The Irish scene changes (1997)

From the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we write, in August, Harold Wilson’s affirmation that a week is a long time in politics is particularly apposite to the political situation in Northern Ireland. The previous month most people here were anxiously scanning the daily news bulletins for some sign that would lend hope that the province’s Armageddon might not be at hand.

Everywhere the awful word "Drumcree” was spoken: cautiously, in anger and in whispers.The holy men of the Orange Order had to placate their god by marching down the "Catholic” Gervaghy Road and through other areas where their opponents would be put under police curfew so that they should not be offended when the Orangemen reminded them, with salutary intent, that they had beaten them in other places in the past.

Gervaghy Road was particularly sensitive for it was here two years ago that a flushed David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, had skipped a victory jig with the arch bigot Paisley when the police had forcefully cleared a path for the Orangemen. Now the word was out: there would be no Orange feet on the Gervagghy Road. But the echo said: stop us at your peril!

Mo Mowlam, the new Labour Secretary of State was the mainstay of the popular hope of deliverance. What she lacked in ability and aplomb was compensated for by tremendous energy as she visited Residents’ Groups, Orange Lodges, politicians, clergymen and the dogs in the street with the old, failed argument that we should all be reasonable.The Catholic nationalists were especially impressed, however; British Secretaries of State didn’t usually call around for tea and a chat and the anger of the Unionists at this newly-forged friendship seemed to clinch the Catholic belief that Mo would protect them.

In the event, Mowlam, in what the Catholics not unreasonably construed as an act of gross treachery, supported the Chief Constable of the RUC in sending in hundreds of armed police, expensively equipped for dealing with the violence which they initiated. With a viciousness equalling their violence of the previous year, they cleared the road for the Orangemen to go in triumph for the worship of their god. Ironically, the Catholic god had to do with a makeshift mass on the street because Mo and the RUC refused them permission to go to their church.

While sensible people with motor cars or the price of a boat or plane ticket were making their way across the Irish border or across the Channel, the fiery battalions of stone and petrol-bomb throwers were already retaliating. Within a few days the cost, in monetary terms, of the legacy of lunacy that motivated both the Orangemen and those opposing them was around £20 million which was within an ass’s whisper of the cost of the same religious outing in '95 and ’96.

Twenty million deducted from the shrunken educational budget or the grossly under-funded NHS was an obvious matter for concern. Last year the offensively arrogant Sir Patrick Mayhew decided that additional “security" costs should be defrayed from the health and educational budgets—on the apparent assumption that youthful petrol-bombers would stop and think about the effect of their actions on their education. The real fear, however, was what the aftermath of Drumcree would lead to.

Would the IRA up the ante? Would the loyalist paramilitaries officially return to the killing game? The newspapers said people were hoarding essential supplies: the empty streets told the general fear.

Sudden change
Suddenly the Orange Order announced that its members would avoid those areas where its marches carried the greatest threat to the peace and a week later the IRA announced a cease-fire. It would have been comforting to think that both these organisations, neither of which is renowned for putting peace and the concern for human life before the historical fictions on which each bases its absurd posturings, had suddenly moved into the twentieth century; unfortunately, their subsequent "explanations” undermined any such optimism.

Unlike the Tories, the response of the Blair government to the IRA cease-fire has been swift and positive. The last government squandered the opportunity created by the earlier cease-fire because Major’s slim majority in the House of Commons left him hostage to the power of the Unionist parties at Westminster—and the Unionists opposed the idea of all-inclusive peace negotiations. Now the Unionists have lost their veto in the Commons and the British and Irish governments have made it clear that, if the IRA cease-fire holds, not only can Sinn Fein join the peace talks when they resume in September, but that, if those talks fail to come up with an agreed settlement before May of next year, the two governments will put their own joint settlement proposals to the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum.

Problems
It appears like a no-win situation for the Unionists parties. Paisley, echoed by his understudy, Robinson, had already announced the intention of the so-called Democratic Unionist Party to pull out of the talks as has, also, the insignificant UK Unionist Party. The powerful Orange Order has asked the main Ulster Unionist Party to withdraw, too, but David Trimble, perhaps with a greater understanding of grassroots opinion, has indicated that the Ulster Unionists are likely to participate— though, as a public relations exercise they will probably insist that their public exchanges with Sinn Fein take the form of "proximity” talks.

The problem for the Unionists is the intention of both the British and the Irish governments to ensure that, one way or the other, there are peace proposals to put before the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum next year. With certainty it can be said that those proposals will not involve any constitutional, change in the status of Northern Ireland though it is likely that new cross-border bodies with considerable power will be included together with internal legislation to protect the rights of the nationalist minority under some form of "partnership” local assembly. Trimble can hardly be unaware that however numerous the opponents of such proposals may be, the majority of people want to seen an end to conflict and this is especially true of the loyalist fringe parties whose armed wings previously represented a serious threat to any solution opposed by the Unionist parties.

On the other hand, Trimble may be comforted by the fact that Adams and his political playmates in Sinn Fein must be equally aware of the desire among their supporters for a lasting resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict. Even more comfort might be derived from the realisation that Sinn Fein, in consenting to enter open-ended talks with the Unionist parties, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the five smaller parties (all of whom accept as a negotiating principle that Northern Ireland should remain with the UK as long as a majority within the province wish so to remain) is compromising its traditional stand which has always been that only a majority on the island of Ireland can determine the constitutional fate of Northern Ireland.

Another grave problem for Sinn Fein and one that is likely to undermine the raison d’etre of the IRA’s justification of their historic right to use physical force is the intention of the Irish government to put any settlement agreed between the parties in Northern Ireland, or of the two governments, to the people of the Republic of Ireland in a referendum to be held the same day as the proposals are put in a referendum to the people of Northern Ireland. By indulging in a bit of political aerobatics Sinn Fein and the IRA were able to claim that the last all-Ireland election, in 1918 (before the British-imposed partition of the country) endorsed the right of Sinn Fein to employ the armed force of the IRA to wage war to establish an all-Ireland Republic.

This peculiar justification theory is important to the IRA/Sinn Fein for despite the fact that the opposition of the Catholic Church to their activities has bred a strong streak of anti-clericalism within the Republican movement, they do accept that there is a "moral" distinction between killing as the heirs of the “legitimate government” of the people and what they would see, and condemn, as mere political murder. The prospect of the removal of this eighty-year excuse must surely create a telling dilemma for ardent Catholics like Adams, McGuinness and many of their cohorts.

But, then, if the peace holds. Unionist, Nationalist and Republican politicians in Northern Ireland, whether or not they engage in the impending peace talks will be faced with dilemmas. Of course the consequences are relevant in that the killing may be ended or may start again but the issues behind the conflict are completely and utterly irrelevant to the real interests of the working class.

Richard Montague

50 Years Ago: The Growing Unemployment (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present and future outlook of the working class is extremely gloomy—as gloomy as the murky London fog outside the writer’s window this Sunday afternoon. Prices are still in cloudland, whilst wages are falling rapidly. Unemployment engulfs a vast mass of the working class, whilst the movement for increased production (which in effect means both a lowering of wages and a lowering in the number of wage receivers) promises to further increase the workless army.

Looking at the matter casually, today it would appear that the main objective of the capitalist is increased production. A closer examination of the matter will easily dispose of this false idea.

