventions would, if uttered now, be regarded as commonplaces. Before World War No. 1 he had something to write about so far as capitalism was concerned. After the war he was mostly reduced to an attempt to write about something.

Shaw is known to millions; not as a social thinker, because he had no message for them, but as a playwright and somewhat eccentric old gentleman who gave interviews in which he sometimes said humorous and preposterous things.

As a playwright his lively humour and paradox may enliven and illumine the theatre for many years. As a social theorist, however, it is case of "out out brief candle."

E. W.

Economics, Politics and Climate Change (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Damage to the environment is a major threat to the stability of human life on this planet, and moreover this is directly attributable to human activity. The truth is that we as human beings interfere with our environment – and this is not always with the most long-term awareness. From the forest clearances of the Neolithic and early Bronze Age through to the planned exploitation of the melting North Pole, we interact with this planet in a way which has a major impact on existing ecosystems. This is nothing new however – what is new is the extent to which we are now doing things which may be pushing us towards environmental tipping points and which may cause irreversible damage to the world we inhabit.

Human beings are not passively compliant with the environment. We are constantly intervening in and altering it, with profound consequences for other species. By some estimates, 140,000 species are going extinct every year, leading some to describe the modern era as the sixth great mass extinction event. We have to find some means by which we can ensure that this unavoidable interfering activity does not prejudice our continued safe existence on this planet.

Accepting that the environmental problems we face at the moment are as a result of human activity, some important questions arise. Firstly, what kind of economy and what kind of material expectations can we have that would enable us to live sustainably? Secondly, questions relating to the politics of any society that might persist in order to promote such sustainability.

A bit of biochemistry

Material consumption on this planet undertook a step change starting with the industrial revolution in Britain, powered by cheap and accessible coal. Coal is fossilised wood from the Carboniferous period. The reason why there is so much wood from this period is that when trees first appeared on the planet the particular substance which gives wood its hardness, namely lignin, was something which no animal or plant was able to digest, and therefore for many millions of years when trees fell down, there were no bacteria or microorganisms that could recycle the wood into anything else, so they just stayed there and built up generation upon generation of trees on top of each other, finally being covered up and compressed under the earth and turning after millions of years to coal.

Trees and plant life are means of storing carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, and a simple look at the chemical equation demonstrates that the carbon is missing. The carbon is trapped within the tree and when a tree decomposes or is burnt the carbon is given off and recombines with oxygen to give CO2. The Carboniferous period therefore represents a time when a huge amount of atmospheric carbon was removed and stored. This resulted in a very oxygen rich atmosphere which may in turn have allowed air breathing animals to emerge from the water. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution we have been burning fossil fuels and returning this trapped carbon to the atmosphere.

The foregoing is a quick and dirty outline of what has led us to the problem of the greenhouse effect: the atmosphere acts like glass in a greenhouse, letting in light from the sun during the day, but preventing the resulting heat from dissipating into space at night. This means that, as carbon and other greenhouse gases increase, the planet is warming up… and much of life on Earth is adapted to temperatures below those to which our global temperature appears to be heading. This should sound alarm bells. However this is simply one aspect of the corrosive impact of our activity on this planet. There is also toxicity in the air, earth and water; increasing acidification of the seas and air; degradation of our top soil and loss of drinking water. The list goes on with agrichemicals, hormones, antibiotics, radioactive waste, noise and light pollution…. Suffice to say we have arrived at a situation where we could well be on a downward slide.

Markets and short-termism

As the world has become progressively global and markets especially so, much attention has centred on the actions of ‘hot money’; hot because it doesn’t stay in your hands for very long. Large amounts of this money swoop in and out of particular markets because there is a quick kill in sight. Commodities, financial markets and stock markets, futures, all variety of assets – any of these can be prey to a sudden rush or a loss of interest by investors. Financial investment computer packages are now built to identify these and play them accordingly. These minute fluctuations can result in huge payouts for big investors and large bonuses for the guy executing the deal. It’s the casino economy in operation. This metaphor reveals much about the nature of this business, because few who enter a casino are looking to the longer term. Likewise, those who execute a split second investment decision are unlikely to be thinking about the potential impact it might have on the employees, or anyone else at all come to that. They are almost certainly not thinking about how this will play out in several months, and certainly not in years: rather grab the winnings and get out quick before something goes wrong.

