Why do we become Socialists? (1951)

From the January 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has often been suggested to us by our opponents that socialists constitute a group (though they emphasize it is a microscopic one) apart from the rest of society. The path has been made easy for propagating this idea because it is one of the few points on which they are unanimous. They are all prepared to agree that to work for socialism is out of the question as far as that famous nonentity, the average man-in-the-street is concerned.

Even those among our critics who claim that socialism is their ultimate aim insist that other so-called practical measures must come first These always take the form of actual or proposed alterations to certain unpopular features of the present system, whilst leaving untouched the basis which determines these features.

This economic basis of ownership and control of the means of production by a privileged few, and wage-labour by the majority, defies all the efforts of politicians to abolish poverty, war and other social ills. To the extent that their reformist measures gain misguided support from the working class capitalism is strengthened by virtue of the lack of interest shown in its supersession by socialism.

It must not be thought that we insist upon the understanding of socialism, as a necessary pre-requisite to its establishment, for the sake of being academic or exclusive. If we could have achieved our object by other means we should have adopted them long ago.

We hold that it is just as necessary to show why the ideas and policies of our opponents fail to solve social problems as it is to explain the socialist solution. We do not under-estimate the factors which work against die spread of socialist ideas, but we maintain that these factors arise out of contemporary conditions and lose their potency as the workers become conscious of the source of their troubles. Disregard of this is evidenced by the claim that wage-workers will never agree to work in a society in which no wages are paid.. The fact that they will lose all the disadvantages, such as enforced unemployment, as well as the dubious advantages of the wages system, is completely ignored.

To socialists it is not only the keeping of an idle class in luxury that is irksome about employment. A cogent objection is the large number of unproductive jobs—advertising, insurance, banking, soldiering, in fact every activity which produces nothing useful, and is often positively harmful to mankind.

The only reason for all this is one which is never mentioned except by socialists. It is simply to keep the present system going—to separate the workers as a whole from the products of their labour, to determine their meagre ration of the world’s wealth, and to get them to fight their master's battles over possession of the remainder.

The development of the techniques of production means that an ever-decreasing proportion of the worker's time need be spent in producing and distributing a given amount of wealth. It is reasonable to suppose that there will be an increasing tendency to question the burdensome complexity of life at present. Even assuming that the majority of people were content with their conditions of work the consequences of producing goods which cannot be sold are disastrous. Recurring unemployment and war and perpetual poverty in relation to what they produce is the lot of those who do not live by owning the means of production.

Those members of the working class who are rather less gluttonous for punishment than their fellows are thus impelled to seek the cause of their unhappy condition. Unfortunately most of them find it easier to blame individuals or sets of individuals, such as Stalin or the Jews, probably because scapegoats are easy to hurl abuse at, and relieve outraged feelings.

It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that most of what is said to-day about Stalin is merely a re-hash of what was said about Hitler not so long ago. Similarly the substitution of a gentile for a jewish boss does not make the sack any more acceptable to the worker.

In time all such prejudices will cancel each other out. The idea will be grasped that it is the social system itself, in which the majority acquiesce, that is the root of the trouble. Inseparable from this will be the understanding that new social relations will replace the present capitalist ones.

One of the biggest obstacles to the acceptance of socialist ideas is the under-estimation of the influence of environment on all thoughts and conduct. Most of us, joining the party did not have nearly as clear an understanding of socialism as we have since gained. It may be compared to learning French. More progress can often be made in a week by living in France than in a year by studying textbooks. In the same way, points that present difficulties to those who are accustomed only to contemporary capitalist ideas find the socialist case hard to accept, until mental barriers of prejudice and conservatism are removed.

It is on the whole true to say that the ideas of men evolve slowly, but eventually society is more or less quickly revolutionized. Although the spread of socialist knowledge may appear to be slow, the development of the present world set-up must eventually lead to a point when all other “ practical" cures for our social ills will have been tried and failed.

There are contradictions within capitalism itself which tend to become greater and are not capable of being resolved, except by a fundamental change. The contradiction of poverty in the midst of actual or potential plenty is still with us, despite the efforts of reformist politicians of all parties. Capitalism decrees that the workers receive on average just sufficient to keep them in working order from week to week (or month to month).

Our opponents often point out individual exceptions to it, such as the occasional worker who makes good by thrift or industry. They forget that these comparatively fortunate ones are counterbalanced by some who cannot even afford enough food to keep their families from illness. That a few workers can escape into the capitalist class (the football pools are a “ popular" way) does not make any difference to those who have to continue the struggle along on £5 or £6 a week. The capitalists naturally seek to maintain their dominance and employ members of the working class—journalists, script writers, teachers, to do most of the routine work connected with stuffing the “right” ideas into the workers’ heads. Capitalism not only gives us poverty, but a way of looking at it so that it appears to become, as Mr. Morrison would put it, not-poverty.

Nevertheless many of the false notions of men about past and present society are being displaced by the growth of all branches of scientific knowledge. This must lead to a realisation of the opportunities of a better life opened up, but held back by ignorance of how to achieve it.

To non-socialists there appears to be no practical alternative to capitalism, but it must be emphasised that this is only so because of the acceptance of its institutions by the majority of those outside the socialist parties of the world. These institutions—private property, money, wage-labour, etc.,—are not permanent features of human life. They evolved from other forms such as primitive communism, and chattel slave-labour. There is no reason to doubt that from them will evolve a new set in keeping with the new basis of society, i.e. common ownership of the means of production.

It is up to you at present outside the party to join us in the work of bringing Socialism into being—no special attributes, virtues or sacrifices are necessary.

One thing we would particularly ask of you. Do not make objections to socialism which rest upon projecting present conditions into the future. When we first heard the socialist case most of us looked for all the possible snags. We found that there are none except in the minds of non-socialists, who mostly do not connect the necessity of changing the present system with the solution of their common problems.

We are confident that the failure of all other political parties to make any worthwhile improvement in the condition of the exploited masses will lead the latter to the realisation that the answer—socialism—lies in nobody’s hands but their own. What we, as a party, do is to propagate the knowledge of how it can be brought about. We are certain that man, having come so far since descending from the trees, will continue the conquest of his environment, and will not find the achievement of socialism beyond his powers.

Stan Parker

Letter From Europe: Dictatorship of the proletariat (1979)

A Letter From Europe from the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

As expected, the French Communist Party voted at its XXIII Congress in Paris in May to remove the reference to ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ from its rule-book. This was a foregone conclusion, since the Party leader, Georges Marchais, had announced two years ago that this would be happening. The only opposition came from a small group around the overrated philosopher Louis Althusser and from die-hard Stalinists like Jeannette Vermeesch, widow of former Party leader, Maurice Thorez.

‘Dictatorship of the proletariat’ was indeed a phrase used by Marx, but never with the meaning the PCF has given it. Marx always insisted that socialism could only be established by political action; in other words, that in order to establish socialism, the working class should gain control of the machinery of government and use it to force the capitalist class to give up its ownership of the means of production. In his private letters and notes he sometimes referred to this use of political power by the working class to abolish capitalism as the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

Both words are obscure and derive from Ancient Rome. Under the constitution of the Roman Republic there was provision for one of the magistrates in times of crisis to be nominated dictator, which meant that he was invested with plenary powers to deal with the situation. Proletarii was the word used to describe the poor Roman citizens who were regarded as contributing nothing to the State but children (in Latin proles means ‘offspring’).

