Revolutionary Reform (1905)

From the June 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two tendencies, apparently contradictory, manifest themselves in Socialist tactics on the subject of reforms.

On one hand, the very principle of Socialism is found in opposition to democratic illusions. Instead of seeing the solution of the so-called “social question” in the expansion of liberties, in therealisationof an ideal of Justice, in the perfecting of the republican regime by means ofuniversal suffrage, Socialism declares that all the social phenomena of our days are the results of capitalism, manifestations of the class war, which will cease only with the disappearance of classes. Therefore the Socialist Party is a party of class and of revolution.

On the other hand, the desire for some immediate bettering of his lot is too well engendered in the heart of man for him to lose hope, even against all logic. Logic is weak against the power of an instinctive desire. The political parties promise reforms to their electors just as a nurse promises the moon to a child.

The Socialist Party is thus caught between the logic of its scientific principle and the universal desire for an immediate amelioration - ”something now”. It cannot betray its principle, but it is likewise impossible that this party- of men - can escape this human desire for reforms.

This contradiction is, however, not without a solution, if we discriminate between the conditions of fighting and the conditions of existence of the working-class.

(. . . . .)

The conditions of existence of the wage-workers depends upon their wages. It is not determined by the legal law, but by the economic law of supply and demand.

The condition of existence of the wage-workers is determined in each corporate body, by the progress of the development of machinery, the concentration of capital, the proportion of the unemployed industrial reserve army, and the stock-in-trade of merchandise.

Social realities are outside of parliaments. The crowd of ambitious folk who jostle one another in the unhealthy atmosphere of the Houses of Parliament can do nothing -  absolutely nothing - to modify the real wage of the workers.

The legal law is of straw; the economic law is of iron.

Why change the tax-gathering plate if you do not change what is put into it?

Why agitate against clericalism if clericalism is a social necessity? You do nothing more nor less than substitute idolatry of the flag for that of the cross.

To dream of bettering the conditions of existence by political means is Utopia.

(. . . . . )

Although the bettering of the conditions of existence by way of political reform is impossible, it is not the same as regards the conditions of fighting, and it appears to us to be possible to make easier the struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist middle-class.

We do not here make a specious distinction. To distinguish between the conditions of fighting and the conditions of existence is not to split a hair. The difference is real.

When a soldier marches under a shower of rain, you better his conditions of existence in giving him an umbrella which protects him from getting wet, and you better his condition of fighting in supplying him with an up-to-date rifle instead of a stone-slinger.

By the very fact of capitalist production the proletariat is at war with the bourgeoisie. This struggle is sometimes hidden, at other times visible to the eyes of all, but it is without truce. Far from becoming less evident, conflicts increase daily. Some reforms would render the attacks of the proletariat more powerful, those of its adversary weaker, and would make the effort easier and more efficient.

One reform which is considered above all others as an amelioration of the conditions of carrying on the proletarian struggle is the reduction in the hours of labour.

The reduction in the hours of the working day makes the workers mentally and physically stronger and better equipped for carrying on the social struggle. Rebels are not made of the starved and wretched: rebellion is a luxury.

The reduction of the working-day facilitates the concentration of capital, thereby hastening the disappearance of the middle-class, making clearer the social struggle.

That is the revolutionary reform par excellence.

It is not an amelioration in the condition of existence. Applications of the reform already made in England and America prove that the amount of labour furnished is sensibly the same: labour-time diminished, work becomes more intense. The proportion of surplus labour is perhaps greater: the 8 hours day probably increasing the relative surplus-value would thereby increase the capitalist profits.

The 8 hours day is an amelioration of the conditions of fighting - nothing more. It is an immense gain.

(. . . . . )

The moment the Trade Unions take up the agitation in favour of the 8 hours day, of which Socialism hitherto took the initiative, when “labour” elected candidates will have introduced themselves into ministerial combinations and lose all thought of economic realities in the reforms pourrire of which the Radicals are so prodigious -the Socialist Party cannot, in my opinion, but find it profitable to direct its efforts towards the reduction of the hours of labour.

Without seeking to discover to-day what is the value of Parliamentary action to obtain this revolutionary reform, we will attempt to show in another article how it is possible to draft a law effectively reducing the working-day, because the difficulty does not consist in having a law passed, but in having it applied.

A. Bruckère in Le Socialiste

(Translated by P. J. Tobin.)

The Stickies and the Provos (2016)

From the March 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

We examine a key division within Irish nationalism which reflected tensions between those who asserted the primacy of ‘nation’ and those who ended up seeking to prioritise ‘class’.

A significant feature of those who situate themselves in the anti-establishment tradition of any country is their attitude to nationalism and imperialism. While reformist politicians of the Labour and Social Democrat varieties tend to identify with their own ruling class and seek to work with them to ameliorate the worst aspects of capitalism, those further to the left often seek alliances (even if just at a conceptual, ideological level) with the ruling classes of other countries. This is often done on the basis that an enemy of an enemy must be a friend. It is the reason why much of the left in Britain has been sympathetic to Irish nationalism and why Irish nationalists have repeatedly sought support from almost anyone hostile to the British state.

Behind this viewpoint often lies the concept of imperialism. This comes in various guises, though the most common conception is the idea that big powerful countries exploit smaller, weaker ones and that this is a fundamental feature of the way capitalism works. Some, such as Lenin, took this concept to its logical conclusion by arguing that sections of the working class in the stronger countries have shared in the fruits of the exploitation of all those in the weaker countries (creating a so-called ‘aristocracy of labour’).

One of the key divisions among people calling themselves revolutionaries has been around this issue. And in the countries deemed to be small, weaker and under the subjugation of a power like the British Empire, this has influenced the thinking and methods of those who wished to create a different type of society. Some have taken the view that the priority must be to fight a battle against the ruling class of the dominant country as they are construed as being the main enemy. Others have been more mindful that in attempting to overthrow the ruling class of a ‘foreign’ empire it is possible to merely install a domestic ruling class instead, leaving capitalism and its attendant problems intact.

This has been one of the most significant, historic divisions in the Irish republican movement for decades, though these days it receives relatively little attention (including from left-wing organisations and commentators in Britain).

The Troubles

In the late 1960s, when much of the developed world was impacted by waves of radical protest, and impelled by the events of May 1968 in Paris, a split developed among Irish republicans. It reflected a division between those who thought nationhood was more important than class interest, and vice versa. It was expressed very clearly at the time in this statement by the youth wing of Sinn Fein (Na Fianna Eireann):

‘The doctrine of Karl Marx is contrary to the Fianna teaching. It is contrary to the Fianna declaration which states – I pledge my allegiance to God and the Irish Republic. Marx also stated that the workingman has no country. We of the Fianna for the most part are the sons of workers but we have a country and we love it very dearly. We can in no way be associated with International Socialism’ (Irish News, 24^th December, 1970).

Exactly what part of the country these young republicans owned (in truth, little if anything) was part of the problem identified by those on the other side of the debate. Whether republicans in Northern Ireland or the Southern Republic, these were people who took the contrary view that they had more in common with their fellow workers in the pro-British loyalist community than they did with the owners and controllers of capital on either side of the Irish border. In some ways, the ideas of this group were ill-formed and sometimes even contradictory but they were struggling towards a position where in answer to the question ‘which is more important – nation or class?’ they answered ‘class’.

During the so-called ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland from 1969, the division between these two groups of republicans was to become almost as poisonous as the division between Protestants and Catholics (or more accurately UK nationalists and Irish nationalists). It was so severe that it led to a fundamental split in both Sinn Fein and its paramilitary wing, the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This division was between the ‘pro-communist’ group that held many of the leadership positions in these organizations at the time, around Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff of the IRA, and Tomos Mac Giolla, President of Sinn Fein – and those who opposed them. Though mainly Dublin-based, the leadership had considerable support in parts of the Republic and pockets of support in the North too, including republican strongholds in Belfast such as the Lower Falls and the Markets, some of the border counties and parts of Derry including the Bogside. Because of their leadership positions within the movement they became known in the press as the ‘Official’ IRA.

