The Cloak and Dagger Brigade (1977)

From the January 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The knives are out. Sir Harold Wilson and a large section of the Labour Party are gunning for those who claim to be trying to “re-establish its socialist principles”. For a party who has never had any, their task is a hopeless one. Going for “Trots” and other so-called left-wingers is unproductive, and two members of the Labour Party National Executive have tabled a resolution asking the Party to cool it. The two members, MPs Eric Heffer and Joan Lestor, are considered by many to be “revolutionaries” in their own right. Their resolution contains the following:

Attacks which add nothing to solving the serious economic and social problems which confront this country.

Whilst we agree that attacks add nothing to solving the problems which confront this country, the solutions put forward by the Labour Government do not seem to be meeting with much success. Indeed, we might say that these solutions have added nothing at all to the old solutions that have been tried in the past, and failed.

We wonder if Heffer and Lestor are among those Labour MPs whose favourite reading today is, apparently, the works of Karl Marx? If so, we suggest they don’t just read Marx but study what he had to say, and see if it adds up to the world which they are trying to better. If they don’t read Marx, here is a glorious opportunity not only to find out how capitalism works, and the solution, Socialism; but a knowledge of Marxism will enable them to deal with the spurious “left-wingers” who are masquerading under the cloak of Marxism within the Labour Party. They could tell these quacks exactly what Marx was after.

In the present circumstances, we reiterate the idea that the principle (of tolerance must be one of the basic concepts of democratic socialism.

Is it only when the Labour Government are in a tight spot that the principle of tolerance must be one of the concepts of “democratic socialism”? If the Government had a thumping majority in the House, would such tolerance be so basic? Whilst tolerance might be a virtue (and we can well understand Labour politicians desiring it, particularly from the electors, who see their promises unfulfilled), it has nothing to do with democratic Socialism. How can a Socialist be tolerant of a man such as Callaghan who calls for the system to be more profitable and for the capitalist class to invest more in industry? Profit and investment have nothing to do with Socialism. Are we to be tolerant of a man who mouths such rubbish (in the name of Socialism), and tolerant of the Heffers and Lestors who will support him when the chips are down?

Mr. Heffer in the House of Commons, April 9th, 1975, said: “We determine the future of our country”. He and the others in the Labour Party have a lot to answer for.

Cyril May

The Purpose of Socialist Organisation (1934)

From the June 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

The reason for organisation is that a number of people united are better able to accomplish a given end as a rule than the same people working in an isolated fashion. In fact, some ends can only be accomplished by means of organisations, and Socialism is one of them.

Mere organisation, however, is not enough. It must be of such a nature that it will meet the need to accomplish the end as soon as possible. Moreover, it must really accomplish the end, and not some pale shadow of it.

Bad organisation will often defeat the end aimed at, weak organisation will hinder its accomplishment, and only sound organisation will adequately achieve it.

The end that is aimed at determines the nature of the organisation. Organisation for Socialism is a political movement to revolutionise present social arrangements which rest on the private ownership of the means for producing and distributing the social wealth.

As the political arrangements of the world are split into separate political units with dearly-defined national boundaries, the world organisation for Socialism must also be split up into similar national groups struggling to obtain control of the national centre of political power, but is in close touch with their counterparts in other national groups. The business of each, however, is first of all to settle accounts with their immediate political adversaries.

Political parties are those which participate in the struggle for control of the State machinery. The Socialist party is therefore a political party.

In order to achieve its aim the party organised to obtain Socialism must be clear as to its object and its policy; work in harmony with existing conditions, which set definite limits to what can be done, and draw its strength from the working class,—all who live by the sale of their energy to the employing class.

The object of the Socialist Party is set out on another page. An examination of it will show that it is a definite, practical object, and is not concerned with any abstract ideas of humanity, justice, liberty, and so forth. It implies a fundamental social revolution—a revolution in the method of ownership. It further implies that the majority of the people shall take part in the change, for it sets out that in the future system there shall be democratic control. For this to be a reality the majority of the people must understand what they are about, else there would be no control, but simply a gigantic muddle. Hence there can be no question of Socialism stealing in by the back door, as it were. It must be clearly and openly explained and examined, so that all may grasp its meaning.

Once this revolutionary nature of Socialism is thoroughly grasped, time will not be wasted devising means that at best only ease, without removing, some of the worst evils of the present system. There is one example that illustrates very well how an immense amount of energy can be spent on a reform that has no important influence on the position of the mass of the people. For generations the workers were persuaded to interest themselves in the question of Irish Home Rule, and even general elections were fought ostensibly on that question. Well, Ireland—or anyhow, the voluble part of it—now have home rule, but no one appears to have discovered any particular change in the condition of the workers inside or outside of Ireland, as a result of it. A similar thing can be said of most of the issues that come up for judgment under the heading of reforms.

The disillusion and apathy that are the offspring of disappointment when ref onus have been obtained but fail to produce any lasting remedy is another objection to reform policies. One can imagine the feelings of those who spent a lifetime working for Irish Home Rule, and now see its accomplishment. They have not even the satisfaction of having achieved the end they were after, because the actual end is something far different from what they pictured it to be.

Again, there is the enormous waste of time arguing about the values of particular reforms and the splits and enmities developed out of these discussions. This point need hardly be laboured, as most of those who are politically active are only too bitterly aware of it.

For the above reason and many more, but above all because reform can only, at best, mitigate, but cannot abolish the evils that flow from the present organisation of society, the policy of the Socialist Party is revolutionary and not reformist.

It has been mentioned that the party aiming at Socialism must work in harmony with existing conditions. It must be recognised that Socialism is a growth out of Capitalism, and not a brand new, watertight system that has been carefully thought out and can be produced like the conjurer produces a cat from an empty bag. The very idea of such a system as Socialism has only developed because of modern social trends. The organisation of industry on a large scale makes production to meet the needs of all a relatively simple matter; this production is obtained by the application of human labour to Nature-given material, and it is the workers alone who apply the labour; the wealth produced is owned by those who own the means of production but who, on the whole, take no part in production. Facts like these are bringing home to more and more workers the knowledge that by converting the means of production into the common property of all, and thus producing for the benefit of all, instead of a privileged few, it would be possible for all to live in comfort, and hence is a very desirable change.

To make this change, however, it is necessary to observe that the State power is the bulwark that supports the present system, and that there are certain prescribed methods by which control of this State power can be attained, failure to observe which only leads to disaster. Many clever and honest people who believed that the parliamentary avenue to State control could be ignored threw up all struggle in despair at the ends of their lives. Sorel, Labriola and Michel sire examples of those who held to the view that strikes and street fights were the means the workers should adopt to overthrow the present social system, but in the end they became despondent. Others, like Briand, who held similar views, ultimately went over to the side of the Capitalists.

