Leninist State vs. World Socialism (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

What can one say about the Socialist Workers Party except that they do quite rightly respond with indignation to the iniquities of capitalism and they do understand that there is a class struggle going on—even if their idea of the working-class is hopelessly narrow, including mainly manual workers rather than all people dependent upon selling their labour power in order to survive. The SWP is a radical party, in the old sense of not liking society as it is and wanting something to be done. This "something" they call socialism but despite their claim to be a socialist party, their speakers are conspicuously silent on, and their literature notably empty of any definition of socialism.

The Socialist Party has a clear definition of socialism; it will be a society of common, not state or private, ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution; there will be democratic and not minority control of social affairs; production will be solely for use rather than for sale or profit; there will be free access by all people to all goods and services, without the fetters of the money economy. All of that is clear and anyone who cares to go back to 1904 will find all of our literature advocating the same principled and unequivocal socialist aim.

What sort of society is the SWP aiming for?

The so-called socialist aim of the SWP has always been obscure. They regard the Bolshevik coup d’état in Russia as an example of a successful socialist revolution, yet they argue that after ten years of its happening Russia had become a state capitalist country which should be opposed by socialists. They have told workers to elect Labour governments whenever elections have taken place but they argue that Labour governments are anti-socialist. They have tried the opportunist policy of supporting courses of action and then dissociating themselves from the inevitably unpopular consequences. But now, after years of refusing to tell anyone what socialism means to them, the SWP has published a pamphlet The Future Socialist Society in which all is explained. They would have done themselves a favour to have kept their confusion a secret. They have done us a favour, for now we can see quite clearly that the SWP does not stand for socialism, but for a Leninist state—which should be resisted by all workers.

The Socialist State

There will be no state in a socialist society. The state is the body which has existed for as long as property society has existed, in order to defend the propertied ruling class against the propertyless majority. Socialism will be a classless society, without exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled, coercion and submission. Not so, according to the SWP:

. . . the working class will have to create its own state. This state, like any other, will be a centralised organisation exercising ultimate authority in society and having at its disposal decisive armed force (p.8).

There is no point in having a state unless there are people to be bullied and coerced. According to the SWP, the new state will be bullying and coercing the capitalists—the exploiters who live by robbing the working class. But if the workers can dominate the capitalists with a state, why allow them to continue exploiting and robbing the workers? Why not immediately dispossess the parasite minority? Once the capitalists have been stripped of their power to exploit workers economically there will be no need to control them with a state: there will be a classless society without the need for a body of class rule. The SWP argue the absurd case that this all-powerful workers' state will "exercise ultimate authority in society" but for the authority over the most crucial aspect of society in which the capitalists will still be having power. In order to have authority over the exploiters on behalf of the exploited—it is like a proposal for the prisoners to be given control over the screws—there will need to be a new "socialist army":

The old capitalist armed forces . . . will be replaced with organisations of armed workers—workers’ militias (p.8).

Conscription will be re-introduced:

. . . service in the militia will be on a rota basis so as to train and involve the maximum number of workers in the armed defence of their power . . . (p.9).

We do not know whether the SWP would allow conscientious objectors to refuse military service under the new state or whether such dangerous subversives would be sent to "socialist prisons". The new militia will not only be an army but a police force also—a military police, in fact:

The militia will also be in charge of everyday law and order . . . they will perform far more effectively than the capitalist police (p.9).

No more getting away with breaking state-imposed laws under the new state: the crime detection rate of the "socialist police" is already guaranteed to be better than at present. There will be officers in the militia—no doubt they will have little red stripes on their uniforms to show us that they are "socialist" super-thugs, and

All officers in the militia will be elected . . . (p.9).

So, there you have it: establish SWP-style socialism and you get to vote for the Chief Inspector at your local nick.

The new state will have a "socialist government" which will probably be run by "the party which has led the revolution"(p.9). But not everyone will be allowed to vote for the government:

There will not be complete universal suffrage because the nature of the system will exclude the old bourgeoisie and its main associates from the electoral process (p. 10).

So capitalists will not have the vote. If there are still capitalists in the SWP's "socialist society" they would not need to vote, for capitalists have economic power already and the only use which voting performs is to get hold of that power. If the capitalists are abolished as a class, then firstly there is no need for a state—because there will be no contest between classes—and secondly it would be stupidly anti-socialist to deny votes to ex-capitalists who are now equal members of a classless society. Worse still, the SWP proposes to deny votes to the "main associates" of the old capitalists. Does that mean that all previous supporters of capitalism will have no right to vote? Or will the right to vote be denied to active anti-SWPers—including The Socialist Party, which would be working actively to democratically overthrow the new state? The Socialist Party need be in no doubt about our place in this horrific new state, for we are told that political parties will only be allowed to operate freely "providing they accept the basic framework of the revolution" (p.9). Quite simply, the new state will be undemocratic—and once there is a state of such power anyone can be placed in the role of one of the enemies of the state, denied the right to vote or to oppose the regime. All too often the first people to be persecuted by new states are the ones who helped to created them. Take the example of the SWP "promise" about the freedom of artists:

There will be no repetition of the disastrous Stalinist policy of proscribing particular artistic forms or proclaiming that only one style of art . . . has validity. Apart from reserving the right to prohibit direct counter-revolutionary propaganda, the revolutionary government will promote the maximum freedom in this area (pp.33-4).

Let us consider a practical case. Suppose there is a socialist film-maker under the new state who makes a good movie about the way in which life under a militia is not freedom but just another form of oppression. At the end of the film there is a scene in which a socialist makes a speech against the new regime, pointing out that wherever the state exists there is an absence of freedom. The new state bosses might conclude—quite rightly—that such a film could turn workers against the state, make them feel unfree, make them ungrateful to the government which had led them to supposed freedom, incite revolutionary activity which the state would regard as counter-revolutionary. The film would have to be banned, or parts of it censored. These are the inevitable requirements of running a coercive state. As the SWP tell us now, before we could be foolish enough to grant them such power.

. . . it has to be frankly stated that some repression, some use of direct force, will be necessary not only to overthrow the capitalist state but also after the revolution to maintain workers’ power (p.11).

As they say of their heroes, who established a previous "socialist state": "The Bolsheviks had no choice but to introduce a highly authoritarian regime" (p.12).

All of these absurd ideas about socialism are based upon three basic errors. Firstly, that "The class struggle does not come to an end with the victory of the revolution" (p.11). For the SWP, socialism is a class society in which one class rules over another. In fact, once workers gain control of the state our one simple task will be to abolish both classes and the state by means of the immediate dispossession of the capitalist minority. This will put an end to the class struggle forever. 

Secondly, that workers can take power in one country alone. The only action a socialist majority in one country can do is to use all its might to hasten the process of developing class consciousness of workers across the world. It is not possible to do that by setting up a so-called workers' state which would be forced to run capitalism in one country—state capitalism—and in doing so would set back the development of socialist ideas in other countries as workers looked on to see the failures of the "new socialist state". The SWP states that ". . . a workers' state cannot survive indefinitely in one country" (p.17). In fact, it would be fatal for workers ever to take responsibility for running a state in any country. The sole task of the workers against whom the state is used is to use the state for one purpose and then get rid of it.

Thirdly, the SWP accepts the ideas of Lenin about revolution as an act of leaders taking the majority who are led to a new social order: such an authoritarian revolution could only be like all previous revolutions in history, ending in the domination of the leaders, forming a new state over the led. So it was that the Bolsheviks promised to set up a dictatorship of the proletariat but in fact constructed a dictatorship over the proletariat. The SWP aim to do the same thing, with their own pathetic band of leaders in the 1980s role of the Lenins, Trotskys and probably plenty of Stalins. This is not a socialist vision, but a nightmare of Leninist state dictatorship which workers should not be tempted by but should resist.