POLITICAL TERMINOLOGY

These two words were introduced into modern political terminology at the time of the French Revolution, the leaders and thinkers of which modelled themselves on the Ancient Roman Republic. The Jacobins were in favour of a ‘dictatorship’ by a minority of revolutionaries to crush the resistance of the nobility. The term proletaire came into use to describe ordinary, poor people. Both terms were inherited by the political descendants of the extreme French revolutionaries in the nineteenth century, including the utopian communists from whom Marx learned part of his socialism.

Marx, however, used the word proletariat in a more precise fashion, not to mean just poor people generally but only those who worked for wages: the working class. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was thus, for him, the exercise of political power by the working class in their own interest. This Marx equated with a complete political democracy in which the working class — the majority in capitalist society — would rule. His references to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ all show that he understood it to be the exercise of political power by the working class within a democratic framework.

We ourselves have never used the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in our everyday propaganda. This is not because we do not agree with Marx that the working class should take democratic political action to establish socialism, but because the phrase is obscure and misleading. We have always preferred to express the same concept by the use of phrases like ‘the capture of political power’ and ‘the conquest of the powers of government’ which are more easily understandable.

In speaking of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ rather than simply of a ‘revolutionary dictatorship’, Marx made a decisive break with the Jacobin tradition. The idea of ‘dictatorship’ was given a democratic content, since the plenary political power it implied was to be exercised by the majority class in society and not by some revolutionary minority.

By the turn of the nineteenth century Jacobin ideas has almost died out in France but were enjoying a revival in Russia, a country whose political and social system had many of the features of France’s ancien regime. Here the idea of a minority revolutionary dictatorship had an attraction for the anti- Tsarist revolutionaries, including some of those who considered themselves Marxists. Among the latter was Lenin, who carried this idea over into the Social Democratic movement.

WORKING CLASS DEMOCRACY

Lenin was in favour of the Russian Social Democrats being organised as a ‘vanguard party’ whose task would be to lead the workers, peasants and oppressed nationalities of Russia against the Tsarist regime. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was carried out in just this way — and it resulted in the establishment not of Marx’s ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, a working class democracy, but in the revolutionary dictatorship of the Bolshevik minority. Since the economic and political conditions of Russia did not permit the establishment of socialism the Bolsheviks had no choice but to develop capitalism in Russia (largely in the form of ‘state capitalism’, as Lenin himself described it). But since capitalism cannot be run in the interests of the working class, the Bolshevik dictatorship soon became a dictatorship not just against the nobility, the capitalists and richer peasants but also a dictatorship over the working class: the trade unions were taken over by the government, strikes were banned, protests were suppressed and protestors sent to labour camps.

Unfortunately, this was not evident to a section of the war-weary and discontented working class of Western Europe. To them Russia was what it proclaimed itself to be: a 'workers' republic’ which showed the way for the workers of other countries. The Bolshevik government exploited this sympathy to split the Social Democratic parties in the West and set up ‘Communist’ parties based on Bolshevik ideology.

In France in 1920 a majority of the delegates to the Social Democrats’ Congress at Tours voted to go over to Bolshevism and set up the Parti Communiste Francais. The new PCF was committed to Bolshevik ideology, including the idea that it as the self-styled ‘vanguard of the working class' would exercise a revolutionary dictatorship. By a strange irony of history, the Jacobin idea of minority dictatorship, which had been rejected by Marx and which had almost died out in France, was reintroduced there by way of backward Russia. This time, however, it was called the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. It was with this Jacobin, Leninist sense that the phrase was introduced into the rule-book of the PCF.

Now it has been removed. Which is not such a bad thing, since, first, it had no right to be there in the first place, and second, its being there added to the already great enough confusion surrounding the phrase.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg)

"A Still, Small Voice" (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has never been, such a non-issue as the Common Market Referendum. One assumes it will have been already forgotten by the time this piece sees the light of print. However, much as I have tried to avoid this abysmal nonsense, I accidentally heard a bit on the BBC in the small hours worth remarking on. The speaker was that horny-handed, r-dwopping son of toil Roy Jenkins, Home Secretary, son of a miner who found the royal road out of the pits and clearly taught Roy a thing or two. (A very usual story, of course.)

This pro-market man was saying, somewhere in darkest Manchester, in unctuous tones: “Those who oppose the market never tell us: What alternative is there?”

Now before Das Kapital there was Das Bible and somewhere in that less scientific work, we are told that the voice of god is not in the earthquake or the thunder but in a still, small voice. This came to my mind when in response to that clearly rhetorical question I heard a still, small voice from the back of the hall: “Socialism.” It was the voice of the SPGB. Because none of the myriad frauds who call themselves socialists (including Jenkins) would dream of saying that Socialism is the answer to society’s ills. They busy themselves with every quack nostrum to fit every issue and never even think of Socialism as a here-and-now solution. Only an SPGBer or supporter could come up with the startling idea: Socialism is the answer.

And what did Jenkins say to that? About the only thing he could — that an interrupter of a speech was not a democrat, etc. which got him a bit of cheap applause, and had the additional merit of evading the point.

Jenkins would not even think that his use of the term “interrupter” to refer to one who dares to answer a question he himself poses is the negation of democracy. (How can he think at all, his brains clearly being in his r’s?) Nevertheless, the still, small voice was undoubtedly encouraging. I fancy its owner will read this tribute. And that some among the radio listeners will have had food for thought.

On the same day there was something more about Socialism — all the pundits forever talking about it, but never the slightest sign that anyone knows a damn thing. This was in an advert, in The Guardian plugging The New Statesman. The advert, was for an article by Paul Johnson, former editor of the paper, and the advert, itself is now produced:

A BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONAL MISERY

Trade unionism is killing socialism in Britain and it is time socialists did something about it. The essence of socialism is not its method but its universality. It teaches that the wealth of society should be administered in the interests of all. It is not a programme for industrial workers or any particular group of workers. It is not a programme for any class. It does not believe in classes. It is against sectional interests which organise themselves to exploit the rest of the community. Socialism expresses the essential unity and common humanity of society.

Now Paul Johnson is a quite amiable idiot (unlike his successor as editor, Crossman) and gibberish like the above has enabled him to get hold of a goodly share of “the wealth of society”, to the extent of its being worth a para, in The Observer describing his two houses etc. recently. But can anyone make head or tail of the jumble above? The SPGB's description of Socialism in the Declaration of Principles has appeared in every issue of our journal since it was first formulated by socialist workers long before most of us were born. When our clear and ringing tones are compared with the New Statesman mixture of the impossible and the incomprehensible are we, with our still-too-small voice, not entitled to feel proud?

The first sentence of the NS advert, is breathtaking in itself. If the unions are killing Socialism, it can only be because Socialism is alive. That is a simple proposition which would appeal to Dr. Johnson, about whom his ludicrous namesake recently wrote a bestseller. But Paul could not have seen the obvious. He cannot believe that we have Socialism already — even the NS can’t be that daft. Anyway, he seems to have heard that Socialism will have no classes. He obviously knows that that doesn’t apply in Wilson’s England.