Those who criticised  their ‘communism’ and irreligion, placing emphasis on the nationalist, sectarian struggle against the British state and their loyalist ‘stooges’ instead, emerged  as a new, Provisional IRA – the ‘Provos’. Cathal Goulding labelled them blackshirts in balaclavas. Indeed, many of the Officials believed the Provos had been funded by elements in the then Irish government around Minster of Finance – and later Taoiseach – Charles Haughey, who wanted to see ‘communists’ removed from the IRA leadership (even if a later court case failed to prove this conclusively).

Sectarianism

Over time, the Provos (who set up their own political party, Provisional Sinn Fein) became the majority within the movement – and the main reason for this was a very practical one. In a period when many Northern Irish Catholics felt themselves to be not only discriminated against but also terrorized by the British state and the Protestant mobs whipped up by demagogues such as Ian Paisley, the traditional IRA was seen to have failed. The epithet ‘I Ran Away’ was levelled at the Officials, and the Provos were often seen as being more proactive defenders of Catholic communities, while taunting the ‘Marxist’ Officials with the nickname ‘the Stickies’ after the new, adhesive lily they adopted when commemorating the Easter Rising.

In reality, the situation was more complicated than the stereotyping might suggest – some young Provos, attracted by romantic notions of the armed struggle, also had pronounced left-wing sympathies (including both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness). Meanwhile the Officials were often involved in bloody battles against the security services, loyalist paramilitaries and the Provos.

What was clear, though, over time, was the trajectory of the Officials away from traditional, Irish nationalist politics and the armed struggle to achieve a united Ireland. Indeed, in 1972 they became the first paramilitary organisation to declare a ceasefire. Catholic priests in Derry declared that as representatives of international communism the Officials were not welcome there, while ‘better dead than red’ graffiti was painted on walls in the Bogside by the Provos. For their part, the Officials declared that they were not a Catholic organisation and emphasized the need to win over loyalist workers to the cause of socialism (even if what they meant by this usually amounted to vague aspirations common on the radical left towards what would effectively be state-run capitalism, and a penchant for left-wing icons of the time such as Che Guevara).

Other elements emerged that became hostile to the Provos and Officials alike, adopting a mix of hardline Irish nationalism with Leninism. Most notably, this led to the foundation of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and its paramilitary wing, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). This was effectively another breakaway from the Officials by those unhappy with their lack of proactive military engagement. It became an especially violent and sectarian organisation under the leadership of Seamus Costello and infamously blew up Tory politician Airey Neave. The INLA initially attracted tacit support from independent MP Bernadette Devlin who was to claim ‘the Provos are concentrating on getting rid of the British in a military campaign without any policy on the class war, and the Officials now have no policy on the national question . . . We will agitate on both the national and class issues’ (Irish Times, 14 December, 1974). But the INLA was prone to feuds – both internal and external – and while Costello had at one time been Director of Operations for the Official IRA under Cathal Goulding, he was almost certainly murdered by them in 1977.

Of more lasting significance was that the differing positions of the Provos and Officials was reflected in their attitudes when incarcerated in prison, typically at the time in Long Kesh and the Crumlin Road jail. The Provos refused to mix with Protestant prisoners and demanded political segregation – the Officials saw the opportunity to speak politically to fellow workers who had come from the other side of the religious divide, including in Open University seminars. It was here that contact was made with loyalist paramilitary leaders such as Gusty Spence of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). A secret meeting in Dublin between the Official IRA and UVF paramilitary leaderships followed in 1974 and while obvious differences remained, it was clear that a certain strand of Ulster Loyalism had some sympathy with positions taken by the Officials and their general approach to politics. In 1981 Gusty Spence publicly announced his conversion to what he called ‘socialism’ and – perhaps bizarrely – his nephew was arrested for membership of the Official IRA. This type of shift within a particular current of Protestant politics was later to be reflected in the emergence of the political wing of the UVF, the Progressive Unionist Party under David Ervine. This developed a political position that appeared in some respects to be non-sectarian and with an economic programme that was unashamedly leftist.

Workers’ Party

In 1977 the Official’s political organisation renamed itself Sinn Fein – the Workers’ Party, later to become just the Workers’ Party. Once again in distinction to the traditional IRA/Sinn Fein nationalist position, they were prepared to not only stand in elections either side of the border, but to take their seats too. This meant abandoning the policy of so-called ‘abstentionism’ which refused to recognise the legitimacy of either the British state in the six county Northern Ireland, or the ‘incomplete’ 26 county Republic in the South.

Thus began a long march towards a form of political respectability, and long before Provisional Sinn Fein began to make a similar journey. It was a journey though that wasn’t without trauma and led to a familiar leftist split in the 1990s when a ‘reformist’ faction around Workers’ Party Irish MP and MEP Proinsias De Rossa ended up forming the Democratic Left. This then drifted into the Irish Labour Party in 1998, though only after having formed a ‘Rainbow Coalition’ government with Fine Gael and the Labour Party first. 

This left the hardline rump of the Workers’ Party to soldier on around veterans Mac Giolla, Sean Garland and Seamus Lynch  – ‘soldier on’ being the operative phrase. For while the Official IRA had gone on conditional ceasefire in 1972, it had never entirely gone away or ceased activity. Though officially denied, overwhelming evidence suggests that this particular strand of republicanism had long organised itself into ‘Group A’, which was the political wing called the Workers’ Party, and ‘Group B’ which was the remnants of the Official IRA. The latter was mainly charged with protection of members and fundraising activities that were somewhat unorthodox. These notably included bank robberies, as their leftist politics was not to the liking of traditional republican fundraisers in the US who had helped bankroll the Provos.

Perhaps most bizarrely of all, in 2009 WP leader Sean Garland was arrested in Dublin by the Garda with subsequent (unsuccessful) attempts to extradite him to the US that made him an ageing cause célèbre for leftists and celebrities alike. The charge from the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was that he had – through contacts in North Korea –helped create vast quantities of high-quality counterfeit US dollars. This was allegedly an attempt to both fundraise for the cause and undermine capitalism from within at the same time. Coincidentally, it was at this point that the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning of weapons in Northern Ireland confirmed that ‘Group B’ armaments, including weapons used forty years previously, had finally been put beyond use.

So effectively ended a story partly tragic and partly comic. The WP does still exist (standing candidates in the 2015 UK General Election in Belfast) but is a shadow of its former self. It is a fascinating case study of the tensions between nationalism and class-based politics, and which nevertheless had a major, if partly hidden, wider influence including on its old adversaries the Provos. For they – under the leadership of Adams and McGuinness – ended up adopting many of its political positions (and allegedly even one or two high profile bank robberies) when decades before the Provos had all but attempted to wipe them out as traitors to their cause.

Books such as Inside the IRA by Andrew Sanders are worth reading for those interested in learning more about their political tradition and position within Irish republican politics, though The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar is indispensable – a veritable tour de force about this historical political curio. Partly hard-headed pragmatists who realised they had more in common with their fellow workers than with their bosses, and partly romantic rebels with naïve attitudes towards the rebellions and revolutions of the past, their history is one from which many lessons can be drawn – and not all of them in the way they intended.