Politicians of all colours repeatedly talk of ‘rebalancing’ this economy because so much of this nation’s earnings arise from exactly this kind of activity and, as the banking crisis showed, it can have its downside. However the power and attraction of City finance, of working on fine margins, of split second deals, are both too attractive and too lucrative: amongst the reasons that the greatly trumpeted market reforms amounted to not very much. Moreover these very financiers are often the funders of political parties and want those parties to reflect their interests in return for the cash donations.

But it reveals something deep about the thinking of our society; the thinking behind the throne in our society. It shows that the precept is to make money today and not think about tomorrow. And supposedly there is a theory to support it: as long as markets are free and traders can do what they want, then what happens will reflect the priorities of the active agents: supply and demand ensures that we get what we want and need. Or so we are told. But how is the future factored into this? How are the interests of our children added into the calculation? Where does their demand figure?

Viewed collectively, we are living in a great mansion where we are ripping out parts of the floor and walls to sling on the fires and are not worrying because the house has not yet fallen down. We are carrying on smoking because we haven’t developed lung cancer yet…

If you have ever looked at a set of company accounts you’ll notice that there is hardly ever anything beyond a five-year projection. Just to add to the mix, governments seldom last for more than 4-5 years. We want results, folks, and we want ‘em now: what government ever swept to power on the ticket that things will be better in 25 years?

Supplying Demand

Adam Smith is the daddy of much capitalist ideology and his view of supply and demand is seen to underpin much of the rhetoric which argues in support of the market system. However, even accepting the theory, for supply and demand to operate correctly all active agents must have perfect information: buyers must know all available options and their relative merits, and this information must be accurate and timely. However Adam Smith was writing in the days before the advent of the PR industry.

Starting in the 20^th century, the science of psychology was utilised in the cause of shaping public opinion, both spawning the PR world and heavily influencing advertising/propaganda. Welcome to the world of false consciousness writ large, a world where in the UK 98 percent of climate scientists assert the reality of human-made global warming whereas many people still think it’s a con. Perhaps as an example the fact that Exxon can offer $10k to any scientist who publicly criticises the International Panel on Climate Change shows the way they can distort the picture…

Fossil fuel companies have an amazing track record of funding genuine-sounding groups with the sole intention of spreading confusion about climate change. In the same way that tobacco companies knew the dangers of their products way before they were revealed by Richard Doll's research in the 1950s, and pharma companies suppress negative test results, so we have fossil fuel giants distorting the debate with misinformation, personal diatribes, threats of legal action, and simple lies. The problem with supply and demand is that it assumes everyone is equally able to access information; it doesn’t work if key players can tilt the playing field to their advantage. And as fossil fuel companies are in the game to make money, and as climate change information represents a threat to their money-making potential, they will use their power to damage it and deflect it; to minimise its impact on their business.

What is hard to understand about the climate change deniers is how they can reconcile their activities with the fact that they are exacerbating a problem which threatens them also, as well as their children and so forth. How can they act as if in some sense they might be able to breathe all this money they have made; or they can buy another planet to live on? If there is anything in this climate change stuff – and everyone must accept it sounds like a risk – then do they not worry about the future at all? How can they park all these potential concerns?

Naomi Klein has suggested, plausibly, that it is because they cannot conceive of a world unlike this one; and so cannot countenance the idea that it has to change. Essentially they grasp that this system and environmental degradation are synonymous but that this system is the only means to support the life style and world view they have and therefore this system of consumption must be defended at all costs, even if that involves bringing down everything with it. Like the crazed old dictators of history who would rather the entire empire collapsed than they relinquished power, these capitalist titans would rather have it all smashed to smithereens than share any of it. Classic dog in a manger attitude, but with far worse consequences: I’d rather watch it all destroyed than hand it over and become like the rest of you…

Where do we go from here

So, to summarise:

(1) Climate change (amongst other environmental threats) is happening and is a serious problem for all of us.

(2) Climate change has resulted from human activity.

