Ensnared by ideological beliefs (1995)

Theatre Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Easter by August Strindberg

Playwrights, like ordinary mortals, are creatures of their time. Whether unconsciously or as a matter of intention, most playwrights reveal in their story-lines and their dramatic pre-occupations, their characters and their dialogue, a view of the society of which they are a part.

August Strinberg's Easter (RSC, Barbican) is full of symbolism and illusion. It describes events in the life of Elis Heyst, a manic-depressive Norwegian schoolteacher in three fateful days between Maundy Thursday and the Saturday before Easter Sunday. It is filled with references to Christian suffering and the possibilities if redemption; to the coming of spring after a Scandinavian winter; to guilt associated with a father's imprisonment for embezzlement; and, finally—so it seems—to forgiveness and charity. It is marvellously presented by a gifted cast in the crucible-like atmosphere of The Pit, to the echoing sounds of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion and against a slide-show of paintings from The Last Supper and the Crucifixion. The atmosphere of religiosity is tangible. 

Critics in the national press have responded to the moving last act as well they might. The ideas of forgiveness and charity might have been appropriated by Strindberg and given expression in the world of late nineteenth-century capitalism and Christian belief, but their benevolent, life-enhancing notions have a universal, timeless relevance. Indeed socialists see them as part of the common currency of life in a world based on co-operation rather than competition, happiness rather than angst.

What is especially interesting in both the play and also the reactions of the audience (and the critics) to it, is the way in which forgiveness and charity have been stolen and given expression within the values of capitalist society. Several times an apparently merciful redeemer makes clear to the unfortunate Elis that "it all comes back": that he (Elis) is to be forgiven because long ago his father—and languishing in jail—behaved charitably to the redeemer. This makes forgiveness not so much a gesture of magnanimity as a commodity to be exchanged on an "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch my back" basis.

This marketing of forgiveness and charity escaped the notice of the critics in the national newspapers. Clearly it isn't only playwrights who are ensnared by the ideological beliefs of the society of which they are a part. Most of the audience and the critics are victims of the same kind of prejudices.

Michael Gill

Blue Pencilled People (1995)

Theatre Review from the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editing Process by Meredith Oakes, The Royal Court Theatre.

Meredith Oakes's play The Editing Process is apparently about the take-over of a small magazine by a predatory capitalist entrepreneur. Enter the new owner's efficiency expert, together with the corporate image consultant, and activities are rationalised, savings (sic) realised, and talk of redundancies is in the air.

Michael Billington in the Guardian complains that the play refuses "to expand into a metaphor for the crisis currently affecting the publishing business". And Billington is right. There is no acknowledgment of the larger world in which the characters operate.

Oakes is good at showing the importance of work: revealing the impact of work on personality; pointing to its centrality in life, as the basis of most social relations. But, according to Oakes, behaviour has no economic and social reference points. Displays of power and dependency at work are seen as matters of individual choice and not as concomitants of the social relations of work. Indeed in defence of her position Oakes writes in a letter to the Guardian that "whatever system prevails, a power is sought by a few people. The quality of society depends on the moral choices those people make, not the political labels they wear".

Socialists see this as just plain wrong. Power is not a universal to be forever the basis of struggle and conflict. Power is a feature of an economically-divided society, and its generalised appearance is rooted in economic divisions. Oakes sees power and morality as independent variables: socialists recognise the primary impact of economic divisions in determining the character of ideas in what Marx called "the superstructure of society".

Within its limitations The Editing Process is a revealing, often very funny, play which us presented with wit and panache. But it is fundamentally flawed. Its characters and their actions are economically and socially adrift. Their behaviours are rooted in personal whims and idiosyncrasies that lack for economic and social underpinning. Like statues without legs Oakes's characters have separated from the economic foundations which might have more adequately accounted for their actions. The result is a series of undimensional snapshots of a world which properly demands a multi-dimensional focus.

Michael Gill

Not so friendly (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

A group of socialists recently attended a meeting of the Friends of the Earth at Sunderland YMCA. It had been advertised as an open public meeting, all ideas welcome. There was a crowd of about fifty, mostly students, and we sat at the back of the room to listen to what the speakers had to say.

There were three speakers, two from the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM). One talked of alleviating unemployment by creating 'Worker Controls' in which workers would commonly own their industries, and capital investment (which would also be commonly owned) would be used in the interests of the workers. The 'Worker Controls' would also be used to teach workers how to run their own affairs (how nice). The other ICOM speaker said that one of their members was at present investigating ways to solve 'over-population' and food shortages.

When it came to question time, one if us asked the speaker to explain the cause of unemployment "since you must know the cause before you can attempt to solve the problem". The ICOM speaker replied that there were various causes of unemployment, then relapsed into a tone such as to be inaudible to anyone. The member answered his own question: "Capitalism is the cause of unemployment, and your energies should be directed at removing the cause. men and women are thrown onto the dole because they are of no further use to their employers. Perhaps the market is 'glutted', but there must be a reserve army of labour ready for use when the market demands." Amazingly enough, the ICOM speaker replied that there was plenty of demand, but forgot to add that needs do not constitute market demand.

Another member said:"You say that workers will learn how to run their own affairs in these 'Worker Controls', but workers control everything now. The working class run capitalism from top to bottom. You won't find a capitalist soiling his hands with work." No reply. Another socialist rose and said that 'overpopulation' is a myth and the ICOM speaker stands accused of helping to spread dangerous myths. If half the starving people were removed tomorrow, the other half would still starve. It would not make an iota of difference. The accused, and red-faced, speaker stormed out of the room, not to be seen again that night. At that moment a member of the audience (or perhaps another member of ICOM) stood up and said, "I've had enough of this" and, "Perhaps our friends would like to leave".  (I wonder if they are that friendly with whales!)