The New Economy

Most of the SWP's pamphlet is devoted to describing the role of the new state. Conspicuously little is said about the economic arrangements under "the workers' state". It is admitted that "Socialism cannot be built in one country" (p.17). But the new state will exist in one country. So we must assume that it will be running capitalism—state capitalism. There is plenty of evidence in the pamphlet to suggest that this is what the SWP has in mind. We are told that "The formal mechanism through which economic power will be established is a familiar one, namely nationalisation" (p.14). Indeed, it is all too familiar: nationalisation can be simply translated as state-run capitalism. Not all of the means of wealth production will be nationalised: ". . . the working class will immediately . . . take into its hands all the major means of production in society" (p.14). Only the major ones, included among which will be

. . . nationalisation of the banks and the imposition of strict exchange controls backed by other revolutionary measures to prevent the inevitable attempt at a flight of capital abroad (p.14).

So, there will still be banks and capital under the SWP's "socialism". But some capitalists will be spared from being taken over by the new state capitalist: "Small businesses employing only one or two workers can mostly be left to later" (p.14).

Take note of that if you are currently working in a shop or sweatshop. Workers will continue to be in the working class, selling their labour power. Therefore they will need trade unions 

and the trade unions will also retain the right to strike, since even under a workers' state sections of the working class may need to defend their interests against abuse and should keep this ultimate weapon (p.13).

Incidentally, after the so-called workers' state was formed in Russia Trotsky told the workers that their trade unions could only be used to make the state-run industries more profitable and we have no guarantees that the new state rulers would not do the same if they had power.

If you are a "technical expert" who does not support the new state the SWP has some bad news for you:

. . . they will simply work for and under the direction of the factory or industrial council just as today they work for the bosses . . . If absolutely necessary they will have to perform with workers' guns at their heads . . . (pp.15-6).

We are referring here to scientists, auditors, architects, surgeons—all  of whom are now workers—people forced to sell their labour power in order to live. They are being told that life for them will be “Just as today", working for bosses and possibly having to do so with guns pointed at their heads. Workers will still be wage slaves, dependent on wages or salaries:

. . . the supply of goods will remain limited and workers will still work for money wages which in turn they will use to purchase these goods  (p.21).

So the workers under the new state will still have to buy the goods and services which they produce. From whom will they buy them? From the state which, like any other capitalist, produces nothing and sells what the workers produce to the workers.

A socialist society, based on the common ownership of all resources by all the people, would have no resemblance to what the SWP describes. There will be no classes, no banks or exchange controls or capital, and no money—for what use could money have in a society where everything belongs to everyone? The SWP simply do not understand this conception of a moneyless society of common ownership. Instead they offer confusing notions, such as that

in order to move, people will either transfer to vacant accommodation or exchange houses instead of buying and selling them (p.22).

The SWP is proposing the establishment of a system of barter to replace the buying and selling system. But it gets worse. Rather than the abolition of wages and money, which Marx pointed out is essential to socialism, they propose the gradual abolition of wages and money:

Buying and selling will fade away. Money . . . will steadily lose its usefulness to the point where it can be dispensed with altogether (p.22).

Now, either society is based on property in which there is buying and selling and a need for money or on propertyless common ownership. The two conditions are mutually exclusive: you can no more have a bit of both than you can be a bit pregnant. The SWP pamphlet writers know, because of their reading of Marx and their knowledge of The Socialist Party, that it would be a major mistake for them to try to describe a socialist society without mentioning the abolition of money and buying and selling. But they are petrified by the thought that this would make them appear utopian. After all, they are always telling The Socialist Party that although they know we are right in stating that socialism will be a moneyless, wageless, classless society it is folly to tell the workers that because they will reject socialism. That is Leninist arrogance: only some people—the leaders who monopolise theory—can be told the truth: for the workers it is better to offer palatable nonsense. That is why the SWP , in a confused and embarrassed manner, have inserted a few words alluding to the abolition of money, buying and selling—but only the gradual abolition, with money fading away—presumably one tenpenny piece at a time.

The SWP's picture of socialism would be a joke if the future of humanity was something to laugh about. In fact, given the supreme urgency of the need for socialist transformation of society, the nonsense being sold as socialism by the SWP is an insult to the intelligence of those who read it and a sinister picture of a Leninist state under which no worker should want to live.

Steve Coleman

Leninism v Anarchism (2012)

Book Review from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anarchism. A Marxist Criticism. by John Molyneux. Bookmarks. £4.

John Molyneux is the SWPer who wrote their 1987 pamphlet on The Future Socialist Society in which he stated that the first thing that would happen on the establishment of such a society would be that wages would be increased and also that engineers would be forced, if they refused to co-operate, to work with a gun at their head. Obviously, he was talking about a future state capitalist society.

His earlier pamphlet is still listed as ‘further reading’ in his new, 80-page booklet in which he criticises anarchists from an SWP viewpoint. His basic argument is that ‘through its rejection of parties in general and the Leninist party in particular anarchism merely contributes to the organisational and political disarmament of the working class’ (p. 29).

We can agree with his criticism of anarchists for their refusal to participate in elections and for their theory that it is the existence of the state rather than of capitalism that is the cause of working-class problems. But that’s about it. On the other hand, we can agree with the anarchist emphasis on the need to establish a stateless society and with their criticism of Leninism as the theory and practice of a would-be new ruling class.

Having said this – and Molyneux notes this too – some anarchists are themselves in effect vanguardists in that they seek as an ‘active minority’ to lead the working class in an assault on capitalism and the state. Molyneux appeals to such anarchists to be consistent and join a properly-structured leadership organisation.

Our appeal is to those anarchists who are committed to the concept of a self-organised majority revolution without leaders to be consistent and abandon their dogmatic opposition to the working class forming a political party to contest elections and eventually win control of political power, not to form a government but to immediately abolish capitalism and usher in the classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society that real socialism will be.

Adam Buick

The SUS Vagrancy Act (1980)

From the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently there has been a series of wrathful protests by various black-community pressure groups and capitalism’s left-wingers about the police abuse of the so-called “Sus” charge. “Sus” is the offence under s.4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 which provides for the arrest and punishment of “suspected persons” who “frequent or loiter in” a public place “with intent to commit an arrestable offence”, usually an alleged intention to steal.

Several features of this charge make it particularly susceptible to police abuse: “loiter” can refer to any presence except a direct expeditious passage through the place in question; it only requires two policemen to testify (on a book of archaic anecdotes from the Middle East) that they saw the accused “acting suspiciously” on two occasions which need only be minutes apart—first establishes the alleged offender as a “suspected person” the second constitutes his offence; conveniently for the police the accused has no right to trial by jury. Most of capitalism’s exasperated reformers and apologists were even more indignant to learn from Home Office statistics that 42 per cent of those arrested under this charge were “coloured” although this pigmentation-group only accounts for about 3 per cent of the population.

Somewhere in England a man is arrested and incarcerated by a blue-hatted member of his own species for being suspected of intending to take some food from a market stall and . . .  eat it. The hand-cuffs snap shut in the shadows cast by Europe’s huge food mountains. This fleeting moment typifies a social system fraught with contradictions: poverty alongside prosperity, prisons alongside palaces. Modern capitalism has produced tension between human development and political restraint: a man with a twenty-function, battery-operated, liquid-crystal display watch on one wrist and a handcuff on the other, linking him to a policeman leading him to a cell. The digital wrist watch evidences a level of technological advancement and, because it is produced in a factory, our capacity to provide for social needs. Our technology and productive capacity is, however, manifestly NOT being used to maximise the health and welfare of humanity. This global system with its motto of “no ’profit, no production” draws reins on the existing manufactural potential. This tension was explained by Karl Marx:

At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations, within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into fetters. (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Preface)

For capitalism to continue the notion of property must stand unassailed, but as the system works on minority ownership of the means of life (the land, factories, mills, mines and offices) a factory owner or state will need more than scrolled title deeds to defend a use of the factory which serves the interest of the owner at the expense of the non-owning working class. As the interests of the owner and the non-owner are necessarily at loggerheads — the non-owner is given a wage or salary which has to be worth less than what he has produced in order for the owner to make a profit — capitalism requires constant enforcement of its property ideology. With the advent of industrial production in the early nineteenth century an increasingly comprehensive force was required to maintain the private ownership of society’s means of production.