What are the elements required to produce wealth today? Raw materials, machinery and labour-power of various degrees of skill. Is there any shortage of raw material? The earth is teeming with raw material, and the untapped resources are as relatively unlimited as the development of human ingenuity. Is there a shortage of machinery? There are numerous first-class manufactures of all classes of machinery working short-time for want of orders to execute. Is there a shortage of labour-power? The hundreds of thousands of unemployed of all degrees of skill searching anxiously, and so often, unavailingly for work can provide a complete answer to this question. Finally, the slowing down of production owing to overstocked markets is the overwhelming contradiction to the claims of the increased productionists.

The mere increase of production is not the objective of the capitalist; his main objective is the lowering of the cost of production.

The capitalist in competing for markets endeavours to undersell competitors by reducing the labour-time spent upon articles to a minimum (reducing the value of an article) and at the same time to obtain the maximum of surplus value by increasing the difference between what the worker receives and what he produces—increasing the amount of wealth a worker can produce and reducing the amount he receives, in other words, increasing the exploitation of the worker.

(From an unsigned article, “Hope Springs Infernal in the Workers Breast,” in the Socialist Standard February 1922.)

Joseph Chamberlain on the Functions of the Capitalist State. (1924)

From the April 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “From the moment that we accepted and entered upon the duties of office our most important duty, our most absorbing care, has-been not the party legislation, which occupies probably the largest part of our public discussion, but the development and the maintenance of that vast agriculture, manufacture, and commercial enterprise upon which the welfare and even the existence of our great population depends. .  .  .  .  All the great offices of state are occupied with commercial affairs. The Foreign Office and the Colonial Office are chiefly engaged in finding new markets and —in defending old ones. The War Office and the Admiralty are mostly occupied in preparations for the defence of those markets and for the protection of our commerce. The Boards of Agriculture and of Trade are entirely concerned with those two great branches of industry. Even the Education Department bases its claim to the public money upon the necessity of keeping our people well to the front in the commercial competition which they have to sustain; and the Home Office finds the largest scope for its activity in the protection of life and health and in the promotion of the comfort, of the vast army of manual labourers who are engaged in those industries. Therefore it is not too much to say that commerce is the greatest of all political interests and that that Government deserves most the popular approval which does most to increase our trade and to settle it on a firm foundation.”

(From a speech to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, 1896. Quoted by L. S. Woolf in Empire and Commerce in Africa, p. 7.)

Why Capitalism is Decadent (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists refuse to be taken in by the assertions that capitalism is not only the most viable economic system possible but that it also represents continuous progress. After all, the evidence to the contrary is everywhere — inner-city nightmarish conditions, beggars in the streets, homelessness, increasing violence and drug abuse. . . .  and, of course, to deal with this 'progress', more police officers!

For most of the politicians, economists and historians this century, “the future” has been equated with progress. Even those who have never expressed a belief in the miraculous have invariably claimed that there has never been any reason to think that the future will bring anything other than development and advancement in the overall condition of the human species. While many have recognised that capitalism is not perfect, and have thus spent time trying to perfect it, they have never seriously countenanced an alternative to it because none seemed necessary or relevant. So long as capitalism is defended and emerges victorious, they have argued, humankind will prosper; thus to defend capitalism is to support progress. One historian—Francis Fukuyama—was so confident of the invincibility of capitalism as a progressive social system that a few years ago he pronounced that history had ended with the triumph of the world market and the rise of bourgeois liberal democracy, claiming that minor difficulties notwithstanding, human progress was assured.

While such an attitude has been the prevailing establishment view it has not always been held quite so enthusiastically by the rest of the population. It is, after all, the working class majority in society who have most direct contact with—and experience of—the system's inadequacies, being a subject class with little or no economic power. Today, the ruling class view of progress has less resonance among the working class the world over than perhaps ever before. Recent opinion polls in ‘advanced’ states like Britain have suggested that 60 per cent and more of the population now believe that the kind of world today’s children will inherit will be worse than their own generation inherited, apparently the highest number to take this view since records began. It is a view replicated in a great many industrialised countries let alone in the less developed ones and in the ‘Third World', where meaningful progress for the majority has long been a sick joke indeed.

Is progress still possible?
For our part as we watch the twentieth century draw to a close, socialists do not argue that progress is assured or that, contrariwise, we are all doomed. Socialists contend that lasting progress is possible for humankind—but only under certain conditions. These conditions do not appertain at the moment and most people are right to recognise this and right to question the traditional ruling class viewpoint they have been fed. They are right because we are no longer living in a society that is progressive in any real sense, but one that is reactionary or decadent.

In using the term ‘decadent' to describe modern society some explanation is necessary. Standard dictionary references to this term elicit the following definitions: “a state of decay”, “lacking in physical and moral vigour”, and “decline—especially in sexual morality”. To those most familiar with the word it probably conjures up visions of a society resembling something out of the Borgias or the hit musical set in 1920's Weimar Germany, Cabaret. In popular usage decadence, sexual licentiousness and moral decline are synonymous. For our purposes the wider definition of decadence being taken to refer to something in a state of decay, and existing without vigour, is the most useful.

For instance, over many decades—in fact about 100 years—socialists have argued that the type of society we live in today is decadent. Indeed, it is because we think that capitalism is decadent that we are politically organised to help bring about its overthrow. But that does not necessarily mean we contend that capitalism is drowning in an ocean of sexual immorality. Instead, we say capitalism is decadent because as a way of organising human affairs it is now outdated or obsolete.

To understand this it is necessary to briefly examine the socialist view of historical development, derived in the main from the pioneering work of the early socialists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For without an understanding of the socialist view of social change it is impossible to fully comprehend why we say that capitalism is a decadent social system.

The key to history
During the last century Marx and Engels developed what is usually termed their Materialist Conception of History, an analytical tool which has since been used by socialists to explain historical events and social changes. 'The basis of Marx and Engels’ contention—derived from an investigation of past social changes and the forces that motivated them—was that society is not basically a static entity, changing only superficially, but is periodically subject to dynamic change and development. These changes are characterised chiefly by alterations in the way in which humans organise themselves to get what they need to live—food, clothing, housing, entertainment and so on.

The chattel slave society of Ancient Rome and the feudal society of the Middle Ages were organised on a very different basis to modern capitalist society, for example. Whereas once the dominant form of social organisation was for slaves to be physically owned and compelled to work for the benefit of their masters—often in appalling conditions—the inefficiency of this arrangement led at a later stage in human history to the development of feudalism, where feudal serfs worked part of the week for their own upkeep and livelihood and the rest for the feudal lord. Today we have capitalist society where there is still a class division between two main classes, the difference being that now the majority subject class ‘freely' sells its ability to work on a market in return for wages and salaries in order to live. Like in the other private property systems of Ancient society or feudalism, this subject class is still exploited by a dominant and unproductive class—in this case, the capitalists. However, the nature of social organisation has clearly changed.