They then proceeded to discuss 'Worker Controls', perhaps hoping that they had silenced us, but they hoped in vain. for another of our group said, "Obviously production in 'Worker Controls' would have to meet market demand, so in a situation where one group of people needed food but had no money (which is not market demand) and another group wanted arms and had the money (which does constitute market demand), the workers would have to produce arms." "I cannot see a workers' co-op producing arms", said the ICOM speaker. "Then I am afraid the only alternative would be the sack", said the member. We were then invited to leave. Why? Because the speaker decided to close the meeting after a very brief question time. We did not get the chance to put our case at this meeting, but we will continue to attend meetings that are 'open' to us.

Vince Maratty (North East Branch)

About Books (1953)

 Book Reviews from the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russian novelists have a knack of cramming their stories with such a large number of characters that the majority of their non-Russian leaders get lost in the crowd. Adding to the confusion is the similarity of male and female Christian names and the addition of a suffix to the surname to denote the female. Again, it appears that the name by which a person is addressed depends on the relationship with the person who is addressing him. A stranger or a remote acquaintance will use the surname, a friend or close acquaintance will use the first Christian name whilst relatives and very close friends will address a person by his or her second Christian name. This use of different names to denote the same person becomes mystifying to most English readers.

Although Sholokov's books are constructed similarly, when we read them we do not experience the same confusion that attends the reading of other Russian authors. He so presents his characters that we are able to distinguish one from the others right from the word "Go."

Sholokov's two earliest books, "And Quiet Flows the Don" and "The Don Flows Home to the Sea" are now world famous, and justly so. The first of these books was originally published in Russia in 1929 and the second in 1940. A recent reprint in English has been published by Putnam and Co., Ltd., and the two volumes are available at 12s. 6d. each.

The story, which is continuous through the two books, is enthralling. It presents us with a history of the Don Cossack peasant farmers from the early years of the present century up to the early nineteen-twenties and takes us through the latter part of the Czarist regime, the 1914-1918 war, the Bolshevik seizure of power and the counter-revolutionary war in the Cossack regions.

The Cossack farmers had little interest in the theories and aspirations of either side in the counter-revolutionary war. They desired little more than to be left alone to till their land and enjoy the fruits of their work. When they took up arms it was with the intent of driving out one bunch of oppressors or the other, which accounts for the fact that some of them not infrequently changed sides. It also accounts for one theme in Sholokov's story where intimate friends and even relatives fight one another from opposite ranks.

The great lesson to be learned from this story of the Don Cossacks is that revolutionary social changes cannot be brought about merely by the passing of laws or the issuing of decrees. The Bolshevik idea, that a political party with the support of a small minority of workers should seize political power and then start to ram revolutionary changes down the throats of a vast majority of peasants, is pathetically false. They found that, in order to impose the mildest of their measures for collectivisation, they had to resort to armed force and precipitate a civil war. The Cossacks, with the big landowners, enrolled under the banners of the White Russian Generals. Many of them fought in insurgent bands attached to neither side.

The peasant farmer makes his own home, builds his own farmhouses, breeds his own cattle and grows his own crops. Everything around him is individually, or family produced. The idea that the fruit of his individual effort should be socially appropriated is foreign to him. His highest political aspiration is to increase his individual farm holding, not to surrender all he has to a collective farm community of which he is an unwilling member. Even when the Bolsheviks had militarily subdued the Don Cossack region they were not able to enforce their instructions. They passed from compromise to compromise until their original proposals were lost to sight.

The fratricidal war the Cossacks fought was grim and brutal and Sholokov's story is in keeping with the time about which he writes. If he has a bias in favour of either party in that war he hides it well. His story is thrilling, exciting and tragic. It's great.

Mikhail Sholokov has written a third book entitled, "Virgin Soil Upturned" (same publishers, same price). In this he takes up the story of the collectivisation of the Cossack farms from the year 1930. The story is good but does not compare with the earlier two works. One could almost imagine it was written by a different author.

By a combination of propaganda and compulsion the Bolshevik Government was still trying to build its collective farms. The opposition from the wealthy farmers was fierce; from the poor ones it was sullen. The overall results were most discouraging to the men who were sent to the Cossack region to carry out the Communists' instructions.

Although the story in this book is not continued on from the other two, and although it is not such a splendid tale, it is worth reading in order to follow up the history of the Cossack farmers to a more recent date.

W. Waters

The Last Word: Why Santa should get stuffed (1997)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

The Last Word Column from the December 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much to be said for abolishing Christmas. It is a festival of fake sincerity; the most dishonest season of the year. It is a time for buying what can't be afforded and selling what would not sensibly be wanted. It is a brief period of employment for obese drunks who are forced to fit into tight red uniforms and pretend to be jolly. It is a time for families to come together and realise how little they have in common but genes. It is the moment for the Arch-Parasite of Buckingham Palace to descend from her secluded palace and address the scum whose bent bodies support her and her class. It is busy season for the casualty wards, where wage slaves off the leash have bought escape through alcohol and mutilated themselves and others in metal wreckages, while the lonely attempt suicide and are dragged in sighing to be saved for another year. It is the period reserved for extra-special TV stupidity: the régime of the faked smile, the contrived sentiment, public condescension towards crippled children, and Noel Edmonds. It is the cold season for the noses of the poor to be pressed up against windows which display goods they may not buy. On the mass-produced greetings cards there is snow; in the shop doorways they shiver and hope they will not freeze.

The religious believe that it has become too commercialised. They want to rejoice in fantasies about a messiah born of a virgin. The traders are generally indifferent to the origin of the seasonal madness; their god announces his presence each time a cash till rings. Nobody knows quite what it's all for. Vicars run jumble sales and declare that it doesn't matter if the flock believes in Jesus. Merchants flog commodities with tacky images of babies born in a manger; Dylan's "flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark." All is confusion and falsified joy. The perfect festival for a system built on sales and insincerity.