Since the days of the Bow Street Runners, organised by Henry Fielding after his appointment as a magistrate in 1749, the principal function of the police has been the protection of property. From the cradle we are fed the idea, often in unwritten, unspoken axioms, that the protection of property is in the best interests of everyone. Yet, while for a member of the working class “property” relates to such things as an inquest at school when a pair of plimsolls goes missing; savings he must declare as a supplicant at the Social Security Office, or the semi-detached house for which his mortgage demands a lifetime of payment, “property” for a member of the capitalist class means the enforceable right to use his land, factory or office for optimum profit irrespective of human need.

Every time an arrest is made on “sus”, a number of points should be apparent. First, that the daily enforcement of the laws of ownership in the arena of personal chattels in cases of pickpocketing, shoplifting or mugging is remote from the real focal point of property: the fact that the property of some is society’s means of life. Second, that “crimes" which at first sight have no connection with property—like crimes of violence—are an upshoot of this society which aches with splendour amidst squalor, glorified butchery in war, the shackle of institutionalised monogamy and where, perhaps anaesthetised with alcohol or drugs, sporadic violence is wrought by many of those ditched by capitalism’s competitive chaos.

If the Vagrancy Act which affords the “sus” charge were to be repealed tomorrow, what would be the result? It would be of scant relief to the hundreds of people, mostly black youths, who were likely to be seized by the police every week while the Act was in force. Capitalism would continue as normal. The need for the Accounts Book to always aim for profit would keep nigh on two million people unemployed, and racism would continue to simmer as scapegoats are sought. Blame would still be cast on the “coloured immigrant” despite the fact that areas most blighted with unemployment like Glasgow and Belfast house virtually no such “immigrants”. Coloured people would still find employment harder to obtain than “whites”, would still be left to do about the most anyone can, with no work and the dole-pittance—loiter; would still be bullied by the police who would then resort to a whole range of Statutes and common law precedents to authorise street searches and arrests. Wage-slave policemen eager for promotion or simply to taste the “action” glamourised in recruitment commercials would still abuse their powers.

Policemen with softer truncheons, or reduced powers, will solve no working class problem. While the idea of property reigns the police will remain to protect the minority ownership of the means of life and to maintain the morality and discipline in the working class which is necessary if the majority is to abide the system which offers them employment, unemployment and sometimes conscription while dividends, rents and profits are pushed through the letter-boxes of the capitalist class.

Gary Jay

Roy Jenkins and his “new” Centre Party (1980)

From the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rise of the Labour Party towards the status of the Other Government of British Capitalism has been marked in many disreputable ways—among them their nurturing of an alternative aristocracy. Alternative, that is, to those High Tories who grew up in the comfortable assumption that they are fitted to rule through a superiority which cannot be made or bought or imitated because it is inborn. The components of this superiority typically include an education at Eton, followed by one of the more select colleges at Oxbridge like Balliol or Kings and perhaps what is known as service as an officer in a Guards regiment. Backed up by the ownership of a few thousand acres and a lucrative share portfolio, this is what raises the Tory aristocrats above upstarts like Peter Walker and Ted Heath who, although they are both rich and cunning, plainly lack the uncommon touch.

The Labour version of aristocrats have similar assumptions about their fitness to rule but the components are somewhat different. For them, it is advantageous to have been born in some humble Welsh mining village, to have gone to the local grammar school and won a place at university perhaps after a couple of trade union-sponsored years at Ruskin College. Then they are fitted to move into Parliament, and the government, and to set about organising the more efficient exploitation of the workers they have left behind in the valleys.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Occasionally some hard-handed worker from the docks or the gas works will embarrass the Tories by believing what they say about this being a classless society and insisting on becoming one of their propagandists. When the opposite happens, when a member of the landed gentry or some effete lover of the high life joins the Labour Party, the embarrassment is less acute—which says a lot about what Labour is in business for.

One exception who has caused the Labour Party considerable anguish is Roy Jenkins, who is now threatening to inflict upon the British working class yet another political party to compete for their vote on a programme compounded of platitudes, evasions and lies. Jenkins, we are told, is someone we should all be grateful for; his name can hardly be penned by Fleet Street hacks without being preceded by adjectives like urbane, elegant, cultivated . . . He is said to like duchesses and fine food and wine and was once derided by his arch rival on the Tory benches, Iain Macleod, as one whose “. . .  disdain for his political opponents is only matched by his contempt for his political friends”. But not all his friends; when Hugh Gaitskell was Labour leader, it was said that Jenkins was a regular guest at his Hampstead home where, with people like Crosland, Douglas Jay and Gordon Walker, policy was settled over generous drafts of wine.

Jenkins is one who was born into the alternative aristocracy, a Welshman whose father was a miners’ MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee. Unlike some Labour Members — for example Neil Kinnock — he has never made a profession (or should it be religion?) of his Welshness. For one thing, if he ever had a Welsh accent he must have worked hard at eliminating it. (Perhaps that is why he has trouble with his Rs; his supporters must tremble at the prospect that one day he will claim that his Centre Party is ‘‘wesponsbile, wadical, weforming”.)

From Abersychan Grammar School Jenkins went first to University College Cardiff and then to Oxford, where he was a very receptive scholar and became chairman of the Labour Club. His first government post of any weight was as Minister of Air, in 1964, followed by Home Secretary and then, when Callaghan resigned in 1967 over devaluation, Chancellor of the Exchequer. In all these jobs, he proved himself to have the qualities necessary to an administrator of capitalism.

First, flexibility: in a broadcast two days before the March 1966 election he commended Labour’s way of planning:

This government has not yet got the problem fully under control but George Brown’s constructive and determined approach offers much the biggest hope.

He then advised the electors:

In our short period of Labour government I believe we have earned a renewal of your support. I ask you to give us that support . . .  and to give it this time, by a clear and decisive majority.

Well the workers took this advice but very soon Jenkins seemed to think that it had been misguided, saying tartly to Crossman at the end of a Cabinet meeting in December 1966, “I’d give anything for evidence that we have a long term plan for any part of this Government’s policy, thank you very much Dick.” (Richard Crossman, Diary of a Cabinet Minister.)

Second, rigidity. As Chancellor, Jenkins won a reputation as the unbending advocate of the familiar, discredited proposition that the problems of the British capitalist class could best be solved by a drastic cut in working class living standards. Thus he was in favour of compulsory wage restraint and agreed to abandon the idea only on condition that the union-restricting laws set out in the infamous White Paper In Place of Strife would be introduced instead. In Cabinet in January 1968 Jenkins insisted on the reimposition of prescription charges, the abolition of which was an article of Labour Party faith, “. . . because the issue had become a matter of confidence with the bankers.” (Crossman). His performance in pushing through, in elegant speeches, Labour’s 1968 programme of public spending cuts, which embraced other historically cherished Labour objects like raising the school leaving age and publicly financed housing, was so valuable to the capitalist class that Harold Wilson felt moved to pay him this tribute: “My greatest asset was the firmness and determination of the Chancellor in the presentation of the balanced package.” (The Labour Government, 1964/70).

No doubt Jenkins carried out his hatchet job with all the civilised manners for which he is famous. Indeed, such was the nonchalance of this dedicated servant of British capitalism that he was suspected of being lazy. "I find it a little strange”, grumbled Crossman, “That on a Monday he can sit in his cottage and that he always finds time to dine out and take life easy. Moreover, he doesn’t know his Treasury briefs as well as Callaghan did.” It was just as well that Crossman kept this to himself for a while; by 1970 the Labour government, and Jenkins’ policies, were unpopular enough without the working class being additionally enraged by this lack of attention to Treasury write-ups.

After Labour’s defeat in 1970 there were signs that Jenkins was getting restless with his party. His friends may have been alarmed at further symptoms of a serious disturbance in his political balance. He began, even in his guarded moments, to do the unthinkable to admit that he was a failure, although he deftly converted this admission into a reason for giving him and his party another chance, on the grounds that they may have learned from his mistakes. In a typical speech to a Labour gathering in March 1972 he made these admissions:

. . .  the poverty and wretchedness in this country are a greater reproach to Mr. Heath, or indeed to myself, as a Minister in a recent Government . . .  In spite of half a century (sic) of effort, our society—and still more our world—is still disfigured by gross unfairness . . .
The poor are still poor. Property speculators—and others—are as relatively rich as were those with an accepted position at the top of the social structure.