Utilising Marx’s analysis, socialists contend that the motive force for such changes in society are the material forces of production. These chiefly consist of the instruments of production themselves (tools, machines, etc.) and the productive skills and knowledge at society’s disposal. In the last analysis, it is technological change which periodically revolutionises the productive skills and tools of society as humankind attempts to increase its power over production. But it is important to stress that this theory is not mere technological determinism—while technological change does tend to ultimately lead to major social change, it does not do so automatically, since humans make history. Any wider social change made necessary by technological development will only come about when struggled for by a group of humans—usually a new social class with a unique relationship to the means of living. Indeed, it is precisely the social grouping which comes to play the key organising role for the new productive methods as these methods are transformed by technological development, that will tend to emerge as the new dominant class in society. This grouping will not achieve dominance automatically and will have to struggle for this position by becoming conscious of its own interests and by then capturing political power from the old dominant class.

We argue that it is this scenario which broadly explains historical change through various social epochs. It explains, for instance, the demise of feudalism and the rise of the capitalist class and capitalist relations of production, and similarly it can be used to chart the decline of capitalism and the rise of the forces in society that have a class interest in its abolition and in the establishment of socialism.

Inventing history

The conditions which gave rise from the seventeenth century or so onwards to the capitalist mode of production—based on wage labour, market exchange and capital accumulation—have now clearly changed in an important way. This is because the role of the dominant class in society—the capitalists—has significantly altered. When the capitalist class emerged as the ruling class in society it was because they originally played a key technical role in the rise of the market economy as it superseded feudalism. Most people arc taught at school the stories of inventors and entrepreneurs such as Arkwright, Watt and others who played such a notable part in the development of the Industrial Revolution. In fact the view of the capitalist class as being the key innovators and inventors in society still persists to a degree, and was used by Margaret Thatcher among others as a form of modern-day justification for the free market It is, however, a view which is no longer to any significant extent supported by reality. Today, very few indeed of the richest men and women in the world have invented or introduced anything to hasten productive development. For every capitalist like Bill Gates of Microsoft there are many times more like the Duke of Westminster, George Soros or the Sultan of Brunei, who only work—if at all—at overseeing their finances.

This was a phenomenon noted in a work which was in many ways a fine application of the Materialist Conception of History, where Friedrich Engels argued in his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that the transformation of industry and the means of distribution into large joint-stock companies, trusts and state property demonstrated the increasing irrelevance of the capitalist class regarding the management and development of society’s productive forces. He argued from the perspective of the late nineteenth century that as capitalism takes hold:

   "All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the stock exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. ”

In other words, as capitalism takes root, the more isolated and independent nature of human activity in feudalism is replaced by a huge network of socially interconnected production, initially spurred on by a class of entrepreneurs, but then sustained by the mass of the population who come to operate capitalist society from top to bottom, even performing the tasks that the capitalists once did themselves. The capitalist class achieve an economically privileged position in society, and do not have to work or directly involve themselves in the productive process any longer. Hence the key organisational role in society clearly passes from the class of capitalists to the wage and salary earning working class who create all the wealth, including the large part of it appropriated by the capitalists for their own purposes.

As capitalism develops in this way its fundamental contradiction becomes ever more apparent—a socially operated and highly interconnected means of living based on the collective effort of the majority on the one hand, private ownership of this means of living by a tiny parasitic minority on the other. Socialists argue that this fundamental contradiction of capitalism, from which much else follows, can only be solved by the replacement of the capitalist class’s private monopoly of the means of production and distribution by collective ownership by society as a whole—socialism.

(To be continued)

Dave Perrin

Exhibition Review: Robots (2018)

Exhibition Review from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some of the earliest objects that could be considered as robots were constructed by the catholic church from around 1500. They were clockwork machines that, for instance, showed Jesus on the cross shedding drops of wooden blood. Most people had no idea how they worked and regarded them as being based on magic. Thus the machines demonstrated the power and authority of the church.

So begins an exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, on until the middle of April, which covers robots from the early days to the present and even the future. In medieval times anatomists described the human body as a complex machine, while clockwork models were used to show the movements of heavenly bodies. Later, automatons were built that performed actions such as dancing, and these enjoyed a golden age in the eighteenth century.

But it was in the last century that robots began to come into their own, with electric batteries used rather than clockwork. There is a section on cinematic representation of robots, including a replica of Maria from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, which is described as ‘the first blockbuster robot’. Industrial robots began to be used in factories from the 1960s, to carry out specific repetitive tasks, and for safety reasons they could not work with people.

There has been much technical progress in recent years, some of it exemplified in the displays. For instance, one company makes 3D-printed bionic hands that can be used not just by robots but also by people with amputations. Kaspar (developed at the University of Hertfordshire) can help children on the autism spectrum, for instance to read facial expressions and to feel less intimidated. Other examples included in the display are Baxter and YuMi, both of which can work alongside people. All this raises the problem of robots displacing human workers: a recent report (Guardian, 29 January) argues that up to a quarter of jobs in the northern UK could be replaced by robots by 2030, with Mansfield being the worst hit.

A question posed at the end of the exhibition we can lead to the reader to ponder: should robots be gender-neutral? 

Paul Bennett

Obituary: Bill Williams (1997)

Obituary from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bill joined the old Palmers Green branch in 1953, having moved to London from north Wales. From an early age he had been interested in science and technology, building his own reflecting telescope and even importing magazines on rocket technology from the USA during the Second World War!

He had been plagued by ill-health for most of his life, due to TB and aggravated by smoking, starting the habit years before it had been universally recognised as potentially dangerous. Although this limited his physical activity, as a car-owner he was able to act as "wheels" for branch members to carry out activities in the 50s and 60s.

His main profession was as a draughtsman in the Civil Service and he was active as a member in their union, DATA. It was at this time that, because of his gaunt appearance, he was known as "The Thin Man".

He was keenly interested in the UFO phenomenon and related subjects, but managed to keep his feet firmly on the ground as far as his materialist understanding of the world was concerned. During the 50s and 60s he took an active part in the theoretical investigation of crisis theory in political economy and in studying the emergence of civilisations in the ancient Near East. As far as he was able Bill was an active member of the branch, and his knowledge of scientific and technological developments was of much value in branch discussions and meetings.

When eventually his health prevented him from working, he was able to escape from wage slavery, in so far as not being beholden to an employer. This situation left him with a modest income. Even by the limitations imposed by capitalism Bill could not have been said to have lived his life to the full, choosing an abstemious existence rather than living for the day. He lived the last 20 years of his life with only one lung and had to be extremely careful about not infecting his remaining one. He was, however, able to attend the branch up to a few weeks before his death.

Julian Vein

Letters: Many tragic aspects of SLP history (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many tragic aspects of SLP history

Dear Editors,

In reviewing the TV series 1914-18, DAP asserts that the Socialist Labour Party "wavered before coming out against the conflict” (Socialist Standard, December). I presume by Socialist Labour Party DAP means those in the SDF who broke away in 1903 in opposition to Hyndman’s reformism, chauvinism and authoritarianism rather than the American organisation headed by DeLeon. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can find no evidence to support DAP's allegation. Indeed, the SLP's paper The Socialist for September 1914 stated that the SLP was neither pro-British nor pro-German and that its enemy was the capitalists. As the slaughter progressed, a number of SLPers found themselves behind bars for opposing the war, while the police destroyed the SLP's printing press.

There were many tragic aspects to the SLP's history but its position on WWI was not one of them. What was tragic in my view was the failure of those who broke away from the SDF in 1903 to unite with those who broke away in 1904 for much the same reasons. True enough there were differences—the SLP emphasised the industrial struggle while the SPGB emphasised the political. But there were a host of similarities— opposition to reformism, the need for a democratic organisation, making and educating Socialists.

