Who will do the dirty work? (1981)

From the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a familiar scene. You’ve been pointing out the absurdity of a system in which the people who produce all the goods and services have access only to what their wages can buy while the Tiny Rowlands of this world, good at inheriting and making money but nothing else, possess and enjoy enough wealth to buy anything that takes their fancy. You’ve suggested that it’s time to get rid of the wages system, money and the negative employer-employee relationship; time for people to produce goods not for their employer to make a profit but so that these goods can be freely and directly available to all who need them. But what about the dirty work? You answer this objection by pointing out that advanced technology, when used for the benefit of all, will leave hardly any ‘dirty work’ at all to be done. But your objector is still shaking his head, unconvinced: “You can’t mechanise everything. What I want to know is who’ll sweep the streets and collect the rubbish?”

It’s true that the mechanisation argument isn’t entirely convincing. It’s hard to imagine a world without any unpleasant work and anyway it’s not for socialists to try and predict the exact details of how socialism will be organised. Better to answer the objection by looking at what people mean, and assume, when they talk about ‘dirty work’.

Work that is messy, that gets your hands dirty, is usually considered dirty work. But not always. Doctors and nurses, for example, have close contact with human functions that are normally regarded as dirty yet few people would consider that they did dirty work. For most people dirty work doesn’t just mean dirt but dirt plus heavy monotonous activity requiring little skill or creativity. This sort of work couldn’t, most people believe, be done voluntarily. The only way to motivate people to do it, we’re told, is by offering them money.

Yet if we look around we find that even in today’s society most dirty work isn’t done for money. Who sweeps and scrubs the floors, dusts and polishes, does the washing and the washing up, changes the nappies and worse? Women usually do it, but whether women or men, they do it for nothing. If something like half the human race spends most of its time doing dirty work without getting a wage for it, can it possibly be argued that money is the only motivation that will get people to do this kind of work? In fact the opposite appears to be true, namely that people do any kind of work better when motivated by social need — in the case of most women the needs of their family.

But is dirty work as objectionable anyway as most people believe it to be? Behind the belief that it is, lie two main assumptions. The first is that people don’t like dirt. Is this true? Children certainly do, in spite of strict training to dislike it. And in later life many still enjoy such ‘dirty’ activities as messing with bike or car engines, playing rugby on a muddy pitch, digging the garden . . . The second assumption is that people will naturally steer clear of activities that are strenuous or boring. But this again isn’t entirely true. When people are after a given result, they’re quite capable of going for activities of just this kind: they’ll jog around the park or swim up and down the pool for the sake of health and fitness, they’ll dig a patch to grow vegetables in, they’ll sand down woodwork before painting it to get a smooth finish. Jogging, digging and sandpapering aren’t the most exciting, creative ways of passing the time, but many people will do them if it’s a means to a desired end.

After all this, you think you’ve convinced your objector that dirty work is no real barrier to socialism. But he’s still shaking his head: “No matter what you say, nobody would want to be a dustbin man ”. And he’s right; of course: nobody would want to spend their entire working life collecting dustbins. But that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t mind collecting dustbins occasionally, when it was socially necessary.

Unfortunately though, in the society we live in at present, work isn’t done on the basis of people cooperating to do what’s socially necessary. Work is done within the system of employment. People have to sell their physical and mental energies to an employer in order to earn the money that will buy them the necessities of life. Once they have contracted to sell their energies as, say, dustbin collectors or teachers or bank workers, they will have to carry it out for most of their waking hours, perhaps for the rest of their active lives. They do not see the desired goal that would give them the incentive to work willingly and enjoy ably (a pay packet is no substitute). The imposed daily stretch of work and the lack of variety make all jobs boring and unsatisfying. In these unattractive conditions any type of work becomes objectionable and dirty work becomes positively offensive.

In socialism people will no longer work for an employer or for a wage or salary but simply to achieve a desired result. All the completely negative work that has to be done today — such as the production of armaments and the killing and destruction (the real 'dirty' work) — will disappear. So will all the useless non-productive work associated with money and production for profit — such as insurance, banking, sales promotion . . . All work will be equally useful and necessary to society and no stigma will be attached to any of it. People will be free to create conditions that will make any task pleasant and interesting, and in the process they will be able to put technology — now ensnared by the profit motive — to its best use.

People don't mind getting their hands dirty nor their bodies tired. What they do mind is having to work under conditions that have taken all the pleasure out of work. Change the conditions (get rid of capitalism and establish socialism) and then the very concept of 'dirty work' will disappear.

Christine Moss

Law and Order in the U.S.A. (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member of the World Socialist Party of the US paints a somewhat frightening picture of politics in America

If you saw it only on television and stayed off the streets, the political situation in the United States this year seemed like a second-rate circus which had suddenly and dramatically risen in entertainment value. The star performers—Humphrey, Nixon and Wallace—were clowns at best, whose acts included the usual inane platitudes, empty promises, perpetual smiles, and abysmal ignorance of the system they defended. At worst, they were not clowns, but surrealist weasels, one of whom was seeking the power to provoke and crush insurrections, to fill the concentration camps which have already been constructed here under the McCarran Act, to complete the extermination of the Vietnamese, to bring on a chemical, biological, and/or atomic world war, and to turn the circus into a chamber of horrors whose only audience would be the eskimos lucky enough to survive the epidemics of anthracis and tularemia. 

The theme of all three performers was the same: change "our" military strategy in Vietnam and do something about law and order. Many U.S. "radicals" have been thoroughly shaken by Wallace's success among white workers, recalling that the Nazis succeeded with a similar combination of racist chauvinism and pretended hostility to big business. And indeed, his aggressive, anti-intellectual appeals to the racism and bigotry of his supporters are frightening to hear. But the actual policies that Nixon is (or Humphrey would have been) likely to adopt are no less frightening.

We should be grateful, in one way, that "law and order" became such a strident campaign issue in the election, because it gives us a chance to expose the primary aim of government. That aim is to protect the social order of capitalism. Government is the agency which maintains the control of the capitalist class over their property and their workers. It is essential to grasp the fact that a given form of government is the result of a particular social order, not the cause. Otherwise we cannot understand the true function of elections, and we cannot understand politics. Instead we will approach politics the way most workers do, and waste our time in futile and meaningless debate over the personalities of individual candidates.