Dave Perrin

Aid fatigue? (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It seems that the prospect of over five million people being threatened with death by starvation, in one area in a fairly short space of time, is no longer headline news unless attached to a famous name. That is a very real possibility in parts of Ethiopia now, after the latest droughts and further harvest failures. And yet this time the first headlines to appear were “Geldof flies to Ethiopia as starvation threatens” (Guardian, 30 November/1 December 1987).

Whatever his good intentions, Bob Geldof must know that the recurrence of the problem itself proves the utter futility of charity as even a partial solution to the obscene contradictions of present-day society. Indeed, he said he found it distressing that over the past three years “nothing serious has been done”. Perhaps he thinks we’re not trying hard enough to redistribute our poverty. In fact, some commentators this time have invented the phrase “aid fatigue”, to suggest that workers scraping by in countries like Britain and Ireland may have genuine compassion for those who are even worse off than we are, but can only take so much sermonising and scolding from public figures who preach to us that if only we were a bit more caring, we really could humanise the global slaughter-house we live in . . .

In fact, the anger of Saint Bob has now found a new object. On flying out from Heathrow on a “fact-finding” mission to Ethiopia, he said that he laid the blame for the famine at the door of the “Marxist” government, and that he would be requesting a meeting with the Ethiopian leader, Colonel Mengistu, to ask him about his arms purchasing policy. He failed to say whether he would be popping in to the Pope on his way, to sort out a few problems there, or perhaps a few of the other heads of governments who could tell him a thing or two about arms purchases. After all, the governments of the world as a whole spend, between them, over one million dollars on weapons every minute of the day and night. They do not do this because they are evil (however suitable that description may be); they do it as a necessary aspect of the world capitalist system which a majority have been persuaded to accept or support. Rather than confusing the issue by isolating one leader or government in particular to “blame”, it might in fact prove far more “compassionate” in the long run for Geldof to focus publicity on the practical answer. Only a global overthrow of property relationships across the world will rescue the world’s dispossessed from the trap of poverty and hunger. It might make better publicity to demand chats with the Colonel about what arms he buys, but if Geldof is going to join the fools’ chorus which scoffs at the possibility of the socialist solution, then he should have stuck to singing songs.

We are now told, however, that the colonel is a marxist revolutionary. Of course, Ethiopia has no more relation to Marx’s ideas of human liberation that do Russia, China, America or Britain. Socialists have good reason to be bitterly opposed to every one of these regimes. In fact Marx and his collaborator Engels understood very well how capitalism (whether state-controlled or “private”) starves people. In 1865, Engels wrote to Marx:

Too little is produced . . . But why is too little produced? Not because the limits of production are exhausted. No, but because the limits of production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies, but by the number of purses able to buy and pay.

The military conflict in Ethiopia between separatist guerrillas and government forces, which has made the situation even worse, is itself a product of the international power struggles of the capitalist world order, based ultimately on the pursuit of profit and power by a minority. Neither can nature be held responsible: it is poverty which has made people increasingly vulnerable to any problems of rainfall and harvests, and the poor condition of the soil in much of Africa is also largely caused by social and economic factors. The world as a whole is crying out for social transformation, and if you start talking about the change to a system of production of use, wherever you may be, then you are part of that process of change, rather than remaining one of those who would put it off forever, with a collection of leaky sticking plasters.

Clifford Slapper

A visit to eastern Europe (1970)

From the November 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

When socialists visit so-called socialist countries it can be a particularly nauseating experience, because socialists proceed with their eyes open and with a background of understanding. What they sec is a variety of capitalism, which more correctly might be designated as fascism. One should not forget that the Nazis called themselves socialists (National Socialist German Workers Party) The label on the bottle does not always denote the medicine inside.

I have several times been to the so-called “Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia”, but have never seen anything remotely resembling socialism there.

The workers of Yugoslavia arc paid wages, and there is at present much unemployment— just as in other capitalist countries. Money is used as a means of exchange because there is buying and selling — a fundamental of capitalism. This may be new to non-socialists, but indicates to us the true nature of the economy.

Outside the trade union hall in Belgrade, I watched hundreds of workers trying to get into the hall to see an important chess match. At that moment, an enormous car came along — a veritable palace on wheels, and a sort of combination of a Rolls-Royce and a Cadillac. One should appreciate that the average car in Yugoslavia is well below the standard here. I concluded that this car must be that of President Tito. When it pulled up I noticed the Soviet flag flying on the bonnet, and out stepped the Russian chess team, immaculately clad just like film stars. The Yugoslavs beamed at them as if they were from Mars.

When the chess tournament started there was the usual speeches from the platform by the local mayor and other dignitaries, who proudly welcomed the Russians (and others) to the “Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia”, and one speech after the other kept referring to the “Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia”.

I once asked a railway official (who was both interpreter and guide) where 1 could see any signs of socialism in Yugoslavia. “Yes”, he said, as if pleased with my simple question. “Just come with me”. He took me to the square outside the station which was decorated with Russian and Yugoslav flags, following some agreement between those countries at that time. “There”, he said proudly, “that’s positive signs of socialism”. When I told him that flag waving (as socialists saw it) was a sign of jingoism or patriotism, he failed to appreciate my standpoint.

The German Democratic Republic

The crossing of the East German territory when travelling to Berlin by plane presents no difficulties, for one flies straight in. But when going by train, one has to traverse the Eastern zone, known by the false name of “German Democratic Republic”, for no democracy exists there.

In 1946 when the G.D.R. was formed, the Communist Party received only 20 per cent of the vote which gave them power; and in 1953 Russian tanks faced and butchered a mass of hostile workers during an uprising. There can scarcely be anything democratic after that affair.

When the train stops at the West German frontier, the passport authorities quickly walked through the corridors, and their work was finished in a few minutes. Then the train goes on through two or three miles of no-man’s land to the Eastern frontier. The passport inspection is quite another thing here. 1 counted no less than twenty-four officials who swarmed into the train or played a part in the inspection. Two soldiers with rifles were standing at each end of the train, and I noticed a policeman with a large Alsatian dog standing on the line near the end of the train. Then he let the dog off the lease, and the dog went under the train from end to end, for obvious reasons.

Four other officials climbed on top of the train and opened the vents and covers where the water for the toilets is taken in, walking the whole length of the train to perform this task.

The delay caused by this thorough search took up about an hour, and the train was nearly empty. Reports have it that three or four hours delay are not unusual.

From West Berlin foreigners (but not West Berliners) can visit East Berlin by special coach. Passport details, and the amount of money one has, are all checked and entered on a large form which has to be signed before one is allowed to board the coach.

“Check Point Charlie” is a special entry point on the Berlin wall. The wall itself is about ten feet high, with concrete blocks and barbed wire to decorate it realistically. There are notices of mines, and soldiers arc patrolling it on the Eastern side; while on the Western side is an electrified wire fence in case one has managed to beat the other obstacles. The atmosphere of the concentration camp dominates everything ; and I began to wonder, as a socialist, what 1 had let myself in for.

At “Check Point Charlie” everybody had to descend from the coach and line up with “permit disc” bearing a letter and number (and in numerical order — like in army or prison), while the East German guards checked every detail of passports, visas, and the form which had been signed in the Western zone. This took about an hour, and frequently visitors are sent back because their passports are not in order for the East section. When one has scaled all these hurdles, you re-board the coach and are permitted to go through from “Capitalist Berlin to Socialist Berlin”.

East Berlin, which remained far behind West in re-building, has now surged forwards and there is a mass of buildings completed, and many still being built. The Russians pillaged all they could lay their hands upon, and Fast Germany suffered as a result. While the West was receiving Marshall Aid, East Berlin was being ransacked and made to pay for the war. No wonder the East Germans wanted to escape to the West.