(Observer, 12.3.72).

This sudden revelation that Labour government, and he also, had flopped did not persuade Jenkins to abandon his candidature. Nor did it stop him, when Labour came back in 1974, imposing another dose of his failure on the working class by again accepting the job of Home Secretary. It seemed however that he was unsettled in that job, feeling that his svelte talents should have been more gratefully rewarded. He did not applaud Callaghan’s election to the leadership. Callaghan did not go to university, was breezy and avuncular and shows little knowledge of wine or table napery. And Labour’s new leader also showed scant regard for Jenkins; according to Alan Watkins (Observer 15.6.80), “Mr. Callaghan made it clear . . . that in his opinion Jenkins’s career in British politics was over.” This warring, it should be remembered, happened in a party whose grass roots members delude themselves that it stands for working class unity for socialism.

In 1976, Jenkins showed what he thought of unity and of Labour’s crisis-ridden attempts to run capitalism. With the government reeling and listing in heavy waters, he was one of the first rats over the side, striking out for the calmer (and better paid) waters of the Presidency of the EEC. Labour’s irritation at this well-publicised evacuation was aggravated when they lost Jenkins's seat at the subsequent by-election. Some politicians fail. Others lose a fight. Some make mistakes. Jenkins proved that he is indeed someone special: he did all three.

Should he then be trusted? From the ashes he rises and invites the working class to degrade themselves under yet another style of capitalism. His 1979 Dimbleby Lecture, in which he spelt out the case for a Centre Party—and for himself as leader—listed the objects which could be “assisted” by such a party: to control the scope of the state; to offer consumers more say; to make the “nation” more “confident” and “outward looking”; to have class divisions “fade” and that same “nation” achieve a “renewed sense of cohesion and common purpose”. These stale platitudes spouted from a man who is supposed to be one of capitalism’s great political thinkers. It is difficult to imagine how anyone, no matter how ignorant, could offer anything less original or efficacious.

Jenkins’ temerity in putting himself, and his proposed Centre Party, forward illuminates one of the persistent fallacies which help to keep capitalism in being. The working class are at present convinced that leadership is necessary. This belief sometimes demands one style of leader blunt, abrasive, overwhelming like Ernie Bevin. And sometimes it demands another type — suave, smooth, underwhelming like Jenkins. It is time the workers rid themselves of this baseless, debilitating theory; the style and the personality of a leader is of no consequence. All of them are powerless to control capitalism, which means that, whoever thinks they are in charge of the system, it will continue to have its dehumanising way with the people who support it and who are deceived by the wheedling of its leaders.

So choosing between Jenkins and his Centre Party and the rest is meaningless; it is like stating a preference for your own executioner. We would do better to keep our heads—and to trust ourselves.

Ivan

The future of oil (1980)

From the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

North Sea oil and gas once—seen as the saviours of British capitalism—should be seen in relation to British and world capitalism, and to long-term energy requirements. In essence none of the economic and social problems is new, not even the environmental ones. For example, when wood was the domestic and industrial fuel in Britain the government, belatedly, had to step in to prevent the woodlands being entirely destroyed.

The history of this century has seen several big change-overs in the predominant source of energy. Coal, which had been mined on a small scale by the Romans but was then neglected for centuries, came into its own as wood supplies dwindled. Output rose from 5 million tons in 1750 to 60 million a hundred years later, and reached its peak of 287 million tons in 1913. Then rapid decline set in and current production is about 125 million. Now, in the words of a report by the world’s seven leading oil companies: “Oil, which once ousted coal as the dominant energy source, can do little more than meet the current level of demand over the next twenty years. After that it will be down hill all the way.” (Financial Times, 22 April 1980.)

Oil became dominant with the motor age. Imports of oil products into Britain, only 200,000 tons in 1913, were 100 million tons in 1973. Since then the fast development of North Sea oil has nearly reached self-sufficiency and there is the prospect of a surplus for export during the 1980s. Now a new phase opens, following the agreement reached in June at the Venice meeting of seven industrial nations (USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Britain and Italy) to reduce their dependence on oil by 1990 and to cover the gap by developing coal production and making increased use of nuclear energy, solar energy and other resources.

In view of what has happened in the past to many plans and declarations of intent, this one should be regarded with caution. Indeed, within days, Margaret Thatcher was explaining that the agreement did not mean what it seemed. If, however, British coal production was doubled, it would bring total output to the level of 1922—but with one big difference. It would not increase the number of miners, now under 300,000, to over a million as it was in 1922. With the revolution in mining techniques, the main increase in the number of jobs would not be in the pits but in the industries producing the sophisticated and costly mining machinery and equipment, and the resulting total would be nothing like a million. One result of the coal revival is that all the big oil companies are now making massive investments in coal mining and in the use of coal to make oil and chemicals.

While British oil production has been soaring, in the USA it has fallen. In 1961 American oil output was by far the largest in the world, double that of Russia, which enabled America to be self-sufficient up to 1970. Now, consuming a third of all world oil production, America is the world’s biggest importer, at a cost in 1980 of about £45,000 million. In home output they now rank third, with Saudi Arabia and Russia well ahead; though increased exploration under the stimulus of high world oil prices will result in an increase of production for some time.

According to Western observers (where widely different conclusions must however be accepted with reserve) Russian capitalism also has its energy problems. Mark Frankland (Observer, 22 June 1980), after discounting the wilder forecasts, considers that Russian oil production and exports may soon reach a peak and begin to decline. On the other hand, Russia has one-third of world gas reserves, the largest coal reserves, considerable unused hydro-electrical potential, and fast-growing nuclear power.

In Frankland’s view, Russia’s difficulty is that, owing to location, it is becoming “monstrously expensive” to develop new oilfields. Other observers believe that the wasteful use of energy in past years has made it increasingly difficult for Russia to expand its manufacturing and agricultural output. The Financial Times (1 April 1980) says that Russia and her East European dependencies “use twice or three times the amount of energy used in the West for a comparable output”.

Major disruption to all the oil importing countries was caused in 1973 when the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) enormously increased their prices. Dominating oil production, and with 80 per cent of all known resources outside Russia, they were able to band together, threaten to withhold supplies and force the importers to pay more. In 1973 they put prices up from $3 to $8 a barrel, and have since raised it to $35. Some forecasters expect $65 by 1990.

After years of weak, competitive marketing, during which the OPEC countries had been accepting payment in fast depreciating dollars and pounds (while having to pay constantly rising prices for the industrial goods they imported), they have learned the old capitalist principle of selling at the highest price the market will bear. Their action was met with sanctimonious accusations of “greed” and “irresponsibility” and with threats of armed force to take over Middle East oil.

As happens with all monopolies, OPEC itself is temporarily in some trouble. High world oil prices, and the depression, have reduced sales and current production is in excess of demand. But OPEC still commands the situation, and the American Department of Energy takes an alarmist view of the chaos that could be created if output by some of the main suppliers declines (as in Iran) or is deliberately cut to raise prices further. Later on in the 1980s it may be, as suggested in the Sunday Telegraph (15 June 1980) that “OPEC’s domination of world oil supplies is likely to be eroded . . .  by the build-up of production in non-OPEC areas, notably Mexico, the North Sea and the Far East”.

Dr. Hammer, Chairman of Occidental Petroleum (Sunday Telegraph 29 June 1980) looks to two big additions to world oil production; first China and, more importantly, the commercial working of shale-oil. According to him, shale-oil reserves in America are two and a half times greater than all the Western world's known oil reserves. In the past extraction has been too costly, but this is changing with the spectacular rise of world oil prices.

New panic broke out when Russia invaded Afghanistan, with the implication, in the eyes of Western observers, that it was the prelude to a drive towards Middle East oil. Exceptionally, The Times (24 June 1980) suggested that the Western Powers should “seriously consider selling equipment to the Soviet Union to expand its oil production, Afghanistan or no Afghanistan".

As regards the problem of world reserves of oil, past experience has been that, in spite of constantly growing consumption, each decade has shown an increase in estimates of total untapped reserves. A survey quoted in the Financial Times (3 June 1980) shows that proved world reserves rose from 554 billion barrels in 1970 to 655 billion in 1979. Other estimates put the ultimate peak of reserves at a very much higher figure before decline sets in.