The phrase "law and order: has the merit of calling our attention away from trivia like sales taxes, trade agreements, foreign aid, directly to the basis of politics itself—the structure of the society. That structure consists of two major classes: the capitalist class, who own the means for producing and distributing wealth, and the working class, who depend for their living on wages and salaries. There are groups which do not fit into either category, but the nature of the social order is determined by the relationship between these two classes.

Because the interests of the two classes are irreconcilable, they are most of the time locked in a struggle for power; and one cannot increase its power except at the expense of its opposite. The interests of the capitalist class are to conserve its right to property over industries and resources, invest capital, sell commodities for profit, expand world-wide markets, obtain cheap raw materials, control the social behaviour of non-owners and hire competent labor at the lowest possible cost. The pursuit of these interests forces the capitalist class to inflict misery on everyone else. They must break or emasculate unions. They must employ salesmen to lie and trick their way into homes and sell un-needed products, pay engineers to make cheap, dangerous cars, send police into the streets to club, stab, and shoot the people who cause trouble for them, and draft troops to deal with resistance to their power and hold onto valuable real estate.

The interests of the working class, whatever their color, are to find jobs, obtain decent living and working conditions, raise their wages, cling to their civil liberties, and ultimately, put an end to alienated work, take over control of society's wealth and distribute it for their own benefit.

The government is a class instrument, the means by which law is made and enforced. It regulates matters which concern the capitalist class as a whole, but which no one corporation or capitalist enterprise can manage by itself: interstate commerce, law enforcement, taxation, foreign investment subsidy, and suppression of threats to the capitalist system from riots or wars.

Politics for the workers is usually an exercise in futility. They choose between various capitalist candidates on the basis of a few speeches and television appearances, and hope for a law now and the in their favour. In times of social turmoil, most of them support candidates who re-assure them and promise to keep things normal. Having only a vague idea of their own interests, workers are swindled into accepting the best deal they can get from the capitalist parties. Time after time they scab on each other, smash their most militant political organizations, police and suppress the "radicals" among themselves who have begun to wake up, dilute their collective strength by using ethnic minority groups within their class as scapegoats, and fight and die in defence of the very property investments which exploit them. Then they are told that to vote for anything but a capitalist party is "unrealistic" because only capitalist parties can win elections.

The workers in short are a subject class. They are prevented from changing their position by their failure to see government as a class weapon. The schools teach them that government mediates between classes, and that they owe something to the government because it represents them. But no government, in a society made up of two classes with irreconcilable interests, can represent the interests of both classes. If it represents the interests of one class, then it is by definition suppressing the other. Either the government represents our employers, or it represents us. Either the government represents our employer, or it represents us. And since it protects our employers' monopoly over the nation's wealth, orders us to risk our lives in its defence, limits our right to strike and safeguards their right to exploit us, and maintains our cages for our "rehabilitation" in the event that we rebel against their authority, we should recognise that "law and order" in their mouths is just one more of the many frauds by which they remain in the seat of power.

Law and order means the law and order of General Motors, Standard Oil, Socony-Mobil, U.S. Steel—the law and order of the capitalist class. For the rest of us, law and order means ten thousand troops clubbing and gassing crowds of unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Chicago. More important, it means a system which enriches 10 per cent of the population at the expense of the other 90 per cent.

What capitalist politicians want us to understand by it, of course, is mothers being able to wheel their baby carriages through the park without getting raped, and smiling policemen who help little children across the street. But what their use of the tern suggests is that the ordinary methods of protecting the system are no longer working. Individual assaults on the property of the capitalist class are handled by courts and prisons; but the courts are not prepared to handle mass insurrections, nor are they equipped for things such as the guerrilla warfare that broke out last summer against the Cleveland police.

The phrase "law and order" is intended to prepare the politically ignorant majority of Americans for some extraordinary, perhaps unbelievably brutal, means to cope with dissent. The government, with working class support, may suspend what few civil liberties remain to the workers. It may draft half a million young men for continuous occupation of the major cities, and imprison the leaders of every organization which is considered subversive. It may dupe white workers into venting their discontent on black workers in a kind of domestic Vietnam. The future seems grim, and the only thing that will brighten it is the spread of socialist concepts.

Stan Blake

History from below (1978)

Theatre Review from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Turned Upside Down, National Theatre, London. (Available in Penguin Books.)

Christopher Hill's book The World Turned Upside Down tells of the other English Revolution—the one that did not succeed; that was not led by Oliver Cromwell and Fairfax; the revolution that wanted to turn the world upside down. This is not the revolution that most histories revolve around. It is probably far more interesting. As Hill puts it, some of the figures in this story "speak more directly to us than Charles I or Pym or General Monck, who appear as history makers in the text books". At the time of the Civil Wars (1640s) and in particular in the period immediately after the execution of Charles I, England was rife with subversive ideas. A melting pot of dissenters, levellers, diggers, ranters, and early Quakers; every level of English society, including the church and the army, was touched by the passion of revolution. 

The common link was religion. From Cromwell downwards, those who were interested in changing the world sought authority and respectability from the bible. Those who opposed revolution used the bible to justify repression. For some, revolution meant a new way of approaching God; for others, the ranters in particular, revolution meant the end of the doctrine of sin and the idea that God inhabited everyone and everything; in effect the dissolution of religion.

The most interesting character was the digger Gerard Winstanley, whose ideas were briefly outlined in the Socialist Standard in June this year. Winstanley wanted a community without money, buying and selling, wage working, without army and law. Although the disasters of the digger experiments (strife within and brutal repression from without) caused Winstanley to recant somewhat on aspects of his more extreme views, he stood for common ownership of the earth by locally self supporting communities. Nor were his views utopian. Winstanley had practical views on the organisation of production; which may not have resulted in the abundance that is now possible, but which might have led to the majority being immeasurably better fed, housed, and clothed.

Hill's book is history from below, the story of the common, though extraordinary, people of the time. Keith Dewhurst has made a valiant attempt to turn this huge canopy of religious and revolutionary fervour into a play. The stage is crammed with incident; the execution of Charles I, Winstanley's insolence, (he refuses to doff his hat to Fairfax, a mere "fellow creature"), his anti-property and law views, the disputes between capitalist and landlord, the confrontations between army and people, the extreme sexual liberation of the ranters, disputes between property based, and real concepts of freedom; and the ultimate failure and disillusion of all except Winstanley. All this and more is crammed into the two hours traffic of the stage.