For the benefit of our ignorant pundit, the position on trade unions that real Socialists have always advocated is perfectly clear. They perform a necessary function within the capitalist system by enabling the workers to resist exploitation as much as possible by fighting the battle of wages and conditions — a never-ending struggle. (They do not exist to eliminate exploitation, of course, because that’s what employment is all about.) It is not only ludicrous to talk about the unions killing Socialism. It would be equally stupid to envisage them killing capitalism. That is not their purpose (nor are most trade unionists Socialists as yet). Capitalism is ripe for the killing indeed. But the deed will be done only by an organized majority of working-class Socialists. If these Johnsons would only read the Socialist Standard they would be less likely to display their ignorance, and do less damage to the cause of Socialism.

L. E. Weidberg

Correspondence. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

Could you please answer these questions below, in order to clear up a great deal of misunderstanding?

1. When is the value of a commodity determined?
2. Can additional value be added to the commodity in the process of distribution?
3. Has distribution any determining factor in the value of a commodity?

Sid Felperin

Reply:

A commodity is a useful article produced for exchange. It is the result of the application of human energy to the material provided by nature. Its value {a social relation) depends upon the amount of labour required to reproduce such an article in a given society under certain given physical and social conditions.

All the labour necessary to obtain the raw material, work it up into the product required for consumption, and transport it to the point where such products are necessary for consumption, adds value. Coal produced for the needs of London is of greater value in London than in, say, Newcastle, its source of production. But labour used up in transporting coal from its source in Newcastle to London and then back to Newcastle for consumption would add no value to the coal.

Articles so produced are bought and sold upon the market. The market is the sphere of the circulation of commodities. In this circulating process no value is added to the product. The necessary storing, accounting, advertising and such matter are expenses of circulation but do not increase the value of articles as they come upon the market with their values already determined.

The fact that some articles sell above and others below their values, and that here and there one capitalist may gain an advantage over another are matters we cannot enter into here, but they do not affect the general position that the value of an article depends upon its cost of reproduction in human energy.

Expenses of circulation such as those mentioned above are generally included under the heading, “Overhead Expenses” by capitalist concerns. Such expenses are paid out of the surplus value obtained in production.

The above brief explanation will clear the way for the answers to our questioner.

The value of an article is already determined when it comes upon the market for sale. The subsequent expenses of circulation are not productive expenses, and hence not value producing.

If by “distribution" is meant the transport of an article from its source of production to the place where consumption requires it, then value is added in such distribution. But if by “distribution” is meant the transport of articles to a spot where it is more profitable to dispose of them, then no value is added in such distribution. In the latter case the question is one of circulation which has already been dealt with.

The answer to the third question is contained in the answer to the first and second.

Ed. Com.

Alcohol accounting (1991)

From the May 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent TV documentaries on Australia’s ABC have shown the scientific evidence of severe damage to the brain and other organs caused by alcohol abuse. There is no doubt that it is a very serious problem affecting a significant portion of the population.

It would be nice to think that this concern about the effects of excessive alcohol consumption was motivated by humanitarian feelings for the wretchedness of ruined lives. However, it doesn’t require much digging to reveal the real concerns of the nation’s accountants and politicians—it is costing a great deal of money in lost lives, hospital bills, social security payments, property damage and lost production.

Who has to pay for this? Ultimately it costs the class whose income is derived from their ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth; for the size of the tax bill is a major factor affecting the profitability of their businesses. The Melbourne Age (10 July 1990) ran an article confirming that, as usual, human lives and misery have been debased and alienated by measuring them in terms of money:

Mr Staples [Federal Minister for Aged, Family and Health Services] says a conservative estimate of the yearly cost of alcohol and associated problems to the community is $5 billion. (The Royal Australian College of Physicians puts the figure at between $5 and S12 billion).

Of course the owners of the breweries and liquor and hotel outlets are against any moves to reduce alcohol consumption, while the owners of other businesses are unimpressed with having to pay for the damage caused by alcohol abuse. Who said the capitalist class are united?

The capitalist class are anxious not to overdo the anti-alcohol-abuse campaign. After all alcohol helps keep the workers sedated between working and sleeping. Can’t have the workers doing too much serious thinking—they might just wake up to the whole rotten system and throw it out!

Drug abuse is a direct result of the system of society we live in. Not only is there profit to be made out of supplying the drugs be they legal or otherwise, there is also a willingness to “get out of it” on drugs by many. Is it any wonder that people want to “escape” from their unhappiness which is a result of alienation from the means to life? Poverty, wage-slavery, powerlessness, menial and repetitive work, and the whole sick social environment of capitalism will grind down the most resilient of people.

Drug abuse and the human suffering it causes will not go away while the conditions which are its cause remain. Capitalism will not go away until the majority of us have become convinced of the urgent need for its immediate abolition and replacement with the only alternative—free access socialism.

Dave Tildesley
World Socialist Party of New Zealand 

Green Politics explained (1990)

Book Review from the July 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This. By David Icke, (Green Print)

In this book, David Icke, Green party speaker and TV "personality", sets out to explain the basics of “Green politics”. In so doing, he includes quite a lot of useful, though not startlingly original, material on topics such as the horrors of factory farming and the wastefulness of capitalism. The patronizing tone in which much of the book is written, however, detracts from its intended impact.

Yet there is much here that can be seen as encouraging, given that the Green Party are now supported by a sizeable proportion of workers. For instance. Icke argues that the Tories. Labour and Liberal Democrats are all basically the same, that causes should be attacked, not symptoms, and that the profit motive takes priority over human needs. He makes the point that green ideas concern not just the environment but virtually everything about the way humans live and how we abuse or protect our planet and its other inhabitants:

Tethered pigs and nuclear weapons may not seem to have any connection whatsoever, but they have Both are created by the same state of mind.

This passage, however, also suggests where Icke goes wrong.

He writes as if the real problem were "a state of mind", as if things could be solved just by thinking differently and changing our behaviour accordingly. He does claim that the real enemy is. as he calls it, "the system", but he describes this as:

a form of economic thinking that sees the profit figure at the bottom of the balance sheet every year as the only measurement of success.

His solution is to stress other aspects of production besides profit, especially the environmental impact. The tax system will be manipulated to make it cheaper for companies to protect, rather than poison, the environment. He describes this as "turning the present system on its head", but like all reformers he is just proposing minor adjustments and ignoring the fact that capitalism must have profits and will get them however it can, no matter what the legislators say. This need for profit cannot be evaded by passing laws saying that other things are more important: it can only be ended by doing away with capitalism. For all their self-proclaimed radicalism. Icke and the Greens show no appreciation of this point at all.

Nor do they understand the class nature of society, and they assume its continuation. They propose a Basic Income for everyone, whether employed or not, to cover essential living costs. Large companies would be discouraged by a tax based on company size, while the United Nations will monitor the activities of multinationals. Icke offers a eulogy for Nicaragua, which looks even less convincing since the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas.

This book accurately reflects green politics, in combining a growing awareness of some of the consequences of capitalism with muddled and petty reformist policies.

Paul Bennett

Green capitalism (1990)

Book Review from the July 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Capitalists: How Industry Can Make Money—and Protect the Environment. By John Elkington and Tom Burke. (Victor Gollancz.)