It probably has something to do with the end of the year and a faint hope that the new one will be better. Perhaps Christmas is the illusory prelude to a new dawn: the lazy man's route to revolution. After Christmas come the resolutions of the New Year: ritualised hopes by the self-deluded who dream of self-control.

Worse even than Christmas are those New Year parties where strangers hug each other and pretend that the haze of booze and fabrication of community will last forever. The unkissed make a grab for whatever they can get, forcing some victim into physical proximity in the name of festivity. The next morning's stench of stale whisky is already in the air; the blushes of office co-workers who will have to share a desk after an unwanted snog are being planned; the delirium of the depressed makes its dreary way as the calendar changes and Ding Dong . . . it's 1998 and nothing's changed.

So, away with all this bogus goodwill and let us say what we mean. Tell the boss to stick his Christmas dinner where the sun don't shine, because you'd rather have the money. Tell the clerical men in dresses to bugger off and put their own house in order before they have the audacity to preach to us about how to live. Tell the charity merchants to seek their own crumbs, because we want the cake which we baked and nothing less. Tell Santa to get a life and stop trying to seduce innocent children with the lure of commodities. And tell those dull, offensive, dreary carol singers that if they so much as come within a foot of your door with their chants about little Jesus meek and mild they'll be having their lukewarm stuffing in an overcrowded corridor down at the local hospital.

Despite our best efforts, Capitalism's Merry Men will do their worst. Once again the TV News will carry pictures of the homeless being given a charitable mince pie by decent people who will be forced after Christmas to throw them back on to the cold, winter streets. Once again the Vatican Godfather will ascend his balcony and rub salt into the wounds of millions who will be told that their misery is god's will. Once agin those who refuse to celebrate religious and commercial folly will be called kill-joys. Even though all that socialists want to see is a society decent and co-operative and sociable enough for there to be no need to put aside one week or one day for happiness to prevail.

Steve Coleman

Past, Present, and Future (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Andrew Carnegie! Pierpont Morgan! Names not without meaning to the man in the street, but, to the Socialist, symbolic of something of far deeper significance than their mention calls up in the mind of the uninitiated.

Designative of types of two distinct orders of capitalist dominators, representative of two definite eras of industrial history, they bear inconvertible witness to the truth of our scientific conclusion anent the evolutionary nature of capitalism. They are to be cherished as invaluable aids to the understanding of one of the most important lessons the workers have to learn; as raised letters to the blind, ocular demonstration to those who cannot hear.

As far as may ever be properly said  of human kind, the men they nominate are makers of a page of history incomparably more pregnant of consequences to the world than any which chronicles the activities of royal hero or military genius—ancient lights or modern. They mark an epoch.

Their story will bear repeating.

It is common knowledge that at the end of the last century Andrew carnegie was head of the largest steel rail factory in the world, an establishment with an output so vast that to state it is to court suspicion of extravagance.

Here the famous Scot had dominion over which his rule was complete; his word was law, his whim destiny, life and death his prerogative—as was shown when he had his workmen shot down by bargeloads of armed detectives.

Came Pierpont Morgan with new conception. Andrew's method of business was based on competition—the undercutting of rivals. The very essence of Morgan's system was the elimination of competition by amalgamating the powerful concerns of an industry, crushing the smaller, and then,—why then Competition had reached the end of the strife-strewn path that history had foreordained she should traverse, and is discovered taking her ease at least, sitting in peace "under her olive," suckling a sturdy son—Monopoly.

Andrew was asked to abdicate, and, like himself, refused. He would see Morgan hanged and Wall Street sink into the bowels of the earth before he would surrender his factory.

Did Andrew speak without due reflection? It would seem so, for, just as, when he declared the disgrace of dying rich, he underestimated the difficulty of becoming poor, hurling defiance at Wall Street, he depreciated the tremendous power opposed to him.

He quickly found that Morgan had control of the railways, and was therefore in a position of dominance; for without his consent not a rail could be freighted out of the vast Pittsburg steel works. He quickly found also that the new conception did not wait upon the pleasure of the master of Pittsburg; for if he would not submit to be bought out, then Wall Street would amalgamate the remnants of the industry against him and fight him out.

Here was a situation in which all Pinkerton's army could afford Andrew no assistance. Those who threatened him were no longer working men, the natural defence against whom was the levelled rifle. No weapon existed to batter the forces of the financial monarchs, so Carnegie was a beaten man. he retired from the contest—made way for the "Billion Dollar Trust."

Now great change came o'er the land. Pittsburg became a province in the empire of the Steel Trust; the seat of government was shifted to Wall Street; the sceptre had passed from the great ironmaster, acquainted with every corner of his factory, proficient in the technics of his art, supervisor of the operations of producing his commodities, into the hands of the great financier, who knew not what steel was. The position that Andrew had filled with majesty was now the place of a hireling - a mere foreman whose only princely semblance was his salary. Great powers of direction had been given to an employee, but control had passed for ever from the overseer of the productive forces, and had become vested in outsiders, whose utility or necessity the most subtle imagination fails to conceive.

Nor did the change end here. The strife of competition gave place to the peace of monopoly. In the field of steel production there was one master instead of many; in the field of steel distribution there was one seller instead of many. So peace reigned in the steel industry as it does at times in Russia under the soothing influence of the Czar's Cossacks.

All this marks an epoch in capitalism's evolution.

Not the first, be it understood, for the merchant prince was a ruler in his generation, even as the manufacturer has been in the days now slipping into history, and the financier is to be in the days which are to come.