Why does the play fail? Ultimately, what it does not bring out is Hill's main thesis — that this was a period of real potential for an alternative society. Looking back now, one can say that it was bound to fail. But, argues Hill, looking at it then it was different; for the people involved an alternate society seemed viable. Perhaps in attempting to present a grand sweep of mid-seventeenth century history, Dewhurst was too ambitious. He might have succeeded better had he concentrated more on one digger community, and allowed the turbulent and exciting background to emerge through it. However, the play is yet another reminder of the long history of communist ideas, and as such is another blow at the absurdity of private ownership.

Ronnie Warrington

Editorial: Festival of Commerce (1991)

Editorial from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the jamboree of commercialism known as Christmas approaches, we take the opportunity of expressing our attitude to it and wishing you a tolerable and enlightening New Year.

Christmas developed from an ancient pagan festival: both the date and superstitions like the mistletoe are of pre-Christian origin. It is supposed to celebrate the birth of "Jesus Christ", a possibly legendary figure claimed as the Messiah and as a demigod. He is the focal point of one the most powerful and widespread, oppressive and stultifying religious movements that have tortured humanity.

Religion cannot be reconciled with a rational view of the universe and society. Inverting Genesis, we say "humans made God in their own image". The rule of God in the universe reflects and serves to justify rule by human masters in society. Why else is he called "King"? Indeed. why else is he "he" rather than "she"? Like our real rulers, he is portrayed as powerful yet merciful, presiding sadly over the labyrinth of human misery. If God exists, he is our enemy.

Nowadays Christmas is primarily a secular festival. The rat-race is suspended for a few days to give the morale of the wage and salary slaves a midwinter boost. During the festivities, those that can afford it try to enjoy themselves. The limited extent to which they succeed is evidenced by their frantic efforts to drown out the consciousness of their alienation by loud music, over-eating and—above all—getting pissed.And then back to the grindstone.

Expensive and unwanted gifts are purchased and exchanged, to the great profit of all the business interests involved. This custom is scarcely a spontaneous expression of affection. On the whole it is more like a ritual duty. A significant point is the way people are embarrassed to receive a present and to have none to give in return. The exchange economy not only fragments society into a myriad of isolated competitors; it also produces the poisonous ethos of "you don't get or give something for nothing", which penetrates personal life.

It is customary at Christmas to speak of Peace on Earth and Good Will To All Men. But the tragedy of an outmoded and insane social organisation continues as usual. Think of its delights. Poverty and destruction in the midst of actual or potential plenty. Slums, famines, pollution, commercial destruction of wildlife, waste, more waste, social divisions and strife of all kinds. Built-in obsolescence, advertising, the domination of money. Uniforms, tanks, bombs, prisons, muggings, alcoholism, prayers, prostitution, national anthems, bigotry, fear, ignorance, loneliness, AIDS, Neil Major and John Kinnock. Feeling better now?

Humanity has the means—technical, material, organisational—to build a new world of freedom, harmony and enough for all. A world in which the enormous potential of modern knowledge and technology, released from the service of commerce and war, can be realised. A world in which the human species owns its means of life in common, and controls them democratically in the interests of all. A world in which the direct satisfaction of human needs of all kinds had replaced profit and the "national interest" as the moving force of social life. A world which will know nothing of money or coercive government or national frontiers. A world fit to live in.

We think humanity is fully capable of constructing such a socialist society once it has the understanding necessary. We must establish the new society soon of the species is to survive. Helping people grasp this is the purpose of the Socialist Party. Don't just wish us luck if you sympathise (we don't believe in luck, either). Contact us for more information; and you might feel inclined to join and help us in the new year.

Letter: Socialism and Red Shirts (1933)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent sends the following letter of enquiry:—

Tottenham, N.15.

Dear Sir,

Will you please tell me, through the "S.S.," and not by the post, how long is the Socialist Party of Great Britain becoming theatrical?

For some months past the members of your Party, in Victoria Park, on Sunday, have now taken to wearing red shirts, so the indication of a class conscious men will, in the near future, be determined by the colour of his shirt, and not the state of his upper story.

On Monday evening last, I attended a "debate" at Ridley Road between a member of the Communist [Party] and another of your party. Wonder of wonders, —the Communist was wearing a white shirt and collar and a green tie, and your representative was wearing a red shirt. Various members in the crowd, within my hearing, passed remarks about it.

I have been interested in Socialism nearly all my life. Nearly thirty years ago I first listened to Fitzgerald and Anderson at our local meeting place, but not once have I seen them in red shirts or "Bread or Work" banners.

If red shirts stood for anything intelligent it would not be so bad, but it is a latter-day stunt of a so-called Communist Party, and to it the red shirts should be confined. There is no room in a class conscious party for theatricals. It is pure and simple  an advocacy of a physical encounter with the Capitalist class.

Yours for Socialism,

       W. J. Palmer

Reply.

Our correspondent bases his question on an implication which is not in accordance with the facts. He writes: "For some months past the members of your Party in Victoria Park on Sunday have now taken to wearing red shirts . . . "

This statement would convey to those who do not visit Victoria Park that all or most members of the S.P.G.B. who visit Victoria Park wear red shirts as a sort of uniform. This is not correct. What is correct is that our correspondent has seen a few members of the S.P.G.B. whose shirts happen to be red in colour.

We can therefore assure our correspondent that the S.P.G.B. has not changed its view that membership of the Socialist Party must be based on the understanding and acceptance of Socialist principles. The S.P.G.B. has not adopted red shirts or any kind of uniform. If individual members of the S.P.G.B. happen to have shirts and ties which are red in colour, that has no significance whatever, any more than the fact that other members wear blue shirts, grey shirts, or shirts of any other colour or mixture of colours.

We assure our correspondent that the S.P.G.B. is not deserting Socialist principles for theatrical display. We would also draw his attention to the significant fact that he nowhere suggests that the individuals he saw in red shirts (including the S.P.G.B. representative in debate) departed in the slightest degree from the enunciation of Socialist principles. If he ever finds members of the S.P.G.B. doing so he will have reason to criticise. Until that happens our correspondent has no ground for his suggestion that such a departure has occurred merely because he sees a shirt of some particular colour.