The coach stopped only once during its three hours in East Berlin, and that was in the middle of a park where there was no possibility of contacting anybody. The real purpose of this stop was for toilet requirements, although the official guide made it appear that the purpose was to visit an enormous war memorial, guarded by Russian soldiers. The Russians evidently knew that if they did not guard their monuments in Hast Berlin, the workers would soon demolish them.

We were several times warned that cameras and newspapers must not be taken into East Berlin — so democratic is their regime.

With all the propaganda and security of this police state, there was absolutely nothing remotely resembling socialism— only a nauseating hypocrisy.

Horace Jarvis

Pathfinders: (Pr x Media) = Funding2 (2016)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the world woke up to the strange headline that a) gravitational waves had almost certainly probably been detected and that therefore… b) wait for it… c) Einstein was a bit clever and… d) his theory of relativity was almost certainly probably right.

Of course the scientists were ecstatic. They had been trying to find these waves for years, and now that they had, they also potentially had a new way of looking at the universe. Maybe.

So, good job and pats on the back all round, but front-page splash material, really? It was like the Higgs all over again, with journalists and readers alike gamely talking it all up while trying not to look too baffled.

On the face of it, not much had really changed. Einstein's theory of relativity had already been corroborated as far back as 1919, and every scrap of observational data since had only served to confirm it, making it one of the most successful theories in the history of science.

In a sense, this was the least desirable outcome, from the point of view of new physics. And new physics is sorely needed, because at the moment the Standard model doesn't make sense. Relativity and quantum mechanics are like the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and the Standard model has them worryingly in collision. The new discovery does nothing to change that.

Still, it is pretty clever to be able to detect a movement just a thousandth of the width of a proton (though some newspapers mistakenly printed 'atom' instead, which is like confusing a football with a football stadium). And, to add spice, it was one of those cases of serendipitous luck that make science a lot more fun to read about.

But how interested are the public by all this? It's not as if relativity is a subject you often hear discussed down the boozer, although maybe it depends on the boozer. And the booze (how can nothing be made of something, how can you bend time, how can you pack 30 suns into a space the size of a city, how do they even know any of this, why am I seeing two of you...?).

To many people, physics is just an advanced form of trainspotting (they might say the same about radical politics). Why should anyone care about it, when surviving in capitalism is already a full-time job? Trouble is, people feel that they ought to care because the media is making a big song and dance about it (unlike radical politics). And likewise, the media make a fuss because the scientists are making a fuss.

It comes down to a simple equation: PR x Media = Funding. Gone are the days when science was done by balding boffins in potting sheds. Instead it's 'Big Science' using 'Big Data' collected by Big Tools with Bloody Big Budgets. Detectors like the LIGO gravity wave sensors are hooked up in a patchwork process known as interferometry, across continents and sometimes across the world or even across space. That's not cheap. Then there are large colliders like the LHC at CERN, or the International Space Station (the most expensive tool ever built by anybody) or the ITER fusion reactor at Cadarache in France. In these cases the budgets are so big that only governments can afford them, and even then, only if they club together. And governments, as everyone knows, are peculiarly sensitive to the prevailing climate of popularity, not only among the voting populace who think they're paying for all this but also, and more importantly, among the capitalist class who are actually footing the bill.

So science, to get its funding, has become something of a beauty contest, which is why savvy scientists now engage PR firms after, and sometimes before, getting their research peer-reviewed, and why the pressure is on to announce results even before there are any results to announce. Physics, in particular that ethereal branch known as cosmology, scores surprisingly well in this beauty contest, not because it's in any way relevant or accessible to most of us, but because it's full of famous and charismatic stars (no pun intended), it sports some preposterously untestable ideas, and it's swathed in an aura of mysticism that, in the post-religion era, seems satisfyingly profound. Geneticists and chemists just don't have that kind of glamour. Though they tend to produce far more useful science, they are the unlovely infantry grunts doing essentially icky and sticky things with test tubes. Physicists are the dashing flyboys, the Brylcreem theorists who will make the human race race faster and faster, and maybe loop the loop. It's still based in fact, but quasi-fetishised, made to mean more than it seems, and to seem more than it means - science goes to Hollywood.

Still, and as a quid pro quo, new Hollywood sci-fi movies are increasingly expected to be 'scientifically correct'.  Nobody ever expected Flash Gordon to flash a PhD, but the product of a more scientifically-engaged public is a more scientifically-critical audience, so now film-makers simply can't get away with putting sound effects into space battles because everybody knows (yawn) that sound doesn't travel in space. Instead, and in a development few would have predicted, recent films like Gravity, Interstellar or The Martian are promoted, despite the varying silliness of their plots, precisely on the grounds of their devotion to the laws of physics, and criticised precisely where that devotion falls short.

And why not indeed? If only film-makers would apply the same rigorous standards to their history films, perhaps today's voting public would be a bit better informed about the world they live in, how it got that way, and what they should really be angry about. We've had politically correct, and now we've got scientifically correct. Maybe next cinema-goers should be demanding historically correct. And who knows? Unlike the detection of gravitational waves, that could well be a development that ends up rocking everybody's boat.

PJS

The Class Issue in the American Revolution (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

What, if anything, does the Declaration of Independence mean? The approach of its 200th anniversary has produced a small deluge of reviews of the saga of American history and the "truths” adopted on 4th July 1776. There must be many who, having read and listened, still wonder why a nation claiming to be founded on “inalienable rights” of equality, freedom of speech and thought and "the pursuit of happiness” manifestly does not have them. The answer is that the Declaration of Independence was framed as the expression of one class’s economic interests.

The colonization of America resulted from European countries’ quest for trade. Its labour-force came in part from the same source as theirs, the dispossession of peasants to make them “free labourers”; also from refugees from the religious wars and persecutions which were part of the break-up of feudalism, victims of rack-renting and famine in Ireland, unemployed artisans, etc. About half the white colonists before 1730 sold themselves as slaves or "indentured servants” in exchange for a passage to the New World, and about 200,000 black slaves were taken from Africa.

The various American colonies were practically all self-supporting from agriculture and the forests and their products (the highly lucrative fur trade created policies towards Indians, and also the first millionaires). In the non-slave states the labouring class was a mixture of indentured servants and wageworkers. The colonies were driven closer together by conflicts with Indians and by the English wars with France and Spain which both had colonies in America and fought for trade there.

The rôle of the British government in controlling America was to preserve Britain’s position as the manufacturing centre, to which other countries sent raw materials and from which they had to buy manufactured goods. Under the Navigation Laws, the colonies had to use English ships for trade and all goods had to be "laid on the shores of England”, where duty was collected. The French war had left the British government with a heavy debt, and it sought to raise revenue in America; whereas the New England merchants were chiefly smugglers evading payment of duties.

The political conflicts leading up to the War of Independence — the Boston Tea Party, the Currency Act, legislation restricting the manufacture of finished goods and restraining movement westward — were all manifestations of this situation. But the term "American Revolution” is a misnomer insofar as it conveys a separate, unique upheaval or “a noble experiment”, as The Times called it in a recent article. It was part of the eruption as the capitalist class took political power, the American phase of the English revolution.

The greater part of the Declaration of Independence consists of political attacks on George III. In Britain the Georges were supported by the Tory representatives of the landowning aristocracy while the Whigs, standing for the interests of developing capitalism and freedom of trade, were still struggling. In America, still in its early stages, the class issues were confused but the dominant interests were those from which the capitalist class originated: the smuggling merchants, land speculators, and would-be manufacturers. The Tories comprised large landholders, "respectable” merchants, officials and dependants of the British regime, and the Church of England faction.

These ties were exchanged across the Atlantic. The revolutionists were in fact a minority, but they were more active, perceptive and coherent — in a word, conscious — than any other section. They drew the support of the small business men and the labouring class through local legislative assemblies and over such issues as the Currency Act.