It is from the workers that the Socialist Party draws its strength, because it is the workers whose interests demand the change. The Capitalists, as a whole, live in comfort, on account of their privileged position, consequently it would be both absurd and useless to expect them to voluntarily give up their privileges. Speaking in general, it is to the Capitalist's interest to retain the present system of exploitation, because they are the gainers from it, and it is to the interest of the workers to abolish the system, because it enslaves them and shuts them out from a life of comfort and security.

Hence the Socialist Party addresses its appeal for members to the working class, and draws its funds and its workers from members of the working class. For reasons already mentioned, it is essential that those who join the Socialist Party should clearly understand its object and policy, and hence the need for an object and set of principles making this clear, so that those who join will know exactly where they are.

There is one thing, however, which is not written in the Declaration of Principles, but is also necessary for obtaining Socialism, that is, members to do the work that is involved in organisation for such a purpose. Here we would appeal to sympathisers who agree with us but have not yet seen fit to join.

The more there are to do the various necessary jobs, the less burdensome the jobs become, and the more efficiently they can be done. We need speakers and writers to spread our message; people who can do clerical work, literature selling, and the hosts of other jobs that must be done.

Above all, those who come into the Socialist Party will have the unique advantage of helping to support the organisation for which they are working. Their remuneration will be their satisfaction as one of the instruments in the great social transformation that is coming, which will lift them out of bondage.

Gilmac.

Single mothers and absent fathers (1994)

From the April 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women trying to solve the problem of male dominance by fighting men, and men who try to hang on to their historical dominant role are playing into the hands of the capitalist class, argues Nicky Snell

One of the government's recent scapegoats has been the single parent. An obvious target as single parents are mostly women and mostly poor. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for them, they have hung themselves with their own rope.

The stigmatized "unmarried mother" was in the early part of this century frequently given a life-sentence in a psychiatric institution. Her crime: partaking willingly or unwillingly in sexual intercourse outside of another repressive institution - marriage; and having the fortune or misfortune to conceive. She was labelled immoral, and even if not incarcerated in a psychiatric prison, would be sentenced to a life of shame. Such moral stigma hardly touched the male participant in the condemned sexual act.

To me, such an attitude seems incomprehensible. The human procreative process, including sexual pleasure and the ensuing arrival of a new and tiny human life, grown within the woman's body, has always seemed something worthy of celebration.

This is not to detract from the very real, sometimes devastating effects that such an arrival can have upon a woman's life. In those days, a pregnant woman, married or unmarried, was threatened with loss of life. Death as a result of childbirth was common. And as any committed parent knows, keeping a baby alive, let alone comfortable and content, involves an enormous amount of work. Even today, this work is not recognized for what it is. Parents caring for little children do not even have the comforts allocated to wage-slaves: a protected wage, tea breaks, lunch hours and regular time off duty though parents can gain something mostly denied to other wage-slaves. a deep satisfaction in the work.

In short, heterosexual sex makes babies, and women and men have a sex drive. Even now, no form of contraception, not even a sterilization operation, can be 100 percent relied upon. Human babies, being dependent for many years, require a lot of attention to keep them alive, happy and healthy, and providing the kind of environment where this is possible is not an easy task — certainly not within our present economic system. The traditional system of survival for babies, children and their carers is patriarchal monogamous marriage. The man takes the initiative in finding a wife. The woman must wait to be asked. The man then has free access to her body for the purposes of sexual satisfaction ("conjugal rights"). He also has a responsibility to provide and care for the woman and their resulting children. It is understood that such human qualities as love, compassion and altruism are required to make this palatable.

Up until the late sixties and seventies, anybody transgressing these guidelines was shamed and castigated, in particular the woman who enjoyed sexual pleasure outside marriage. The man who failed to provide for this family was treated with contempt.

The moralizing and shame served the capitalists well. It kept the majority of women and children within the framework of "The Family", largely dependent on the men who derived their income by slaving for the capitalist hierarchy. A man who feels duty-bound to feed his family in these circumstances is a man fearful of losing his job. Such a man is manipulable by capitalism.

The damaging effects of patriarchal monogamy led to a number of challenges.

The first concerned sexual repression. Sexuality is a very powerful drive within both men and women that seeks some form of release. For young adults it is new, strong and difficult to manage. The old way of dealing with it was to discuss it as little as possible and to keep young women and men apart. Homosexual activity was stamped on where possible. There were then accepted means for men and women to meet and arrive at the desired state of matrimony, within which sexuality could be expressed. Unfortunately the levels of repression and ignorance set up led to many people leading a life of sexual misery. Wilhelm Reich argued that there is a connection between sexual repression and fascism.

The second concerned the effect upon society of the expectation that a man should "control" his wife. This expectation sabotages potentially good relations between the sexes, leaving a man to a greater or lesser extent on guard and limiting a woman’s freedom of expression.

For example, a man whose wife spends "over" long talking to another man in a pub may be warned by his mates to "look out". He is seen to be not in control of his wife and pressured into unnecessary hostilities both with his wife and the man in question. Or a woman, who has some genuine grievance which needs discussing with her partner at an adult level, may be dismissed as "nagging". The man feels that to take her seriously is somehow to relinquish his masterful role.

The main challenge here has come from the women's liberation movement.

But we are still left with capitalism. Its present-day representatives in Britain, the Conservative Party, have been trying to re-instate patriarchal monogamy values by condemning single parents and forcing fathers back into the position of financially supporting families they have left behind. Whose purpose does this serve?

Firstly, many of the recent moves made by the government have to do with power and control. From the better-off to the worst-off — from doctors and university lecturers and teachers to schoolchildren and the unemployed — all are under far stricter surveillance than before. And control has to do with property. We are being reminded that we are not free. We are governed by the state which is an instrument of capitalism.

Secondly, the principle of "divide and conquer" is being brought to bear. Under pressure the working class tends to divide against itself. The government is helping this by encouraging scapegoating of particular sections of the working class single parents, absent fathers, etc.

Though many of us have been amused at the way the government's policies have backfired recently, these have nonetheless been having their effect. In a article entitled "Fathers who won't Pay", Yasmin Alibhai Brown writes in the February issue of Everywoman:

In a bar at the BBC Television Centre. I recently heard three slightly tipsy chaps ranting on about how men were now killing themselves because the state was making such massive and unjust demands on them to support the children of previous relationships. Words like ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt’ were flying around the crowded room.

Men are back to hating women and feminists resent the relative status of "middle- class" men. Once again the focus is away from the real source of the problem — a system in which the profits of the few come before the needs of the many, feminists and "middle-class" men included.