Type of the dying past—Andrew Carnegie; type of the youthful present—Pierpont Morgan; where shall we seek a type of the yet unfulfilled future?

For it may not be doubted that the reign of this present capitalist dominator is transient, even as the others have been. That which has beginning must of necessity have end. Capitalism has not always existed, nor will. It has been revolutionary in its time, has risen against and dethroned its immediate predecessor—Feudalism: what os to dethrone it in its turn? Long since the manufacturer seized the baton of the merchant prince and pushed him from power, only to be himself thrown down in the fulness of time by the financial upstart—who is there left under the sin to unseat this last?

The prophetic finger of Science points to him who even now stands in revolutionary opposition to the regalism of the financial Molloch and his phase of capitalism. For scientific inquiry has furnished abundant evidence that through all history power has moved in the direction of economy, of adjustment to the needs of the social organism, of ultimate advantage to humanity. The manufacturer has played his useful part in production, as did the merchant prince before him in distribution, but what necessary place, in either production or distribution is filled by the financier? The final vestige of useful function has been relegated to an employee, who, however munificent his remuneration, remains a hireling.

Irony of fate—the only use the last of the capitalist rulers can have is to prepare the way for his successor. For long capitalism has been engaged in the lugubrious occupation of digging a grave: it has at length discovered that this grave is its own. For has not Pierpont Morgan himself announced that the function of his kind is to organise production in such form that it may be taken over by the community?

Capitalism is itself to be the educator of the revolution which is to shatter it to pieces. Its latest development, by separating entirely from the productive processes the owners and controllers of the means of production, is making very clear to the worker, what he could never believe before, that he alone is necessary to the creation of material wealth. Control of production, he begins to see, has passed to an order of men who can be removed without any industrial disturbance, and the growing knowledge of this fact pronounces the doom, not only of the phase of financial monarchy in capitalism, but of the capitalist system itself.

Wherefore the prophetic finger aforesaid, which must be pointing somewhere, could indicate none other than the worker as the successor of the modern capitalist. The needs of the social organism demand his rise to power, for it is impossible for that organism to continue to flourish while the vast bulk of its component cells are ill-nourished and stinted. Logic also demands that the worker become paramount, for it is the very antithesis of logic to produce goods for profit instead of for use, to have the producers hungry and unemployed because they have produced too much and glutted the market. Finally, history demands the supremacy of the worker; for why else has it provided this last of the long concatenation of changes which, starting by depriving him of the means of life as necessary condition of their perfection to such as would afford him fuller subsistence and higher existence, end by offering him once again those means of life—radiant with their added wonders of fertility, and large with the promise of still greater wonders yet to be added unto them—if he will only stretch out his hand and take them?

The transition is so easy—merely the substitution of the old property condition for that which so long has played the usurper. Private property in the means of life must go. It has dug its own grave, it remains but for the workers to push it in and cover it up decently.

Then, with common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth the sound, sure and kindly basis of all human affairs let come what will.

A. E. Jacomb

Seasonal Goodwill, Dodgy Deals and Unreliable Witnesses (2015)

The Halo Halo! Column from the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jingle bells, jingle bloody bells. Yes, it’s that time of year again. A month of enforced jollity is about to be inflicted on us. And to make matters worse, The Apprentice is back on the box, that weekly display of arrogant, immature toadies stabbing each other in the back in an attempt to impress Alan Sugar and his sidekicks with their dodgy business deals.

An hour of that every week could certainly affect your mental health. You find yourself thinking; If only Marx had been a better businessman. Instead of hiding away in the British Museum reading room every day he’d have invested in a Father Christmas outfit and a false beard and got himself down to Oxford Street with a suitcase full of plastic, happy nodding worker gnomes. At £5.99 each (batteries extra) they’d have sold like hot cakes and we’d have had socialism years ago.

Fortunately, the Apprentices will have all been fired by Christmas, but as for Christmas itself, the only known ways to ensure a festive free December are to apply for a place on the Mars colonization programme or to join the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And the Mars mission is probably more oversubscribed than the vacancies (144,000) in the Jehovah’s Witnesses heaven.

So unless you want to spend the rest of your days reading The Watchtower, (mandatory for ‘witnesses’ to prevent them ‘falling into darkness’) you’ll just have to put up with it. Whatever you do, don’t invite them round to share your turkey. They are mad. Honestly, you’d have more fun with a paper hat, a balloon and a cracker, surrounded by screaming kids and broken toys, while attempting to plough through volume three of Capital with the Queen’s speech on the telly in the background.

What’s really irritating about them though, apart from their numerous attempts to forecast the end of the world, so far unsuccessfully, are their sanctimonious, infantile publications, The Watchtower and Awake.

Take the September issue of Awake for example. ‘A Balanced View of Money’ it promised us on the front cover. Exactly what’s needed we thought, and excitedly looked forward to reading their views on the accumulation of capital and, definitely, something on the production of absolute and of relative surplus value. But guess what? All we could find was the warning that ‘the love of money is a root to all sorts of injurious things’, and a heartbreaking account of how Daniel and his friend Thomas fell out after the car Thomas bought from Daniel broke down, and he demanded his money back.

Not what we were hoping for, but at least we learned one thing. Never buy a second-hand car from a Jehovah’s Witness.

NW

Obituary: Don Poirier (2002)

Obituary from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are saddened to have to report the death from cancer of comrade Don Poirier of the Socialist Party of Canada at the comparatively early age of 63. Don became a socialist while still serving as an enlisted man in the Royal Canadian Navy (which shows that those who argue that members of the armed forces are immune to socialist ideas are wrong). On leaving he joined the SPC in Vancouver and soon became active as an outdoor speaker and organiser. In the mid-sixties he was a paid organiser for the SPC and the World Socialist Party of the US, touring North America in a van with socialist slogans such as “Production for Use not Profit” and “One World, One People” painted on its side. Most of his working life was spent in logging camps where he was also active as an organiser for the International Woodworkers of America. In between, he managed or owned a succession of bookshops, the last in Duncan on Vancouver Island. Don was a sturdy fighter for the cause of socialism and will be missed.

