Strikes — and General Strikes (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day has been chosen as a day of trade-union protest, arising out of a decision reached at a special Trades Union Congress held on 5th March. Some unions are making it a one-day strike, others are limiting it to shorter walk-outs and others again are merely holding protest meetings, or standing aloof. The strikers may number several millions and the event was widely reported in the press as a TUC General Strike.

In fact it bears hardly any resemblance to the planned and purposeful organizing that a serious General Strike would call for. Its timing alone shows that the General Council of the TUC is well aware of how little effect it will have on the Government, whose wage policy it is designed to change. The resolution carried on 5th March reads:

Congress calls upon the General Council . . .  to invite affiliated unions to join in a day of national protest and stoppages against the wage control policy and increase of food prices.

It also called upon the General Council to organize this “as quickly as possible”.

On 5th March the government’s wage policy (The Counter-Inflation Bill) had not become law; it was still  being debated in Parliament. If they believed in the effectiveness of the day of protest as a means of forcing the Government to drop its policy, the TUC could have organized it without delay. Instead, they waited until after the Bill became law at the end of March and then chose May Day. Had they chosen a date before the Bill was passed their bluff would immediately have been called — because it would have been demonstrated at once that the Government had not been deflected from its intention to enact the new law, any more than the Government was deterred from going on with the Industrial Relations Bill against which the TUC organized a similar day of protest on 12th January 1971.

Compromise

Discretion has been the order of the day for the TUC, and with some reason. In nearly two centuries of trade-union history it is impossible to find a single occasion on which a government and Parliament have been prevented by strike confrontation from passing a law they were set on. The reason for this is a simple one. Governments calculate that their legislation has the backing of a majority of the electorate, or at least will be accepted by them at the next election; and nearly three-quarters of the electorate are not trade-unionists.

While the unions have not been able to use confrontation to prevent laws being passed, they have been able to influence the laws in which they are particularly interested in another way. The workers need trade unions, but so also do the employers: under modern conditions the relatively orderly functioning of industry without organizations with which employers can negotiate pay and conditions is unthinkable. The government and the employers need trade-union law. But so also do the unions, if only to give them access to the courts to protect their £140 million funds. (In the early days and again from 1859 to 1871 this protection did not exist and the unions were at the mercy of those who misappropriated their funds.)

So, on numerous occasions, the unions have been able to “do a deal” with government or opposition, Tory, Liberal or Labour, for relaxations of the laws in return for the offer of trade-union concessions or support at elections. The last occasion was in 1969 with the Wilson government. The bargain then was that the Government, while not dropping their intention to go on with their Industrial Relations Bill, cut out certain clauses offensive to the unions in return for a TUC pledge to deal with “unofficial strikes”; at Wilson’s insistence this was written into the TUC Constitution.

The latest move of this kind is the suggestion by Scanlon of the Engineering Union that if the Government would amend the Industrial Relations Act the way would be open for the TUC to seek agreement with the Government on inflation and wages policy. He expressly disclaimed any intention to challenge Parliament.

More Effective Ways

All of this is a far cry from the idea of a serious General Strike. The purpose of such a strike, as with any other strike, should be to use the stoppage of work to hit the employers financially by stopping the production of wealth and profits. Its method would not be to create chaos by bringing all workers out but to bring out the smallest number that would be effective in the industries where the impact would be greatest. (In the 1926 General Strike the strikers called out to help the miners numbered under 2 million.)

As Marx showed and as experience supports, strikes are most effective when capitalism is expanding, factories are working to capacity and profit prospects are good — for it is at such times that the employers least want to interrupt production and are most likely to make concessions. Indeed, provided that the employers know the threat is a serious one, the concessions may be forthcoming without a strike or with one of very short duration. It was the weakness of the 1926 Strike that government and employers looked at the TUC General Council and decided that the threat was bluff. The same is true of the TUC decision of 5th March, which was so little regarded that it caused hardly a ripple on the Stock Exchange. It would have been very different if the threat had been taken seriously.

The 1926 General Strike has another warning: the absurdity of leaving such matters to the TUC General Council. The TUC General Council (unlike the central body in Denmark, where a General Strike recently took place) is not a trade union, does not engage in the ordinary wage-negotiating functions of a union, and is rather a kind of political organization for the big trade-union supporters of the Labour Party. Action by, say, half a dozen unions, under rank-and-file control, would be the appropriate way.