The War of Independence ended in 1782, one month before the Tory government fell and the Americans’ Whig allies came to power in Britain. This was the beginning of capitalism’s rise to maturity. How much the Declaration of Independence meant, and whom it stood for, can be seen in the fact that in the mid-1780s out of an American population of 3½ million (excluding Indians) only 400,000 were “free” men. Its principles, and the ideas of democracy it embodied, were cast aside almost immediately.

That, again, was not special to America. In France the cry was “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, and in England freedom was demanded everywhere. Freedom for whom and what? Freedom for the inrushing capitalist class to exploit without restraint, without the shackles of monarchy and divine right: equality at the start of a race in which the self-elected winner had the hides and carcasses of the rest. In America, the ownership and control of the means of living were vested in the class whose lineal descendants still hold it.

The history books show Independence to have been essential to the emergence of a great modern nation: the creation of a strong central government controlled by the manufacturing and commercial class. The capitalists were a revolutionary class, advancing the capacities of mankind immeasurably. What the Declaration of Independence shows is their inability to fulfil those capacities after two hundred years. Like the aristocracy from whose grip they broke, from a dynamic social force they have long since become an obstruction to mankind. It is time for the next move, to Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

Gashouse or powerhouse? (1985)

Editorial from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every few years, when the working class in most parts of the capitalist world are invited to elect another government, they go to the polls unmindful of the real significance of the occasion. For some time they will have been bombarded by the claims of the competing parties to have the most effective and humane programme for organising capitalism. They will have read many assertions of an ability to eliminate poverty, ill health, war. . . With this information — it would be too kind, and inaccurate, to describe it as knowledge — in their heads the workers can go to the polls and weightily decide between one party and another — which means between one style of capitalism and another. Having elected a government, the workers then expect it to get on with the job, which they assume to be arranging the affairs of society so that they run more happily and efficiently, in the interests of the voters. For that is how they regard the function of the legislative bodies to which they elect the people they call their representatives.

But the truth is rather different, for very little of the work of those bodies has any connection with the interests of the mass of the people. Of course, at times it does have some effect on their lives (although usually not in the manner promised) and for that reason it may be the subject of impassioned debate among the working class. But this effect is rarely, if ever, in any sense permanent or significant. For the rest, the legislatures are concerned with the day-to-day organisation of capitalism which has no relevance to working-class lives.

In some cases this takes the form of organisational, managerial reforms, for example the present policy of the Thatcher government to end state control over some industries such as telecommunications and to open these up to private investment. Workers get very excited about these measures, in some cases because they think that "they" (the Tory government) are thereby taking away some of "our" property. Others get equally worked up because they are allowed to buy a few shares in the newly organised concern and so, in their own estimation, become "investors". They might even think of themselves as tycoons, manipulators of the world's stock markets. But whatever the fantasies, the reality is that the fundamental of the class ownership of the industries remains undisturbed. Any worker who has doubts on that score can test the matter out by trying to get free telephone calls. We should also remember that there was equal excitement when the industries which the Thatcher government are now "privatising" were taken into state control. Nationalisation was regarded then as the public (which meant by all of us) ownership of a concern so that it was to be operated in the interests of everyone. Workers who held that theory could have tested it out by trying to keep for themselves some of the produce of "their" industry. In fact, many of them have been forced to assess the theory, by resisting the efforts of nationalised industries to close down unprofitable plant and to sack "redundant" workers or to try to hold back wage rises and intensify exploitation. As the steel workers and the coal miners have found out, the notion that state control is common ownership is a cruel deception.

Another overriding concern of the legislatures is the juggling with the financial superstructure of capitalism, to create the illusion that in this they are making fundamental social changes. This takes place under the popular assumption that there is no problem of capitalism which can't be solved by an injection of money into the appropriate. sensitive spot. The more extreme expressions of workers' poverty, such as slum housing and malnutrition, are widely supposed to be curable by simply increasing the amount of state benefits and investments applied to the area of concern. But this is not an original idea; governments have long tried, or claimed to be able, to deal with such problems in that way but whatever grants they make, and however skilfully and frenziedly they juggle with the finances, the problems will not go away. The reason for their impotence is that the problems are endemic to capitalism; poverty, for example, is an inevitable feature of class society and an accompaniment of wage slavery. As long as capitalism lasts — as long as there is a working class —there will be poverty and with it there will be extremes of poverty, just as there will be riches and excessive riches. So when a legislature sets itself to a session of financial juggling it is engaged in something which has no relevance to the abolition of capitalism's problems and none, therefore, to the interests of the working class who elected them.

In the end, the proof of where the efforts of a legislative body are directed lies in experience. After ages of laws being laid down, and repealed, are the working class any nearer to a solution of their problems? Has poverty been abolished? Is war no longer a threat to society? Is everyone as healthy, happy and secure as they can possibly be? The answer to all these questions is clearly a negative, which is not to be cynical or despairing but realistic.

This fact may be taken as giving credence to those who argue that legislative bodies are themselves irrelevancies, to be ignored by the working-class movement for the socialist revolution to take over society in the interests of the world's people. In fact that attitude misses the essential point. An elected legislature is the seat of power in capitalism, however its function may be misconceived and misused. The miners had this rammed home to them during their recent strike and it is time the workers as a whole grasped it. At present the voters send people to legislatures with a clear mandate to continue the capitalist system, which means to absorb themselves with measures which have no bearing on workers' lives.

But a socialist working class will use the occasion of an election in a completely different way. They will know that, as the legislatures are the seat of power, it is an act of futile waste to run up against them; they must be controlled before they can be used to bring about working class emancipation. This will be the function — strictly imposed, monitored and controlled which will be applied by the working class on their elected delegates in the establishment of socialism.

The revolution will bring a society of communal ownership and democratic control — a world of abundance and free access to wealth. Worldwide, legislatures will have their part to play in the revolution — it will be an act of historic significance.

Wadya Know (1949)

A Short Story from the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apologies to Damon Runyon

At eleven-o-clock last Friday evening I am sitting in Fifty’s snack bar on Piccadilly Circus and we are consuming coffee. It is very bad coffee in Fifty’s bar and we are only consuming this coffee because we have nothing much else on. “We” I say, because I have company—Flutter. Flutter is feeling sociable and offers gaspers to a dame across the counter, speaking to her as follows:

"Say, when this joint closes up. maybe we can help wash-up. eh?"

Well the dame looks very surprised at this and says that in this Fifty place they have special geezers for washing up. “What’s more," she says. “these washing-up geezers is dirt cheap and what's Flutter want to lower himself for anyway?”

Flutter is very incensed at this and I am rubbering in to save any argument. I say “How is Charlie.” I says.

“Charlie!" shrills this dame. “Oos ee?" “Why” I says, “Charlie Fifty who owns this joint and maybe a million. You mean you never see him?” She signifies that she never clapped eyes on this Fifty fellow ever.

Well this is the second shock we are receiving that evening. First these special geezers who spend their natural washing-up dishes. And then the guy who is owning the joint never shows up to run the business—selling lousy coffee to me and Flutter and the other city guys who can’t go any place else.

By now Flutter is speaking bitter things on the subject of guys who have nothing to do but own milk bars and watch their blood pressure. I am thinking that there's millions who does jobs for Charlie Fifty and maybe he has special geezers to watch his blood pressure and doesn’t do that himself either on account of he is too busy owning his milk bars. I am grumbling about all this to Flutter maybe 100 per cent, and he speaks loudly as follows:

“Yeah—we gets lousy coffee and no-good grub, these geezers she speaks about washes-up all their naturals and this Sixty-man he’s no benefit to anybody anyway.”