(3) Capitalism by focussing on the short term is unlikely to take the longer term, and hence the environment, into account

(4) Capitalists and corporations will seek to distort the facts of the matter so they can carry on as usual

(5) Capitalists are ideologically blinkered against climate change since it exposes the dangers of capitalism as an environmental threat

What does this mean?

Firstly, that we cannot expect the problems to be solved within capitalism; all the powers tilt the opposite way. Consider the fact that this has been on the international agenda for 30 years and nothing has been achieved; emissions have increased over this period (and were only halted as an effect of the global recession). Additionally, note that the government has publicly stated that the environment must come second to the economy – but isn’t that what got us into this mess?

Secondly, we cannot believe much of what we hear in the mainstream media.

Thirdly, the agenda of all Green groups and so-called leftwing parties, who seek to change things without completely scrapping this system, is a hiding to nothing. The approach advocated by the Green Party of tough regulation is a sham. If regulation worked, wouldn’t big corporations be paying their taxes? The legal systems which govern these matters end up as the preserve of well-paid lawyers of whom the corporations have more than the governments.

Ultimately the issue of the environment is an issue of power: who has the power to determine what happens to this planet? Only in a society where we have the power to determine what can and cannot be done will we be able to stop this headlong rush to environmental devastation. That means a world of common ownership and democratic control. Anything else which anyone offers is merely using an Elastoplast to seal a volcano. Only socialism can deliver on the environment.

Howard Pilott

Pathfinders: Down on the Pharma (2012)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The flu season is upon us again and readers will be delighted to hear that swine flu has not been idle. Tests have been taking place after a woman died last month from swine flu contracted at a country fair in Ohio, and three more cases were reported from Minnesota. The flu strain, H1N2, is derived from the 2009 H1N1 virus, is air-borne and carries the pandemic M gene. All victims had prolonged contact with pigs, however a different strain, H3N2, has caused 296 infections across 10 US states since July this year (Link). The message at present is that people at high risk should stay away from pigs, state fairs or Korea, where the H1N2 strain is said to be a ‘triple reassortant’ virus in that it is a mix of avian, swine and human flu (Link).

Scientists are being cautious, obviously. Nobody is going to cry wolf this time, after they got the blame for the huge panic in 2009. Although there was a swine flu pandemic on that occasion it was nothing like the civilisation-ending apocalypse the excitable media had led everyone to believe.

The Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, which publishes regular information on pandemic threats, is part of a global body of research institutions which, for obvious reasons, would be required almost exactly as-is in a socialist society. Nobody can possibly question the value of what such institutions do. Even creationists, who claim not to believe in evolution, rush fast enough for their annual vaccinations and understand well enough the need for them. We humans are locked in an arms race with microbes and only the most vigilant monitoring stands between us and some disaster of truly biblical proportions.

Other threats, however, are more debatable. Many of the scientists working on the H1N1 virus in 2009 objected to the research being published, for fear that terrorists could use the work to create a synthetic weapon. After 9/11 and a brief wave of anthrax letter-bombs the USA took this threat very seriously, and set up the Biowatch programme, which consisted of networks of sensors in urban areas including underground stations, designed to spot attempts to poison the public (New Scientist, 15 September). Ten years on and Biowatch has produced a null result, which ‘proves’ to its supporters that it has worked. This is like the old joke that an elephant-repellent spray must be working if you can’t see any elephants. Detractors however point to the billion dollar bill and the fact that in the same decade there has not been a single biological terrorism attack anywhere in the world. Given the clumsy, low-tech efforts of many would-be bombers in the past, perhaps the threat of such people managing to develop a bioweapon has indeed been overstated.

But what is one to make of the fact that a very real and present threat, one which everybody knows about, is actually being increasingly ignored? Hospitals are riddled with MRSA and c. Diff. so that it can be more dangerous to go to hospital than stay at home. 60 percent of infectious disease specialists report encountering infections untreatable by any antibiotic. Just when antibiotic resistance is becoming a world-wide problem, it turns out that drug companies are pulling out of antibiotic research (‘NIH superbug outbreak highlights lack of new antibiotics’, WashingtonPost, 25 August). Why? The answer is revealing.