John Elkington and Tom Burke, both involved in environmental pressure groups and public relations work for large corporations, have written a book which documents. industrial sector by industrial sector. the way in which capitalism, driven by the necessity to make profit and expand capital, has systematically despoiled and polluted the environment and harmed the health and lives of workers, either at their place of work or where they live.

The book, for example, contains a lengthy section on the accident at the Bhopal chemical plant in India in 1984 in which 2000 people were killed and tens of thousands severely gassed. We are told how the head of the company tried to place the blame on the Indian government for letting workers live in and around the plant. "It could never happen here," he told a Congressional Committee convened to look at the implications for the United States. But it did. when just a few days later a chemical cloud leaked from the company’s factory in Institute, West Virginia. injuring 135 workers. Then there is the honest and candid reply from a Corporate Executive at Fords, who, on being asked his views on environmental pollution replied that his only concern was “To make money, screw everything else. This is a profit-making system, boy, the rest is frills”. We are also given detailed reports from health organisations and other similar bodies like the US Economic Development Commission who showed that “some 2500 Californians will die from cancer each year over the next decade because of their exposure to toxic chemicals".

These facts and figures only add force to the socialist argument that the many social problems facing workers today, including pollution, stem from our subservient class position as propertyless wage-salary earners owning nothing but our ability to work, which they must sell to an employer in order to live. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class in the production process and exists only to make profit and accumulate capital. Workers have no control over pollution, locally or globally, while the state exists only to further the interests of the capitalist class, taking action only when their general or particular interests warrant it. Yet nowhere in their book do Elkington and Burke discuss or come to terms with this social reality: they show little understanding of the economics of capitalism, are ignorant of how or why profit is produced, and are quiescent on the subject of class and minority property ownership, and the relationship of these factors to the problem of pollution.

Instead, the authors offer a Ten-Point Plan of environmental reforms which they believe capitalists can incorporate into their production processes in the interests of the whole of society without endangering rates of profit. It is this poverty of thought which is the most lamentable aspect of the book.

Capitalists only adopt new technologies, working methods or products when it is profitable to do so, not because the existing ones happen to be polluting the planet or killing workers. As socialists, we have always argued the need for workers to take conscious political action to create the framework of common ownership and democratic control of the means and methods of production and distribution, as the only way in which the social problems like pollution can be tackled. It is sheer folly to believe capitalists will adopt an environmental 'Ten-Point Plan' if their competitors elsewhere in the world market do not. What would shareholders say to a board of directors which introduced costly anti-pollution machinery or practices if it meant that the company lost its competitive edge and market as a result? Some American capitalists have already pointed this out, as the authors grudgingly admit:

Faced with a growing number of increasingly protracted environmental conflicts, hardline American industrialists have often called for the removal of environmental safeguards altogether, arguing that, in the final analysis, it is a question of America's Economy or America's Environment' (p.159).

And then, as if to drive this point home, the authors cite a recent survey of 4000 US chemical companies who estimated that if they adopted the latest practicable technology:

it would cost 139 million dollars, cutting profitability by about 9 per cent causing four plant closures and destroying 261 jobs. If, on the other hand, these companies were forced to go for the ultimate, in the form of the best available technology. the cost would be around 677 million dollars profits would be cut by a third, 20 plants would be forced to close and nearly 10.000 jobs would be lost (p.210).

A society which was not constrained by private property, commodity production and buying and selling would use as a matter of course the best possible technology at hand to ensure the safety of those working in the plants and the protection of the natural environment. Social cost would be the deciding factor, not commercial cost. Capitalism is unable to do this and Elkington and Burke, unlike the Corporate Executive from Fords, are themselves green to believe otherwise.

Richard Lloyd

Proper Gander: Whatever Happened To Political Drama? (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The phrase ‘cops ‘n’ frocks’ has been used to sum up the current state of British TV drama, with its lazy reliance on crime (Happy Valley, Silent Witness etc.) and the past (Call The Midwife, Downton Abbey). The range of dramas has narrowed considerably from previous decades, and the idea of televised drama being used to voice radical political ideas or critique social trends is sadly now more old-fashioned than a cathode ray tube.

From the 1960s, many plays found their homes in anthology series, a format which is as obsolete as political drama itself. Theatre 625 (1964–1968) featured dramatisations of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and works by George Orwell, August Strindberg and Franz Kafka. More widely remembered are The Wednesday Play (1964–1970) and its successor, Play For Today (1970–1984). Their emphasis was on original screenplays rather than adaptations, and therefore they concentrated on more immediate issues which otherwise might not have received much public attention. Around 600 plays were produced in these three BBC series, many of which were lost when their tapes were wiped in the belief that they had exhausted their economic potential. Notable productions include two plays about homelessness written by Jeremy Sandford, who slept rough as part of his research: Cathy Come Home (1966) showed a young family’s downward spiral into homelessness, while Edna The Inebriate Woman (1971) followed a woman’s life on the streets and in hostels, prison and a psychiatric hospital. The Spongers (1978) showed the devastating effects of welfare cuts on services for disabled people. The Black Stuff (1980) by Alan Bleasdale told the story of five Liverpudlian tarmac layers whose struggles with unemployment were subsequently described in its sequel series The Boys From The Blackstuff (1982).

As well as Bleasdale and Sandford, other prominent film-makers included director Ken Loach, producer Tony Garnett and writer Jim Allen. Outside the anthology strands, Loach worked with them on The Rank And File (1971), based on the Pilkington Glass strike which took place in a climate of trade union leaders being seen as too close to a government proposing laws against unofficial strikes, Days Of Hope (1975), which followed a family in the years after the First World War, and The Price Of Coal (1977) about a Yorkshire colliery community.

These plays are remembered as being ‘gritty’, focusing on hardship and aiming for realism by being filmed as if they were documentaries. However, the anthology format allowed for differing styles and messages, and even Ken Loach made an offbeat musical for The Wednesday Play. Other BBC series were thought experiments offering ‘what if…’ scenarios about possible drastic changes to society. Doomwatch (1970–1972) was set in a fictional government department which investigated threats from scientific developments, such as genetic engineering and behaviour modification. Distrust of the notion of scientific progress runs through Doomwatch like words in a stick of rock. ‘Progress’ has connotations of continual improvements, but science exists in a changing political and social context which shapes how it develops. In this series, politicians and scientists are depicted as secretive, self-serving and blinkered, suppressing awareness of unwanted side effects to further their own interests. Survivors (1975–1977) used the starting point of a pandemic wiping out most of the population to explore themes of replacing capitalist institutions, communal living and self-sufficiency. These dramas are less overtly political, perhaps because they aren’t based in real situations. The scenario described in nuclear war dramas The War Game (1965) and Threads (1984) fortunately hasn’t happened either, although these plays clearly criticised real-life government policies about preparing for and supposedly coping with armageddon.

Even children’s programmes occasionally tackled serious matters without talking down to their audience. Noah’s Castle (1980) was set in a near future where rocketing inflation leads to scarcity of basic commodities. The school-based Grange Hill (1978-2008) examined issues such as drug addiction and bullying as well as criticising the effects of funding cuts to education.

By the mid-‘80s, Grange Hill became less vocal about government education policies and Play For Today had had its day. Television drama was no longer a place to consciously voice political ideas, and instead the emphasis shifted to discussing more personal issues through soap operas such as EastEnders and Brookside. Soaps are more about juggling characters’ relationships than ideas, so the format doesn’t lend itself to exploring the impact of political and economic forces.