At this point we are being pushed off our stools by an Admiral or maybe a Commodore who is saying.

“Cumom—dosin hup!” This makes me wonder if he does this all his life too.

The worst jolt comes when I am trying to board the last street-car to Horrorway. The attendant is elbowing me and some other citizens off this car into the gutter. He is accompanying his actions with suitable words like this: “This ’ere vehicle’s run for the Company’s benefit! Not yours!” So we are left quite mortified at our nerve. How are we to know the car is full of shareholders? Then we think maybe this attendant guy only shoots us a line. Who ever sees a bus-full of shareholders and they wouldn’t live in Horrorway nohow. As I only says to Flutter, I says this is a very perplexing world . . .

D. R. Onion.

One nation — an emaciated myth (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few things are more consistently misrepresented than the past and now the Tory Wets are at it, with their talk of One Nation. There was, they tell us, something called One Nation Toryism when decency was the politician’s guiding principle. When those who held wealth and power and privilege regarded themselves as under an agonising obligation to the rest, who had little or none of those things. The poor and the sick had to be looked after — and of course kept poor — through a charitable concern for their welfare. Naturally there will be disputes occasionally to mar this blissful arrangement but these can be settled through a process of consensus, taking all interests into account so that the final decision is acceptable to everyone. Confrontation - the bitter, head-on fight to the death — is in very bad taste. Apparently One Nation Toryism operated in the past and as a result everyone kept their place and England was a green and pleasant land awash with milk and honey.

So far nobody has actually been able to tell us when that was and what it was like and why, if life then was so relaxed and serene, the principle of One Nation was ever allowed to decline into Divided Britain under Margaret Thatcher, who enjoys nothing so much as a good day’s searing confrontation with Neil Kinnock, the unions, the BBC or her own back benchers. Just how much some of those back benchers are in the grip of nostalgia for One Britain was made clear recently when Ted Heath attacked the government’s proposals on education reform on the grounds that they violated the sacred principles of real, caring Toryism. But it is less than 20 years ago when Heath was himself Prime Minister. Was there One Nation then? Have we forgotten something about life in Britain in the 1970s?

Heath, like Thatcher, was the offspring of a small-town grocer. He was brought up in Broadstairs on the Kent coast. Now there is much to recommend Broadstairs, a rambling town with white cliffs, sandy bays and rock pools which give it the air of a seaside town out of Enid Blyton. But it hardly seems a place likely to spawn a charismatic political leader and so it turned out to be with Heath — a dogged, stubborn man who lacked the art of showing himself as a person of real warmth or of clear principles. Of course this was not why he was sacked as Tory leader. In the eyes of his party, his real crime was to lose an election, in circumstances which seemed to make it almost entirely his fault.

And that is what makes his talk now about One Britain rather strange. Heath came to power in June 1970 after a campaign in which his party promised to do something to stop what seemed to be the unstoppable rise in prices. The Tory programme made it quite clear that they would apply a different economic strategy from that of previous Labour and Conservative governments. Harder-headed, more rigorous standards would be applied, the screw would be tightened on state subsidies to ailing companies and those which could not compete effectively enough would be abandoned — lame ducks as prey to the economic foxes and vultures. There would be an end to government intervention in wage disputes, which would be left to sort themselves out under the influence of market forces; Labour’s Prices and Incomes Board would be abolished.

The idea was partly to encourage employers to resist wage claims and the government led the way in this by enforcing the policy on its own employees who, apart from anything else, were among the weakest in their bargaining power. The postmen were a vital test case; they took their dispute to the lengths of a strike but theirs was an industry due for the sweeping changes which have since come about. Their defeat was predictable, as was the bitterness with which they faced it. It was no time to talk to a postman about One Nation Toryism.

The same can be said about the decision to abolish free school milk, which had once been held up as an example to the world of how a caring state ensured that no child should grow up with easily avoidable diseases of malnutrition. It can be said too about the rise in the price of school dinners, an early step towards their eventual virtual abolition. School dinners had been valued as a social service, an assurance that even the poorest kids would get at least one substantial meal each day (not to mention the poorly paid teachers). Thatcher was Minister of Education at the time; she later said that the attacks she received over these cuts would send her home weeping — a touching vision.

But Heath was perhaps a little before his time in these policies and it soon became apparent that if British capitalism was to compete in its established markets there was an urgent need for help from the state. In early 1972 Heath did his famous U-turn, when he reversed many of the policies on which his election victory had been based. Huge subsidies were made available to industry; Rolls Royce and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders were two of the more famous companies saved from collapse. Having abolished the Labour government’s Industrial Development Corporation, which organised these types of operation, Heath’s government now set up the Industrial Development Executive, whose function was almost exactly the same. In place of Labour’s Prices and Incomes Board we had a Price Commission and a Wages Board. Now committed to a policy of interference in wage disputes the government were faced with a series of them, in particular a strike by civil servants — the first in history.

The abandonment of the principle of non-interference was finally signalled with the imposition of a statutory 90-day freeze on wage rises, to be relaxed gradually over a long period. This was accompanied by an erosion of trade union bargaining power in the Industrial Relations Bill. The Labour Party attacks on this Bill ignored the fact that many of its proposals were similar to those in the previous Labour government’s White Paper In Place of Strife. When the Bill became law it did nothing to reduce tension and its inoperable nature was made clear in June 1973 when some dockers were imprisoned for contempt of court after refusing to appear before the Industrial Relations Court. The judge concerned was interpreting the Act correctly; he was doing what the government and parliament had wanted. But an acutely embarrassed government could foresee an unending procession of eager trade union martyrs pressing through the prison gates. Something had to be done to wangle out of this impasse of their own making. The Official Solicitor was urged to think of a way out; this shadowy figure enjoyed a brief spell of fame, the dockers were released and the Act and the Court thereafter discredited.

This monumental muddle came to a head with the oil crisis of 1973, as the miners, the electrical power workers and the train drivers were taking action over pay claims. The miners had already won a spectacular victory in their strike of 1972, when the flying pickets came onto the scene, Arthur Scargill first made his name and the Wilberforce Enquiry came down emphatically on the miners’ side. There is no need here to recount the story of the Three Day Week, the State of Emergency, the power cuts, the unlit shop fronts, the blank television screens after 10.30pm. It was hardly an ideal vision of One Nation. After that, no Prime Minister should have hoped to win an election (although in fact Heath almost pulled it off).

Perhaps Heath made some terrible mistake. Perhaps he simply got his timing wrong — many of his policies are in operation now, more appropriate to the interests of British capitalism in recession in the 1980s than they were in the 1970s. But one policy he did not try through all those crises was that of One Nation Toryism. For example his bitter denunciation of the miners in 1973 allowed nothing about the dangers of their job. In March that year seven miners were killed by floodwater; in May another seven in a collapse; in July 18 in a pit cage crash. At that time pneumoconiosis held some 40,000 miners in its painful, incurable grip. These workers were part of the useful, productive people in society; Heath’s policies, like those of all governments, were designed to protect the interests of the unproductive, parasitic minority of the capitalist class.

This class, when Heath lost power in 1974, still owned most of the wealth of Britain. The richest one per cent of the population held 22.5 per cent of the wealth and the richest ten per cent held 57.5 per cent. (In fact they increased their share considerably under the subsequent Labour government, who asserted that they would squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked; Labour has always claimed to be the real proponent of the One Nation principle.) That is the real, fundamental condition of society which makes all the talk of One Nation so much deceit. This is a class divided society of riches and poverty, of opulence and malnutrition, of palaces and slums. It is a society of conflict, of coercion of the many by the few, of exploitation. To attempt to revive the emaciated concept of One Nation hints that the Tory Wets must be getting desperate. It should be laid to rest, with all the other false theories by which capitalism lives on.