In the first place, the antibiotic honeymoon is over. Like peak oil, we’ve hit peak bio, after which every development is harder and more expensive. It is all about the return on investment. When the field lay wide open in the 1940s and there was plenty of claim to stake and patents to be had, it was a bonanza. Now the well is dry, but unlike oil there is no way to wean humans off the need for antibiotics without seeing a return of the bubonic plague and other horrors. But drug companies are businesses which worry about profit, not plagues, so they are doing the sensible thing and pulling the plug on antibiotic research. You can’t argue the logic when you can make more money out of an erectile dysfunction drug than out of antibiotics. Of the 12 largest pharmaceutical companies only 4 are still doing any research.The largest, Pfizer, has laid off 1200 workers and closed its antibiotic research centre in Connecticut and moved to Shanghai and out of antibiotic research altogether.

Alternatives to antibiotics are, like alternatives to oil, scarcely credible at present. The widely-mooted idea of engineering viruses to eat bacterial pathogens is still some way off, with the first clinical trial in Western Europe only taking place in 2009. Bacteriophages are hard to make, because unlike antibiotics they are not one-size-fits-all. Each pathogen strain requires a different phage, and when a pandemic may present multiple strains simultaneously this is an obvious disadvantage. They are also hard to store, and of course each one has to go through independent regulatory hurdles before being approved for use. Given the increased expense of development plus the tightly restricted potential for patent exploitation, this is likely to make phage research even more unattractive to big pharma than antibiotics. In the event of a pandemic, phage research and production may very well be too slow and cumbersome to respond.

Antibiotics too are facing even more severe regulatory hurdles because of the scare surrounding the antibiotic Ketek, which led to a number of deaths in 2006. With lawyers circling hungrily, no drug regulator is taking any chances. At a time when new drugs are becoming ever more vital, regulators are stamping on the brakes.

‘It’s a case of evolution outrunning capitalism,’ says the Washington Post report. But it’s not a case of capitalism somehow failing to keep up with evolution, as if the two are locked in mortal combat. While the money was in antibiotics, capitalism delivered. Now it isn’t, capitalism has simply lost interest in the matter. The fact that the human race could potentially be decimated doesn’t enter into it.

This is one of the worst indictments of capitalism that it’s possible to make, its absolute defiance of common sense and the interests of the human species it supposedly serves. When science, logic and self-preservation all indicate one road, and money indicates the other, capitalism doesn’t think twice. People who congratulate capitalism for its competitive drive to produce innovation should reflect on the fact that no matter how much ingenuity it inspires in humans desperate to pay their rent, it stands capable at any moment of making the wrong decision just when the consequences could be fatal.

Paddy Shannon

Editorial: G.B. Shaw - A few notes (1950)

Editorial from the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Bernard Shaw has been the instance of eulogies galore in all of which he is acclaimed as one of the great, if not of the greatest, intellectual giants of all time. One example of this is contained in the Times' "Literary Supplement" (10/11/1950) which concludes an editorial concerning him with these words:

   "Born when Queen Victoria had been but nineteen years on the throne, he was one of the bravest, most brilliant, and most incongruous bequests to us of an era already receding in the legendary and strange. There are never more than a dozen aristocrats of intellect in the world at the same time, if we are to credit Huysmans's calculation. One member of that supreme court is missing to-day, and his successor waits in the shade."

In our view this idea of an "aristocracy of intellect" is based upon an illusion and is fostered because it serves the interest of ruling classes. But let that pass. What we are concerned with here is the claim so often made that Shaw was a socialist who made an outstanding contribution to the socialist movement. This claim has been unceasingly made by the unblushing principal and his adherents during the past sixty odd years; on the part of the latter with an occasional tolerant and amused chuckle at his "crankiness." The basis of the claim is his tilting at social abuses and at smug "respectability." This tilting was really only the spearhead of his own smug worship of "men of ability," in the front rank of whom he modestly placed himself. So we will write a few words and quote a few of his own statements that relate to this claim.

In fact Shaw was not a socialist, never was one, and did not understand what Socialism implied. All his life he confused Socialism with State Capitalism and with a "business-like government." He envisaged a state ruled by a self-elected few who, at the best, would exercise a kind of benevolent despotism over the ignorant mass in a system based upon property with the buying and selling of goods. He swallowed and promulgates Samuel Butler's idea of an inborn "life force" which was the backbone of his particular "great man" theory.