Tragic too was the hypnotic effect of Bolshevism on many SLPers which resulted in their joining the Communist Party where they quickly came under the iron rule of those who slavishly implemented the line laid down by Moscow. However, SLPers did make some important contributions to Marxist theory in particular the work of William Paul and Len Cotton on the state.

The Socialist Party is right to criticise any other organisation calling itself Socialist but if it does so on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations it risks falling into the trap of using the type of methods its opponents, particularly Leninists, use against it.

Terry Liddle 

London SE9

Reply:
The review did not make "unsubstantiated allegations" about the SLP. It stated that the SLP "wavered" before fully coming out against the war, which meant that the only political organisation to "unequivocally" oppose the war was the Socialist Party. This is not a loose or unsubstantiated allegation—it is a matter of historical record, noted with dismay by us at the time and chronicled by historians since.

The Socialist in the early months of the war contained a number of contradictory statements which reflected the different political positions held by members of the SLP, both pro- and anti-war. One section of the SLP membership looked favourably on the idea of a war of “national defence" against German militarism. This was the view expressed both by leading SLPer Arthur MacManus and by the then editor of The Socialist, Johnny Muir. The resultant doubts about the SLP's exact position on the war were expressed by Muir himself in the December 1914 issue of the paper where he wrote about the two factions in his party:

   "I have not been able to find out what support each side has, and consequently I cannot say definitely what the official attitude of the Party is."

We may add that both before the conflict and during it the SLP worked with pro-capitalist organisations for temporary purposes e g. in anti-militarism campaigns. Eventually the SLP allied itself with elements in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and British Socialist Party (BSP) who opposed the war but nevertheless supported state-run capitalism.

This was a disastrous policy which played no small part in encouraging the "hypnotic" politics of Bolshevism Terry Liddle refers to. The other factor in this was the leadership-orientated, anti-democratic nature of the SLP, a characteristic of course shared by the SLP’s American partner body of the same name as well as by the Russian Bolsheviks themselves. Indeed, the very idea that the SLP—like the SPGB—recognised "the need for democratic organisation" is at variance with any serious knowledge of that organisation. The SLP was a highly authoritarian body like its US counterpart and Terry Liddle would do well to read the rule books of either if he doubts this. Because of factors like these it was no surprise to us that the SLP was split asunder in 1920 when a large portion of its membership left to found the Communist Party of Great Britain along with members of organisations like the ILP, BSP and others that the SLP had been courting for years.

Editors.

What about the electorate?

Dear Editors,

While in agreement with R. Montague's article in the November issue of the Socialist Standard in which he criticises the role of the media in contemporary society, he fails to mention the recipient of media propaganda, i.e., the electorate. and the influence which it in turn has upon society.

Take, for example, the current demise of socialism within the Labour Party. Some people would argue that it is all the fault of the leadership; but the Labour Party can only be the kind of party that public opinion will allow it to be; and public opinion is, for the most part, determined by the media. The Labour Party knows full that if it started to espouse socialism between now and the next election. it would have no chance of being elected, because the media has succeeded in turning socialism into a dirty word and/ or an anachronism.

Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of awareness amongst the electorate that when they watch television news what they are in fact watching is not merely news but propaganda, propaganda being the discriminating use of information, which is then presented in such a way as to make it seem acceptable or unacceptable. depending upon the mode of presentation. Propaganda is, of course, something that is not confined merely to communist or Islamic countries, but is universal, and is most prevalent among those societies which have the largest number of television channels, radio stations and newspapers (the bourgeoisie has a total monopoly of the broadcasting media, the most powerful of the media institutions, and a virtual monopoly of the press).

I would suggest that the Socialist Standard continues to spend more time attacking the power of the media (as does R. Montague’s article) and less time in criticising politicians in general. since there is little doubt that those famous faces we see on our television screens at news-time, plus of course all those faceless backroom people. those television producers. editors and directors who prepare news programmes, have far more influence on the minds of the electorate than do their elected representatives in Parliament.

E. Shepherd

Manchester

Mass debating with barmy Bernie (1997)

The TV Review column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Usually there is much competition for the dubious privilege of which programme has plumbed the lowest depths of inanity and humbug in the period before this column goes to press. Last month there was no contest. Not even Richard and Judy or Ricki Lake came close to matching the televisual disgrace which masqueraded as informed debate under the title of The Monarchy: The Nation Decides (ITV, 7 January).

Billed as the biggest exercise in democracy ever seen on British television, this programme told us all we need to know about the nature of democracy that exists in capitalist society. Virtually every aspect of it, from the so-called "debate” format, to the paucity of the views expressed by the invited panellists through to the uncontrolled (and allegedly rigged) telephone poll, went to demonstrate that democracy in capitalism is largely sham democracy.

Nothing more than a soundbite was allowed, most of the debate was taken up with whether the Royal family are "value for money" (whatever that means) and as Roy Greenslade explained in the following day's Guardian, the audience of 3,000 had been whipped up into a near hysterical frenzy before the show so that by when the 'debate' actually started it resembled little more than a bear garden.

Large sections of the audience, invited from several cities around Britain, simply shouted, heckled and cat-called on a mass basis for the entire duration of the programme. This meant that the little debate that would have been possible was rendered useless—and clearly by the design of Carlton TV who commissioned and ran the whole thing.

In a sense it was understandable that the audience—or a least a sizeable enough part of it—should have behaved in such a way. It was probably the best chance they had of stemming the tide of verbal diarrhoea emanating from the panellists. Nonetheless, some seeped through and the stench was truly repellent

Particularly odious, as a representative of the monarchists, was author Frederick Forsyth. Though coherent in an entirely tangential manner, Forsyth’s bad-tempered performance was sufficient to bring a whole host of rather unkind epithets to even the most considerate reviewer’s mind—like 'arrogant', ‘bumptious’ and ’surly’, these being the least descriptive but at the same time those least likely to result in a libel action. Forsyth’s main defence of the royals was that they are an economic bonus for Britain. To echo this point, he shouted at his hecklers “Your jobs are at stake!," claiming that any expenditure on the Royal Family is easily outweighed (he even had some figures) by the tourist revenue they create every year. It was possible to imagine the millions of rich tea-towel makers and commemorative mug engravers across the length and breadth of the country nodding sagely in approval. The suggestion that the multinationals and big-time capitalists were the real beneficiaries of all this (if there are any at all) was not considered. The programme producers had neither the time nor inclination to let anyone string more than two sentences together and a coherent reply to this nonsense, if any had been forthcoming, would have been near impossible.

Arise, Sir Bernie

One panellist smartly retorted that Forsyth would be better off sticking to writing Fiction, something he evidently knows a bit about, but what poor old Bernie Grant is good for is anybody's guess. A knighthood perhaps, or an early peerage. Never a stranger to controversy, one might have anticipated that Grant’s presence on the panel was guaranteed to set the cat amongst the pigeons. But, no. Bernie knows which side his bread is buttered on and launched into a sycophantic eulogy of the Queen that would have put Dame Vera Lynn to shame. Elizabeth was a marvellous head of the Commonwealth, he claimed, and did an awful lot to help all the poor black people in Africa.