Ivan 

Education questions (2016)

Book Review from the March 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Slavoj Zizek. A Zizekian Gaze at Education'. By Tony Wall and David Perrin. Springer. 2015.

A recent review in the Socialist Standard of a book on the nature of democracy in advanced capitalist society pointed out the hollowness of the voting process, used as it is to confirm and consolidate the status quo, compared to the much more varied and meaningful use it could be put to in a society organised differently. The same can surely be said of the education system under capitalism whose main purpose is not to spread knowledge and understanding for its own sake but to impart to its ‘consumers’ the ‘skills’ necessary to carry out functions in the market system when their formal education is over and at the same time to habituate them to the ‘normality’ of that system, making it unlikely they will look beyond it for alternatives forms of social organisation.

This is something clearly articulated by Wall and Perrin in their book on the Slovenian left-wing social commentator and philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. In the last 20-odd years Zizek has produced numerous works in which he seeks to analyse the workings of modern capitalism and in particular how it shapes the psyche of all those who live under it. As this book points out, some have seen Zizek as an intellectual charlatan, ‘an empty vessel making much philosophical noise’, but Wall and Perrin, while making it clear that Zizek ‘rarely speaks about education directly’, find his broader insights into capitalist society sufficiently stimulating to apply them to the education system they themselves work in. In doing so, they go on a discursive tour that takes in situationism, the autodidactic educational tradition, and attempts at alternative education like A S Neill’s Summerhill School.

They point out how the ‘familiarity breeds consent’ processes Zizek emphasises are, in the area of education as in others, both subtle and all-encompassing so that ‘we carry on regardless, even if we have been trained to question our own assumptions and engage in critical reflection – we are readily duped and tricked and “being critical” can even lead to the concepts we are seeking to dismantle taking an even tighter grip on us’. Here we have an excellent description of how acceptance of the increasingly rigid processes of capitalist education envelop both teachers and students. Some of course do see through it, but attempts to pursue a different path within that system are most likely to result in estrangement, in weary resignation or, as the authors put it, ‘acting as if’ (e.g. as if ‘dumbing-down were not taking place or Ofsted inspections in schools or research assessment exercises in universities really were crucially important), because of our need to fit in, or even because our job may depend on it. 

The final chapter of this book, the first attempt to apply Zizek’s ideas to education, is entitled ‘Now What Might We Do’. But the writers seem to recognise that the amount that can be done within the framework in which they operate as educators is extremely limited. They quote approvingly Zizek’s statements that ‘one should analyse the capitalist system as a totality of interdependent links’ and that ‘you can think beyond capitalism and liberal democracy as the ultimate framework of our lives’. They recognise that the subject they are dealing with ‘goes beyond education departments and their policies, and it even goes beyond nation states’. But just as it is difficult to find in Zizek’s writings a clearly articulated view of what we might replace the current social set-up with and how that can be done, so Wall and Perrin too, perhaps inevitably given the subject of their study, limit themselves to offering what they call ‘glimpses into navigating differently’ and conclude by stating that ‘while Zizek may have been asking the questions, it is up to us both to provide the answers and act on them’.

Howard Moss

Socialism and the Intellectuals: A Confession of Impotence (1957)

From the March 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fabian Society have just issued Tract No. 304. It is by Kingsley Amis and is entitled Socialism and the Intellectuals. On the inside of the.cover we are told that he is “a poet, novelist, literary critic and lecturer in English at the University College of Swansea. Author of the widely-acclaimed and best-selling Lucky Jim” Having read this we rubbed our eyes and looked at the title again, but right enough it was Socialism and the Intellectuals.

That the Fabian Society should have thought that this statement of Mr. Amis' qualification was a reason for giving weight to his pronouncements in a field quite foreign to him is an example of how foreign the field is to the futile Fabian Society—futile as far as understanding and changing the present basis of society is concerned.

We asked ourselves why on earth was a man with the qualifications mentioned straying into a field that must be practically unknown territory to him? We read the opening sentences of the pamphlet and were still more bewildered, for this is how he begins: “As will soon become obvious from what I have to say, I am not a politician, nor am I specially well informed about politics." After reading the pamphlet we came to the conclusion that the last phrase was too modest; he obviously is not informed at all! As he puts it on page 10: “The intelligentsia—and once more I include myself—doesn’t understand economics." However, this does not prevent him from saying what should and should not be done! Nor does it prevent him from adopting the patronising attitude that is typical of his kind.

In spite of the title there is not a word of explanation of Socialism in the whole pamphlet, though the word is used a few times. The inference we gather from his remarks is that Socialism is what the Labour Party stands for, and Marxism is what the Russian State stands for.

Cartoon from the original article.

Before he comes to a definition of the Intelligentsia Mr. Amis has some illuminating remarks to make on himself. He tells us that his father was an "office worker" and “I grew up in a modest but comfortable lower middle-class house in the London suburbs." Here one can find the outlook of the man laid bare. He could not say “working class," it would have stuck in his priggish throat. He was a scholarship boy at a London day school “and, also on a scholarship, studied English at one of the less pretentious Oxford colleges." How beautifully indefinite and smug this is. In other words his father depended upon the sale of his labour power in an office, at what job we don't know, in order to obtain the means to live and keep his family. We gather that Mr. Amis also depends for his livelihood upon the sale of his labour power in order to live, in spite of the scholarships. But the thought of identifying himself with the working class, of which in fact he is a member is abhorrent to him, just as it is abhorrent to his fellow so-called intellectuals.

Here is how he defines the Intellectual:

“I want to make a few distinctions and definitions. I take as my general field of reference the middle-class intellectual, using the phrase in a pretty wide sense. One could reel off a fairly long list of the occupations pursued by the kind of people I am discussing, and this may be helpful in attaining some sort of precision. 1 mean occupations like those university, college and school teachers, perhaps the lower ranks of the civil service, journalists, industrial scientists, librarians, G.P.'s, some of the clergy (predominantly the non-conformist sects?) and the various brands of literary and artistic, or arty intellectual." (Page 2.)

 There you have it. It will be seen that the groups he mentions all depend for a livelihood upon selling their mental and physical energies, just as John Smith the mechanic does, or Bill Jones, the fish porter. In fact they are all members of the working class. But this prosaic fact would take the self-imposed gilt off the scholarship boy produced by the “lower middle class." A pity he didn’t go further in his precision. We would be interested to know what group he would designate as the “middle middle-class" and the “upper middle-class."

All through the pamphlet Mr. Amis sets his group apart from the rest of society as a group that has no interest to defend. This is how he puts it on page 6:

“Anyway, by his station in society the member of the intelligentsia really has no political interests to defend, except the very general one (the one he most often forgets) of not finding himself bossed around by a totalitarian government. But compared with, say, a steelworker or a banker, he is politically in a void. Furthermore, he belongs to no social group which might lend him stability.”

This is the sort of rubbish that comes from the attitude of superiority; an attitude that has belonged to the Fabian Society from its inception. How does Mr. Amis think the teachers have reached their present status except by the struggles of the past? And how do they get their jobs except by setting forth their qualifications to their employers and hoping they will be the applicants chosen? In other words they act in a similar way to that of other members of the working class, and if they don’t come up to the required standard they get the sack—pardon us Mr. Amis—are asked to resign! Teachers, civil servants, etc., have “no interests to defend” and yet, like other members of the working class, they strike, or threaten to strike, for higher pay or better conditions, or to resist a worsening of conditions, even the G.P.’s are in that position at the moment.

Here are some specimens of the political outlook of Mr. Amis:

"Marxism, however, has a second attraction not offered by the Church: It involves violence." (Page 6.)