Are You a Wage Slave? (2012)

From the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people object to being told that they are a wage-slave but why?

The notion of wage slavery, taken reasonably, is actually rather difficult to refute. The idea that we are in an entirely different social position to chattel slaves is based upon the assumption of our freedom. But this sense of freedom is an illusion which rests upon the contradiction between law and reality. The law grants us personal liberties, and we therefore have the right to make our own decisions: where to live; who to work for; or whether to work at all. But underlying this veil of freedom are the real, material, physical facts, and they run as such: you can only live where you can afford to live; you can only work for someone who will willingly employ you; and while you are under no legal obligation to work for anyone at all, you will find it a struggle to live while not doing so. The welfare state will be your (miserable) safety net, but only as long as you abide by the contract agreeing to actively seek employment.

Whether we choose the wages system or not, we are in reality bound to it, and within this system we enter into contracts with employers whereby the value we create for them is more than the value we receive in wages, and thus they make a profit through our exploitation. We are not by law bound to a single individual, but, in fact, to the capitalist class as a whole. With the acknowledgment of these simple truths, the illusive veil of freedom is dissolved, and laid bare is the reality in which we are still in chains.

Such a strong feeling of personal aversion to claims of wage slavery no doubt stems from a sense of pride. But this objection to the mere notion of wage-slavery only acts to perpetuate the reality of the condition: people’s misplaced sense of pride paradoxically serves to maintain their humiliating position. Imagine, of those chattel slaves who fought for political emancipation, if they had instead simply denied the existence of slavery. But it’s difficult to express the common sense behind, and the political importance of, the term ‘wage-slavery’ when somebody has already decided that what you’re saying is offensive.

The term ‘socialism’ has been immersed in so much bullshit that it is often necessary to revert to the basics when discussing it. Failure to properly define terms often results in being associated with an entirely different political stance, and one which is, conveniently, much easier to attack.

We do not see ourselves, as many of the Left do, as being distinct and detached from the rest of the working class (that is, all of those who work for a wage or salary), but as being part of the working class movement as a whole. In fact, we firmly hold that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself, which means that workers do not need, and must not have, leaders in the revolution. We, like Marx, have always stood in staunch opposition to anyone that says otherwise (Lenin and his Bolshevik Party of “professional revolutionaries,” for example). In this sense, the explanation of the socialist case to other workers is a sign not of our condescending superiority but of our political equality.

Something else frequently encountered is some people’s instant feeling of outrage at someone espousing the socialist case while living in what they judge to be a more comfortable position than their own. But this acts to make their own feelings of hardship an obstacle to, rather than a catalyst for change.

This is misplaced, because it rests on the misunderstanding that socialists are people who simply whinge about capitalism and the rough hand it deals to us. What we are actually trying to express, however, is the position of workers in relation to capitalists, whatever their wage might be. The point is to show exactly what capitalism is – i.e. the exploitation of wage-labour, production for profit, a market system – in order to illustrate how it can, and why it must, be changed.

We often meet the protest, “Well what do you do to improve things?’, as though alack of effort to improve or reform capitalism somehow makes the argument less valid. But we have never claimed to be concerned with the improvement of capitalism; while acknowledging the necessity of the defensive actions of trade unionism within capitalism, the Socialist Party case is in fact openly anti-reformist. This is because no amount of adjustment to capitalism can completely eradicate the problems which are inherent within it.

We do not simply advocate a more equal, fair form of capitalism which is a little bit kinder to workers, but the abolition of capitalism altogether: that is, the abolition of private property and of the wages system, and the establishment of a society based upon the doctrine of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. Given the required nature of the revolution, i.e. carried out by the majority, all we can really do at present towards achieving this is to try to persuade other workers of its necessity. The time will come for more practical efforts towards socialism, but while the majority of workers still support capitalism we are, alas, not yet there.

But why is it that we socialists constantly have to justify ourselves? Those who are so quick to erect barriers against the spread of socialist thought should consider the question: what is it that you are defending, and in whose interest?  Capitalism is an inefficient social system which causes a catastrophic level of death and destruction on a daily basis. It is a system in which many are forced to live in poverty or die through starvation in a world of unprecedented abundance; a world capable of providing life’s necessities for all of its inhabitants. Capitalism is a miserable social order in which those who own but do not produce live parasitically off the labour of those who produce but do not own. But its continuation ultimately depends upon the continuation of workers’ consent. We have withdrawn ours and we urge you to do the same: until then, the onus for justification lies with you.

CBH

The Vitalising Principle of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1955)

From the March 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was organised in 1904 in order to achieve the emancipation of the working class. That was the reason for its founding.

The people who formed our party were working men and working women. They had learnt that there was only one way by which the workers could gain their emancipation. That way was by establishing Socialism, and that there were no short cuts to this objective. Bitter experience had taught them that the fatuous policies of "progressives," the blissful dreams of humanitarians, the patronising philosophysing of "intellectuals," and the prolonged agony of reformism, were all alike delusions and snares. Their experiences and studies in an earlier organisation had taught them three things: The Socialism could only be established by a working class that understood what it involved and wanted it; that before Socialism could be established the working class must take the powers of government out of the hands of the possessing class; and, finally, that the Socialist Party must follow an unswerving course based upon an understanding of the class struggle and its implications.