Careful Decision

The approach of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to strikes has always been based on the facts of capitalism on which our whole principles are framed. Those who control the machinery of government, including the armed forces, dominate society — hence the necessity for a Socialist working class to use the vote to gain that control for the purpose of achieving Socialism. It follows that the employers with their wealth and the backing of the State can always win against strikes if they think the issue important enough. As it was put in the Socialist Standard in April 1919:

   On the economic field the masters are in a far stronger position than the workers and can beat them any time they decide to fight to a finish.

It is for the unions therefore to weigh up carefully at a given time whether the employers will be likely to make concessions in order to prevent production being interrupted. Strikes should not be "on principle” and fought to a finish, but for what in the circumstances appear to be attainable objects.

The "illegality” of strikes is not itself a deciding factor. The unions, in their two hundred years, have often been expressly illegal or outside the law and have often been able to ignore laws which are on the statute book but which employers and the government tacitly allow to be ignored. It is, however, essential for unions when weighing up a situation to decide whether in the particular circumstances the government will actively intervene and decide to carry the fight to a finish against the unions, with their certain defeat.

Edgar Hardcastle 

Pictures of Racism (1982)

Book Review from the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women under Apartheid, IDAF, 1981.

This book is published by the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa—an organisation opposed to racial oppression—in co-operation with the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid. It consists of some 100 photographs from an exhibition commissioned by the UN. accompanied by a sketchy analysis of apartheid and its manifold consequences chiefly from the perspective of black women, and an account of their bitter and protracted struggle against the system from 1913 onwards.

At the heart of apartheid is the migrant labour system, a consequence of the government’s policy of “separate development”; the territorial division of South Africa into a developed “white” area comprising 87 per cent of the land, and the various tribal homelands or bantustans to which the African 70 per cent of the population belong. Roughly two-thirds of the 9½ million Africans in white South Africa are migrant labourers on annual contracts; the remaining one-third qualify for the right to reside in black townships or “locations” under the stringent conditions laid down in section 10 of the Urban Areas Act.

Influx control is the means whereby the system is maintained, ensuring an adequate supply of cheap labour. Those “economically superfluous” to the requirements of the white area are denied entry or are “re-located” to a homeland called their “country” to which they may never have been before. Indeed, since 1948 over 3 million Africans have been forcibly removed in this fashion and dumped in the homelands, compounding the desperate poverty there.

This basic pattern of black existence applies with particular force to women. More women (6.1m) than men (5.2m) live in the homelands since male migrants cannot take their families with them. As a result broken marriages and desertion are common and it is chiefly the women who bear the cost.

Sexually discriminatory laws deny women any right to land, though government appointed chiefs may allocate them areas for use. With overcrowding and poverty intensifying, increasing numbers of women are being forced off the land and into the migrant labour system. Like the men they are accommodated either in single quarters belonging to their employers or single sex, barrack-like hostels into which they cannot bring husbands, boy-friends or children.

As a group, black women earn considerably less than even the low wages paid to black men. For the most part they work as domestic servants for white women. According to the author Hilda Bernstein, after childbirth “the primary role of a white woman becomes that of consumer and living display, through leisure and adornment, of her husband’s wealth”, and the possession of a domestic or two enables them to fulfil this role.

Black women are discriminated against by residential laws in many ways. For example, the stipulation in the Urban Areas Act that the right to reside in an urban area is dependent on whether one has worked for a single employer in the area continuously for at least ten years, or lived in the area continuously for at least 15 years, works against women who stay with their parents in rural areas for the birth of their babies. Neither can women be registered as tenants in townships or stay in urban areas if widowed or divorced.

Some of the photographs are particularly poignant. An old woman in socks sitting against a wall mending her skirt with gnarled hands; another prostrate on the ground beside her scanty belongings, waiting for a train to some settlement camp. On the other hand, the picture of a crowd of black demonstrators bearing posters “WE STAND BY OUR LEADERS” certainly won't arouse sympathy in any socialist; indeed, one of the failings of movements such as the ANC is its elitist outlook. Apart from anything else, the existence of a hierarchical structure enables the authorities swiftly to immobilise protest by arresting its leaders. A rigorously democratic organisation would be much the stronger for not having to rely on “leaders”.

Finally, the book fails to discuss the sort of society which the struggle against apartheid seeks to bring about. It also tends towards generalisation and exaggeration and serves to obscure understanding of the structure of present society. An example is the statement that “through the apartheid system the wealth and resources are controlled by the ruling white minority”. This is not true. There are black capitalists and impoverished white workers, as well as white capitalists and black workers. Anyone who imagines that changing the colour of the ruling class will make a significant difference to the lot of black workers need look no further than the various despotic regimes of the homelands, such as Matanzima’s Transkei or Sebe’s Ciskei, which flaunt their corrupt opulence in the face of black starvation.