There is no evidence offered for this nonsensical view. In his ignorance Mr. Amis apparently blindly accepts Russian Communism as Marxist without investigation.

“One feels that a progressive party should have this reform [reform of the laws relating to homosexuality] on its programme." (Page 10.)

This gives an idea of the kind of question that looms large in Mr. Amis’s intellectual mind.

“Until very recently there has been only one political issue of anything like the same proportions and of the same kind as the Abyssinias and the Spains of the Thirties: I mean, of course, Cyprus. There, at any rate, is something which potentially unites the romantic with the practical man. But what gets done about it? Compare what does get done about it with what would have got done about it in the Thirties." (Page 11.)

We have compared, and, in both cases found the answer to be—nothing that fundamentally matters! Of course there has been an issue of political importance, both then and now, that reduces the ones he mentions to insignificance, but Mr. Amis hasn’t seen it. That issue is the ownership of the means of production by a privileged section of society which compels the mass of society to occupy a subject position beset by insecurity and want of the means to live a comfortable care-free life.

Here is a specimen of his idea of what moves some of his fellow intellectuals to action:

“Violence has a good deal of charm for some sections of the intelligentsia (as the cult of bullfighting shows) or, at any rate, the thought of violence is attractive. It provides a way of getting one’s own back by proxy on one’s parents and one’s old headmaster; one can work off the guilt of having been to a public school, and so on, by chatting about blowing up the class one was born into; one can compensate with some dash for one’s thwarted desire for power, which is often obversive in these circles. Quite soon it becomes natural to write airily about political murders and read about them with appreciation." (Page 6.)

We presume that Mr. Amis knows what he is talking about as he is referring to members of a group to which he keeps insisting he belongs. However, if the idea were not so absurd, and if we were not convinced he was romancing, we would be inclined to ask: “What kind of lunatics are these who masquerade as intellectuals?”

Now let us give a final quotation:

"I may have shown a certain animus towards Orwell, and I have not had occasion to do more than mention some of his many fine qualities. But animus remains, and the reason for it is this. He was the man above all others who was qualified to become the candid friend the Labour Party needed so much in the years after I945. But what he did was to become a right wing propagandist by negation, or, at any rate, a supremely powerful—though unconscious—advocate of political quietism." (Page 8.)

This seems to sum up the real reason for writing the pamphlet—to express his spleen against those of his fellow “intellectuals,” like Orwell, Auden, Koestler, Spender, and Day Lewis, whom he felt had let him down. On the other hand, of course, it may have been to “work off the guilt of having been to a public school!”

For the rest Mr. Amis's pamphlet has no value as a contribution to clearing the vision on the cause of social subjection and its removal. He evidently has no glimmering of the answers. What he has done is taken the opportunity to jibe at those of his fellow “intellectuals” who have deserted the Labour Party, make the usual clever remarks of this kind, and, with his tongue in his cheek, lump himself in with his impotent fellows. He displays the usual impudence of his fellows in straying into a field of which he is ignorant and giving his patronising opinions. If he had looked at facts instead of stratifying groups he might have got somewhere.

There is something about Left and Right wings in the pamphlet. Mr. Amis should take to his wings, fly out of discussions that are out of his depth, and get back to “best sellers.”

Gilmac.

Odds and Ends: Totalitarian Hungary (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Totalitarian Hungary

Under the heading “Hungary to Have Only One Party,” the Sunday Observer reports from Vienna a statement of a Mr. Marosan, Minister of State in the Kadar Government, that:—

   “The Government will try to broaden itself by including non-Communist Party representatives of other former parties”
      “This does not mean that other parties will be admitted in Hungary” (6:1:57.)

There is to be only one legal party—the so-called Hungarian Communist Party. And this the Communists call a “ People’s Democracy!” After one of the bloodiest national revolts in recent years, and the greatest anti-communist rebellion in a Soviet controlled country, the Communists still carry on as though nothing had ever happened.

Shake, Rattle and Rock

Following the tremendous success (both from the entertainment and financial point of view) of the film “Rock Around the Clock,” another Rock 'n Roll film has been widely shown on the circuits. It is called “Shake, Rattle and Rock." It is fairly light-hearted and includes numerous Rock 'n Roll hits. But it also gives some background to the craze, its influence on teenagers and the attitude of the T.V. and Radio tycoons.

The “hero” of “Shake, Rattle and Rock" is a young disc jockey and youth club organiser in a slum area. His boss at the T.V. studio looks upon Rock n' Roll solely as a money-making gimmick, something to push and push ... and then drop when the public is no longer interested; when it is no longer a money-maker. To the young disc jockey Rock n' Roll is an art-form; a form of teenage expression like the “Charleston" and the “Blackbottom” of a couple of decades or so ago. But more important Rock n' Roll is a means of keeping the kids off the streets; of preventing them from becoming hoodlums in the pay of local gangsters.

The film comes to an end with a mock trial, at which a local “anti-Rock” vigilante committee claims that Rock n' Roll is decadent, savage and causes crime. But Rock n’ Roll emerges triumphant.... It is a harmless outlet for youthful energy—and, more important, a good money-maker.

Eating Out?

How pleasant it is to eat out. No need to cook an evening meal.

On Monday evening one can visit the Latin Quarter—Dinner, Cabaret and Dance—featuring Mimi Pearse and 20 beautiful girls, all for 21/- plus “booze.” And on Tuesday evening there is always the Pigalle with Dinner-de-Luxe at 27/6 (Saturdays à la carte, only 35/-!) And Wednesday evening finds one at the Green Street Club—“ The Club in Mayfair for the Connoisseur.” . .

And so on through the week.

Life can be so interesting and easy ... so long as you are “well loaded" with money. Of course, if you are just a clerk, ’bus driver, a school teacher, or a shop keeper; if, in fact, you are a worker like the majority of people, then you will have to go to Lyons Corner House, the A.B.C., or the Caff round the corner—or go home and cook the spaghetti yourself!!

Fact or Fiction

A book that this writer read just over ten years ago makes quite interesting re-reading. It is The Great Conspiracy Against Russia by Sayers and Kahn, two pro-Russian American writers.

On re-reading this book one can understand how so many young Communists were taken-in by it ten years ago. Much of Book I (section I that is) dealing with Western interference in Russian affairs, the activities of White Russian émigré organisation, etc., after the Revolution in Russia in 1917, is no doubt correct But much of the “Treason Trials” propaganda, the anti-Trotskyist tirades and the like in this book have now been exploded for ever. One example will suffice:—

“At the time of the Axis-supported Franco uprising in Spain, 1936-1938, Andreas Nin headed an ultra-leftist, pro-Trotsky Spanish organization called the Portido Obrero de Unificiacion Marxista, or P.O.U.M. . . .  when the P.O.UM. staged an abortive revolt in Barcelona behind the loyalist lines in the crucial summer of 1937 and called for 'resolute action to overthrow the Government,' it was discovered that Nin and the other P.O.U.M. leaders were actually fascist agents working with France and that they had been carrying on a systematic campaign of sabotage, espionage and terrorism against the Spanish Government. . . . Secret documents seized by the Barcelona Police established that P.O.U.M. members had been carrying on extensive espionage for the fascists; .. . ” (p. 296.)

That the P.O.U.M. wanted a different government no one will deny but to say, as do Sayers and Kahn, that the P.O.U.M.ists were a pro-Fascist organisation is typical of the pro-Stalinist fiction in this book. George Orwell in his book Homage To Catalonia, and Hugo Dewar in Assassins at Large, have both shown conclusively that the Communist allegations against not only the P.O.U.M., but also the Anarchists, in Spain, are pure fabrication's, having no basis in fact.

The Great Conspiracy is interesting reading . . . as fiction!

Peter E. Newell