It was obviously beyond Bernie’s comprehension that the Queen and her like, and the system they uphold, is the reason for their poverty and misery in the first place. But never mind, she's so gracious and has such a lovely warm smile as she walks among the malnourished. Well, she can continue to smile very big smiles indeed with suckers like Bernie Grant to do her bidding for her.

Most of those who plucked up the courage to oppose the monarchy, including those who rang in, did so with the proviso that they wanted a nice, respectable Head of State—a leader to look up to. Bizarrely enough, Princess Anne was the most popular choice followed by monied clown and failed balloonist Richard Branson. As such, the legions of republicans proved themselves little better than the raving monarchists. But then again, why should we expect them to be any different? These are, after all, people who vote for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens and are therefore fully tuned in to what can be expected in an inherently hierarchical, class-ridden and exploitative system like capitalism.

Even if Carlton had provided for a proper debate format, it would have been to no great effect. For does anyone still expect serious arguments for social equality from such people and their elected representatives? Frankly, it is no more likely to come from them than it is from the Duke of Edinburgh. and if this dreadful programme had even one little thing to commend it, it must have been the obviousness of that. 

Dave Perrin

Sophisticated critical perspectives (1997)

Theatre Review from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Art by Yasmina Reza (Wyndham's Theatre)

Art is an odd play. Some critics see it as a populist attack on modern art; others believe it to be about friendship. It runs for barely 90 minutes and it is packing them in—queues every night for returned tickets. When I called for tickets the clerk at the booking office told me—with a mixture of pride and of resignation born of hard work—”It's the hottest ticket in town."

The plot is simply stated. Serge buys an abstract painting for about £20,000. His friend, Marc, is uncomprehending. To Marc the canvas is but a white rectangle—although he does admit that he can see some whitish diagonals and some pinkish dots. But what can Serge see in it? Marc is baffled. He thought he knew Serge, and now this. He feels undermined—betrayed perhaps. In the event pushed by Serge into saying that he likes it. he explodes and calls it “shit". Yvan. a mutual friend, accommodating by nature, is brought in to mediate. But far from successfully resolving the conflict, he is unwillingly drawn into the drama. Three friends soon become three men at odds with one another.

At the end the audience was agog. I've rarely heard so much animated conversation at the end of a play; so many different opinions wafting on the air. Retiring for a pizza we talked for longer than the play had run. What did it all mean? All four of us had seen it differently, and had different points of view. As we chatted I found it easy to understand why the critics and the audience had been so divided. What had been presented was capable of many interpretations, so that the opinions of individual members of the audience probably revealed more about them and their particular knowledge and prejudices than about what they had seen and heard.

I was reminded of similar discussions about politics. Talk to folk about politics and most people will retain some variant of the conventional opinions offered in the Sun, Mail or Telegraph. etc. Only a few people, and conspicuously members of the Socialist Party, are able to see beyond the obvious to deeper levels of reality. Thus socialists see politics in terms of historical materialism and class conflict based on ownership of the means of production and exchange. And here, in reacting to what they had seen on stage, people were bringing a similar range of insights to bear; ranging from the kind of crude populist antagonism found in the popular press to sophisticated critical perspectives and insights.

I guess there must have been a lot of quasi-Sun readers in the audience. The biggest cheer of the evening greeted Yvan’s admission that, yes, he too thought the picture was “shit". But Yvan was clearly lying. His was a response born out of pain and a desire to hurt Serge. Not that many in the audience seemed to care, even if they understood. They laughed uproariously at Serge's plight. I confess to feeling very uncomfortable when people sitting close to me find the pain of characters on stage a matter for amusement. We smile smugly at the thought that it was our primitive ancestors who cheered at public executions, but you don't have to sit long in theatres and cinemas to realise how much capitalism has brutalised people's sensitivities. On such occasions I am reminded of Orwell’s description of the progress (sic) of capitalism: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.’’

Early in the play Serge observes to Marc “You have to understand the rules (of modern art) before you can make an informed comment." Socialists know this to be "true" of the world of economics and politics. You have to go beyond the immediate, the self-evident, if you are going to get any kind of purchase on how society works. What people need if they are to understand their everyday lives is a set of analytical tools— based on historical materialism, the labour theory of value, and the class struggle. A similar set of tools seems necessary if we are to understand art. The ideological apparatus of capitalism—including the so-called education system, newspapers, public service (ho, ho) broadcasting, and the other media—is intent on not providing such explanatory frameworks. The reaction of many in the audience to Art is one measure of its success.

Michael Gill

50 Years Ago: Labour Government, Strikes and Arbitration (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The road haulage strike, which lasted for some ten days in the early part of January, brought out clearly the false position of the Labour Government and the impracticability of its policy.

Having undertaken the running of the capitalist system, the Labour Government is finding that it has got to do it in the only way it can be done. Capitalism will only work if the Capitalists can see the prospect of making a profit, so, in disregard of years of vaguely anti-capitalist propaganda, the Labour Government has had to come out in support of the "profit motive". Having claimed it would raise wages, it urges the unions not to make wage claims, lest profits should all be swallowed up. It declared for shorter hours, but now says the time is inopportune. It condemned the use of troops in strikes, and has twice used them since it came to power. It declared that under Labour Government strikes were unnecessary because “impartial arbitration" would give all the worker wanted, but has repeatedly seen the workers defying unsatisfactory arbitration awards.

(From editorial. Socialist Standard, February 1947)

Cooking the Books: What the Poor Law Pays (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

We know what determines the level of income of those in employment – it’s the cost of recreating their working skills in conjunction with the class struggle and the play of supply and demand – but what about those not in work? What determines the income they get as a handout from the state?

Some light on this was shed by some top secret documents found at the end of January in a filing cabinet in a junk shop in Australia. One of the files concerned the work of a cabinet sub-committee, known as the ‘razor gang’ (down under they call a spade a spade), whose remit was to slash payments to the unemployed as a way of relieving the burden of taxation on profits which had fallen in the slump that followed the financial crash of 2008.

Normally such documents only become available after 30 or so years, but the files related to a much more recent period:

‘One file revealed that Tony Abbott, the former prime minister, considered banning anyone under 30 from accessing income support in a radical proposal before the 2014 budget. Some of his ministers, it said, wanted to ban what the documents termed “job snobs” from receiving unemployment benefits.’

However, the then prime minister didn’t get his way:

‘The proposal was crushed by dissenters in his cabinet who feared that, if implemented, it might force jobless young people into homelessness, crime and other anti-social behaviour.’(Times, 1 February).

There you have it: what governments dole out to the those not in employment for one reason or another – ‘benefits’ doesn’t seem the right word – is the minimum they think they can get away with without provoking too much ‘anti-social behaviour’, in particular crime, which would cost them money to deal with.

Dealing with the unemployed and the unemployable has been a problem for capitalism right from its beginnings, premised as it is on the existence of a class without access to means to themselves produce what they need. In the first instance this involved driving people off the land, which began in England in the 16th century.

The first attempt to deal with this were the Poor Laws, which made providing for those unable to acquire any money to live the responsibility of the parish where they were born. Those who ventured away from their parish were denounced as ‘sturdy beggars’ – and whipped and branded, as Marx describes in chapter 28 of Volume I of Capital on the ‘Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated since the End of the Fifteenth Century’. Right up until the middle of the last century this remained administered locally by Poor Law ‘guardians’.