Ed. Comm.

The "Intellectuals". (1912)

Book Review from the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

"We dedicate this little book to H. M. Hyndman, Robert Blatchford, and Keir Hardie, who can give this country a Socialist party tomorrow, if they care to lead the way. If our leaders will not lead, then to the rank and file, who are getting ready to go forward without them."

The above is from the fly-leaf of "The Problem of Parliament," the work in which Victor Grayson appealed for unity between the various parties which have been pretending to teach Socialism to the working class. In that work he repeatedly shows that there is no distinction between the glorified capitalism of the Fabian Society and his own conception of a new order. Socialism, he says, is "merely another and better form of government . . . The ruling of a State or municipality is the highest form of industry and commerce, and must be put in the hands of the most experienced and highly trained men of business who can be discovered. . . .  Control by expert officials . . . that is the ideal before Socialists."

On almost every page the idea is in evidence that we find on the fly-leaf. The leaders must show the way. The "Intellectuals" must "fire the people with a desire for reform." If they don't—well, Grayson says the rank and file are preparing to go forward without them. That is the one thing dreaded by the ruling class; an intelligent working class without leaders. The latter, too, object to any scheme in which they do not figure conspicuously. Leaders, therefore, become identified with the ruling class—their interests are identical and in opposition to the working class, which can never be free, even in thought, while it submits to leaders.

The Fabians, I.L.P., S.D.P., and Clarionettes all teach the same dogma to the workers. The B.S.P. has endorsed it by assimilating those who previously held it. They fail completely to substantiate their claim that they possess the qualities necessary to leadership.

When common-sense examines their utterances or their efforts at construction, they are discovered to be not even smart enough to avoid contradiction, not brilliant enough to cover up their inconsistencies, not sufficiently intelligent—or cunning—to obscure their indefiniteness either in object, principles, or methods.

Directly the B.S.P., without principles or constitution, begins to take action on the political field, its looseness of organisation must become evident, not only to its own rank and file, but also to outsiders.

The party at its formation, and on other occasions (including the conference), has said that its object is "Socialism, nothing less." A single object, and that Socialism definitely expressed should, they imagine, place them above suspicion. But apparently the possession of a single object does not prevent them having others—many others, in fact.

Free Maintenance of Children, the Co-operative Organisation of Unemployed Labour, the MinimumWage in All Industries, and the Eight Hours Law, were mentioned as some by Mr. Hyndman, and agreed to by those present. These evidently do not offer sufficient scope for the ambitious leader; so the conference declared in favour of Proportional Representation, Adult Suffrage, Payment of Election Expenses, the Initiation and Referendum, Single Chamber Legislature, and the Substitution of a Committee Representative of all Parties for the Present Cabinet—also in favour of Home Rule for Ireland.

Yet all the prominent leaders who were present at the conference, and who gave their sanction and blessing, have at different times themselves shown the fallacy of reforms, when describing how working-class conditions worsen, sometimes in spite of them, often because of them.

An organisation which claims at the outset to be revolutionary must be badly led indeed when its revolutionary object—the only excuse it can advance for its nominal separation from the Labour Party—becomes secondary or ultimate; has to wait while something else is done first. Socialism, they say in effect, is the only object of the party: let's make sure of Home Rule for Ireland and other things.

Reforms and revolution are mutually contradictory. Said Mr. Hyndman: "We are face to face with a system which is impossible of reform. Moreover, they confuse the issue." To dally with reforms is therefore to set up by far the most serious opposition to revolution. That section of the workers who have become disgusted with the sickly. frightened attitude and open compromise of Labour M.P.s, are caught up in the new party that makes revolution its first pious expression of principle, and then proceeds to place it in the lumber room of forgotten things, by dragging into the field of discussion the freak like measures of ambitious and hysterical politicians—non-essentials so far as the workers are concerned—things that do not matter.

The B.S.P. gives even greater latitude—if that were possible—than does the I.L.P. Every member has taken with him into the new party the nostrums on which he has relied for popularity. Inclusion of the trickster means acceptance of his tricks. The policy of the party can only be obtained by totting up the idiosyncracies of its leaders. Grayson's contribution, for instance, broken bottles for strikers, getting kidnapped when something special is expected of him, calling himself a Socialist—as he did at Colne Valley—and running on a Liberal Programme. Blatchford can advocate "the buying out of the capitalist class—by the working class—but not at fancy prices" or appeal to the workers to "stand up for their country (!) right or wrong," in time of war. Hyndman can run an election on Home Rule, one chamber rule, reversal of the Osborne judgement, or any of the numerous "stepping-stones" on which he tried to climb into Parliament, but which he calls "stepping-stones to Socialism." Quelch will be free to unfurl the banner of the citizen army. probably claiming as a first contingent the results of the "great propaganda effort" outlined by the Executive for the enrollment of a million Socialists. It is rumoured also that Mr. Jesse Collings is likely to apply for membership, with his "three acres and a cow"; but even without this addition the B.S.P. is entitled to the appellation of the Labour Party—"a queer lot."

This little band of disappointed pilgrims of St. Stephen's have embodied in a single resolution, purporting to be their attitude toward industrial organisations, sufficient evidence to prove their incapacity to lead, their readiness to compromise and confuse, and their inability to cover up their clumsy attempts to curry favour with every section of those organised industrially.

They are prepared to give their sympathy and support in the conduct any struggles in which trade unions may be engaged, or in the task of consolidating, federating, or amalgamating their forces. It evidently does not matter which. They extend their blessing to those who believe that industrial organisations, primarily concerned with haggling over the price of labour-power, and latterly building up funds to keep their members off capitalist rates, are necessary as a framework on which to construct a co-operative commonwealth.

They say it is their duty to bring the workers together as class-conscious trade unionists—whatever they may be—and Socialists, so that, with the existing trade unions, they will "absolutely control by their labour the entire industry of the country." By this time we should be justified in assuming that the working class had got all they wanted. No so, however. The control of industry by Labour is merely subsidiary to the "main function of the party," which is expressed in the same resolution as: "The organisation of an independent political party of the working class, aiming at the conquest of political power by that class, as the political expression of the working-class movement, and as a means to its final emancipation."