I can remember thinking, a few years back, that the movement of women and children onto the registers of the Social Security was a movement towards society taking collective responsibility for its children. It may have been, but it was also a movement towards the relative impoverishment of women and children.

Now the men are to be likewise impoverished with the arrival of the Child Support Agency, whose prime purpose is to save the state the money it now pays to women on Income Support by taking it from the fathers, which doesn't improve the living standard of the women by one iota. It is also a move to place the responsibility of providing for children back onto the shoulders of their biological fathers, who of course have to derive their income by slaving for the capitalist hierarchy.

For those women in the exhausting business of undertaking full-time paid work as well as raising children alone, there may be some improvement in living standards, but whether it is worth the resentment that accompany the extra money is a matter of some doubt. Where men are forced to part with their earnings to support women and children, there is almost a reversal of the old system: a man suffering the indignity of having his earnings deducted at source will feel himself to be the woman's property. Thus the battle of the sexes continues, with a twist to its tail.

The “sex war" is taking place now and represents a near 50/50 split in the world's population. It is not a simple affair, but one which has to be faced if we wish to achieve the free and truly democratic society we wish for.

It is not something that was started by feminists, neither is it something that will end either by their activities alone or by simply quieting them down. It started a very long time ago. No one knows exactly how or why it became such a universal practice for women to be treated as the property of men, but there appears to be a connection between this phenomenon and the use of slaves, the domestication of farm animals and the assumption of property rights over land.

Women, forced or educated into a subordinate role, cannot act in the world in an assertive and free way, and are unable to take up an active political stance alongside men. Subordinates often become manipulative and dishonest: the loyalty of a subordinate is usually tempered by resentment and is always fragile compared to the love and solidarity given to an equal friend or partner. Likewise, women trying to solve the problem of male dominance, by fighting men as the enemy, help to keep us divided, as do men who try to hang on to their historical dominant role.

We all, men and women alike, can end the division of the sexes through listening and learning and through changes in consciousness and behaviour in order to come together and fight the real enemy — the system geared to making financial profit for the few at the expense of the rest of us.

A humanity divided against itself cannot organize to create Socialism. A humanity linked by solidarity, friendship and respect can do just that.

Nicky Snell

Halo Halo!: Answers from Genesis (and the Koran) (2016)

The Halo Halo! Column from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The difference between philosophy and religion, as someone once pointed out, is that philosophy is questions which may never be answered, and religion is answers which may never be questioned. And the answers we get from some religionists are staggering.

Ken Ham, for example, an ex-science teacher (thank goodness for the ‘ex’) and now the president of Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian outfit, teaches that the Book of Genesis should be taken as historical fact, that the universe is no more than about 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs once co-existed with genetically modern humans. His smart-arse answer to anyone who disagrees with his views on evolution and the origin of life is ‘were you there?’(He, presumably, was there when God was creating the universe, Eve was in the Garden of Eden sharing an apple with the serpent and Adam was riding around, Fred Flintstone style, on his dinosaur).

He recently ruffled a few feathers on the Richard Dawkins Foundation website (where they don’t suffer religious fools gladly) with a Facebook post describing the teaching of science to children as a form of child abuse. Teaching children that they are sinners, and liable to an eternity of pain and hellfire unless they live their lives in accordance with Mr Ham’s fantasies is, apparently, not abusive.

It is not only Christians whose lives need to be governed by ancient books of nightmares of course. The Newsweek website recently reported that a powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam (yes, you read that correctly – they have a council of mullahs to make sure their laws meet Allah’s requirements) declared a new law that criminalises violence against women to be ‘un-Islamic’.

The new act passed by the Province of Punjab, where in 2013 more than 5,800 cases of violence against women were reported, gives legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence and calls for the creation of an abuse reporting hot-line.

In the past this religious council has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, supported a law which required women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court, and blocked a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off 8 or 9 year-old girls, so Allah’s hardly going to like this one is he?

‘This whole law is wrong’ argued one confused old cleric, spouting passages from the Koran to back up his point. And another complained, bitterly ‘This law makes a man insecure’. It’s political correctness gone mad, obviously, a total lack of common sense. But no doubt they’ll be able to live with it. They’ve still got that passage in the Koran that allows a man to beat his wife when necessary.

NW

A Fabian speaks (1987)

From the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speaking at a recent Fabian Society meeting, Alan Whitehead, the Labour leader of Southampton City Council, ably demonstrated the confusion that exists in the minds of those who place their trust in "the broad church”. Coming less than twenty-four hours after the Greenwich by-election the first ten minutes of the meeting were taken up with the defeat of the Labour candidate Deirdre Wood. Naturally the blame was laid at the door of the wicked capitalist press. Smears and nasty personal attacks had misled the voters to such a degree that they had elected a Social Democrat as their MP. Heads nodded in agreement and the meeting commenced.

Organised as morale booster for the faithful, the talk concentrated on how Labour won and held Southampton City Council. Although it was a public meeting the speaker doubtlessly thought he was addressing fellow Labourites only. In his speech Alan Whitehead freely used the words socialist and socialism. It was as if he had written the speech, like some enthusiastic cook spicing up an unappetising meal, by liberally shaking “socialist" and "socialism" all over his creation. From "socialist governments" to "socialist schools" to "socialist councillors" and "socialist" holes in the road. Carried away by the excitement of it all Alan Whitehead even claimed there are "many forms of socialism". It was this revolutionary spirit that had led to the Town Hall lights being changed from blue to red on the first day in office.

Moving on to the council's finances, the words "deceit" and "deception" were used. These methods were necessary to keep the money out of the hands of those devious Tories — "What we like to call creative accountancy". We were also told that a deal had been done with merchant bankers Morgan Grenfell — which exposed the double standards of capitalist banking. What it told us about Southampton City Council was left unsaid. To retain power it was necessary to use "Stalinistic Discipline". All members are told how to vote before meetings. Such undemocratic phrases were part and parcel of Alan Whitehead's speech. This dangerous, elitist nonsense was openly put forward as socialism. In stating "that there are many forms of socialism" this hotchpotch of ignorance was offered as one of them.

Coming to the question and answer session, the usual display of confused ideas and half baked theories were paraded. One Labour member complained that present parliamentary candidates "spent too much time on the ethics". Others asked about socialist buses, socialist houses and even a socialist arts festival. On being asked to clarify his position by giving a definition of socialism. Alan Whitehead tried to evade the question. After shuffling his papers like a demented newsreader anxious to get off home he spent a further five minutes ho-ho-hoing like a trainee Father Christmas.