The mid-‘90s saw the final flowering of political TV drama. By this time, the documentary style of previous decades was going out of fashion, although the sense of anger remained. Cardiac Arrest (1994–1996) was a serial based on the experiences of writer Jed Mercurio when he worked in hospital. He describes a health service where staff have to rely on cynicism and cutting corners to cope with the hierarchies and impossible workloads. Our Friends In The North (1996) was Peter Flannery’s ‘state of the nation’ play, spanning thirty years in the lives of four people shaped by changing housing policy, police corruption and the miners’ strike. The plot of Alan Bleasdale’s GBH (1992) echoed events in the early ‘80s when Militant influenced the Labour Party and Liverpool city council. The other political dramas of the 1990s also had their roots in previous decades; Tony Garnett was an executive producer of Cardiac Arrest, and attempts to bring Our Friends In The North to the screen began since it was performed as a stage play in 1982.

All these plays passionately examine how people with little power or influence react to wider economic and political forces. They tend to be from a left-wing, rather than a revolutionary viewpoint, but still present experiences and situations from which we can draw our own conclusions. Why is television no longer an outlet for this kind of expression? These days, the BBC doesn’t want to alienate the government in case this leads to further funding cuts. It places more weight than it used to on its supposed ‘impartiality’. Any programme which presents a different viewpoint to acceptance of the status quo would be seen as ‘partial’, and therefore would not be produced. Even documentaries which expose injustices and corruption presuppose that the basic set-up of society is sound. This doesn’t mean that successors of Loach, Garnett, Allen and the others are clamouring to make political dramas and getting knocked back by conservative TV executives. What few successors they have probably realise that it’s not even worth trying.

Mike Foster

The Bleak Afterthoughts of a Labour Critic (1947)

From the April 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF MR. W. J. BROWN. M.P. 

Mr. W. J. Brown, Independent M.P. for Rugby, who writes a political column in the Evening Standard has added a further page to his curious history. In the issue for February 20th, 1947, he declared that one good thing that may come out of the crisis is that it will teach us to have done with shibboleths and get down to dealing with the situation. His line is that “ the great issue for years ahead is not Socialism but Survival. Nothing but an immense increase in production will save us.” If we fail to do this, says Mr. Brown, there will be a "general crisis” and the economy cuts imposed after the last war and in 1931 "will be nothing to the retrenchments we shall be compelled to make then. They may well involve a reduction in our already inadequate standard of life of 30 or 40 per cent.”

First let us look at the labels Mr. Brown has worn over the years. Now he is Independent, before that for a very brief span he endorsed Mosley’s New Party (before Mosley went Fascist), and before that he was a Labour M.P. until he resigned from the Labour Party in disgust.

In the beginning he called himself a Socialist, by which he meant that he subscribed to the Labour Party programme. In 1931 he resigned from the Labour Party on the ground that the Labour Government instead of being a Socialist Party had determined "that its role was to be that of the Caretaker of Capitalism.” (“My Political Position.” W. J. Brown, 1931.) Mr. Brown objected to this role as he had also objected to the ‘‘economy cuts” of 1931. Declaring “I am a Socialist,” he warned us that “unless the next Labour Government goes all out for Socialism, it will fail.” It must “have done with petty tinkering:,” and must "risk all in the effort to chancre the order of society.” 

Very strangely, in view of the above demand, he signed at about the same time or a little earlier, the Mosley New Party Manifesto which, it was said, he had helped to draft, and which ruled out Socialism for just the same kind of reason as that given now bv Mr. Brown in his Evening Standard article. It said that "Questions of the ultimate goal of society are excluded by the very urgency of the problem which confronts us,” and went on to appeal to employers and workers  (as again does his present article) to get together to "meet the emergency by common effort.”

Finally, in 1941 (‘‘What Have I to Lose?”) he renounced his early claim to be a Socialist: "In earlier days I described myself as a Socialist. Except in a very generalised sense, I should hesitate to so describe myself today.”

It will be seen that Mr. Brown is very hard to please. When the 1931 crisis (caused by Capitalism) was gathering, he wanted the Labour Government to risk all for Socialism and not be a Caretaker of the Capitalist system. Now that there is another Labour Government and another crisis, he demands that Socialism be ruled out for years ahead. He can hardly deny that the present Government is trying to be a caretaker for Capitalism, but now he wants it to be a more careful caretaker.

So much for Mr. Brown’s uncertain views over the years; hut what of the policy itself?

If we do not take care of capitalism, we are warned that our standard of living will drop 30 or 40 per cent. In 1931 (in the anti-MacDonald phase, not the New Party phase), Mr. Brown was preaching the necessity of Socialism and the uselessness of caretaking. Mr. J. R. MacDonald, who rejected Mr. Brown’s advice, decided to go in for caretaking in a thorough way as Prime Minister of the Coalition Government with the Tories. What was the result? Wages and unemployment benefit were cut and unemployment rose to nearly 2,500,000. What possible reason can Mr. Brown advance for supposing that more of the same kind of caretaking will have a different result? The only difference we can see is that Mr. Brown has changed sides, but important though that may seem to Mr. Brown, it does not alter the nature of the Capitalist system, which breeds War, Want and Crises, no matter what Government is in charge.

Years ago a critic of the Socialist Party of Great Britain told us that it would be a good thing if we supported Mr. Brown. If we had we would certainly have been tied un in some pretty knots; and what sort of progress would have been or will be made by the workers if they all supported Mr. Brown? They would have wasted a quarter of a century getting periodic bouts of aggravated hardship in crises, on top of the continuing hardships of Capitalism in its “prosperous” times, and all Mr. Brown can now offer is the choice between “our already inadequate standard of life ” and 30 or 40 per cent, less even than that. What a prospect! and what a blind guide!

The history of the past 25 years, and the history of Mr. Brown strengthen the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s conviction that for the workers of this and all other countries the only cure for the evils of Capitalism is to get rid of it, including the form known as State Capitalism that the present caretakers believe to be an improvement, and which we find no more attractive than, as it happens, does Mr. Brown.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: The Vote or Twitter? (2016)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Here’s a polemical question for the readers of Socialist Standard: 'Do we now have more power as consumers, texters, and members of the Twitteratti, than we have as mere voters?’

We know that our so-called leaders and their camp followers in the political chatteratti are increasingly out of touch and that Napoleon’s dictum ‘the people are just three hot meals away from revolution’ has never been more apt. You only need to substitute the words pay-day loan, mortgage re-payment, zero-hours contract, health emergency, or pension crisis. And there you have it –life in contemporary Britain for millions of people.

We even have a new social type –the superfluous graduate, someone with no future who works in a dystopian culture where you practically need a degree to be an employee in a shoe shop. There is now a tidal wave of tertiary educated youth enslaved by student debt, stuck in a never-ending series of McJobs –with low wages, poor conditions, short-term, temporary contracts, no pensions, no benefits, no security, and next to no job satisfaction. This group knows full well that it’s only the sons and daughters of the privileged 1 percent who can take on those unpaid internships which lead to secure, well-paid, fulfilling careers. Unpaid internships are also a great deal for the bosses. Unlike the old-time slave owners they don’t even need to house, feed, or clothe their workers!