In 1948 the post-war Labour government made it a national responsibility, run by a board doling out ‘national assistance’. Over time the name changed, first to ‘social security’ (a nice Orwellian touch) and then to its present ‘income support’. But it’s still basically the ‘poor law’ with the government assuming the role of Dickens’s Poor Law Guardians, paying out as little as they can so as to minimise the burden on the capitalist class of maintaining those not in employment.

Basically, then, the answer to what determines the level of income of those not in employment is what the government thinks it can get away with without provoking riots or encouraging those affected to turn to crime.  It doesn't always work as the spontaneous riots of 2011 showed.

The Profit System and the Alternative (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The social system we live under is capitalism, the profit system. It is a world-wide system. It exists in China and Cuba, just as it exists in Britain and the USA. Under capitalism, the means and instruments for production and distribution (land, factories, mines, railways, shipping, etc.) are owned and controlled by a minority— the capitalist class (5 percent of the population). All wealth, however, from a pin to an oilrig, is produced by us, the majority—the working class. In return for a wage or salary we sell our physical and mental energies to the capitalist class.

Production under capitalism is primarily undertaken with a view to making profit for the capitalist class, which means that items are produced and goods provided only when someone decides more money can be clawed back than was originally invested. The capitalist class, though, do not keep all of the profits they make. Much is reinvested in order that more profits can accumulate.

More often than not, too much is produced. When this happens the profits of the capitalist class are threatened. The result is that millions of tons of food are destroyed every year on purpose, to keep prices high in the shops. In addition, when no profits are to be made, workers are sacked or made redundant.

Meanwhile, millions die of starvation. Elsewhere, people sleep rough on the streets while millions of houses stand vacant and millions are unemployed while factories and machinery stand idle.

Occasionally, the interests of the capitalist class of one country come into conflict with the capitalist class of another. When this happens wars sometimes break out and workers are packed off to fight the workers from another country. They are told they are fighting for freedom and democracy, when in reality they are fighting over trade routes, foreign markets and mineral resources (all sources of profit for the capitalist class).

The mainstream parties will tell you that all this is inevitable (we agree that is—under capitalism) but that, if we are only patient, the system can be reformed. This is untrue. The capitalist system cannot be reformed in our interests because tho profit motive always has to come before social needs. Don't get us wrong, some reforms are beneficial, but none can abolish that basic contradiction between profit and need. The only way the capitalist system can be run is as it is run now. This is why the Socialist Party does not advocate reform, which is another way of saying patching up capitalism. We seek an end to the entire world-wide capitalist social system. In its place we wish to see established a world-wide socialist system.

Socialism does not exist and has never existed. It can not be established in a single country but only on a world-wide basis. In socialism, the earth’s resources, along with the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, will be commonly owned and democratically controlled by the world’s peoples. There will be no minority élite and no owners because society will be classless.

With the disappearance of money and the wages system, society's productive potential will be released from the artificial constraints of profit. Goods and services will be provided because society needs them, not because they generate profit. With the barriers of the money system removed, the only questions needed to be asked is what is required and where—questions that will be answered according to the availability of resources.

Technology and communications will be freed from the constraints of profit and used to their utmost to serve the world’s peoples. Again, alternative sources of fuel and energy will be sought, both to best serve humans and show the environment the respect it deserves.

People will give according to their ability and take from the stockpile of communal wealth according to their own self-defined needs, with work being based on voluntary co-operation.

For the first time ever, people will have control over their own lives, with all monetary worries and fears of crime and war ended. For the first time ever, the people of planet Earth will have an equal share in planet Earth.

John Bissett

Greasy Pole: Beggars are not choosers (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let us not be too hard on David Maclean, the Home Office minister who seems to be haunted by beggars demanding money in Scottish accents. Maclean never gives money but he does give them a piece of his mind—which is supposed to be worth having because he has a reputation as one of the brighter young Tory MPs. Speaking out is what he is used to; some time ago he had to be restrained from advocating that "vermin" be driven from the streets and praising the vigilantes—whose activities are, after all, outside the law. But Maclean is obviously under emotional stress as he is among an endangered species—Tory MPs who could be wiped out at the general election. So perhaps he can be excused for his attempt, albeit clumsy, to clamber aboard a bandwagon which is being propelled by the big political parties as what they hope will be a vote winner among those people who find beggars frightening or distasteful whatever accent they speak in.

Lower standards
It is not so long ago that we were subjected to an implicit instruction that homeless people and beggars might have been expected in Britain in an earlier, less enlightened age but are now confined to countries with lower standards of humanity and tolerance. Of course there were a few in places like the West End (Tory MP Sir George Young describes them as people you stepped over as you left the Opera) but these were eccentric, incorrigible. It is different now. All over the centre of cities such as London people sleep in shop doorways or under cardboard boxes and begging has spread out into suburban shopping centres.

The anger of people like Maclean is aroused because the beggars are an embarrassment. How much of an embarrassment can be gauged by the reaction of another Tory MP, Terry Dicks who came up to what are now the expectations of him by describing beggars as "scum" who should be “hosed out" of the doorways where they shelter. The embarrassment springs from the fact that the beggars are a massive, unavoidable, distressing testimony to the failure of Tory government. There was no hint, in their election campaign in 1979, that after almost 20 years of the Conservatives being in power, vagrancy would be the kind of problem to raise the ire of their MPs. But of course they can’t admit that it is evidence of their failure. So it has to be explained away as the result of personal shortcomings of the people concerned.

Maclean does not go as far as to call the beggars "scum"but he does say they are on the streets ". . .  out of choice because they find it more pleasant". This is the standard response to any group of people—the unemployed, single mothers—who have the greater difficulty in surviving under capitalism in the 1990s. These people, we are told, actually prefer to scrape by on Income Support in a sky-high tower block or living rough in the city. There is no explanation as to why so many people suddenly suffer this same kind of personality problem all at the same time and just when an economic recession is in progress, only to recover somewhat when the recession recedes to give way to a boom. It is easier—and. the politicians hope, more fertile for votes—to lambaste the beggars and call for a policy of "zero tolerance".

Blair
There was a time when the Labour Party might have been expected to respond to "zero tolerance" with some deceptive clap-trap about civil liberties and human concerns, leaving some voters under the delusion that things would be different under a Labour government. They should know better now, as Tony Blair leads the way in denouncing the beggars with heartrending stories about what he sees at Kings Cross where he drops his children in the morning, on his way to a hard day’s planning of how he will run the social system which is responsible for such ugliness and for the human wreckage which gravitates to it. No doubt Blair is concerned for his children; he is also not unaware that policies like “zero tolerance” may have a vote-winning potential.

None of this is reassuring to people who assumed society had moved on from the days when rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars and vagrants could be whipped in every county they passed through or when someone could be imprisoned for inducing people to give them money by displaying wounds or deformities. If Blair and Tories like Maclean have got it right, it is no longer politically inadvisable to advocate punishing people for what capitalism does to them. A safer policy now, for the vote-hungry politician, is "zero tolerance".

A recent survey by Centrepoint, which offers shelter to homeless people, gave some idea of what their clients are like—and it does not fit in with the version offered by Blair and Dicks. Almost a third were aged between 16 and 17; a third had no income; almost a half had a GCE.CSE or GCSE; almost a third had slept rough; a quarter had been in local authority care. It says a great deal about capitalism and its political parties that the response to the "embarrassment" such people provoke in tourists, tradespeople and politicians on their way out of the Opera is to repress and damage them more than they have already experienced.