Surely no worker with ordinary sense and discrimination can fail to discover in this obsequious truckling to the mistaken beliefs of so many different sections, the real object of the B.S.P. leaders—to obtain a following in order that they may sell them. Parliamentary seats and suchlike rewards only go those who lead successfully. If the discontented ones would succeed they must find something less transparent than this—most important of the resolutions passed at their first conference.

The intrigues and conspiracies of political-cum-Syndicalist, whether transparent or dexterous, should impose upon no one. The fallacy of reforms and the suffering that goes with so-called economic action—without corresponding gain—becomes very day more apparent. Socialism has long ago reached that stage where there is no longer any excuse for confusion. The revolutionary object, the principles upon which alone all workers can find a common platform, together with the method, are dictated as well by science and history as by common sense. Those who understand cannot spare the time to discriminate between the ignorant leader and the unscrupulous adventurer—the effect of both is confusion. Our task is to make Socialism clear to the workers, and we shall persevere with that task until the game of the leaders is played out—until there is no one to lead, because "the rank and file are ready to go forward of themselves."

F. Foan

Having a rotten Christmas (1983)

A Short Story from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

"I suppose", said Tomlinson, waving his hand-rolled Old Holborn as if it were a large, expensive cigar, "you'll be spending it at home with the family?" I looked at him with a wary surprise; for three years in that office I had been working under, or perhaps I should say had been terrified by, him — by the huge temper which sparkled behind his pebble glasses, by the rage which he regularly turned on me when he knew he had made a mistake. if I could find the courage, I would hand in my notice. Now, on this Christmas Eve, I was unnerved by his unaccustomed affability, with its hint that he saw me as a human being who might after all live in a home with a family.

Without warning he lunged to grip my shoulder, bared orange teeth and coaxed across his face, now very close to mine, an expression I had not seen there before. This was it, I thought — the physical attack I had feared for so long, and with wing-like gyrations of my elbow I tried to dislodge his hand. But his grip was strong (he had once been an Olympic gymnast) and for some seconds we writhed wordlessly at his desk until, as he panted "Merry Christmas", it dawned on me that he was smiling.

Tomlinson was shipping manager to a small firm which had begun its life in an office and warehouse in the City of London, importing and selling chemicals. There was, to put it mildly, a resistance to change there; the management was entrenched in a traditional formality which, among other things, ensured that you had to work there for years before you could earn the prefix "Mister" to your name. Nobody, of course, ever used their first name and if one of the secretaries got married the rest of the staff simply continued to call her by her maiden name.

The post-war property boom had blasted the firm out of the high rents of the City into a modern, bleak building in a west-suburban industrial estate. Quite a few of the employees lived in the East End and beyond; before the move they had had a simple journey to work but now each day they had to travel from one end of the Central Line to the other, reading their Daily Express and telling each other jokes using their surnames/ Whatever the reason for such loyalty, it could not have been that the firm were paying high wages. I know that I was paid well below the going rate and, after one fearfully sneaked look at his pay packet, I knew that Tomlinson, for all his airs, was treated no better. Twice a year we got a bonus which was handed out, after weeks of coy reminders from Tomlinson, as if the firm was swamping us in generosity.

It was in this mood that Tomlinson approached me that day. We had just received the Christmas bonus and I suppose he expected my usual enmity would have been disarmed by gratitude. It was, he may have reasoned, the season of good will (although there was never any celebration in that firm); time to repair some of the damage he had done during the rest of the year, perhaps to catch me off guard with an admission that the firm was a relaxed, friendly, caring bunch and that Tomlinson was an impulsively warm and festive personality.

In my gloomier, more penetrative moments I could see that what might be called right was on their side. Far beyond the passages and courts of the City, beyond the gimcrack suburbs, the popular christian festival of Christmas is offered to us just as Tomlinson was offering his hand to me. In the midst of a war, with thousands dying each day in unimaginable fear and pain, Christmas is the time for monarchs and statesmen to place special emphasis on their obscenities about peace and human dignity. A social system in which an abundantly rich minority live off a grindingly poor majority is justified, when Christmas comes, in soothing words about the good times which will come when we have had a change of heart. As millions die each year in famine, Christmas feeds us with its special brand of hypocrisy. Its festivity is a time to try to escape an inexorable, horrible reality, for workers to disguise their impoverished homes in tinsel and coloured paper and to anaesthetise their tensions at the prospect of the exploitation process waiting to swallow them again, when the holiday is over and the decorations are a dusty heap in a corner.

Christmas exists on the delusion that capitalism need be as it is — indeed, at times that it is not as it is. But this society is not a matter of human defects. Poverty exists, not because the working class, who suffer from it, are morally deficient and their masters morally perfect. War lays waste to life, not through human aggression or acquisitiveness. Society is blighted by repression, not because its people ignore moral instruction.

It cannot be said too often, or too emphatically, that the effects of capitalism are unavoidable as long as the system endures. Capitalism inexorably produces war, poverty and human degradation and these problems will not be abolished by seeking a change in hearts but through a revolutionary upheaval. Anything — like the Christmas interlude — which attempts to persuade us otherwise is an episode in hypocrisy and delusion.

All of this was apparent, as it always was with me, as I faced Tomlinson that Christmas Eve. I would like to be able to say that I shook off his hand and told him what I thought of him, of the company he adored, of the country he gave his loyalty to, of the social system he regarded as the ultimate in human rationality. But I wasn't up to it so I muttered and shuffled my feet. reached out for the bill of lading file and immersed myself thankfully in what Tomlinson called work.

And yes, I did spend it at home with my family, where all good wage slaves go at Christmas. But there was no escape there; for the family is not, as the queen so often tells us, a haven of warm security. It may not be too obvious, around the Christmas fireside, but the family has a role in capitalism — to socialise us from childhood into an acceptance of capitalism's privilege-based morality. There was no escape there nor anywhere; the Tories were not long back in power and Suez lay in the not-too-distant future. It was still possible before reality set in, for the media bandits to talk about a new Elizabethan age. I gloomily contemplated capitalism's future and the immediate fact that after Boxing Day everyone would stop being talkative and replete and go back to the deprived and furtive personalities of wage-slaves.