The real problem is a different one. In oil, as in coal, when the easily accessible sources are worked out, the tendency is for each ton produced to need an increasing amount of labour, showing itself in the enormous investments of capital required for North Sea oil and for the expansion of coal output. Investment in North Sea oil in 1979 was £2,000 million.

One aspect of the current situation is the odd belief of many economists and politicians that because North Sea oil is under British control and does not have to be imported, this spells prosperity for the working class. They forget that they are dealing with capitalism, which does not produce for use but for sale at a profit. They should look at the history of coal production; for decades before 1913, when coal was king, British capitalism had huge coal reserves under its control and a big export market, but this did not prevent miners suffering long spells of heavy unemployment and being forced to accept wage reductions in periodical depressions.

While the Venice conference was in session, the Daily Mail (24 June 1980) announced that doubling of coal production meant “a rosy new future for the miners”. But in the House of Commons the same day Thatcher explained that the increase of output was to take place in America, Canada and elsewhere with lower production costs, and said: “I do not expect what happened at the Venice summit to have any impact on coal in this country unless we have sharply increased productivity and thereby competitive prices” (The Times, 25 June 1980).

For miners it spells, not a rosy future, but having to meet cheap coal imports.

Edgar Hardcastle

Running Commentary: A right Royal time (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

A right Royal time

Somebody's mum is 80 this month. She "looks 60” and still sloshes around in the rain in her wellies. Like many grandmas, she will celebrate her birthday surrounded by three or four generations of her family. So what's special?

If our grandma reaches 80, a number of people apart from the family will be pleased. The florists, confectioners, stationers and shops where we buy our flowers, cards and presents will all profit from the occasion. But this is nothing compared with the bonanza they’ll have when the Queen Mother celebrates her 80th birthday.

News Magazine (4.7.80) apart from featuring articles and pictures of the Royal Lady’s life and times, helps to cover the cost of producing this souvenir issue by carrying two types of advertisements in addition to the usual ones. Cartiers, "By Appointment” Jewellers and Goldsmiths to the Queen as well as her mum, and “over 50,000 employees in 1,000 Woolworth stores” take full page advertisements to send loyal birthday greetings.

As with every “special occasion” (pity the makers and importers of Moscow Olympics mementoes who, we understand, “caught a chill”), purveyors of royal souvenirs vie with each other to relieve you of your money. The Post Office got together with the Royal Mint. For £3.75 (plus £1 for postage) you can buy a special First Day Cover and a specially minted crown (a souvenir coin, not the headgear). The Heritage Club offers the Queen Mother Armorial Plate, slightly more expensive at £396, but this does include “carriage”. John Pinches offers the Queen Mother Birthday Pendant for "just £20”, and the Museum Galleries a set of four “superb quality” medallions for £14.95. However, if you really want to celebrate the occasion in style, the Daily Telegraph of July 7 carried an advertisement from Garrards “The Crown Jewellers” (as opposed to just being “By Appointment”) for a coin watch in 18ct. gold at £1,900; a deposit of £200 will secure.

These are just a few examples at the “top end” of the market. The biggest profits will be made from the hundreds of thousands of paper flags, cotton pennants, cheap commemorative “china” souvenirs, pictures, scarves, books, cards and other rubbish on which members of the working class will be pressured to squander part of their wages to celebrate the Queen Mum's birthday. This is not just a family affair, it is big business. 

Housing drives

The most complacent of politicians would not deny that the housing conditions of many sections of British workers are dreadful. But what they all say is that they are doing, or rather are about to do, something to cure the problem. Some guide as to the extent to which governments over the last few years have actually made a difference to the housing of the working class was given in a report of a speech by a junior Housing Minister at an Institute of Housing seminar in April this year (the Guardian 25.4.80). John Stanley announced a new housing drive. But so did the government before him, and the one before that, and the one before that back to those grim 19th century days . . .

With all that driving we should arrive sometime. But we don’t. Council and private house building are at their lowest levels since the 1930s and 1924 respectively. But don't think it is stopping in the 20s and 30s; the 19th century may be nearer than we think. One “Senior Housing Official”, referring to the last Labour, and the present Tory government’s housing record, put it like this: “Under the two governments, housing investment has already fallen to levels tolerated by Attlee and Baldwin. In the future, will the comparisons be Gladstone and Walpole?”

The new housing drives are about as real as government promises to cut unemployment. Under the last Labour government house building fell from 100,000 homes a year to 60,000. By 1984, if present trends continue, council house building will be reduced to miserable proportions. Likewise, private house building has one clear direction—down. Not that reversal of the trend would make much difference. Even now, there are thousands of empty privately owned homes and not all council homes are full, despite long waiting lists. But private house buying and renting mean having the necessary money. And as most of the homeless or those living in bad housing in many cities have not got that stuff, houses stay empty and slums remain overcrowded.

But aren’t the rich overcrowded too? Just think of poor Princess Anne. Not only does she have to share a home with her husband and son but there’s all those servants to be crowded in as well. Gatcombe Park, a Cotswold mansion which the Queen bought for her, is slightly bigger than the average two up and two down, but think of the drains! The royals have recently applied to the Ministry of Agriculture for an improvement grant to pay for their rotten sewers. If given, the grant would probably be large enough to buy quite a few workers' houses, let alone improve the drains.

Education cuts

Are you going to school? Are your children going to school? If so, it must be nice to know that you or your parents will probably have the privilege of paying for text books soon, as the Tories continue to freeze education. Grim jokes about sharing desks (Joan’s turn to sit down to-day), sharing equipment (Sue’s turn to write her answer today) and sharing teachers (2B's turn for lessons this week), are rife in the education world. The numbers in classes are rising (as though these are not big enough already) while thousands of trained teachers can't get work. Now the Bernard Sunley Charitable Organisation wants to do something about this state of affairs. They have just made a £1,500,000 donation to education and while no one can pretend that this will make a major difference, it presumably will pay for a few books and a few school dinners for the mounting number of children who can’t afford them—or will it? Actually the money has been provided to build not a new school, but a new management training centre in Northampton (the Guardian 17.4.80). The trust fund (owned by the giant insurance company Eagle Star) will not be doling out this money to help poorer children to a slightly less dreadful education. It is trying to ensure that those very important serfs, the managerial cliques, are better trained to squeeze even more profit out of school leavers lucky enough to find employment.

African wages

One of Sir Keith Joseph’s concerns as Industry Secretary is to con the workers into even lower wages so that his class can get even more profits. His latest scheme, announced to a somewhat stunned BBC lunch time audience on Sunday the 29 June, was that the workers should voluntarily take lower wages and so ‘‘price themselves into a job”. Now there are many who have long held the view that Sir Keith is not a fanatic he is just mad. On the other hand, it may be as well to recall that other equally strange folk (for example James Callaghan) managed to trick a large section of the working class into extremely low pay rises (while inflation raced ahead) for quite some time. Perhaps it is unlikely that messianic Sir Keith is going to have the same effect, but it is too early to say yet.

What Sir Keith really needs is a dash of South Africa; there they really put the world of his dreams into action. At least 33 British Companies now operating in South Africa are accused of paying their workers less than subsistence wages. The minimum wage level in South Africa is known officially as the poverty datum line (PDL). This does not actually give enough to prevent starvation. But the Brits are supposed to observe the EEC code which requires them to pay what the EEC calls the minimum effective level (MEL); but even this is only barely sufficient to keep starvation at bay. Among the glorious list of 33 British Companies which, it is claimed, pay less than the MEL, some actually admit to paying less than the PDL. These remnants of British imperialism include household names such as Barclays Bank, BP, GEC, Norwich Union, Rank Hovis MacDougall, Rentokil and Tate and Lyle.

Some of the quotations from Company Reports and comments which the Observer (8.6.80) extracted are quite startling. Thomas French & Sons, fabric manufacturers, say “it is not the Company's policy to aim at ‘unmerited’ pay levels recommended by the EEC code”. The Company could only be more honest if it had said: “it is not our policy to pay a halfpenny more than necessary to get the blacks to work, to leave us the highest margin of profit” And how do they define their criterion of a “merited” pay rise? In the meantime, the Company’s lowest paid workers are paid less than 50 per cent of the PDL. Rank Hovis MacDougall says that, “its policy is for the minimum wages of its workers in rural areas to be in line with PDL as soon as practicable . . .” Until the Company graciously decides, African workers can live a lingering death.