The Chairman joined in on the joke, saying it would take all night to define socialism. Told he was being evasive, Alan Whitehead made a half-hearted attempt to relate what had "influenced his socialist ideals". Drawing from his vast knowledge (he has a PhD) he managed to mutter something about Gramsci. Sidney Webb and Austro-Marxists. Like a drunk trying to stagger home he bumped into something solid. Lenin! Feeling on safe ground he warned us about Leninism, Marxists-Leninists and fellow travellers. And that was it. Marvellous! A speaker that spends nearly an hour talking about something that he cannot or will not define. Is it any wonder that workers are confused? To give a pot of muddled thinking another stir the chairman added that socialism could be interpreted in different ways by different people.

Perhaps both of these "leaders" had forgotten (or not read) a manifesto signed by Sidney Webb. Hyndman, G. B. Shaw. William Morris and others which said:

On this point all Socialists agree. Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines and the land. Thus we look to put an end forever to the wages system, to sweep away all distinction of class, and eventually to establish national and international communism on a sound basis.

(Manifesto of English Socialists 1893) 

Since those early days what was to be a means has become an end in itself. Any trick or con to gain power and hold it is permissible. This duplicity is made possible by the electorate giving support to the Labour Party, in the belief that it can manage capitalism on their behalf by tacking a phoney socialist sticker to it.

But as more and more people come to understand capitalism and how it operates less and less people will be fooled by this bunch of opportunists, who can then go back to what they are suited to best —changing the lights on Southampton Town Hall.

Chris McColl

Botha's last stand? (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last few months have seen South Africa take several steps nearer to becoming a police state. Under the state of emergency the director-general of the Department of Education and Training has issued new instructions banning the display of any slogans on T-shirts, school bags and so on that express opposition to the apartheid regime. In addition the director-general can ban any course, class or syllabus that is not approved of by the Education Act or is. in other words, considered subversive. These new powers supplement other decrees issued under the state of emergency which compel pupils to enrol in school.

At the same time there have been new, draconian restrictions placed on the media: nothing can be published about militant, black organisations, consumer boycotts, strikes, campaigns of civil disobedience or detentions of political prisoners. Neither are newspapers allowed to print white spaces to indicate that material has been removed to meet the requirements of state censorship. In a feeble attempt to justify the new measures President Botha claimed that the media was promoting the cause of "radicals", especially the African National Congress, rather than that of the "moderates". In an advertisement published in December last year he said:

There can . . . be no doubt that there are individuals within the established media and organs of the alternative media who strongly believe that the media should be overtly and covertly used to promote the objectives of the radical revolution.

Meanwhile the coercion by the security forces continues: since the beginning of the state of emergency it is estimated that 22,000 people have been detained without trial or charge and it is thought that 8,200 of these detainees have been children under the age of 18. 4,000 of whom are still in prison. Those who have been released tell of appalling torture and brutality by their guards and their statements are backed up by a growing dossier of medical evidence from doctors who have examined the children on their release. The Detainees Parents Support Group, an independent monitoring group which has collected the statistics, claim that:

The security forces are attempting to instill fear of involvement among the children . . . the picture that emerges is one of seemingly random detentions.

The overtly coercive tactics of mass detentions, new restrictions on the media and education are part of an increasingly desperate attempt by the South African government to retain control in the face of not only unrest among blacks in the townships but also of what can only be described as a situation of dual power.

In the townships over the past two years an alternative structure of community action groups, student associations, tenants' groups and street committees have grown up. At the same time the state-sponsored community councils have seen their authority reduced and their members labelled as collaborators. The community councils, elected in polls that were heavily boycotted, have from the start lacked legitimacy in the eyes of township residents because of their close association with apartheid. Over the last two years many councillors have resigned and others have been brutally punished for their "collaboration". Increasingly militant black community organisations have taken over the administration of their own communities. Education has been a particular focus for discontent, leading to the schools' boycott of 1985 and 1986 and the closing of some schools by the Education Department as a result. But while formal education has virtually ceased in many areas, an alternative system of "people's education" has developed with the pupils themselves determining its content and direction. It is fear of this self-education that has led to the new emergency decrees forcing children to return to the kind of schooling that the state deems acceptable.

The restrictions on the media also represent an important part of the attempt by the state to regain control in the townships since they mean that local organisations are no longer able to communicate with people through local newspapers and it has become more difficult to organise or publicise campaigns.

But more sinister perhaps is the way in which the state has established a covert system of local security councils which have a dual function of, on the one hand, undermining militant black groups and on the other, trying to restore legitimacy to township groups acceptable to the government. The National Security Management System (NSMS) was established seven years ago but over the last two years it was established a network of over 500 regional and local Joint Management Committees (JMCs) throughout the country. Their function is to undermine the black opposition by exploiting factional rivalries between different groups and by running propaganda campaigns designed to discredit the "alternative" township committees. By gathering intelligence locally which is relayed back to the NSMS they also enable the police and security forces to arrest local activists and political leaders. At the same time JMCs are trying to restore legitimate authority to the state-sponsored community councils by dealing with some of the grievances of township residents such as poor housing. Clearly there is a recognition that heavy-handed repressive tactics are costly and, in the long run, less effective than more subtle means of undermining opposition.

At the same time as the white ruling class in South Africa pursues this twin track strategy towards the blacks, it is also trying to restore its image in the eyes of its traditional Afrikaner supporters. In the month before the ANC celebrated its 75th anniversary. Botha stated that he would root out ANC members both within South Africa itself and also in the surrounding countries. To show he meant business he launched a series of raids into neighbouring Swaziland. With the possibility of an early election being called this year he is likely to make a patriotic appeal to whites in South Africa to close ranks against what is portrayed as the threat of Russian-backed black insurgents inside South Africa. But as multi-national after multi-national pulls out of the country because of the threat to their profitability posed by continuing instability and the failure of the Botha regime to provide a framework in which capitalist enterprise can flourish, white workers in South Africa are likely to start asking themselves questions, if not about the morality of apartheid then surely about a system that can no longer guarantee their jobs and privileged standard of living.

Janie Percy-Smith

About Robert Owen (1971)

Book Review from the May 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen, by A. L. Morton, Lawrence and Wishart. 12s.6d.

Report to the County of Lanark. A New View of Society by Robert Owen introduced by V.A.C. Gattrell. Pelican. 7s.

The co-operative movement in Britain looks to Robert Owen as its founding father. Readers of Marx and Engels have met him as a “utopian socialist”. Gattrell thinks he was more of a Tory philanthropist.

In any event Owen was a remarkable man. Born in Newtown in Wales in 1771 he became a successful millowner first in Manchester and then in New Lanark. At New Lanark he pursued what today would be called an “enlightened labour management policy”, providing welfare services and better working and living conditions for his workers. As a result productivity and profits increased. But what struck Owen as the lesson of New Lanark was that “man is the creature of circumstances” and that “human nature . . .  is without exception universally plastic”. People’s characters could, in other words, be moulded for them. From this premise followed quite logically his attack on all existing religions and on individualism as well as his views on crime and punishment, education, sex, marriage and divorce. It led him, whatever Gattrell says, towards socialist conclusions.