When the founder members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain realised that the party to which they formerly belonged, the Social Democratic Federation, was leading the workers into a morass, they then decided to form a new party with the aim of emancipating the workers by establishing Socialism, and cleaving to this as their sole object. Hence they set down their object and formulated a set of principles which summarised the existing social system, its implications and the course that must be followed.

Since 1904 the other parties have come and gone, chimerical hopes have been raised, but the basic position has not changed, nor are there any indications that it is ever likely to change before the accomplishment of the Party's objective. Hence the only course the workers can follow in order to achieve their emancipation from the capitalist system of exploitation is to work for the establishment of Socialism and to ignore all the alluring and much trodden byways which only lead to frustration and despair. No amount of word spinning, verbal juggling, or hairsplitting, can get around this position or surmount the obstacles that stand in the workers' path to emancipation. To no longer be solely concerned with the emancipation of the working class would be to abandon the outlook that brought our party into existence, inspired those who have continued to press forward its outlook and policy, and what has kept the Party on a sound Socialist course through 50 years of tribulation and opposition.

The fact that the emancipation of the working class by the establishment of Socialism will have beneficial effects on groups of people, whether they be workers or not, who suffer other forms of discriminations is entirely incidental and has no bearing on our intentions or procedure, though it helps to support our case.

The class cleavage between workers and capitalists is universal; it cuts across all national, colour and religious distinctions. It overrides and swamps all other distinctions in the final analysis and the final reckoning. When the class distinction between the working class and the capitalist class has been abolished by the establishment of Socialism all other distinctions that set people at variance today will go with it.

Finally, our exclusive aim is the emancipation of the working class by the establishment of Socialism, and we welcome to our ranks all who are prepared to help us in this work.

Gilmac.

One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, Three O'Clock, Rock . . . (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rock, Around the Clock . . . Yes, Rock n' Roll is the craze—from London to Glasgow, Paris to Berlin, and even Moscow.

Dixieland, New Orleans, Chicago, Swing, Boogie Woogie, Jive, Bop . . . they all come, and go. And now it's Rock 'n' Roll. Teenagers shout, sing and riot wherever the film "Rock Around the Clock" is showing; dance halls hold weekly Rock 'n' Roll nights; records by Bill Haley, the Platters and Elvis Presley, sell by the million, and even the B.B.C. play a few Rock 'n' Roll records. Yes, it's the craze. But why?

Every so often "Pop" music gets a shot in the arm; a new lease of life. In the 'twenties it was the Charleston and Jazz Bands, the 'thirties Swing, Boogie Woogie and Jive; the 'forties the New Orleans revival and Bop. And now  . . . "Rock"!

What then is Rock 'n' Roll? It isn't Jazz or Swing or Boogie. It's just a combination of the three . . . a simple beat, a simple lyric, improvisation, plenty of noise—plus "corn"; all the "gimmicks" in the book. Yes it's a gimmick; musical extroversion of the Nth degree. But it's got a beat. Even the "squares" tap their feet, and "cats" just go wild!

Why do many youngsters go wild over Rock 'n' Roll? Why did many go crazy over Goodman, Basie or Harry James in the 'thirties or the Charleston Chasers in the 'twenties? Why do people mob a movie star or a famous footballer? The reason, I think, is that life for most people is pretty boring, "soul destroying"—particularly for youngsters, teenagers, who have more energy than their elders; who have not yet had the zest for life knocked out of them. After eight or nine hours in an office, shop or factory, the "kids" want to do something; they want to express themselves in some way or another. Life for most of them seems empty, purposeless. Modern Capitalist society with its general insecurity, its wars and its call-ups gives them very little to strive for. And after a day at the office or factory bench, they've just got to let themselves go. They need some kind of escape; some kind of outlet for pent-up energy. The movies, the Dance Halls, the Jazz Clubs, provide them with this "escape", this outlet. The cinema, the Dance Halls and Jazz Clubs, each with its variation on an old theme, or a new gimmick or craze such as "Bop" or "Rock" give these youngsters and teenagers a chance once, twice or more times a week to get away from what are often poor, uncomfortable homes; to sing, dance, stamp their feet and "let their hair down," away from the chief clerk, clerk, the factory foreman—and their parents; to leave their worries, their problems, their frustrations and repressions behind—for a while.

Rock 'n' Roll is a new craze. But a Rock 'n' Roll night at the Palais; a Rock 'n' Roll Jamboree can be fun for a few hours a week, yet after all it's not much of a substitute for a really full and interesting life. And our present society denies that to most young people today.

But, for the time being, at least  . . . "Rock around the Clock."

Peter E. Newell

Marilyn Monroe: A Cultural Phenomena (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Beauty is only skin-deep," wrote the Self-Made Merchant to his son, "but that's deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man." That was sixty years ago, before it became customary to used the hands for describing beauty and when beuty, however deep, kept most of its skin under cover. The reasonable man's pleasure to-day is Marilyn Monroe, and the publishers and booksellers, with their empirical knowledge of his tastes cannot give him enough of her—at second hand, of course.

Reigning beauties of the past, for all that poets have made of them, reigned only in courts and castes. Miss Monroe's sovereignty is practically unlimited, geographically or socially. Not long back, manchester City Councillors averred her to be preferable to one of Henry Moore's sculptures, and a Work of Art: a national columnist went farther and said she was an Act of God. Even the Communists' censoriousness of her as a dollar princess has the scent of sour grapes. Marilyn Monroe, in fact, represents the acme of desirability in this day and age.

Times have changed, of course. This writer once heard an old lady describe how, mounting her bicycle in the eighteen-nineties, she was attacked by a woman who screamed: "You brazen thing! I can see your ankles!" It is not only that people in the 'nineties would have been shocked by Miss Monroe, undissembled in tight or negligible clothing: they would have thought her ugly, too. The beauties of the day—Lily Langtry, Olga Nethersole, La Belle Otero—were strapping girls with all the appearance of good living. Nobody talked of slimming, and the ladies' magazines advertised a treatment called Diano which, if it was all true, was nothing short of an inflationary measure.