Zero Tolerance
Aggressive and persistent demands for money are not monopolised by street beggars. A developing trend—probably a response to the decline in employment in the recession—is the business of young people going door-to-door in the evenings offering low quality cleaning material for sale. Another is the expansion of telephone canvassing—people who are employed to work their way through the telephone directory asking if you want to borrow money or have new windows fitted or whatever. These activities can be as intrusive as any beggar—while any profits which result from them will go to the employer.

So far no political leader has said that "zero tolerance" should extend to those kinds of activities. Nor have they suggested that it should be applied to the social system which saw profits to be made from the misery of a place like Kings Cross and which now wants it cleared up to accommodate a smarter, more profitable tourist centre. But zero tolerance is what we should have of capitalism—of its poverty, its famine, its diseases, of the misery and death it deals out to millions of people all the time. And zero tolerance of the politicians who deceive with their false remedies which either fail or even leave the system worse then before.

Ivan

Letters: Roll Call of Defeats not Victories (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Roll Call of Defeats not Victories

The Socialist Standard berates Greens for proposing that modified capitalism can be environmentally friendly in a manner which tars all Greens with the same brush. Although the Green Party conference recently voted to focus spending on lobbying rather than Direct Action (i.e. “asking” capitalists to be greener) this stance is not true across the board. I have met Socialists and Anarchists who are ’greens’ in that they make ecology their specialist subject and/or take part in direct action.

I must say in passing that I see the world through class spectacles and I have to grit my teeth when obliged to share my earth-mover with landed gentry.

James Nash 

Swansea

Reply:
We do not tar all those who are concerned about the environment with the same brush. After all, we come into this category too (have you read our pamphlet Ecology and Socialism?). The difference between us and most of the others is that we are concerned about other problems besides the environment and that we think capitalism can never be modified to work in an environmentally-friendly way. Under capitalism profits and profit-making must come first before all other considerations, including protecting the environment and maintaining a sustainable ecological balance.

Our criticism is aimed at those Greens who think capitalism can be modified in this way, in particular the reformist Green Party but also those in bodies like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace who act on the same assumption.

It is true that the Green Party does offer an alternative to existing corporate and state capitalism, but this turns out to be the impossible dream of a return to an idealised version of small-scale capitalism, with co-operatives and small businesses producing for local markets.

Lobbying groups like Friends of the Earth avoid proposing any alternative to existing capitalism: they assume in practice that this form of capitalism will continue eternally and see their role as merely to lobby within it for new laws and regulations to protect the environment.

Lobbying can, occasionally, achieve a concession but we are talking about very minor adjustments which make no difference whatsoever to the overall functioning of capitalism as a system that has to put profit-making before all other considerations including the environment.

You seem to be suggesting that, unlike the Green lobbyists, the Green Direct Actionists are not reformist, but don’t be so sure. Some do just see direct action, i. e. physical pressure, as a means of backing up reformist lobbying to get some law changed. The others, apparently. really do think that they can coerce the state, but there are no facts to back this up.

Direct action can sometimes work against soft targets (such as hunts or shops selling furs) but it has never worked against the state. It has never stopped a single nuclear power station being built, nor a single motorway or by-pass. Twyford Down. M1, Newbury, this is a roll call of defeats not victories. Under these circumstances continually banging your head against a police truncheon is not an intelligent course of action, even if this might give rise to the illusion that you are not a reformist who wants to modify capitalism.

The intelligent action for Greens is to work towards building up a majority to end capitalism, the root cause of pollution and environmental destruction.

Editors

A new way of thinking?

Dear Editors,

In his generally very positive review of We Can Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life (Socialist Standard, September, 1996), Stan Parker neglects to mention the central thesis of my book.

I argue that capitalism and Marxism are based upon the same paradigm of history and the same view of human beings. In this paradigm, economic forces drive history and economic development is the basis of human development Self-interest is seen as the primary human motivation. The great mass of people are viewed as either passive victims or beneficiaries of the actions of élites. It is not possible to build a democratic society based on this paradigm.

In my view, Marxism has failed. Communist regimes which, rightly or wrongly, claimed Marx as their progenitor have collapsed. Marxist parties in advanced capitalist countries, that is, operating in those societies which Marxism would lead one to believe would be best suited to the growth of Marxist movements, have become marginalized or reformist or both. The idea of global revolution against capitalism, to create a new society based on cooperation and sharing, is in retreat even while such a transformation is more and more necessary.

In his landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn argues that scientists do not abandon a paradigm or model for understanding the world, no matter how much that model may seem to have failed, unless there is a new paradigm to take its place. The purpose of We Can Change the World is to propose a new way of thinking about people and society, a new paradigm, which makes revolution possible.

I maintain that revolution is possible because most people are already engaged in a struggle against capitalism to create a better world. Most people in their everyday lives struggle against a culture based on inequality, competition, and exploitation to create relationships based on equality and solidarity. This effort is not pure or unmixed in people's lives, and people may not be aware of the meaning of their efforts. But whatever equal and committed relationships people have in their lives, they have created them by struggle against capitalist culture. The smallest acts of kindness and the most collective arts of class struggle are on a continuum of struggle to humanize the world.

The revolutionary transformation of society is the only possible fulfillment of the goals and struggles of the great majority of people. The first condition for success in their effort is that people be aware of the significance of their struggles.

I counterpose my views to Marxism, which accepts the capitalist idea that self-interest is the fundamental human motivation. As Marx put it. "every individual seeks only his particular interest.” Marx believed with the capitalists that history is driven by economic development, which in turn is driven by greed. Unlike the capitalists, however, Marx maintained that greed leads not to permanence but to revolution.

Marx’s model of history does not see working people as conscious agents of change who act on the basis of anti-capitalist values. Instead Marxism sees working people primarily as dehumanized and passive victims of economic forces who. when they are moved to action, are moved by these same forces. Lenin’s concept of the revolutionary party was his attempt to supply Marx’s idea of revolution with a human subject with disastrous results.

There is one other point on which I would like to comment. I was taken aback by the picture of Mao accompanying the review of my book, and can’t imagine what are the "worryingly approving comments about the Cultural Revolution" to which the review refers. In fact I show that the Cultural Revolution was a"pseudo-revolution which triggered a real revolution" against the Communist Party, and that this real revolution was defeated by its ambivalence about Mao and its failure to attack him until he drowned the revolution in blood. The Mao portrait and caption are very misleading, and marred an otherwise positive review.

Dave Stratman

Reply:

We can agree with much of what you say about the form the revolution against capitalism must take. Our problem is that we don’t recognise the picture you paint of Marx.

1. It is true that in his early philosophical writings dating from the time he was becoming a socialist. Marx did tend to see the working class as a completely alienated and downtrodden mass that needed to be liberated with the help of others—philosophers.like himself and his fellow students of Hegel. But he soon abandoned this naive position in favour of the principle that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself', a position he held and applied for the rest of his life. So, contrary to your claim, Marx did see "working people as conscious agents of change”.

In any event, one of the meanings he attached to the term "alienation” in his early philosophical writings was, besides workers’ alienation (separation) from the product of their labour, their alienation from their nature as humans, their alienation from their humanity. This implies a position close to yours: that humans are not just the passive product of their circumstances, but also have an essential nature which can be suppressed but which will keep coming to the surface.