Now let us see what he had to say in his younger days, when he was at the height of his thinking power.

In the "Fortnight Review" for February and March 1894 W. H. Matlock attacked the "Socialist" views of the Fabian Essayists, whom he described as sane and thoughtful men who were the real cream of the socialist movement. Bernard Shaw replied to Matlock in the issue for April, 1894.

The following quotations from his reply explain Shaw's outlook:

   "First, it is clear that such huge populations as ours really do owe their very existence to what Mr. Matlock defines as Ability [the inventing, discovering and managing], and not to what he defines as Labour [a form of human exertion used to pile up wealth].
   "If State Socialism of the most idiotic doctrinaire kind were to be set up complete to-morrow, and an ordinance issued that every man, from the highest to the lowest, should have exactly equal pay, then I could quite understand difficulties arising from every man insisting on being head of his department."
   "What is more I have no doubt that under Social-Democracy the few will still govern, and that, too, without having to consider at every step the vested interests of moneyed noodledom in the system of Conservatism! Well has Mr. Mallock pointed out that the evolution of society produces, not anarchy, but new types of ruler, and I would ask him to add, new forms of government . . . To-morrow it may be—who knows?—an able Labour Ministry, backed up by a bureaucracy nursed on Fabian Essays. And still Mr. Mallock's historic generalisation will hold good: the few will still govern the many."

After quoting a statement by F. A. Walker, an American economist, about the "economics of ability," he goes on:

   "There you have your skilled economist. He does not romance about capitalists inventing steamers: he shows you just the capitalist and the labourer running helplessly, the one with his money, the other with his muscle, to the able man, the acting organiser and employer, who alone is able to find a use for mere manual deftness, or for that brute strength or heavy bank balance which any fool may possess. And the landlord must put his acres in the same cunning hands. The landlord, capitalist and labourer can none of them do without the entrepreneur. He, as the only party in the transaction capable 'of the slightest initiative in production,' buys his three indispensables as cheaply as he can; pays the price out of what he makes out of them; and keeps the balance as his profit."

Shaw somewhere accused Shakespeare of snobbery on account of the way kings, princes, lords and ladies bulk in his plays. The above extracts show that he, himself, was also afflicted with the same disease in his respect for those to whom he mistakenly attributed "superior intelligence." From the extracts can also be seen how little difference there was between Shaw's "Socialism" and Capitalism. 

Whatever Shaw may have been as a dramatist and artist, as a writer on Socialism he was ignorant, incompetent and blown-up with the petty conceit of the self-styled intellectual. If we were asked what his outstanding contribution in this field was we would unhesitatingly reply that he was given considerable aid to that movement which has built up labour parties that have confused and beguiled multitudes of workers into a path leading to the blank alley of despair. In this field he will be remembered as a clever and witty decoy who helped to head off the march to revolutionary change.

Obituary: Jack Gormley (1981)

Obituary from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack Gormley was 18 when he first met the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s at outdoor meetings in Rushcroft Road, Brixton; it was not until 1946 that he joined our then Camberwell Branch. In the years between—as jack wrote in the November 1975 Socialist Standard ("Why I joined the SPGB")—he had been attracted by reformists masquerading as revolutionaries, who boasting of their mass support imagined they were getting things done. Unemployment! Rents and Houses! Fighting Imperialism! The War against Fascism! Like many others who ignored the arguments of the SPGB, Jack was distracted by dozens of blind-alley issues. He went into the "lively" Norwood Labour Party, and was caught up in a Trotskyist cell. Every week there would be a fresh line to follow, supposedly spearheading the imminent workers' take-over.

Jack began to question all the wasted time and effort. The sense of the SPGB's argument about the paramount necessity to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, had begun to have its effect. He refused to be conscripted during the war, and joining the Socialist Party went enthusiastically to its education classes. For the rest of his life Jack vigorously propounded socialism to everyone he met. His exposition was clear, well illustrated by the fund of experience from his early politically wasted years, also enriched with a wide knowledge of literature. He particularly like the works of Jack London and William Morris, and the poetry of Shelley. South London Party speakers have long been indebted to Jack Gormley for his example and guidance.