It is quite true that Owen was opposed to working class industrial and political struggle and appealed rather to the powers-that-be. But this was quite consistent with his crude materialism for he was asking the kings, governments, churches and Tory philanthropists to become those who would remould the environment. His model communist communities were also, from his point of view, a way of educating the educators, training grounds for those who would change other people’s environment for the better.

The absurdity of Gattrell's suggestion can be seen merely by reading the works he introduces. From them Owen appears as a rationalist and supporter of science and industry who was concerned about the effects of capitalist individualism on human behaviour and happiness. Morton’s selections include passages from Owen on religion and the family (as well as on spiritualism and phrenology which he fell for in his old age) which can leave no one in any doubt that Owen was no Tory sympathiser.

Adam Buick

Buddha puts the clock back (1955)

From the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

In quite a number of homes a little statue smiles down at us from his place on the mantelpiece. There he sits cross-legged, displaying a broad belly with a prominent navel. His ageless face wears an enigmatic smile as he placidly contemplates the best room in the home. Carved in ivory, jade or soapstone, the charming statue of Buddha never palls on us or to judge from his expression, we on him. 

In some Asiatic countries Buddhism is the national religion. It may come as a shock to think that but for an accident of geography, whereby we were born in Europe instead of in Asia that this statuette might not have been an ornament in an English sitting-room but an idol of worship.

Buddha, born in 563 0.C., the son of a reigning Prince in North India, was so surfeited with the idle luxury of palace life that at the age of 30 he set forth alone to seek deliverance for all mankind from the unhappiness and suffering which he found to permeate existence in whatever form. He taught that existence is impermanent and filled with suffering and that there is no immortal soul which separates one man from another but that all men are part of the universe and that in nature the Brotherhood of man is an accomplished fact and so therefore war is foolishness.

Buddha pointed out “Four Noble Truths.” Firstly, that the world is filled with suffering, discontent, disease and unhappiness. The second deduces its cause to be wrong desire or craving. The third “Truth” is that by annihilating wrong desire we remove the cause of suffering. As we think, so we become, or in the words of a Buddhist Scripture "all that we are is the result of what we have thought.” The fourth. “Truth” points out what he thinks to be the nature of the cure; by treading the Path of the Middle Way between extremes. But the Buddhist then goes on to make a point: Nature has taken millions of years to evolve the humble flower, shall man be perfected in 70? He then enunciates the theory of rebirth: man is reincarnated in another life perhaps in the body of an insect or animal or any living creature. Promotion to Nirvana partly depends upon the extent to which the aspirant annihilates desires.

Buddhism is not only a religion, it is also a way of life. For over 2,000 years it has held sway over nearly one-third of mankind. In some countries, such as in Thailand, it is customary for all men to become Buddhist monks at some time in their lives, though with an eye to realism this is confined to three months in a man's life for this is about the maximum time that it is considered practical to abstain from sex and the other pleasures of life.

As a corollary to civilization it is necessary to renounce many individual liberties of action and personal desires, and man co-operates with society instead of acting anarchically. For instance, industry, for obvious reasons, demands that workers keep to pre-arranged hours irrespective of personal convenience. In most walks of life civilization demands repression of personal desires for the general benefit of those living together in society.

The emphasis on the equality of the spiritual potentiality of mankind is a form of democracy not essentially political but in the humanistic man-to-man sense that all men are merely part of a one universal whole. In Confucianist China, where in the past women have held an inferior position the advent of Buddhism which does not differentiate between the sexes (unlike Confucianism) gave them hope and drew strength from their support Kuan Yin, the good-looking Chinese goddess of mercy, is the patron saint of Chinese women and has held an unassailable position of honour in the women's quarters in many Chinese homes. This Buddisatva (a Buddhist saint) previously a male has conveniently changed sex as a sop to the modesty of Chinese women. It can be observed that in Buddhist countries there is not the same sort of snobbishness that frequently pervades society in the West because of this feeling that all men are one with the universe.

Again the emphasis that man is merely part of nature together with speculation on the infinite which is part of Buddhist philosophy enhances the imagination, and this in turn leads to a development of the artistic faculties. The importance of Buddhism in the development of art in the East is universally recognised.

But Buddhism has other effects on its adherents. The belief in the transitoriness of an existence that passes from one form of animal life to another gives a sense of essential impermanence and unimportance of human life to the Buddhist. This has the effect of diminishing the importance of the material conditions of environment and of the events of daily life. This makes the Buddhist fatalistic, for example to the effects which arise from the capitalist-worker antagonism in society. Wages, hours of working, living conditions—what does it matter when one believes one has a constant succession of lives to live. He who is too poor to be able to afford to keep a wife or to sample sexual pleasure does not bother to think out the cause of his poverty—perhaps in the next reincarnation he may be a ram and can then make up for lost time. Besides to receive more money means that more desires can be indulged in and this is against the tenets of Buddhism.

What a useful religion this is to a ruling-class. When they are surfeited with luxury or debauchery how pleasant to lead a frugal life for a change and work the toxic matter out of the system. And for the underprivileged it enables them to bear the hardships that arise from their class position and thus they can carry the master-class on their backs with barely a groan.

Even the pacific side of Buddhism, which one might think could be a drawback in an acquisitive society where wealth, markets and trade routes have to be defended by the workers for their masters with force of arms, can be overcome. Japanese Capitalism has obviously found the answer to this.

By posing the belief in the reincarnation of the soul Buddhism has put a brake upon rational thinking and obscures the economic motives in society. This helps to prevent man from logically considering the reasons why riches and poverty exist side by side and such other contradictions in society which should be self evident. This in turn discourages the Buddhist from organizing in Trade Unions and in the political field to end the system of exploitation.

Belief in Buddhism robs the material events of life of their reality and of the interdependence of their cause and effect. Only the tenets of Buddhism count, and the believer has to try to build up as large a stock as possible of individual good deeds letting the stream of life flow by. It is of no use bothering to change society because it is thought that a lifetime is but an inconsiderable part of the long journey to the goal of Nirvana. The Buddhist is not concerned with organising the working-class to end exploitation but with his mind clogged with religious claptrap has acted as a brake on the development of ideas leading to a materialist conception of history. Thus Buddhism by its opposition to the Socialist movement is playing its part in preventing the establishment of Socialism and is in effect helping to hold back the clock of social change.

Frank Offord

Down Mexico Way (2016)

From the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Billionaire presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, has pledged that, if he becomes President of the United States, he will build a 3,145 kilometres-long wall or fence between the US and Mexico, to keep out all Mexicans and other Latin-Americans.