The issue has caused a mini-storm in the British Parliament as the Trade Secretary John Nott wriggled and squirmed in refusing to publish a Black List of the worst offenders. In reply to a Parliamentary question (the Times 28.6.80), Nott said this of British companies and South African employment: “If a Company gave good fringe benefits” (he is thinking of a car perhaps, or a holiday on the French Riviera?) “and set about achieving good industrial relations” (which means the best conditions for profitable production) “that Company should be commended” (because it is achieving the best conditions for exploitation) “even though some might question its performance over wages” (question the callousness of this exploitation). “Such a Company was much more to be commended” (commended by its capitalist owners?) “than a Company which pays good wages” (meaning MEL?) “but did none of these other things" (but what about those that did neither?).

Don’t get it wrong; all wages are robbery because employment entails exploitation of the work force in order to make the profits for the employers. South Africa is just a particular example of what is happening everywhere. Sir Keith boasted in the USA on a recent trip, that wage rates in the UK are extremely competitive. That is, they are probably lower than many other potential areas for investment of the United States capital in Europe. It is that low wage he and the Tories and all capitalists want to reduce.

Ronnie Warrington

Socialism holds the initiative (1980)

Editorial from the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The socialist analysis of society has many unique features. To begin with, it is consistent; it stands now as it did when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904. The reason for this—and here we have another unique characteristic—is that our analysis fits in with reality, with the material experience of society. No other analysis explains the wars, the poverty, the social and other ailments of capitalism.

But one aspect in which the socialist analysis is unique is too often ignored, particularly by those opponents of socialism who are so confused and deluded as to attribute to themselves the very characteristics which they lack. This aspect is the innovatory nature of socialist theory—the fact that it is socialists who hold the intellectual initiative and have ideas and concepts untrammelled by the stale and fallacious presumptions of capitalist politics.

For the politics of capitalism are not innovatory. The kindest description they can be given is responsive, in the sense that they spring up piecemeal as each separate problem of capitalism manifests itself—and usually they die as those very problems expose their impotence.

These responses are staccato, coming in fits and starts and often operating in contradiction of each other. For example, it is not so long ago that, in response to capitalism’s economic crises, the governing parties were devoted to high government expenditure as an answer to their problems. Now, we are told that those same crises can only be cured by lower government spending—which does not mean that, soon, we shall again be offered the panacea of high state spending in some election programme.

This illustrates the fragmented nature of the responsive politics. Capitalism's governments, whatever noises they may make about planning for years ahead, in fact work at the most from one Budget day to the next. Attempts to improve on this—or at least to lengthen the period for which they “plan”-have always come to grief. The Wilson government in 1964, for example, hatched its infamous National Plan which, under the guidance of the bibulous George Brown, was going to organise capitalism into prosperity. It was, of course, not an original notion and who now, in the economic chaos and the poverty of the 80s, remembers that discreditable episode with other than distaste?

So capitalism’s responses are ephemeral. George Brown is only one of a long, long list of politicians whose reputations lie in a grave along with the measures they espoused, in their glad confident morning, as the all-embracing remedy to capitalism’s ills. In George Brown’s heyday, one of the Labour Party’s favourite words was “pragmatic”, by which they meant that their actions were not based upon dogma but on a reasoned assessment of what was necessary in the immediate circumstances. Another way of describing that attitude was expedient. Another was unprincipled.

Anyone entering capitalist politics cannot afford to have principles other than a dedication to their own advancement. At one time, they may genuinely have ambitions to see society improved, to help ease problems like poverty or bad housing, to bring more security to this troubled world. Real experience of government quickly stifles such delusions; promises are broken or forgotten, alliances are forged with onetime deadly enemies, words are used to confuse and deceive instead of to illuminate and unify.

In contrast, the socialist analysis is based rock-firm on the principle that capitalism’s problems spring from the nature of that social system and that they can be abolished only by ending capitalism and replacing it with socialism. This principle stands because capitalism itself is essentially unchanged, as it has to be. Thus a socialist party must be uncompromising and consistent, at all times pressing the case for the social revolution.

And in this we are unique and innovatory. Not for us the discredited politics, the morals and the assumptions of a society based upon the class ownership of the means of living. Only the socialist offers a challenge to capitalism’s assumptions about restrictive access to wealth, about family and sexual relationships, about issues like personal aggression or co-operation, about repression and freedom.

Socialists do not respond to every shift in the weather of capitalism. No economic blizzard casts doubt on the strength of our case, no blast of war persuades us to deny the united interests of the international working class to establish socialism. We are disenchanted, to put it mildly, with the decadence of capitalism and with the staleness and impotence of its responsive politics. We take the initiative; socialism will be the fresh society, which offers the challenge to control our own future.

Political Notes: New Centre Party (1980)

The Political Notes Column from the July 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Centre Party

While the famous Punch and Judy show of Thatcher and Benn goes through the motions of convincing the electorate that there is a vast ideological gulf between Right and Left, Roy Jenkins, ex-Labour Minister and current President of the European Commission, pursues his scheme of forming a Centre Party. Nobody knows what the proposed Party will be in the centre of, nor what policies it will advocate which have not been tried and failed in the past. The following predictions may be made. Firstly, the new party will stand for capitalism. It may not say that it does, preferring to call it “the mixed economy” (mixed up economy would be more accurate), but by accepting the continuation of class property, wages and profits, we will know which system the Centrals support.

Secondly, if elected, the Centre Party will fail to tackle any single social problem: its reforms will be no better than those of the present capitalist parties. It will blame its failure to carry out promises on all kinds of causes—the unions, the oil sheiks, the weather—but will not concede (or even realise) that the problems are inherent to capitalism. Thirdly, the new Centre Party will evolve its own factions. There will be a Left standing for more state control, less arms expenditure and improved welfare provisions, and a Right standing for less state control, more arms and less welfare expenditure. Some of the Centre Party may fall between both wings and conspire to form a new party of the centre. It too will be marked by the same features as its parent party. And so it will go on — capitalist leaders fighting over the best way to run the worst system. It is perhaps in the recognition that Jenkins’ naive plan is doomed to fail that most politicians have wished to have nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, the non-issue of the day dominates the headlines. Will Jim resign? How long will it take Benn to convince the Stock Exchange that he is respectable? Will Maggie do a U-turn? Will the Liberals revive? Questions that don’t matter, and answers that matter less. The only question of the day which should concern all workers Left, Right and Centre —is whether or not they will continue to support a system that offers them poverty, suffering and insecurity.

Afghanistan Gas

The Russians claim that they went into Afghanistan to “liberate” its inhabitants from an American-backed oppressive regime. The Americans claim that they are concerned about the “freedom” of the Afghanistan people, which has been harmed by the new Russian-backed oppressive regime. Socialists know better than to believe either of the capitalist super-powers when they shield their imperialist motives behind pious justification for warfare. Critical readers of the Guardian will have noticed two separate reports which confirm that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan is explicable in plain economic terms. On 1 May 1980, an article in the gas industry magazine Gas World is reported to have pointed out that

“Supplies of natural gas from Afghanistan will reach 2.5 cubic metres this year, 16 per cent up on last year. The increased supply coincided with Moscow’s refusal to meet Iranian demands for a five-fold increase in the present price of 76 cents per 1,000 cubic feet.
   Gas World comments: 'The extra supplies available from Afghanistan obviously strengthen their hands in negotiations with the Iranians who are already arguing that the Soviets are swindling the Afghans by including the cost of the invasion in the price of the gas they are importing'.”

Two days later, the Guardian included news of the Russian attempt to do a deal with British Petroleum. BP has apparently been offered a supply of 45,000 cubic metres of Soviet gas a year to sell in Western Europe in exchange for technology and managerial knowledge to be used in the Arctic. Meanwhile the press, including the Guardian, continues to perpetrate the image that the conflict in Afghanistan is primarily ideological. A cynic might conclude that they’re talking a lot of gas.