In fact, like you, Marx thought that the essential nature of humans was that they were social, co-operative beings seeking to co-operate to satisfy their needs and that this social need was frustrated by capitalism which sought to reduce them to isolated social atoms competing against each other. The passage you quote from Marx (taken from a footnote in the German Ideology) that "every individual seeks only his particular interest” is not. as you suggest, a statement of Marx’s view of what motivates humans under all circumstances. It is a reference to what is thought of as happening under conditions of bourgeois political democracy, i. e. under capitalism. Marx's point was that this was what happens under capitalism because under it there is no common, social interest.

This—the theory that humans act on the basis of “possessive individualism"—is of course the capitalist “paradigm" of human behaviour. But it wasn't Marx’s and is certainly not ours.

2. Marx's materialist conception of history (which we agree with) does have some of the features you attribute to it, in particular the primacy of economic factors. Marx held that it was the way humans were organised to meet their (material) needs that was the basis of human society; and that the form of human society changed as the way humans changed, in response to technological developments. the way they were organised to meet their needs. However, this was not an automatic process independent of human will and action. Since the break-up of the earliest, hunter-gatherer societies that had been based on common ownership, production for use and distribution according to need, human societies had been divided into classes, with one class benefiting from the economic arrangements on which society was based. Technological developments changed these arrangements and brought into being a new class with an interest in struggling for the spread of the new arrangements which benefited them. This was a political and ideological as well as an economic struggle.

The ideological struggle, although a reflection of an underlying conflict of economic interest. was not necessarily perceived to be this by those engaged in it. In other words, they were not necessarily hypocrites claiming to be pursuing some high ideal as a smokescreen for pursuing their less noble economic interest. In most cases they really did believe in the ideals they pursued. This was why Marx remarked that you can’t judge a historical epoch by what those engaged in it said they were struggling about (religion, honour, or whatever). His materialist conception of history accepted that humans were motivated by ideals. His point was that the ideals for which people struggled and died had, ultimately, an origin in society's economic arrangements, not that everybody always acted out of conscious economic self-interest.

3. In a sense in history up to now "the great mass of people" hove been "either passive victims or beneficiaries of the actions of élites”. But to claim that Marx held that the change from capitalism to socialism would take place on this basis too is a complete travesty of the real position. Consider, for instance, the following well-known passage from The Communist Manifesto: "All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities; the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority”.

Marx drew a distinction between the socialist revolution (which would end class society, and emancipate all humanity) and all previous revolutionary changes in society (which replaced one élite by another). In philosophical terms, Marx saw the socialist revolution as a great act of human liberation, one that would precisely free humanity from the sway of economic and historical forces which had a social origin in the way they were organised to meet their needs but which they could not control and had to submit to.

In freeing humans from the sway of these forces, socialism would allow them to control their own collective destiny, to act as rational beings consciously creating the life they freely chose (which was the ideal of 18th and 19th century philosophy). This was why Marx, who was steeped in this philosophical tradition, sometimes talked of real history—as the acts of free, rational beings— as only beginning with the end of class society. Similarly. what is generally called history—the period of class societies—became for him "prehistory", because during it humans were the passive victims of forces beyond their control.

This is all rather philosophical but it does show that Marx did not adhere to the "paradigm" of the change from capitalism to socialism you attribute to him. Lenin did and, in fact, if everywhere where you wrote "Marx" and "Marxism" you had written “Lenin" and "Leninism" your letter would have been spot on.

4. This does not mean that the working class majority that alone can establish socialism will be motivated exclusively by the ideal of liberating humanity. Since the socialist revolution will be a conscious revolution they will of course be aware of this and this will be an inspiring motive. At the same time, as human beings with material needs to be met. they will be motivated by the desire to establish a society in which these material needs will be met as a matter of course.

This is nothing to be ashamed of, as your approach tends to suggest, but is a quite reasonable and rational course of action. The same can be said about the economic struggles workers engage in under capitalism; these generally do have the aspects of solidarity, cooperation and simple humanity that you mention but they are also, even mainly, about those involved trying to satisfy their material needs better. To say this, and even that this is the primary motivation in most strikes, is not to demean them. It is not being greedy to want to satisfy your material needs; it is being natural since unless they are met you can’t enjoy life in other ways. Humans don't live by bread alone, but we can't live without it.

5. We are sorry if the photo of Mao accompanying our review of your book was inappropriate. The “worryingly approving comments” on the Cultural Revolution we had in mind was not that you showed any sympathy for Mao (which you didn't) but precisely the passage you quote about it being a "pseudo-revolution which triggered a real revolution". It was a pseudo-revolution. but it didn't trigger any “real revolution". As far as we are concerned, the whole episode was a struggle between various rival élites which had nothing to do with the working class.

Editors

These Foolish Things . . . Harvest (1997)

The Scavenger column from the January 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Harvest 1

A recent US study has found that for every dollar spent on foreign aid for rice research, the US got back $17 in better varieties for its own crop. Aid dollars for wheat research realised 190-fold returns, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. Guardian, 24 October.


Harvest 2

“I do it because I would prefer to die than see the rest of my family starve,” said Sabir Saleh, a middle-aged man who used to be a farmer but is now too poor to hire a tractor to plough his land. Every morning he goes out into the minefields laid around Penjwin, a village in northern Iraq shattered by fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. Mr Saleh looks for one mine in particular, the Italian made Valmara, one of the most lethal anti-personnel mines in existence. It is not easy to spot, because its five khaki-coloured prongs look like dried grass. Pressure on any one of them causes the Valmara to jump to waist height and explode, spraying 1.200 ball bearings over a range of 100 yards. “I defuse the mine with a piece of wire.” said Mr Saleh. “Then I unscrew the top of it and take out the aluminium around the explosives. When I have taken apart six mines I have enough aluminium to sell for 30 dinar (about 75 pence) to a shop in Penjwin.” Independent on Sunday, 20 October.


Our friendly bobby

Two policemen have been accused of abducting a homeless old woman who had been sheltering in a terminal at Heathrow airport . They are said to have bundled her into a van and dumped her 25 miles away on a golf course at midnight. In December last year an officer was reported for attacking a down-and-out with his American-style baton. A pilot spotted the officer hitting the man five times, causing head injuries which required hospital treatment. Mail on Sunday, 20 October.


Trust the market!

There are 40,000 programmers working as temps in the UK alone—a figure that has doubled in the last two years. Basic pay is £200 a day, a total wage bill for British industry of at least £2 billion a year and. because there’s still a shortage, rates are climbing . . . Contract programmers might seem risky and expensive, but they’re better and cheaper than the alternative . . . Sharing the available bodies helps meet the demand for their skills. But this is only half the solution—the skills gap in the industry is getting worse, according to a depressing report from the Institute of Data Processing Management called “The End is Nigh”. The report says that too few programmers are being trained—partly as a result of companies relying on contractors . . . “New programmers are not coming through and there’s still a shortage for the older languages. Training for contractors is pretty rare, so they can't develop new skills.” Guardian, 7 November.


Poor outlook

Nearly one household in six in Britain is living below the poverty line, putting the country on a par with some of the poorest states in the European Union, according to the The Cohesion Report, published by the European Commission, 6 November.

'Scavenger'