Between 1965 and 2015 more than 16 million Mexicans migrated, legally or illegally, to the US. Between 2009 and 2014 870,000 came, according to the Pew Research Center. About 5.7 million are currently living in the country illegally, but they do not come, or attempt to come, just from Mexico. They are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They attempt to reach America via Mexico. ‘It is like a fever. People are desperate,’ says one Honduran by telephone to the Toronto Star (30 January).

From 1 October, 2014 to 30 September, 2015 134,000 central Americans, many of them unaccompanied children, fled north, only to be arrested by the American authorities. Many of them don’t get that far. They are apprehended, or even killed before they reach the United States border, either by the police or by narco-gangs. Approximately 153,000 Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans were deported back south in 2015 alone. A few attempt to return north again almost immediately despite the risks.

As in Europe and the Middle East, there are always smuggler gangs offering up to three attempts to get would-be migrants into the US. The costs range from between $5,000 and $10,000. More and more of the migrants, even they succeed in getting into the United States, are being caught and deported.

Why do they try? Why are they so desperate?

Most are peasants, owning little or no land or propertyless workers, often unemployed and desperately poor. Then there is the gang, drug-related violence. San Pedro Sula in Honduras is said to be the world’s second-most violent, non-warzone city, followed by San Salvador. Many murders are gang-related; few are prosecuted. Parents are afraid to let their children play in the streets. And in the US?

Migration to America, however, is not all one way. Between 2009 and 2014 more Mexicans left the US than migrated into the country – probably up to one million. The grass in America, it would seem, was no greener than it was south of the border. Capitalism is everywhere.

Peter E. Newell

The dope pedlars (1966)

Book Review from the January 1966 of the Socialist Standard

“Planned Obsolescence"—the interesting sounding couplet that covers a multitude of sins, something which has hit the post war capitalist world like a bombshell. Briefly, it means deliberately producing poor quality goods with a severely limited lifespan, so that the market is kept going. For the market is the all important god to be worshipped at all cost, never mind who gets harmed in the process.

Nevertheless, you might perhaps have thought that there were some fields into which planned obsolescence would find it difficult to push its ugly snout —like medicine for example? Well, you would have been wrong, very wrong, and Brian Inglis in Drugs, Doctors and Disease (Deutsch 25s.) would tell you just why. This book is an excellently written survey of the pharmaceutical industry, or rather of that industry's dirty record in the promotion and sale of drugs over the past few years and after you have read it, it will not be so difficult to understand just why such tragedies as the Thalidomide affair happened. Indeed, the wonder is that there have not been many others.

Mr. Inglis points out that it has been the policy of some leading drug manufacturers to push new products onto the market at an alarmingly rapid rate, in many cases well before any adequate tests had been completed—even on animals. In fact, such a profitable market has this become that often a new drug is superseded by another before the bewildered doctor has a chance to carry out any kind of worthwhile clinical tests. The result of all this has been generally to ignore the possibilities of side effects and for the drug companies to get their project before they are discovered. And by then, anyway, they will have put a new drug on the market. 

The cynical disregard for human welfare which this involves, the incessant pressure exerted on doctors by the drug salesmen (often posing as patients), the lying claims in the publicity blurbs, all these and more are dealt with by the author in over 200 pages of searching criticism, liberally sprinkled with the most damaging quotes from the industry's apologists. For instance, John T. Connor, president of the U.S. Company Merck:—

"As in other industries, our driving force is profits. But unlike other industries, the single most effective way to earn those profits is by making existing products obsolete, including our own".

Mr. Inglis draws attention also to another harmful trend in that the general practitioner is less and less able to use his own judgement when prescribing treatment and has to rely more and more on what the drug houses choose to tell him about their products. That they mislead and often lie outright is quite clear, but the doctor has no immediate way of knowing this and by the lime the lies have been nailed and the drug withdrawn, some unfortunate has suffered side effects, some of them serious. Thalidomide (trade name “Distaval") was one of the more glaring and tragic examples, and was strongly suspected of causing peripheral neuritis long before its effects on unborn children were fully appreciated. Yet only a few days before the scandal broke, the manufacturers were still claiming its complete safety in use.

That all medical treatment must run an element of risk, we do not deny—there is no such thing as the perfect remedy after all. But having said that, it is still true to claim that the hazards have been multiplied many times as a direct result of the profit motive. Mr. Inglis makes this point very forcefully, but he is not a Socialist and he does not draw the obvious conclusion from his researches. Instead he plays around with the idea of nationalisation of the pharmaceutical industry—or parts of it despite the black record of nationalisation in other spheres.

E.T.C.

Tarnished steel (1980)

From the February 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The bulk of steel production goes to a few big industries like building, engineering, shipbuilding and motor vehicles and to exports. Because of this, the industry is immediately affected by a decline of investment and production in those fields and has therefore always been regarded as the barometer of the state of trade.

The British steel industry’s present financial difficulties reflect the world recession, but in addition it faces a massive permanent reduction in the size of its operations.

Steel has a special interest because, more than any other industry, it has been subjected to “planning” by successive governments, including nationalisation by the post-war Labour government, denationalisation by the Tories, renationalisation by the following Labour government, with the prospect that some of its plants may now be denationalised yet again, it has also experimented with “worker-directors”.

The dependence of steel on the state of other industries was recorded in the Labour government’s National Plan in 1965:

Since the mid-fifties, steel consumption has tended to increase more slowly than the gross domestic product, mainly because the demand for steel in certain substantial sectors of use, such as coal mining, railways, shipbuilding and defence has remained stationary or has declined.

In its early years British iron and steel production had a commanding position. In the 1860s, using the cheap Bessemer process and helped by the ready availability of iron ore and coal, British steel production exceeded the combined output of the rest of the world. As other countries developed steel making the British industry lost its lead. In the USA steel production was speeded up to meet the big demand arising out of the civil war and in 1867 Carnegie, after a visit to this country to study the Bessemer process, began his great steel empire. By 1900 output in the USA was greater than that of Britain and Germany together. Many countries now have greater output than the British industry.

This did not mean that British steel output declined: in fact in 1970 it was larger than it had ever been, but growth was interrupted from time to time during world depressions. In 1884, in the middle of the Great Depression, Lord Randolph Churchill despaired of recovery:

Your iron industry is dead, dead as mutton; your coal industries, which depend greatly on the iron industries, are languishing . . . The shipbuilding industry which held out longest of all is at a standstill.

It was a false alarm and expansion was in due course resumed, only to be interrupted again between the wars. Output fell by nearly a half after 1929 and unemployment in the steel industry was running at 45 per cent in the early 1930s.