Wembley Waffle

A visitor to the Special Conference at Wembley on 31 May would be excused for thinking that it was the Tories, not the Labour Party, who were the organisers. After all, handed to all delegates as they entered was a short leaflet published by a Labour Party faction called The Social Democratic Alliance. This is what it said:

“Oppose the extremist NEC statement! Oppose the move to withdraw from NATO! Oppose re-nationalisation without compensation! Support the mixed economy! Support the Western Alliance! Support the Centre — support the SDA!”

Now, “Left Wing” delegates at the Conference were dropping these on the floor with the contempt that they would show for a signed photo of Sir Keith Joseph. “These people have no place in our great movement” commented one trade unionist. The funny thing is that the SDA policies were precisely those of the last Labour government. The Left may be permitted to shout and make rhetorical threats at Conference time—they may even will the right to put them in their manifesto— but come the next Labour government, the leaders will be dancing to capitalism’s tune, and those who put their faith in the Labour Party will be crying that they were betrayed.

Steve Coleman

Don’t follow leaders (1980)

From the July 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Some are born to lead, others are born to be led” is a saying often used to persuade workers that they need, and should follow, leaders. Under capitalism the motto controlling workers’ actions is “Ours is not to question why; ours is but to do or die”. Socialists have contempt for such ideas. If you walk along a road and don’t know where it leads to, you get lost and that is what has happened to the working class: they have put their trust in leaders, who do not understand the system any more than their followers, and the result is that they all get nowhere fast. In fact some have ended up six feet under the ground, following the orders of their leaders on the battle field in defence of capitalist interests.

The fact that the working class feel the need for leadership is an indication of the limited social role they see for themselves. It’s easy to see how workers are attracted to leaders who offer a way out of the continuous chaos of capitalism, whether they are Left wing reformists claiming that they can run capitalism in the interest of the working class or religious leaders telling us to be “nice boys and girls” and to be content with the little we have because we’ll go to heaven when we die.

We are told by the defenders of capitalism that the ordinary person in the street would not be intelligent enough to take over the running of society from top to bottom. In fact, it is the workers who run society now — from managers to doctors to coal miners — but far from using their abilities for their own benefit, they use them for the benefit of the privileged few who own and control the means of wealth production and distribution.

It is not new leaders that are needed, but a new system which puts human needs, instead of the hunger for profit, first. It is to advocate a new system of society, not new and superior leaders, that is the work of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and our companion parties. Our alternative to capitalism is socialism, which will only be achieved when the majority of the working class understand and realise the need for it. Socialism will not be brought about by workers following some self-appointed vanguard on a mystery tour through a black tunnel—whatever it leads to at the other end, it won’t be socialism. So what is this socialist society that we in the Socialist Party urge workers to lead themselves to? It will be a society where there will be no money and free access to all the wealth produced; no buying and selling will take place because no private property will exist. Instead, the means of wealth production will be commonly owned and democratically controlled. Wars, poverty, class division and the environment from which leadership emerges will have gone forever.

The need for socialism is more urgent now than ever, as capitalism pushes towards a confrontation between the Great Powers which could in minutes wipe out much of the human race. So the choice is yours: leaders or socialism — choose wisely, for your life could depend on it.

SD

Running Commentary: PLO recognition (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

PLO recognition

“They’ve taken my legs, but it only means I’m more firmly planted in the soil.” Mayor Bassam Shaka of Nablus (3.6.80).

The terrorist attacks which maimed two West Bank mayors and wounded other Palestinians in Hebron last month were the climax of weeks of mounting violence in the area, provoked by what all governments would term “necessary vigilance for the security of the state”. The victimisation of communities, refugee camps and families by the Israeli security forces—together with arbitrary searchings and beatings—are having the effect of driving the most “moderate” Palestinians into the arms of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, something that Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in the heady days of 1978 was designed, in part, to prevent.

The nature of the Israeli government’s “civilising mission” on the West Bank was clarified last month with the publication of a letter (dated 19 May) by Uri Avnery, a Labour member of the Knesset. Reproduced was the following extract of orders from the military government to Israeli army conscripts: 

“Any one you catch outside, you first beat with the clubs all over his body, except the head. Have no mercy, break all his bones! Give no explanations. First of all beat, and when you are finished you can explain why you have done so. If you catch a small child, order his whole family out, make them stand in a row, and beat the father in front of his children. Don’t treat this beating as a privilege, it’s a duty! They understand no other way.” (Middle East International, 6.6.80).

It would be misleading to suggest that the PLO’s growing international respectability—the EEC states now recognise it—is the altruistic response to what is occurring on the West Bank (the Arab Community in Palestine were, after all, dispossessed and dispersed rather a long time ago). Rather, it is the consequence of an awareness that vital oil interests (and to a lesser extent, arms markets) depend upon Middle East “stability”, and that the Israeli government’s policies could lead to a further surge of Islamic extremism in the area. (The fact that the American government is internationally out of step on the question doesn’t mean its heart is in the wrong place Carter is doing nothing to upset a strong pro-Israel lobby in election year.)

With autonomy for the Palestinians more firmly on the agenda, can we expect a resolution of what appears to be an intractable problem, with both sides determined to give no ground? A homeland with “secure borders” may sound reasonable, but capitalism is not as simple as that. The PLO’s policy of “liberation” through violence veils the more important issue of whose freedom is at stake, and for what purpose. Peace has hardly gone hand-in-hand with the creation of nation states; real freedom will require self-determination of an entirely different kind.

WHSmenzies

“I believe in a poly-culture of the press from left to right, from cranky to sound.” James Goldsmith, proprietor of Now magazine (“Question Time” BBC1, 12.6.80.)

Owners of newspapers are fond of pointing out that we live in a country where the concepts of freedom of speech, assembly and publication are enshrined in the Constitution. Every one of us has the legal right to own a daily newspaper, provided we can get our hands on several million pounds. What they don’t mention however, is that you can expect some difficulty in getting W. If. Smith to distribute it.

Last month was published a thin book, Where is the Other News? (Minority Press Group) which attempts, among other things, to show why W. H. Smith and Menzies are prepared to display those old family favourites Dental Surgeon and Pig Farming (sales of 3,000 per issue) and not journals like the Socialist Standard (sales of 4,000 per issue). These big two wholesalers have cornered two-thirds of the newspaper and magazine market in Britain (Menzies have 93 per cent of the Scottish market), with total business in 1978 estimated to be 792 million pounds; and their domination of the market is increasing as small wholesalers close down.

Smenzies argue that a publication lacks “credibility” if it is not part of the advertising-funded, market-research based magazine industry. Should they agree to distribute a journal they will ask to vet the boards (not German for weeing on the floor; they only want to check the contents before it is printed—ostensibly for libel, but then aren’t the “quality press” more plagued with writs than anyone?).

But, you might ask, isn’t it naive to expect that Smith’s or Menzies could be other than conservative and not committed to the free availability of challenging opinion? Perhaps so; but in France it is mandatory for wholesalers to distribute periodicals of any circulation. What is clear is that, under capitalism, the free dissemination of ideas has less to do with legality than with the ability to pay—something to remember the next time you “read” Sir Larry Lamb’s Sun.

Hard stuff

Socialists have often shown that capitalism causes an immense waste of resources. An article in the shipping industry newspaper Freighting World, illustrates the point. On 26 March a Captain F. L. Cox points out that because airline passengers can buy cheap alcohol, most aeroplanes are priced to carry a much greater weight than is desirable. A Boeing 747 for instance could have over 500 bottles of spirits in the passenger compartment. Captain Cox points out that this extra weight causes the following problems:

1. Fire hazard. Most spirits would be classified under IATA rules as combustible liquids, some as flammable liquids. Fire would spread more readily after an accident.

2. Deceleration hazard. Violent deceleration can result in bottle missiles flying through the cabin. In one accident, where the aircraft was a total loss, all passengers were safe except for one whose death was thought to have been caused by a flying bottle.