I had a rotten Christmas.

Ivan

‘Surplus Theory’ versus Marxian Theory (2013)

From the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The work of Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick contains some insights for socialists but it is not Marxian economics and is not socialist.

The late twentieth-century saw the demise of many governments that viewed themselves as heirs of the ideas of Karl Marx. The failure of these regimes was seen by their opponents as the triumph of capitalism and the death of socialism. With the rise of neoliberal economics in advanced industrial countries the future of the left did indeed seem bleak. The legacy of Karl Marx and Marxian socialism, however, was far from dead. As the current global recession shook the confidence of neoliberal prescriptions Marx’s economic ideas received renewed attention. We examine here the theories of Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff in relation to class, surplus value, their definition of communism and how to achieve it. Richard Wolff in particular has gained much attention in light of the recession through his video When Capitalism Hits the Fan.

Reformist road to nowhere

The Socialist Party rejects the minority seizure of power or governing with a programme of reforms with the aim of achieving socialism at some point in the future. We argue that pursuing an objective of seizing power in the name of the working class or of a programme of reforms that aim at removing the worst excesses of capitalism do not move society any further towards socialism. Replacing the immediate objective of socialism with more immediate aims in effect removes the socialist objective altogether. Others, most others in fact, who have called themselves socialist or communist in the last century and today have rejected this approach. They have argued for the necessity of the seizure of state power by minority parties or, more often, have seen in the reform programmes of labour parties the hope of gradual socialist transformation. The experience of the twentieth century saw the failure of these approaches to transform society on socialist lines. What ensued was the collapse of confidence in the possibility of socialism and indeed in the belief that there was any alternative to capitalism.

If it was assumed that various governments had been or were in fact variants of socialism or communism then it is quite understandable that confidence in that political outlook would either diminish or that a reworking of assumptions would occur, given that the populations of these ‘socialist’ countries appeared to prefer capitalism. Marxism or ‘socialism’ could either be discarded or the understanding of them reassessed. Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff are in the latter category and have reworked Marxian economics into ‘surplus theory’, which attempts to reinterpret Marxian economics in the light of the failure of so-called ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ governments to arrive at their declared communist objective.

To their credit they do not define the former USSR, China, Cuba, etc. as socialist but as state-capitalist. Likewise they acknowledge that the various attempts to regulate or reform capitalism in the name of socialism resulted in merely more regulated capitalism rather than something different to capitalism. In fact, Wolff and Resnick describe quite nicely the swings, often in response to economic crises, between relatively less or relatively more regulated capitalism in the last century or so. They reject the idea of socialism as it is commonly misunderstood – as state ownership and planned production as against capitalist private ownership and production for the market. At the root of their argument is the understanding that private or state capitalism merely changes the exploiter and does not remove the exploitation. However, their understanding of the root of the exploitation of the working class is at odds with the arguments developed by most Marxian socialists who regard the former USSR and other such regimes as state capitalist.

Russian state capitalism

For us in the Socialist Party capitalism remained intact in the USSR because buying and selling, commodities, value, prices and profit continued. The employers, ceased to be private individuals owning capital and became instead the state, which owned and controlled the large scale means of production and received the surplus value produced. In place of a narrow elite of private owners of the means of production emerged a narrow social elite who controlled the state. The fundamentally exploitative relationship between capital and labour remained intact with the continued existence of money, wages, commodities, exchange, prices and the growth of a bureaucratic and brutal state. We argue that the disappearance of all of these facets of capitalist society would in fact be necessary before a socialist society could be argued to exist.

For Resnick and Wolff on the other hand capitalism remained intact because the mere legal transfer of private to state property and the shift of power from private capitalists to the state did not produce change at the enterprise level. The workers, the producers of surplus value, they argue, must also become the appropriators of surplus value. Their definition of communism is a society where those who produce the surplus in a given enterprise are the same people who own it and control its distribution. Their argument is the result of the application of their ‘surplus theory’, which condenses the three volumes of Capital into saying that Marx was essentially analysing past and present societies according to who appropriates and distributes the surplus produced in a given society. In this way their ‘surplus theory’ can be applied to areas like the family, where it is argued that men have historically extracted surplus labour from women in the home.

Conflict over surplus

Whilst Resnick and Wolff promote their analysis as Marxian, it is in fact a simplified departure from classical Marxian ideas that would have Marx turning in his grave. Marx and Engels and many subsequent socialists considered socialism to be a society which transcends wage-labour and money. ‘Surplus theory’, by contrast, sees no problem with the continuance of money, wages, commodities, exchange, prices and the state. From its perspective, as long as the productive workers obtain the surplus-value of their work and control its distribution then society is communist.

There is a thorny issue for ‘surplus theory’ to deal with in the relationship between ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ workers. This is a distinction between those workers in capitalist societies who produce surplus value (e.g. factory workers) and those workers who do not (civil servants, sales staff, security guards, etc.). Of course the one cannot exist without the other and in socialism, according to our definition, there would no longer be such a distinction as there would be no surplus value (although there would be a surplus of goods, of use-values). However, in a socialist society as defined by Resnick and Wolff there would be a tension between those who produced the surplus value and those that drew from it without contributing to it. They get around this by suggesting job-rotation and other practicable but pointless solutions.

The whole concept of ‘surplus theory’ is simplistic and misleading. Wolff and Resnick describe a process within capitalism where capitalists appropriate surplus value and then redistribute portions of it in order to reproduce the process. These payments are termed ‘subsumed class payments’ and include such things as taxes, wages to ‘unproductive’ employees, rent, interest, advertising, etc. In practice capitalists do not immediately appropriate surplus value but rather the products of the labour of their employees which they hope to sell on the market as commodities at a price that will provide them with a profit (the realisation of surplus value as money). It is not possible to distinguish the appropriation of surplus from the distribution of it as ‘subsumed class payments’ since the process is simultaneous and mostly determined behind the backs of those involved as market transactions (although boards do deliberate on how to distribute accumulated surplus value as cash reserves). Capitalism is an anarchic system of social production in which the capitalist class as a whole appropriates surplus value from the working class as a whole and cannot be understood adequately at the level of the individual enterprise.