The present steel crisis differs from the earlier ones because the British industry no longer has the advantage of cheapness, its costs comparing unfavourably with those of the modernised steel industries in Germany, Japan and the United States. The steel-using industries in this country have declined so that there is no immediate prospect of demand for steel justifying present steel- producing capacity.

This massive over-capacity is largely the result of a new factor which came into play with the popularising, thirty years ago, of Keynesian ideas of “demand management” which the Labour and Tory parties both adopted, and of the Labour Party’s belief in government planning. Instead of the size of the industry being left to respond to market demand (as happened in the 19th Century) governments came to believe that they could bring about a condition of “full employment”, with the whole of industry working continuously at full capacity. It was in this mistaken belief that the National Plan in 1965 aimed at a big increase of steelmaking capacity, and the investment of hundreds of millions of pounds to bring it about. The Tories followed the same policy:

For the next few years a steel-making capacity of 20 million tonnes is likely to be more than enough for the British Steel Corporation. Yet in 1973 the last Tory government approved a development programme designed to achieve a capacity of over 30 million tonnes by the early 1980s. (Financial Times, 7 November 1979.)

Capitalism refused to respond to the planned expansion. Instead of “full employment” it produced a million and a half unemployed and production generally fell instead of rising.

So by the mid-1970s the Labour government, which had thought that all it had to do was to expand production, found itself planning a large-scale closure of unprofitable steel plant with tens of thousands of steel workers being cast adrift to find jobs elsewhere. The Thatcher government has speeded up the closures.

This has a lesson for steel workers, and other workers who shared the absurd belief that full employment and permanently busy industries are conditions that governments can command at will.

And the workers who supported nationalisation because they thought it would give them higher wages and permanent job security should by now realise that market demand, which determines how much can be sold and therefore how much is produced, takes no notice of whether the producer is a company or a nationalised industry.

There is also another cloud hanging over British steel. The present plans envisage a smaller but more competitive industry, but with the development of crude steel production in the developing countries at still lower costs it is being urged that basic steel should be imported, leaving the British producers to concentrate on the manufacture for export of “speciality steels” out of the imported basic materials.

If this is the line of development there will be more closures and redundancies in future years. A tragedy for thousands of workers, with perhaps whole towns devastated by concentrated unemployment. But a tragedy typical of capitalism, which places profits before people.

Edgar Hardcastle

Cooking the Books: George Osborne, Paul Mason and Marx (2016)

The Cooking the Books Column from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speaking in the House of Commons on 1 March George Osborne called the journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason a ‘revolutionary Marxist’.  To which Mason indignantly replied:

‘As to Mr Osborne’s claim that I am ‘revolutionary Marxist’ it is completely inaccurate. I am a radical social democrat who favours the creation of a peer-to-peer sector (co-ops, open source, etc) alongside the market and the state, as part of a long transition to a post-capitalist economy. There’s a comprehensive critique of Bolshevism in my latest book, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future.’

Mason wasn’t always a critic of Bolshevism. For many years he was a member of Workers Power, the Trotskyist  group that calls for a ‘Fifth International’ (not that that made him a revolutionary Marxist either, just an insurrectionary Leninist). This may have been what Osborne had in mind. If so, this would be unfair since Mason left Workers Power years ago. In fact during a time when Mason was a Trotskyist Osborne was a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club. What is that they say about people in glass houses . . ?

More likely is that, in Osborne’s eyes, anybody who criticises capitalism, as Mason has done, is automatically some sort of a Marxist. But, as Mason made clear in his reply, he is not a revolutionary, but wants only to gradually reform capitalism into something else, as the Labour and European Social Democratic parties used to.

Marx was a critic of capitalism but he had no illusions about it being possible either to make it work in the interest of the non-owning, producing majority or to gradually reform it into something else. He advocated the winning of political power to use this to uproot capitalism and bring in what he variously described as ‘a co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production’,  or ‘co-operation and the possession in common of the land and the means of production produced by labour itself’, ‘a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common’. In short, the use of political power to carry out such a revolution in the basis of society.

In this sense ‘revolutionary Marxist’ is a tautology, but Osborne will have added ‘revolutionary’ to suggest that Mason favoured violent insurrection as he would know that this is what many people understand by the word. William Morris had already dealt with this as long ago as 1884 when he wrote that ‘the word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use … does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence’ and that ‘we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society’.

Marx did not analyse capitalism with a view to coming up with policies for governments to adopt. He had no advice to give on this as his analysis showed that there was no policy governments could pursue that would make capitalism operate for the benefit of the non-owning majority. That is why he advocated the working class take political action to revolutionise the basis of society.

More Censorship (1973)

From the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Censorship has won another small but significant victory in the granting of an injunction which prevented a programme being shown on TV last month. The subject of the programme, the American pop-artist and film-maker Andy Warhol, is unimportant — it may well have represented the title of one of Warhol’s films, Trash. What does matter is that whatever it had to show or say was, at a few hours’ notice, suppressed: the populace was not to be exposed to unorthodox thought.

The facts of the case were curious. The applicant for the injunction, Ross McWhirter, was able to obtain a hearing and judgement almost immediately. For once, “the law’s delays” were apparently suspended; a facility to be envied by anyone who has spent the usual months waiting for satisfaction from the courts. The allegedly offensive programme was not seen by anyone responsible for its suppression. McWhirter brought his action, and the judges gave their decision, on the basis of accounts in the preceding Sunday’s papers.

This in itself shows the dishonesty of one of the strongest claims of advocates of more censorship. A television film, or even one at the cinema, can, they insist, be seen inadvertently by children or the easily embarrassed. When its contents have been described and publicized, however, it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to watch except by choice. So the suppressive brigade have, as was thought, never meant what their “humane” arguments say. Their position is simple. They want nobody to see what they disapprove of (except themselves, by implication immune from the crudeness and susceptibility of the rest of us).

There is nothing exceptional about people wanting to ban what they dislike: “it oughter be stopped” is a common cry in innumerable contexts. In most cases the plea is recognizably hopeless, squashed by the status quo. But in the fields of politics, sex and — to a lesser extent — religion, the status quo is all ears. Here, the would-be censors are its aides, drawing attention to threats to the stability of society. “Society” means, of course, the capitalist system.

It can be argued that capitalism does not need the traditional family and conventional morality today. It has been dependent on them too long, however, for most of its supporters to be willing to discard them. The view the majority take, therefore, is the one expressed by a well-known entertainer in a libel action some years ago. Asked to comment on homosexuality, he said he believed it was “subversive of the family”, and that is how large numbers of people see any departure from established morality. What is meant is not the family as a human entity, but the family as a support of capitalist society.