Over the years the South London Press and other local papers published many of Jack's well written and pointed letters, frequently printed under the pen name: "Standard Socialist". Many of us will not forget Jack's passion for discussing politics and religion—he had dispensed with religion before meeting the Party. At every opportunity he went to opponents' meetings. The writer of this notice well remembers a Carshalton Labour Party meeting we both attended. Barbara Castle MP and Sydney Silverman MP had given long, dreary speeches, and were supposed to take questions. Came the first tame question, then Jack got up and put his, it was well put, barbed and resounded throughout the hall. The MPs, hastily excused themselves, retreated back to the House of Commons. The local paper reporting the incident noted the speedy departure in the face of questions, recording Jack's loud challenge: "You're not socialists!" in the wake of the MP's going.

Jack Gormley, troubled in recent years by poor health, died suddenly last month. With his passing, a powerful voice and pen is silenced. SW London Branch will greatly miss his political experience and valued contributions to discussion. His friends in the Party here and in Australia are sad at the loss of a staunch comrade. Our sympathy goes to his family; we share their loss.

MS

Dreaming (1999)

Theatre Review from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dreaming by Peter Barnes. Queen's Theatre, London.

A cousin who had seen the play when it was first produced in Manchester earlier in the year recommended Dreaming. You won't be disappointed she said. And we weren't.

In responding to a piece of drama one test of "significance" which works for me is that particular lines and images stay with me for days (and sometimes weeks) afterwards. Often it takes me several days to come to terms with a substantial piece of drama. I need time to try to understand why particular scenes were so powerful; time to digest my emotional reaction; time to reflect about the meaning of the play. Someone once said that great plays—as distinct from merely good plays—are like a series of attractive boxes, arranged inside one another. You open one box and begin to understand its contents only to find it contains another box, and so on. Each box contains a new set of insights; a new set of discoveries.

So at one level, Dreaming is about a group of mercenaries picking their way through a war-torn world; at another it is about a search for something to make life worthwhile; at a third level it is about the meaning of life. The play is as full of ideas as rain showers on an April day. There is more to engage the hearts and minds of the audience that the entire output of all terrestrial and satellite television channels for a month. The play is full of biting comedy, haunting imagery, and great originality. There are strong parallels with Brecht's Mother Courage (see the Socialist Standard, November 1998). But whereas Brecht wants to prevent us identifying with the plight of the characters on stage, Barnes seems to want to make his audience aware of the theatricality of what we are seeing and hearing by switching from bloody drama to vaudeville patter, to ironic satire, to a song-and-dance routine, almost as quickly as it takes to mention these things.

Any play which wants to examine the nature of the choices available to people, and which makes powerful comments about the way in which such choices are denied to most of us because of the nature of the economic and social arrangements which imprison us, is going to interest the socialist. If, in addition, the play is prepared to celebrate friendship and comradely behaviour, to despise the power and significance of money, and to argue that violence and war are the result of social systems which divide mankind, the interest is going to be even greater.

I think that Dreaming is a major new play. It ought to be playing to full houses, but on a Saturday afternoon in late June, having passed the usual scrum of people waiting to fight their way to see Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera, we found only 50 people rattling like peas in a pod in the huge expanses of the 1,000-seater Queen's Theatre. It says much for the effectiveness of the dumbing down of popular taste that whereas nearly 10 million people a week could found listening to a BBC radio broadcast of the Brains Trust towards the end of the Second World War, dross and fool's gold should now seemingly captivate most theatre goers in London. And it says much for the splendid company that notwithstanding the imperatives of capitalism—which supposedly ties effort to individual reward—they produced a performance for the small audience which was as heart-stopping as it was memorable. Whilst dreams may at present be the order of the day for a discriminating minority present in the Queen's Theatre, the nightmare that is populist pap remains the lot of most punters in London's theatreland.

Michael Gill

No Socialism in Portugal (1976)

From the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the new constitution adopted in April, Portugal is supposed to be a democracy in transition to Socialism. This of course is not true. Portugal is progressing not towards Socialism, but towards a more modern type of capitalism.