What is class?

The use of ‘surplus theory’ can be confusing because it is written in terms familiar to Marxian socialists but with a quite different meaning. When they discuss class, for example, they define it by relationship to surplus value and reject definitions based on power, property or consciousness. For them, your place in capitalism is defined by whether you produce surplus value, derive your wages from surplus value (both working class according to our definition) or whether you appropriate the surplus value and control its distribution (the capitalist class). All processes which do not relate to the direct production of ‘surplus value’ are classified as ‘non-class processes’, such as education, culture and even politics. Their philosophical concept of over-determination (seehttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/overdetermination-and-marxian-theory-socialist-view-work-richard-wolff-and-st ) comes into play again because class is also argued to be no more important than non-class aspects of society – it is argued that that would be reductionism. By this reasoning if you change the class relationship, if you change the ownership and control of surplus value, other changes (at this point unknowable) will follow as class relates dialectically to all other areas of life.

This is a deliberate attempt to try to keep ‘surplus theory’ clear of issues of ownership or power. Socialism has failed to date, Resnick and Wolff argue, because socialism has been defined according to who owns the means of production and/or who controls them. This has led to various governments being called socialist because some of the means of production have passed into state ownership and, if enough of the means of production have been transferred, a large measure of social and political power is likewise conferred. This leads to their abstruse and obfuscating ‘surplus theory’ in which ‘communism’ according to their definition can exist in an economy with state ownership or private ownership and with state planning or markets or a blend of all of these features.

However, capitalism is a system of social production in which private property and the state developed to enable and maintain the expropriation of surplus value via wage-labour. Class (in the classical Marxian sense of the relation of the individual to the means of production) is, of course, not the only or necessarily the most important relation in a given identity or event – it does not determine our lives in any mechanical way. It does, though, suffuse our social experience and shapes and limits our individual and social possibilities. The position of the Socialist Party is at odds with Resnick and Wolff‘s ‘surplus theory.’ Socialism, for us, entails a working-class consciousness of the basis of our exploitation and the necessity of political action to gain control of the state as part of a revolutionary process in which common ownership and democratic control of the means of production would replace capitalism, the private or state ownership of the means of production. Our understanding of class involves awareness of the importance not just of the appropriation of surplus value but its mutual dependence on property relations and the state as well as, crucially, the developed political consciousness of the capitalist class and the currently limited political consciousness of the working class.

Worker co-operatives

So, after all their work developing the theories of over-determination and ‘surplus theory’ what are the practical solutions offered up by Wolff and Resnick. How are the working class to advance towards a world in which they appropriate and distribute their own surplus? Wolff in particular promotes a strategy to achieve social change around the concept of Workers Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). These are, despite Wolff’s efforts to argue that they are something new, essentially worker’s co-operatives. These, it is argued, combined with activism to promote democracy and gain political support could be the basis for achieving social transformation. Here we are on familiar and not new ground. Wolff’s argument is similar to that of Eduard Bernstein who argued over a century ago that worker’s co-operatives were transforming capitalism from within, obviating the need for social revolution. Rosa Luxemburg countered then, as we do now, that workers forming a co-operative “are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.” To achieve meaningful change through WSDEs would require massive social and political struggle with the end being a form of capitalism in which workers collectively exploit themselves.

Colin Skelly

                                                                                                                                        

"An Epitaph for George Dillon" — A Study in Failure (1958)

A Theatre Review from the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Look Back in Anger," "The Entertainer" and now "An Epitaph for George Dillon": John Osborne's trilogy of failure. Jimmy Porter is a failure, Archie Rice is a failure, and George Dillon is a failure. This cannot be without significance, the question is—why? The remarkable success if these plays is largely due to a strong sense of identification that many people have with them. They unconsciously or otherwise see something of themselves in the problem children John Osborne has set before them on his stage.

Each of these three plays represents in one way or another the frustrations and disillusionment of youth in post-war Capitalism their sense of personal failure on the one side and the failure if Britain to remain a front-rank Power on the other, expressed in a soured romanticism the famous "anger," which paradoxically is aimed at those very elements they most desire. Romanticism is essentially the reaction of people to a society which fails to provide them with a satisfactory function. The inability of Capitalism to deal with this basic need thus creates a strong romantic craving for the nebulous "lost cause," for the ideal beyond the drab reality which, unlike in its formative years, the chromium-plated Capitalism of the mid-twentieth century is unable to satisfy. Society has no need of them. Consequently they contract out of the problems of Society, rejected, resentful and rebellious, seeking something, somewhere, that will claim them as its own. Cheated of their purpose and their identity, they seek instead a mythical past, looking backward in anger and also nostalgia, to an age which they imagine had a place in the sun for them as well as the country they pretend in their jilted patriotism to despise.

"An Epitaph of George Dillon," which John Osborne wrote in collaboration with Anthony Creighton, now running at the Comedy Theatre, presents us with the tragedy of such a failure. The artist in Capitalism—a tune without an instrument, unbidden and unwanted, a flower that has somehow strayed amongst the more practical vegetation—unlike his fellow workers in industry and commerce who at least have a point of contact, a specific function, however unsatisfactory and creatively barren.

George Dillon is an actor and playwright, guiltily ashamed of his social impotence. (The alienation of the artist from Society and also the stultifying of the artist in each one of us, making work more often than not a penance, is one of the most vicious aspects of Capitalism.) His failure to be a complete human being induces in him contemptuousness of his class through his inability to communicate with them on his own terms. Dillon's contempt and cynicism towards the working class family, on whom he lives is sickening. (Sickening also is the way some members of the audience find this funny.) The narrowness and meanness of their existence symbolises to Dillon his own predicament as an artist and their attitude to him, that of Society to all artists; betimes hostile, patronising, or merely uncomprehending. To the dire necessity of earning a living Dillon eventually succumbs: to suffer a fate worse in reality than complete negation as an artist. Our Society, with its hollow values—as the play shows—which makes even its own vapid morality bow before snobbery and cheap personal success, turns Dillon, the rebellious profligate outsider and erstwhile idealist, into a soggy hack-writer of "prolefeed." Now capitulated to Capitalism's suffocating conformity, it has a place for him at least—but not in the sun.