The 99 percent also understand that the concept of social mobility is dead and that many of them will be the first generation in their family’s history to be less prosperous, less contented, less healthy, and die younger than their parents.

When will the electorate collectively realize that they have no more choice in our political leaders than in our selection of baked bean brands? We can only buy what’s placed on the supermarket shelf. Or, in the case of our dysfunctional voting system, the candidates who are shortlisted for the rest of us by the corporations, the media, and the 1 percenters.

The old joke that if democracy really changed anything they wouldn’t allow it, has never held more meaning – we pretend to vote and they pretend to govern. Have political parties been reduced to useful tools which the political establishment then use to shape the proletariat? If the Right is the hammer, then has the Left just become an anvil?

If so, is the game up for democracy and what will the coming revolution look like for the remaining 99 percent in the age of the internet? Won’t political parties become increasingly irrelevant and eventually redundant if our only real power comes via our functions as consumers, texters, and members of the online Twitteratti? Please note – I’m not saying this is a good thing – but just a reality of the human condition in the age of new technology.

If so, then it’s obvious, to have real power we must simply stop feeding the beast. The only fear for the corporate plutocracy is the disruption that would ensue if we simply stopped consuming en mass and paralyzed the economic system. Their worst nightmare is a text message that goes viral and calls for a boycott of a particular company or product. Imagine if millions of people stopped banking at RBS, ceased filling their petrol tanks at Shell, or refused to buy Coca-Cola – if only for a few weeks.

Think this could never happen? Wrong, it’s already happening! Using the website Change.org a customer of Verizon Wireless organized an online petition garnering over 165,000 signatures which within hours forced the company to back down on its plans to introduce a $2 ‘convenience’charge for the rip-off ‘privilege’of paying bills by phone or online. A similar ploy received over 300,000 supporters and defeated Bank of America’s avaricious scam for a $5 usage fee for credit cards.

This is just the beginning –consumers have barely begun to flex their internet muscles. If there is a political manifesto for today it must read: ‘We the people simply demand a sharing of the wealth, a sustainable economy which preserves the environment, the dissolution of central power, a guarantee of personal freedoms, and an end to corrupt corporate power elites’.

Ted Newcomen (by email from USA)

Reply: 

The saying 'if democracy really changed anything they wouldn't allow it' is indeed old, but that doesn't make it true. It does, however, reflect the experienced fact that 'changing governments changes nothing' but this is not the fault of political democracy. It is because governments govern in the context of capitalism and capitalism can never be made to work in the interest of the majority as it is based on minority ownership and production for their profit. To blame political democracy when capitalism is the real culprit is to make the mistake many voters in Germany did in the 1930s when they voted the Nazis into power.

The saying is also wrong in suggesting that political democracy is something that the ruling class can choose to allow or not. Universal suffrage is something that the majority had to struggle for against the ruling class and which they had to impose on them and so which our rulers can't just turn off or on at will. They have since learned to adapt to it and how to manipulate it and they now find it a useful way to chose governments to run things on their behalf and also to bring an air of legitimacy to their rule. All the same, it remains a gain for the majority class of wage and salary workers and a weapon they can use to dislodge the ruling class.

We have nothing against twitter and other social media. No doubt they will play their part in spreading the idea of a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources as the only practicable alternative to capitalism. But, while they may be able to organise a campaign to get some capitalist corporation to reverse some maybe ill-judged decision, they will not be able to get them to stop seeking profits, even less to get the owning class – those you call the '1 percenters' – to give up their ownership rights. That will have to be imposed on them and the best way to do this is through political action – by an informed majority winning control of political power and using this to declare all property rights and all corporations null and void. In fact, this is the only way that a framework can be created within which the problems you list facing members of the excluded majority can be constructively tackled and lastingly ended.

You ask us to consider what would happen if millions stopped banking with one particular bank or refused to buy one particular brand of fizzy drink. We ask you to consider what would happen if millions stopped voting for pro-capitalist politicians and used the power the vote gives them to elect instead delegates mandated to use political power to end capitalism and usher in socialism –Editors.

Capitalism—The Sick Society (1959)

From the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Basis of Mental Ill-Health 

"I want to be left alone; I want to dream my dreams, to believe as I once believed, that life is good and beautiful and that men can live with one another in peace and plenty. No son of a bitch on earth can tell me that to make life better you have to first kill a million or ten million men in cold blood." The cry from the heart of millions of ordinary people today; people whose only wish is to live happy, full, life free from hardship, fear and anxiety.

This cri de coeur comes from a “fictitious” American, a soldier disabled in World War I, “The alcoholic veteran with the washboard cranium.” His creator—Henry Miller, whose savage, bitter attacks on Capitalist society are brilliantly embodied in his story of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company from The Tropic of Capricorn.

The greatest tragedy of Capitalism is the suffering of its living victims. The dead are dead and can feel nothing, but the living must endure the frustrations, the fears, the uncertainties, the insecurity, which are inextricably bound to mid-twentieth-century Capitalism. Nearly half the hospital beds in the United Kingdom are reserved for patients with mental illness; in the United States it is as common for people to have their own “head shrinker” (psychiatrist) as it is for them to have their own butcher or beautician. Here is a tape-recording of a private talk between an American T.V. producer (Dan Enright) and a professional “quiz contestant” (Herbert Stempel), reported in Time magazine of 15th September, 1958:

Enright: I want to get a psychiatrist for you.
Stempel: I already have one.
Enright: No, sir. I want you to go to a psychiatrist five days a week, not twice, Herb, to expedite yourself . . .  We will foot the cost . . .
Stempel: Well, my doctor seems to feel that my problem isn’t serious enough for five days a week.

Age of the Phoney

A society must be grievously sick when so many of its members have to undergo mental treatment. Psychiatry is a peculiar product of modern Capitalist society. Mental conflicts (including the “neuroses,” which account for so much mental illness nowadays) are largely the result of peoples’ inability to come to terms with their environment, and psychiatry is an attempt to resolve these conflicts; but they are inevitable under Capitalism, where society is divided by warring groups and classes.

Capitalism has created a world of potential plenty, but millions of its workers either live in poverty or else they live in a state of apprehension lest some “crisis” (an oft recurring feature of Capitalism) throw them into poverty. Capitalism is world-wide, but lethally armed nations make a mockery of cooperation with the shrill cries of their gutter-patriotic leaders and their insatiable demands for markets, trade routes, and for their Cypruses, their Formosas, their Algerias. Capitalism, especially the mid-twentieth-century brand, will go down in human history as the great age of the phoney. Honesty and integrity are subjects for derision; the present-day gods are the gimmick, the ballyhoo, and the slick-tongued salesman, all wallowing in a bog of false social values.

The U.S.A.

No country in this Capitalist world is more socially sick than the United States of America. The United States is a fantastic amalgum: it possesses the source of scientific knowledge and industrial techniques challenged only by Soviet Russia, and yet, according to Paul Blanshard in his book The Right to Read (The Beacon Press, Boston, 1955), there are roughly 8,000,000 “functional illiterates” in the U.S.A. That is, there are 8,000,000 adults who have not got the reading knowledge that a child should acquire in the first four years at school. And according to Louis R. Wilson’s study The Geography of Reading (quoted in the above book), only about one-half of the adult population of the United States in 1938 had sufficient reading skill to understand the ordinary books published for adults. And yet these “functional illiterates” are subjected to the same strains and stresses of Capitalism as their more “enlightened” fellows: is it any wonder, then, that many are intellectually and emotionally incapable of coming to grips with a bitterly competitive and hostile environment—modern capitalist society?