None of this is to say that censorship is a conspiracy. It can be; but its normal motive is belief that the “accepted” order is the only feasible one. Indeed, the tightest bondage is round those who profess to be critical of society but think social restraints are necessary: capitalism has them truly by the short hairs. Few people saw anything wrong with President Nixon’s remark, in rejecting the report of the US Commission on Pornography, that since good books elevate the mind bad ones must lower it. 

The presumption made invokes the old question: “Which way is up?” Elevate means rouse, uplift, put higher. The high thoughts, in Nixon’s estimation, would undoubtedly be ones leading to humility, patriotism, diligence, and the ideals in general of the society he represents. The statement in fact is like a coat with sleeves turned inside-out. The inner meaning is that if a book is seen or presumed to “elevate”, in those terms, it is in the running for being “good”. If it points the other way, it must be “bad”.

What nonsense, one might say: except that it is pernicious nonsense. Idiot arguments and humbug conceal the fact that censorship of anything means the suppression of knowledge and experience. Ross McWhirter’s action, was presented as moral; the truth is that it was anti-social.

Robert Barltrop

Are you anti-social? (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Returning on the train from Manchester the other day, desperately wanting to nod off to sleep, I was doomed to share a carriage with one of those creatures I dread: the incessant train-talker. To increase my woe, this monster began to discourse upon the nature of the world in such a manner that I felt obliged to attempt to clear up a few of her mistakes.

It all began with complaint about poverty, violence and anti-social attitudes — with which I truly sympathised. Then came that dreaded statement: “But we can’t change anything — it’s all due to human nature”. My heart sank and I felt a huge chasm suddenly open between my travelling companion and myself.

As the conversation continued I began to realise what a mass of muddles has arisen since the spread of Darwinism and the theory of evolution. Uniformed acceptance has moulded our attitudes to our fellow men and given us ideas of man’s social existence as ludicrously unmodifiable. Man is part of nature and therefore, it is often believed, he is involved in a fight for existence which is manifest violently in the animal world and in the battle between nations. In addition, part-time biologists postulate vague statements about “basic human nature” which is generally thought to refer to inheritable, instinctive behaviour lying deep in every human (since the time of the first baby homo sapiens), waiting to show its ugly head — which it is frequently supposed to do — in the form of unpleasant anti-social behaviour.

Such a view is based on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of both evolution and behavioural mechanisms. Evolutionary theory is concerned with group or species survival. Obviously, individuals are necessary for these group structures, but stress on the group is a prerequisite for a comprehension of evolution. A successful species is likely to be one that can adapt relatively easily to changing environmental conditions, and examination of the phylogenetic scale indicates that higher organisms appear to possess behavioural systems that give increased adaptability, i.e. they possess a greater capacity for learning with reliance on learned behaviour over purely instinctive mechanisms. Thus, in unicellular and other simple creatures, behaviour is largely due to involuntary and unmodified actions controlled by the genetic material of the organism and elicited with specific environmental stimuli, depending partly on genetic material but mostly upon past experience through learning.

The most dramatic example of this change through evolution is seen in the determination of sexual behaviour in animals. There are three factors involved: genes, hormones, and learning. In very simple creatures, sexual behaviour is controlled purely by the genes which determine whether the organism is male or female. With the evolution of vertebrates, it appears that genes determine the development of the male and female sexual structures, but that hormones secreted by these sexual organs become the important factors in the instigation of sexual behaviour. Hormones are greatly influenced by environmental stimuli and so provide a kind of monitoring system whereby reproduction can be stimulated in suitable conditions. As we pass further up the phylogenetic scale we see the development of better mechanism that allows for the adaptation of the species. In the higher vertebrates, especially primates, genetic material plays a minor part in the development of sexual behaviour (distinguished from physiological structure) and sex roles are determined by a social conditioning, i.e., through learning processes. It is well known that sex ascription will determine the behavioural pattern of the adult human despite the sexual structures so that, for example, a boy who is brought up as a girl will behave like a girl. (In certain cases the picture is more complicated, of course).

Paralleled with the progression from instinctive to learned behaviour through evolution is the development of affection and social behaviour. This is an important step as we see the direct organisation of individuals to ensure the continuation of the group or species. Man is a social animal and in addition modifies his behaviour continuously through learning.

My travelling companion was unaware that the factor that places Man at the top of the genetic scale is his ability to change. She was aware that she was dissatisfied with a world of violence, poverty and anti-social behaviour. Most people feel the same. The next step is to learn how to change the world so as to allow the satisfactory existence of mankind. This is well within Man’s capabilities.

Let’s get together as social creatures and organise our society as we would like it. Let’s have production for use not profit and at the same time remove the evils of war and excessive pollution that threaten to eliminate our species altogether.

Come on! Change for Socialism.

Judith White

Editorial: It’s Election Time Again (2016)

Editorial from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday 5 May, elections will be held across the country to elect members for local and district authorities in England, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. In London, there will be elections for the Mayor and for members of the Greater London Assembly.

Through hustings, meetings and TV interviews, the various parties’ candidates will be competing for votes. The Tories will be defending their record in government and claiming that their policies of cutting state expenditure to reduce the government deficit will provide a brighter future for hardworking families. The Labour Party candidates will attempt to convince voters that they have the policies to tackle inequality and the housing crisis. The Liberal Democrats will also claim that they will be working for a fairer society. UKIP will tell us that leaving the EU and curbing immigration will solve our woes. The Green Party will claim to offer a radical alternative with policies that will tackle environmental issues and meet human needs. The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) will argue that by taxing the rich more heavily, they will be able to invest more in the National Health Service and welfare services. The Women's Equality Party is standing for gender equality in the market place.

The Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru will argue that independence for their respective countries from the UK is the way forward. The Unionist and Nationalist parties will be fighting for places in the Northern Irish assembly.

And yet, in practice, the results of these elections will not improve the lives of working class people. It is little wonder that some will prefer to stay at home rather than go out and vote. What the above parties have in common is that they all stand for some form of capitalism. Whether they are merely self-serving careerists or they sincerely wish to change things for the better, the aspiring politicians will come up against the reality of an economic and social system where profits come before anything else. Instead of controlling capitalism, capitalism will control them as can be seen when George Osborne in his recent budget had to downgrade his previous estimates on future economic growth, due to the recent deterioration in the world economy.

There are political groups that recognise this and call on workers to abstain from the electoral process. We reject this approach and argue that for a socialist working class to gain political power they will need to contest elections at all levels of government in order to capture the machinery of the state. Elections also provide an opportunity for the Socialist Party to make the case against capitalism and for socialism – a world of common ownership and free access to all that is produced. For these reasons, the Socialist Party is contesting three constituencies in London and one in Wales. Our election manifestos and details of how to help can be found elsewhere in this issue.