Ian Jones

Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

From the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

At this time of the year the pantomime season is drawing to a close and these Xmas plays are being taken off.

One of the plays regularly performed is "Jack and the Beanstalk." The story is of Teutonic origin and was written during feudal times. It tells of a peasant woman who is forced by poverty to send her son Jack to market to sell their cow. He exchanges it for a bag of beans. On his return home the woman throws the beans out of the window. They grow to a tremendous height during the night and Jack climbs to the top, to find himself in the realm of a giant. By subterfuge he steals the giant's money bags and when this money is spent and gone he goes back and steals the giant's magic hen. The second acquisition has the advantage that the possessor is able to live in permanent luxury as the hen lays golden eggs. The giant's harp warns its master, but Jack succeeds in making his getaway with the hen. The hen's supply of golden eggs enables Jack and his family to live happily ever after.

The audience not only enjoy the usual pleasures associated with attending a play, but, with this pantomime, as with some others, the additional pleasure of merging their own individual identities with some of characters in the play. To merge their identity with Jack and his mother is a very pleasant experience for many workers.

It makes a pleasing even if fantastic dream to leave their world of anxiety, toll, strife, working-class houses and working-class food through the ownership of a hen that lays golden eggs producing such wealth that the fortunate owner can satisfy all his wants. Quite an impossibility to so many workers' minds, much too good to be even though about—except in a pantomime.

Back at the process of making a living next day all thoughts of the pantomime are forgotten. There is no time for such dreams—the workers is far too busy producing wealth for his employer. And what wealth!! The golden eggs of Jack's hen appear quite insignificant against the profits the workers produce for those who own capital.

Just Take a Look at This:—

The profits of companies, public and private, in 1950, according to the Treasury White Paper amounted to £1,692 millions after deducting depreciation. The profits of 3,787 companies, which reported in 1951, as totalled by the Financial Times came to £1,873 millions. This total is an increase of 30 per cent. over the Financial Times 1950 figure of £1,431 millions. After depreciation the figures were £1,636 millions and £1,225 millions respectively.

Aspirations that now seem to many workers to be just wishful thinking can become reality just as soon as they realise that it is the ownership of the land, factories, transport systems, and the means of life generally by society that will enable these dreams to be realised by them. Then there will be no need to waste labour on armaments, advertisements, passports and the host of officials and clerks necessary for the present system of wealth production.

This will come about when the workers understand the exploitation basis of this system of society.

Socialist propaganda will help them. The task is urgent—will you join with us and help to make those dreams come true!

Frank Offord 

From Political Economy to Vulgar Economics (2015)

From the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The history of economic research came up as an independent science in the seventeenth century. However, that didn’t happen all of a sudden. Long ago since ancient times, the process of rudimentary conceptualization and formation of political economic ideas had begun cropping up. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Hindus and other peoples were already acquainted with such economic categories as commodity, exchange, money, price, loan interest, commercial profit, and others. There are very interesting ideas and data in ancient Egyptian papyri; the code of Hammurabi, the ruler of Babylonia; the Vedas of Ancient India; Homer’s Odyssey and other works of the ancient Greek poet; the writings of Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers of Greek antiquity, and so on. However, what the ancients knew about economic categories was just embryonic.

The history of economic thought begins with the works of Xenophon, Plato and especially Aristotle, who made the first step towards a theoretical understanding of the economy of the ancient Greek society (which was at the stage of demise of the primitive-communal system and the rise of slavery), and articulated some remarkable ideas on value, commodity exchange, and the earliest forms of capital: trading (merchant’s) and usury capital.

Capitalist structures first took shape not in production, but in trade and monetary operations in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Eventually this evolutionary process of the upcoming capital came to be known as Mercantilism that expressed the interests of merchant’s capital in England, Italy and France. Its principal spokesmen were William Stafford (and Thomas Mun in England, Antonio Serra in Italy and Antoine de Montchrestien in France).

The term 'Political Economy' was first coined by the French mercantilist Antoine de Montchrestien in his Treatise of Political Economy (1615), which contained recommendations on how to run the state economy and multiply the country’s wealth. The term was derived from three Greek words: 'politikos' – state, social; 'òikos'- household or its management; and 'nomos' – rule of law, and so meant 'the laws of state management'.

Later on, in the eighteenth century, bourgeois political economy was developed by the Physiocrats: Francois Quesnay, Turgot, and others. François Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing Tableau économique (Economic Table) in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats. Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, commonly known as Turgot, was a French statesman (and economist in his own right) heavily influenced by Quesnay.

In contrast to the mercantilists, they switched the emphasis in economic research from the sphere of circulation to the sphere of production.

Bourgeois political economy in that period [from the 17th century to the 1830s] was advanced by William Petty (1623 – 1687) in England and Pierre Boisguillebert (1646 – 1714) in France. They were the pioneers in formulating the labour theory of value. They were in effect the founders of classical political economy, which reached its peak in the works of the Scottish economist Adam Smith in the eighteenth century and the English economist David Ricardo in the early nineteenth century.

Karl Marx observed in 1859 in the section 'Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities' in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: 'The decisive outcome of the research carried on for over a century and a half by classical political economy, beginning with William Petty in Britain and Boisguillebert in France, and ending with Ricardo in Britain and Sismondi in France, is an analysis of the aspects of the commodity into two forms of labour – use-value is reduced to concrete labour or purposive productive activity, exchange-value to labour-time or homogeneous social labour.' In Capital (1867) he defined political economy: '… by political economy I understand the economy which since the time of W. Petty has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society'.

Marx made a distinction between such men as Petty, Smith and Ricardo and their successors. He wrote of the former that they devoted their efforts 'to the study of the real interrelations of bourgeois production', while the latter were 'content to elucidate the semblance of the interrelations' and to act in effect as apologists for the capitalist class. He called them 'vulgar economists'.

Engels had already warned, and shown great foresight, in 1843 when he wrote in his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy: 'The nearer to our time the economists whom we have to judge, the more severe must our judgment become. For while Smith and Malthus found only scattered fragments, the modern economists had the whole system complete before them: the consequences had all been drawn; the contradictions came clearly enough to light, yet they did not come to examine the premises and still accepted the responsibility for the whole system. The nearer the economists come to the present time, the further they depart from honesty'.

Binay Sarkar

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