The case for eternal beauty becomes as illogical as the argument that there is eternal morality, when one considers the variations in both according to time and place. Metropolitan man may pull faces over the Congo's idea of pulchritude; it is certain that the African native in turn would not think a lot of Marilyn Monroe. It is a question of what you esteem, and that itself is a question of what your world finds necessary. There is an old but appropriate story of a farmer and his guest together gazing across the countryside: the townsman rhapsodizes about the rolling vista, the farmer spits and says, "Thirty-bob-an-acre stuff." Most likely the African, as well as the Eskimo and some others, would say something of the sort about Miss Monroe.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a fair enough statement of fact, but it leaves the important question unanswered. Man is the beholder: what puts, and transforms, beauty in his eye—his mind's eye? In primitive communities it is chiefly physical function, the apparent capacity for child-bearing and hard work. In class-divided societies, beauty has always been seen to a large extent in terms of conspicuous leisure; the sirens of all western civilization seem to have done little else through history but loll on divans (if you believe it, look in the art galleries). And, of course, every age creates its own motives and needs which help to shape its concept of beauty. According to the franker historians, mediaeval ladies often assailed the nostrils as well as the heart, but nobody minded much; nowadays, with a century's public health behind and the soap advertisements before us, a whiff of perspiration kills romance.

Marilyn Monroe is the personification of what popular consciousness in our time deems desirable. The rubato walk is a source of delight; in Victorian England, when no respectable woman thought sex pleasurable, it would have brought an indignant flush to a decent man's face. When the family was sacrosanct (because the economic ties which held it were still fairly strong) sexual provocation was shameful. Now the ties have sagged, the morality has sagged too, and beauty can present itself to arouse the instinctive polygamist in every man. And the conspicuous leisure is still there—in impractical dress as well as the sultriness and aura of wealth.

There is more to Marilyn Monroe than merely physique, however. She is "the sexiest girl in Hollywood," the girl who posed naked for a calendar and takes an interest in Freud. Almost every day there is a fresh tale and a fresh photograph; her skirts blow over her head, she distorts perspective with her callipygous charms. Her marriage to Joe DiMaggio was a feast for the papers and everybody's imagination. The husky, virile Joe, a masculine idol, and the supremely nubile Marilyn saying: "You can't take a career to bed and cuddle it," and: "I like honeymoons." Miss Monroe is, in fact, a dream. In Hollywood they make dreams; she is the most delectable dream of all.

The visual promise of pneumatic bliss is only the beginning. The real secret is the legend. Earlier film beauties, the vamps, the sweater girls and the rest, established conventions for exciting without intent to gratify; the Monroe legend is all of intent to gratify. Miss Monroe suggests not merely that she would please you but also that you would please her. From the humbleness-to-riches story, to the fabulous marriage and the scene where a plumber gropes for his pipe-wrench in her bath, the whole is a gorgeous fantasy into which every unsatisfied person of either sex can project every longing. It is Cinderella up-to-date, in glorious technicolour, and they live voluptuously as well as happily ever after.

None of this reflects any particular discredit on Miss Monroe or her employers, the film magnates. People who sell things, even dreams, are simply cashing-in on other people's needs—the only important criticism is of the world which creates such needs on so large a scale. The brevity of Marilyn Monroe's marriage indeed suggests that she herself is no more satisfied than a good many of her admirers. Certainly she knows no greater security—the careers of public entertainers are as precarious as those of any other people.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that, as fast as morality has slackened and so removed apparent obstacles to well-fulfilled sexual lives, the lack of satisfaction has grown. It is impossible to imagine a stable, sane community deifying a dream, but modern culture is largely made up of dreams. There is Miss Monroe; there are the revenge dreams of the brutal gangster stories, the escape dreams of popular romance, the vicarious thrills of speedways, space-fiction and the big fights. Our society, despising primitive people who incorporate sex practices in their cultures, has erected Marilyn Monroe as its tribal symbol—the symbol of frustration and unsatisfied desires.

Robert Barltrop

Hope for Nicaragua (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years Nicaragua was run by the Somoza family who, in return for maintaing "order", so that the exploitation of the peasants by US multinationals could continue in relative peace, were allowed to help themselves to some of the pickings of this exploitation. In the end the greed and corruption of this bunch of gangsters became too much even for the rest of the parasite class in Nicaragua, who threw in their lot with the Sandinista guerrilla movement (so called after a Nicaraguan general, Augusto Sandino, who led an anti-American and pro-peasant revolt in the late 1920s and early 1930s):

The enormous fortune of the Somozas had coexisted peacefully with the investments of the country's other businessmen until, following the 1972 earthquake, the Somoza family took over banking and construction, two fields considered as the preserve of the country's well-off class. From then on frictions appeared which ended in a break between the capitalists and General Somoza and in a union of capitalists with the young people who had taken up arms under the banner of the Sandinist National Liberation Front. (Républicain Lorrain, 18 July 1979) 

Within a few years of the overthrow of the Somozas in July 1979 power came to be exercised exclusively by the leaders of the Sandinist movement with most, but by no means all, the private capitalists and their supporters going over to the counter-revolution encourage, financed and armed by the US government.

Even if we assume that the leaders of the Sandinist movement who now occupy the top government and state posts in Nicaragua do not attribute themselves a privileged income compared with the rest of the population (which may be the case, to a certain extent) they are still compelled, by virtue of the fact that they are administering a state in the context of the capitalist world economy, to behave as a capitalist class.