When faced with a problem, some people fight it, some run away from it, and some remain undecided, a battleground of conflicting emotions which tend to destroy the peace of mind and cause mental illness. When faced with the problems of Capitalism, therefore, some people fight them (Socialists are in this category), some run away (Capitalism must answer for many suicides), and others become mentally ill: they either fill the mental hospitals, appear in police courts, or, more tragic still, they may live for years with terrible mental conflicts which blight their own and their families lives.

But suddenly these pent-up frustrations, conflicts, and inward suffering may erupt with dreadful results: people “flip their lids” as Americans so graphically describe the onset of acute mental illness, and the outward peace of the humdrum “respectable” home is shattered brutally and irrevocably. Consider the case of 16-year-old Diana Daye Humphries, who ambushed and shot to death her 14-year-old brother in their home in Houston, Texas.

According to an Associated Press despatch dated 24th September, 1958, Diana was an honour student at High School, where her teachers and schoolmates described her as a “brilliant student and well-liked girl, not the type to do a thing like this.” But she did do it, and her reasons for doing it are a terrible indictment of the existence she and her family (along with millions like them) endure under modern Capitalism. Diana (who had also planned to kill her father, her mother and herself) told the police:

“I did it because everything was so routine. My mother goes to work every day and comes home tired. So does my father, and he is sick with ulcers. Everyone was always tired. Robert was tired of school. It seemed we were always getting up, going to work or school, coming home, cooking meals, eating, washing dishes, going to bed and getting up again. I couldn’t stand it! I wanted to kill everyone so we wouldn’t have to suffer any more.”

This penetrating picture of working-class life by a teenage girl makes a macabre mockery of all the sickening eulogies of Capitalist society with which Capitalists and their politicians and spokesmen incessantly bombard our senses. What dark powers Capitalism must have to turn a “brilliant student and well-liked girl” of such tender years into a pessimistic, disillusioned killer.

Another Associated Press Report dated 24th September, 1958, this time from Sparta, Michigan, tells of the tragedy of an unemployed man who killed four of his five children with a shot-gun; his fifth child and estranged wife escaped with minor injuries. The father told the police: “I can only take so much. I got shot up in the war and my nerves act up.” By no means the least horrifying aspect of this tragedy was the hard-boiled, matter-of-fact, attitude of the eight-year-old surviving child, who is reported to have been found sitting on a blood-spattered bed saying: “Hey, cops! Daddy did this. I played dead. He thought he killed me, too.”

These two cases represent the small number of human tragedies in which the stresses and strains of life under Capitalism cause violent reactions, and hence get into newspapers. They are the one-tenth of the iceberg visible above the surface of the water: the extent of submerged human misery can only be inferred from the great increase in recent years of mental illness, suicides, divorces, alcoholism (especially in young people), the so-called “psychosomatic” illnesses, such as duodenal ulceration, and the colossal trade in “tranquillisers ” and sedatives.

The follies, miseries, frustrations, and personal tragedies of modern Capitalist society have been, and are being, forcefully recorded by a growing number of novelists, mostly American. Henry Miller’s savage polemics in The Tropic of Capricorn are not generally available, but there are many other works freely obtainable from public libraries or as cheap “paper backs."

“1984”

Orwell’s prophecy of the control of man’s thoughts under the Capitalist corporate state a few decades hence is a phantasy (which may perhaps become partly true) featuring violence to mind and body and sophisticated torture. But Merle Miller (The Sure Thing) and David Karp (Leave Me Alone) suggest that “thought police” work, albeit “unofficial” is present today: these authors' subject is the intolerance, persecution; and in some cases social ruin, of people with ideas (real and imagined) slightly out of line with the “hundred-per-cent. All-American” outlook of conformist, unquestioning, suburban communities. These last two books are, in a way. more horrifying than 1984. both because they describe what might actually be happening today, and also because the persecution and intolerance are not exercised by “ thought police,” but by groups of ordinary, well-meaning, law-abiding, citizens only too well indoctrinated with the ideas of intense nationalism, racial prejudices, and selfishness engendered by the Capitalist society in which they live.

The problems of Capitalist Society have been described by socialists, novelists, historians, sociologists, and even by professional politicians. But only Socialists recognise that most of these problems cannot be solved until Capitalism is replaced by a social system in which people throughout the world will work harmoniously together to produce and distribute wealth to satisfy society’s needs. In this system of society. Socialism, there will be no terrible forces causing daughters and fathers to kill members of their families, there will be no need for armies of psychiatrists and overpopulated mental hospitals, no need for the senseless slaughter and maiming of men. women and children in war, and there will be no need for people to fear for their safety and security because of what they think.

To work for the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism is the life-work of the Socialist. What better work could there be?

Michael La Touche

Cooking the Books: The EU and the Price of Food (2016)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the argument over whether to Leave or Remain in the EU is in the better overall interest of British capitalism, which the media and politicians are urging us to get embroiled in, the Remain side would arguably seem to have the stronger case – from a capitalist point of view that is, of course.

British capitalism benefits from unrestricted access to the single European market and also from having a say in drawing up its rules and regulations. It also benefits from being part of a large trading bloc in negotiations with other states and blocs, on the same principle behind trade unionism that ‘unity is strength’: you can get a better deal when negotiating as a group rather than individually.

But these are not the only arguments that the Remain camp are using. In April the Treasury published a study on what things would be like in 2030 if British capitalism leaves. Apparently, we’ll all be £4300 a year worse off. This is mere fantasy economics, as the Leave camp were quick to point out, including ex-Cabinet minister, Ian Duncan-Smith, who said that governments can’t predict what’s going to happen even a year ahead, citing Chancellor Osborne’s revision in March of the growth predictions in his previous year’s budget. We have always made the same point but can’t recall any politician making it when in government.

Then there is the claim in one of the ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ leaflets that British capitalism being in the EU is ‘great for families with lower prices in our shops thanks to free trade.’ This is not true as there is ‘free trade’ only within the EU. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the EU is a customs union which imposes tariffs on goods from outside it, in particular agricultural products. This means higher food prices; which was one reason why some were opposed to British capitalism joining in the first place in 1973.

This is still the case, as Gerard Lyons, of Economists for Brexit, pointed out:

‘There is a tariff wall around the EU that protects agriculture, largely for the benefit of France, and parts of manufacturing, because of Germany. In these protected areas, people pay higher prices than in world markets’ (Times, 6 May).

So, if British capitalism left (and if it is decided not to protect UK farmers – a big If) there would be lower food prices. But this would not benefit workers. We’ve been here before, in the 1840s when there was a campaign to repeal the Corn Laws which imposed tariffs on the import of corn which benefited landowners who creamed off as higher rents the increase in the price of what their farmer tenants sold.

The capitalist opponents of the Corn Laws sought working class support by saying it would bring lower food prices, but, as the more astute trade unionists of the time realised, this would not benefit workers since, by lowering the cost of living, it would lead to lower wages, leaving workers no better off.