The word "socialism" in the context of present-day Portugal refers to social reforms and state ownership and control of the economy; in other words, to what is more properly called "state capitalism" in contrast to the classless, wageless, moneyless society the word originally meant.

State capitalism not only is not Socialism, but it has nothing to offer the working class either. Certainly, the working class obtained the freedom to organize and to discuss out of the overthrow by the armed forces in April 1974 of the one-party fascist regime which had governed Portugal for nearly fifty years. On the surface they were enabled not only to defend their living standards and working conditions under capitalism but also to openly advocate Socialism. But in fact Socialists in Portugal will find themselves coming into conflict with all existing political factions.

First they will come up against those who currently hold power ― the newly elected President Eanes and his Prime Minister Soares (leader of the so-called "Socialist" Party) ― who want to see established in Portugal a Western-style parliamentary regime. According to the results of both the April general election and the June presidential election, this proposition is supported by the majority of workers and peasants in Portugal. This is not to say, however, that its implementation would be in their interests. For the proposed parliamentary regime is merely a way of administering capitalism.

It can be argued that a stable parliamentary system is the ideal political form for capitalism. It prevents one group having a monopoly of political power and using it to acquire privileges at the expense of the rest of the ruling class, and it allows changes to be made as changing economic conditions and the changing balance of power between sections of the ruling class demand. But capitalism can never be made to work in the interest of the working class. It is a profit-making system based on the exploitation of wage-labour and can only function as such, a fact which must be recognized and consciously applied by any government of capitalism, however democratically elected and however sincere might be their wish to improve the lot of the working class.

Since the overthrow of the fascist regime in April 1974 the economic situation in Portugal has been chaotic. Investment has slumped; unemployment has grown; inflation has raged. In order to re-launch the Portuguese economy the working class will have to be disciplined to work harder and to accept wage restraint in a period of rising prices, i.e. to accept a cut in real living standards. To impose such a cut will be the main task of the new president and his government.

The danger is that the workers might be tempted to turn to those who, again in the name of "socialism", want a thorough-going state capitalist regime for Portugal. This would be a serious error which would almost certainly nullify the effects of the overthrow of the fascist regime. Experience shows that state capitalist regimes such as exist in Russia, China, Cuba and many Afro-Asian countries are quite ruthless in brutally suppressing all attempts at independent working-class activity within their borders. 

In Portugal today it is not only the so-called "Communist" Party and the Maoists, Trotskyists and other leftists who stand for a state-capitalist dictatorship. There is, or rather was until the purge which followed the mutiny of 25th November last year, a section of the armed forces which held the same view. Typified by Major (ex-General) Carvalho, former head of Copcon, the armed forces security service, who came second in the recent presidential elections polling about a sixth of the votes, this section felt that the organization best fitted to lead the Portuguese people to "socialism" (ie. state capitalism) was not some vanguard party but the armed forces themselves. Had they come to power last November they would have probably established a leftist military regime similar to that existing in, say, Peru.

In any event a state-capitalist regime ― with its widespread State ownership, state planning, state control of foreign trade, etc.― would not change the fact that Portugal is a poor country completely dependent on world-market conditions. A state-capitalist regime, whether run by the armed forces or the CP or by some other group, would not be able to free Portugal from these conditions and the pressures they exert on working-class living standards. Indeed these pressures would be felt even more strongly through being channelled directly through the state, class society's organ of coercion. A state-capitalist Portugal would remain economically dependent on world capitalism and politically would only have a choice as to which imperialism ― American, Russian or perhaps Chinese ― to be a satellite of.

The future without socialist understanding is bleak for the working class in Portugal. They are doomed to suffer capitalism in one form or another. In view of Portugal's drastic economic situation whichever of the factions competing for power emerged as the government would have to redispline the working-class. So, in their own interests, the workers should oppose them all ― the old Caetano gang, Spinola, the parliamentarists, the CP, Cavalho and the army leftists ― for none of them can have anything to offer but hard work, poverty and suffering. The only way out for the Portuguese workers is to unite with their fellow workers in other parts of the world with a view to establishing world Socialism. 

L. B.