Thus, they are forced to oblige peasants to grow cash crops for export, as a means to get foreign

currency (to buy machinery and arms), rather than allowing them to grow food to feed themselves. Thus, they are forced to brigade the workers into state-controlled "trade unions" and to denounce strikes as counter-revolutionary. In this respect, see the front page we reproduce here of of an official Sandinist newspaper whose headline reads: STRIKES WOULD BE AN EXCUSE FOR A YANKEE INVASION! The subtitle in white on black reads: "The strike is not necessary in Nicaragua because power is in the hands of the workers", exactly the same argument used by the rulers of state capitalist Russia and East Europe. In reality it is precisely the fact that the workers in Nicaragua have to sell their ability to work to an employer, private or state, for a wage or salary that shows both that they don't exercise power and that they need the strike weapon to defend themselves.

So, even without calling into doubt the sincerity of (most of) the Sandinist leaders and of those who support them in Nicaragua — by all accounts they do seem to genuinely wish to improve the lot of the ordinary people living there — the fact remains that there is no hope for the people of the so-called Third World as long as capitalism, in the form of the world market economy, remains the dominant world system. Their standard of living and their freedom will remain restricted either by a government operating openly in the interest of native and foreign private capitalists or, if a revolution occurs to try to free them from this oppression, by the very leaders of this revolution however sincere or well-meaning they might be (for the experience of such revolutions shows that in time leaders evolve, after eliminating any genuinely sincere elements among them, into a self-conscious, cynical and hypocritical ruling and privileged class.)

The only hope for the people of the Third World is a world socialist revolution to replace existing world capitalism. Until this happens capitalism will remain in existence in the Third World, either in the form of private capitalism under some corrupt and authoritarian government or in the form of state capitalism under the dictatorship of a vanguard party. In other words, even if they take up arms against such brutal dictators as Batista, Somoza or Pinochet, the most they can achieve is a new class society of state capitalism, not a classless society without exploitation.

Adam Buick

The Demand for "Workers" Control (1945)

From the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reynolds News (4th November, 1945) published the following letter:—

   "I am surprised that Mr. Shinwell says he does not subscribe to the doctrine of workers' control of industry. Surely this has always been one of the basic principles of the Trade Union Movement.
   It appears that, instead of applying Socialism, many of our leaders are endeavouring to find a way out of or around the problem. Only a planned economy of workers' control can realise a full Socialist State.

B. Darke

London, E.9.

Mr. Darke's view is that of many supporters of the Labour Party.

It is completely divergent from the intentions of the Labour Government.

The idea has also been expressed by strikes recently.

The idea is a plausible one: simply this, that if a Government of "workers' representatives" (Labour leaders) are in office it is "Workers' control" of industry.

That therefore things will be run increasingly to the benefit of the workers—correspondingly to the detriment of the capitalists, realising, eventually, planned economy in a "full Socialist State".

Wherein lies Mr. Darke's error? First of all, workers' control is not Socialism. Socialism abolishes classes and therefore the working class. Socialism is democratic control of production by the whole community—not by a section of it.

Secondly, and more importantly, neither is a Labour Government "workers' control."

First, "workers control" in the sense of operating production is universal to-day. But if by "workers' control" is meant control of the ownership and distribution of the wealth the workers produce, it obviously cannot be under capitalism. Capitalism is a system based on private ownership; so long as capitalists own, they control.

Where Mr. Darke is confused is that he believes, like so many workers, that a Government composed of men who one worked with their hands, Labour leaders who are ex-dockers, miners, grocers' boys and milk-float drivers, necessarily makes the policy and intentions of that Government different. It does not.

The Labour Party is elected on a programme for the retention of capitalism. It has deluded many electors that its nationalisation schemes are Socialism. They are not.

It urges the workers now to work harder and tighten their belts to increase exports as a step to "Socialism." It is not.

Horatio.

Too Little Too Late . . . (2015)

From the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . That’s the most that will ever be done under capitalism about the problems that global warming will bring.

The way the capitalist system works rules out the effective action at world level that is needed to begin tackling the problem. It even encourages economic activities that contribute to it.

Capitalism is based on production being controlled by profit-seeking enterprises which, supported by governments, compete on the market to buy resources and sell products. This competitive pursuit of profits is the essence of capitalism. It’s what capitalism is all about and what prevents any effective action to deal with climate change.

Nobody can deny that global warming is taking place. Nor that, if it continues unchecked, it would have disastrous consequences – such as rising sea-levels and increased desertification – through its effects on the climates of the different parts of the world. There can only be argument over what is causing it. Most scientists in the field take the view that it has mainly been caused by the increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere largely as a result of the burning of the fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas.

If this is the case, then one part of any solution has to be cut back on burning these fuels. But this is not happening. In fact, on a world scale, their use is increasing. This is because this is currently the cheapest way of generating the energy to drive industry – and the logic of capitalism compels the profit-seeking enterprises that control production to use the cheapest methods. If they don’t, their competitors will.

What is the solution? First, the competitive struggle for profits as the basis for production must be ended. This requires that the Earth’s natural and industrial resources become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, and on this basis alone, can an effective programme to deal with the problem be drawn up and implemented, because production would then be geared to serving human interests and no longer to make a profit for competing enterprises.

There will be those who say that we haven’t the time to wait for the coming into being of this, in their view, unlikely or long-distant solution, and that we must therefore do something now. In this age of apathy and cynicism when any large-scale change is dismissed, this may seem a plausible argument but it begs the question. It assumes that a solution can be implemented within capitalism. But if it can’t (as Socialists maintain), then concentrating on something now rather than on changing the basis of society and production will be a waste of valuable time while the situation gets worse.

---leaflet handed out at climate change events. Bulk copies are available on request and the cost of postage from: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.