Engels, who used to hobnob with Manchester capitalists in the 1840s, wrote in 1881 that ‘there was no secret made, in those times, of what was aimed at by the repeal of the Corn Laws. To reduce the price of bread, and thereby the monetary rate of wages’, so as to increase the competitiveness of British capitalism on world markets or, as Engels said the British manufacturers put it, to enable them ‘to defy all and every competition with which wicked or ignorant foreigners threatened them’ (Labour Standard, 18 June). Which is how the Leave camp is still putting it today.

Tories back to nature (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Devotees of political stereotypes will be comforted that the Conservative Party seems to be back to its old self again, after all those years when it clumsily posed as the working class's friend, as the party which cares, as the party of freedom and prosperity. All that is over now; one Tory at this year's conference symbolised it when he asked about one of the wetter junior ministers: “What’s a man who rides bicycles, drinks beer and sends his children to comprehensive school doing in the Conservative Party?

During the years between the wars (the two World Wars that is; for our present purposes we are ignoring the others which have cost so much in suffering and destruction) Stanley Baldwin, although he did not ride a bike, managed to deceive a lot of people that there was something called the National Interest, in which everyone's fortunes were involved and which they should trust him to protect. Baldwin was a rich man whose money came from the family ironworks. He spent some of it on a comfortable home in the lush acres of Worcestershire where he acted the part of the country squire, caring for his pigs in whom he perhaps recognised the same characteristics of productive docility as were displayed by his employees.

Baldwin's was an astute ideological base from which to attack the workers. The calm — sometimes indolence — of his exterior concealed a steely resolve which was pitted against the working class in their resistance to the lowering of their wages during the slump. Baldwin has an assured place in the history of class conflict through his handling of the General Strike, when he contemptuously outgeneralled the TUC and then sat back to contemplate the miners being starved into submission. There was cruel suffering for those people, for their children, their families and for the communities where they lived. Baldwin was unmoved; in his ideal scheme of social things there was a place for the workers — but they should know this and keep to it.

A more compassionate — if at times equally indolent — public face was worn by one of Baldwin’s successors, Harold Macmillan, who seemed to regard strikes as a personal affront to his ideal of a united, co-operative, unruffled country in which profits for the ruling class came out in a constant, tranquil flow. Macmillan was always ready to speak on the theme of there being One Nation, which was only to be expected because he owned rather more of the Nation than any of the people he was recommending it to. Now in his declining years, the ex-Prime minister occasionally grumbles that the policies of this government are another affront to his ideal, that they do nothing to promote the prime deceit of One Nation. His words should carry some weight, especially with Tories sitting on a slim majority, for Macmillan knew a thing or two about persuading the working class to vote his way.

If Macmillan were placed in parliament now he might well be among the wets, who are usually pleased to be known as Tories. There is a special irony in this because the Labour Party once used the word Tory as a term of abuse which implied a hard-faced Dickensian indifference to the plight of the poor. The Wets have reacted to this by trying to give the word a more charitable meaning. In the debate last July on the government's refusal to restore the 5 per cent cut in unemployment pay which they imposed in 1980 one outraged Wet, Richard Needham, said "... it is the basis of Tory philosophy that we help those who cannot help themselves" and he was supported by another Wet. Patrick Cormack: "... restore some traditional Toryism to the lobbies, and ensure that those people least able to look after themselves are looked after by us".

A Tory cast in just that mould is Ian Gilmour, who has carried his opposition to the Thatcher government to the extent of speaking at a Child Poverty Action Group fringe meeting at this year's conference. Now this was very bold of Gilmour, since those few Conservatives who have heard of the CPAG probably regard it as highly seditious in its work of highlighting the more extreme poverty among the working class. Well fed pigs are much more attractive and reassuring to look at than half starved children. Gilmour did not attend the meeting to congratulate or to defend the government; he demanded the restoration of the cut in unemployment benefit and larger payments for the unemployed. He is, of course, another very rich Tory — like the man with the bike and the beer he went to Eton - so it was strangely generous of him to worry about the unemployed being deprived of a pittance more each week. It is even more generous of the workers, whether they are unemployed or in an active exploitative state, to take such nonsense seriously.

In any case this government, as they never tire of telling us, are made of sterner stuff. They are unlikely to restore that cut; their resistance to wage claims will probably stay as firm as ever; their resolve to ease the path of British capitalism by forcing down workers’ living standards will not easily waver. And if the election results are any guide there is small prospect of the workers reacting against this. The same patience and optimism which was so effectively exploited by politicians like Baldwin and Macmillan — as well as by Labour leaders — is still there, still pulling in the votes, still keeping capitalism in being.

If the promises of those political leaders had any worth, we would now be living in secure prosperity; the problems which are so troublous now would simply not exist. Workers would be able to vote for parties who had fulfilled their pledges to organise capitalism into a benign, abundant society. But what has actually happened? In March the numbers of people living on Supplementary Benefit rose for the first time above 4 million. Supplementary Benefit was originally designed as a final safety net which would cradle those few people whose usual circumstances had pushed them through the other provisions of the Welfare State. It is now the everyday income which millions of desperate workers rely on to survive.

In April the Department of Health and Social Security (who are supposed to stop it happening) found that over 2 million people are living below the "poverty line" — below the level of existence on Supplementary Benefit which is itself barely enough to live on. That same month the Low Pay Unit and the Civil and Public Services Association reported that the outpacing of wages by price rises was hitting the lower paid particularly hard — that the poorer were getting poorer. There is little hope from the government that this will change. In August, Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe was warning that it will "take a long time” for unemployment to start to fall. There will be no less pressure on those workers who are in employment: in July the President of the Confederation of British Industry described as “bonkers” the idea that wage claims should attempt to compensate for price rises, so that “. . . we should get a bit more each year”.

As those with memories stretching beyond last week will recall, that was exactly the attitude of the last Labour government, who tried to get the workers to accept rises below the rate at which prices were going up. Now it is the policy carried out — or perhaps taken over would be a better term — by a Conservative government. In their efforts to protect the interests of the ruling class, every government is compelled to dispute with the workers over wages. From their point of view, the big problem of the post-war years was the high demand for labour power, which undermined every pay restraint policy, whatever name it went under. This situation was rapidly changing under the Callaghan government and as Labour went out of office unemployment had risen, and was still rising, and seemed likely to continue to do so. Coincident with the election of the Thatcher government the slump deepened and as unemployment has risen still further so the attack on workers' livelihoods has become particularly savage. At the Tory conference, it was the hard-liners, the people who openly express the intention of forcing the workers to suffer most acutely in this crisis, who got the standing ovations: the others won only a ripple of applause scattered among a stony, disapproving silence.

The political danger in this is that the workers are encouraged to blame the Conservatives — or perhaps the Dry Conservatives — for these problems and so to assume that a different party, or a different section of the Conservative Party, would be able to run things differently. Anger and despair at unemployment and extremes of poverty will become focused on the public figures of politicians like Thatcher and Tebbit who, although they do little enough to soften their Gradgrind image, are not responsible for the basic nature of capitalist society. A desire for revenge at the ballot box will obscure the memory that the problems existed under a Labour government and that all parties show themselves equally helpless in face of capitalism's waywardness and anarchy.

Ivan