3. Rescue hazard. Broken glass in the cabin is dangerous to both the passengers and rescue personnel after an accident.

4. Security risk. A hijacker has tried to use a broken bottle as a weapon.

5. Passenger comfort. A) congestion of packages in the cabin; B) extra risk of intoxication and disorderly conduct.

6. Fuel wastage. Extra fuel has to be used in carrying duty-free goods. While only a small proportion of the total fuel load, it is still an unnecessary waste. More travellers return with the type of spirit popular in their own homeland: and it was probably manufactured there in the first place. (our emphasis)

So it can clearly be seen that one minor feature of the present insecure system—the urge to buy cheap booze as an advantage of overseas travel—is responsible for serious social difficulties which could be eradicated tomorrow if the workers woke up to the idea of a society without buying and selling.

Melvin Tenner 

Good for Nothing (2016)

Book Review from the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'War: What is It Good For?', by Ian Morris (Profile £10.99)

Absolutely nothing, according to the song, but Ian Morris claims here that war has had a much more useful role in human history. It has made people safer, healthier, longer-lived and richer, leading to a society with far less risk of violent death and an enormous expansion in what is produced. The basic argument is that war has resulted in stronger states and a consequent suppression of violence. Hence ‘[i]n 2010 the planet was more peaceful and prosperous than ever before.’

It is not suggested that all wars have been beneficial in this way, only what Morris calls productive wars, those that accelerated the growth of strong states (which he terms Leviathans after Thomas Hobbes). Many wars have been counter-productive, or at least unproductive, though in terms of those killed these have been far less lethal than the productive wars. Behind all this is the view that, left to themselves and without a big and powerful government to keep them in line, people will be constantly at each other’s throats, as supposedly in small-scale societies such as the Stone Age and modern hunter-gatherers. This remains a contentious issue and has been discussed in these pages before (August and September 2014).

On Morris’s account, the last five millennia BCE saw productive wars, with rates of violent death falling by up to three quarters as a result. But subsequently the horsemen of the Eurasian steppes prevented the imperial powers from providing proper security for their subjects, which led to the disruption of trade and to troops plundering peasants to make up for the shortfall in their pay from taxes. By the fourteenth century CE, much of Eurasia was under ‘feudal anarchy’ and casual violence.

Almost a millennium and a half of counter-productive war came to an end, which Morris dates specifically to 1415: not because this was the year of Agincourt but because it was when the Portuguese king started to expand his rule into Africa, thereby setting off productive intercontinental war. So began five hundred years of European war against the rest of the world, leading to vast colonial empires. It involved the suppression of local wars and banditry and eventually to safer and richer lives, so it was ‘the most productive war in history’.

The Second World War was also productive, as it led to the United States taking over as the globocop, a role that Britain was no longer capable of playing. The last chapter is a kind of paean to the military and economic power of the US, which can use overwhelming force to keep other countries in line. But it may only have a few decades left, since drones and robots will take over the fighting, and computerisation will make globocops unnecessary. Until then the world needs a US globocop, a credible Leviathan that will preserve the status quo, whereby people continue to become safer and more prosperous.

As can be seen, this line of argument relies on looking at things in the very long run, discounting all the killing and suffering that take place before the ‘benefits’ emerge. European colonial conquest involved genocide, slavery and massive exploitation, and it is a breathtaking understatement to comment that ‘the defeated fared less well than the victors’. There are no references to child labour, but no doubt that could also be categorised as productive, on the grounds that it contributed to the development of capitalism and the profits of the capitalist class.

Class society needs a strong central power to defend the interests of the ruling class and to suppress ‘unlicensed’ bandits such as the Mafia. There is technological progress due to war, but this is just because resources are directed at this end, not that war is needed for technological advances. War is incredibly wasteful in terms of lives and resources, which could be put instead to meeting human need. Any decline in violence is basically due to the cost and difficulty of resisting US global hegemony: ‘The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, with only a few hours’ notice, drop bombs at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet’ (David Graeber: Debt).

Morris writes that ‘we cannot just decide to end war’. What we can do, though, is decide to establish a society in which war is inconceivable. Socialism has been possible for decades, and we do not need wars or globocops or drones to guarantee a society of true peace and well-being.     

Paul Bennett

The coming election in West Germany (1980)

The Briefing Column from the July 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

This October the voters of West Germany will go to the polls to elect a new Bundestag (or Federal Assembly). There are three parties now represented in the Bundestag: the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats. The present government is a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats but in the past (and still today at regional level), the various other combinations Christian Democrats and Free Democrats, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats have also existed, thus neatly illustrating that the fight between these parties is largely a sham and that all three basically stand for the same thing: the maintenance of capitalism in West Germany.

The German Social Democratic Party (SDP) was. before the first world war, the biggest “Marxist” party in Europe, the party of Bebel, Liebkneckt, Kautsky, Bernstein and Rosa Luxemburg. It had already become a reformist party (as a result of its mistaken policy of trying to advocate both socialism and reforms of capitalism) well before the first World War, but from then on it was downhill all the way. In 1959, at a Congress held in Bad-Godesberg, the SPD finally abandoned all pretence at being in the Marxist tradition and came to reject even the state capitalism which had in the meantime become its longterm aim. It openly proclaimed its acceptance of the “market economy”, the mixture of private and state capitalism that exists in Western countries. And since 1966—until 1969 in coalition with the Christian Democrats and then in coalition with the Free Democrats the SPD has wholeheartedly participated in the administration of West German capitalism, running the capitalist system in the interest of those who live off profits derived from their ownership and control of the means of production. Like the Labour Party in Britain, it has provided a few sinecures for trade union leaders, but has had nothing to offer the working class as a whole.

In fact the SPD has even come to be regarded as the normal governing party for West German capitalism. The opposition Christian Democratic party (CDU) thus enters these elections with a handicap, especially as their leader, Franz-Josef Strauss, a loud-mouthed demagogue from Bavaria (where the party is known as the CSU, the Christian Social Union), has a reputation to live down. Because of his past strident “anti-communism”, he used to be depicted as a possible new post-war Hitler who, if returned to power, would seek to avenge Germany’s defeat in the last war. Strauss however is simply another professional capitalist politician who, if the CDU/CSU wins the elections, will be compelled to run the West German state in much the same way as it always has been since it was set up in 1949. “Rightwing” bogeymen, just as much as “leftwing”, once they come to power, are tamed by being obliged to run capitalism according to its dictates rather than according to their own desires. Whether Strauss or Schmidt ends up as Chancellor should be a matter of complete indifference to German workers.

The Free Democrats (FDP), roughly the equivalent of the Liberals in Britain, will be fighting for their lives in this election. West Germany has a complicated proportional representational system, which gives representation in Parliament to any party which has won at least 5 percent of the vote nationally. The FDP, unable to win in any local constituency, is only represented in the Bundestag on this basis and there is a distinct possibility that this time their national vote will fall below 5 per cent, as it has done already in some recent regional elections.

The main reason this may happen is the intervention of a fourth party, already represented in a few regional parliaments, Die Grünen, the Greens or ecologists, whose main plank is “Kern-kraft—Nein Danke (Nuclear Power—No Thanks). This is the “in" party among leftists in Germany these days, with the support of such names as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Rudolf Bahro (almost the first thing he did on being let out of East Germany last year was to go to the congress of the Green party) and, until his recent death, Rudi Dutschke. The presence of such leaders of the “extra-parliamentary opposition” of a decade or so ago in the ranks of the vote-seeking, not to say vote-catching, Green party shows that, after all, such people are not beyond all hope. Cohn-Bendit has at least learned that, if you want to put your ideas into practice, you have to go through the ballot box (even if his ideas are still as confused as they ever were).

Also on the green bandwagon (but not linked with the above party) is the nine-day-wonder of a few years ago, the neo-Nazi “National Party of Germany” (NDP), one of whose stickers saying “Green is Life" we reproduce here. This is not so illogical as it might seem, since opposition to modern technology on behalf of landed interests has always been a trend of fascist thought. So, “green” voters will be able to vote for a “neo-leftist” or a “neo-fascist” according to their preference. All this should ensure that none of the minority parties, and perhaps the FDP neither, overcomes the 5 per cent barrier.

Any Socialists in West Germany will of course be writing “WELTSOZIALISMUS” across their ballot paper.

Adam Buick