Robin Cox

The Last Word: A tale with two characters and two endings (1997)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

The Last Word column from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arriving home after a weary day of canvassing for The Extremely Normal Common Sense Party, Mr Cedric Opinion-Poll climbed out of his Ford Average, entered his regulation-size, semi-detached house in Ordinariville, and settled down to read the morning mail. He had left home early for his day as a financial mystifier for Inter-Useless, where he shares a desk with Ernie Smalltalk, a card-carrying non-voter who is tempted by those nice people with their yogic flying, but is ultimately of the view that you just can’t trust any of them.

Straight after work Cedric had thrown himself, with the moderate passion of a non-fanatic, into doing his utmost to return to parliament the same man who had represented Ordinariville East for the past ten years. He had met on the doorstep the usual stimulating responses: “Yes, I’ll be voting for him”; “No, I don’t think I’ll vote for him this time”; “Bugger Off, I’m watching Telly Addicts.” Cedric took all this in his stride. That’s politics, he concluded: everyone is entitled to their own point of view. Cedric himself was a man of no deep enthusiasms— but he knew what he liked, and The Extremely Normal Common Sense Party was for him.

I hope I have told you enough about Cedric to make it clear that he was not a man of extremes. Sometimes he would jest that the one thing he was extreme about was his hatred of extreme views. Stick to the middle ground, he concluded, and you’ll not go far wrong. For example, on the question of Europe Cedric took the view that it was good for Britain to be in, but there was no sense in going too far and all having to speak French. Cedric often found the newspaper editorials arriving at the same views as his.

Had I not seen it with my own eyes I would have thought I was looking at a different man. You see, it so happened that I had reason to call on Cedric recently with a view to borrowing a spanner. The man who came to the door was hardly the Cedric I have described to you.

“The bastards!” he shouted as he saw me, pulling me into his regulation-size living room. Now, it was not Cedric’s habit to use bad language. Something was clearly up. So I said, “What’s up, Ced?”

“The bloody little shits!” he shouted, holding out three envelopes as if about to perform a magic trick. All talk of spanners was off the agenda. Cedric was angry and as he showed me the contents of the three letters it was clear why.

“Nineteen years I’ve worked for the thieving little company. Nineteen lousy years of collecting my average salary and waiting for my nationally-mean pension. I was even invited to the directors’ Christmas party three years ago. And then they send me this. Don’t even have the nerve to tell me to my face. They just send it to me. Downsizing, they call it. Compulsory redundancies. They’re offering me unemployment counselling. I don’t need counselling. I need money. And I need it more than ever now.”

“Why?” I asked, as he thrust the second envelope at me.
“The bloody bank. All right, I admit I got a bit behind on the mortgage. All that money on a private health plan had to come from somewhere. A few months late on the mortgage and . . . “

Nobody likes having their home repossessed. It was enough to lead even Cedric to pour himself an extra-strong shandy—and kick the coffee table.

“So, what’s in the third envelope, Cedric?” I asked, almost as if I were a stooge in a political parable.

“It’s the latest election leaflet. They want me to go out and deliver two thousand this weekend. What a load of crap! ‘Those without jobs need to be given incentives to find new skills . . . every tenant deserves the right to buy their own home . . . ‘ I’m not handing out this old tripe. I don’t want a bloody job, anyway. I want work which is useful. Why spend my life making profits for a crowd of thieving directors who never lift a finger to produce anything. And why should I lose my home when there are thousands of empty homes they can’t sell and tens of thousands of building workers who want to build new homes.”

“You know, you’re right, Cedric,” I conceded.

“Am I really right?” asked Cedric, calming down and muttering, “Perhaps I’d be better off going down the Job Centre and seeing if they can find me a new job. Even if the salary’s lower, it would be something. And I suppose a house isn’t everything. As a matter of fact, a couple of rented rooms for me, Sheila and the nippers would certainly save on electricity. And I can always forget about that private health plan. The main thing is to get our man elected; he’ll see that these sort of problems are knocked on the head once and for all.”

It was then that I knocked Cedric over the head with his spanner. He fell unconscious: the perfect citizen of capitalism.

Steve Coleman

The Difference. (1915)

From the May 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Daily News and Leader” (24.4.15) quotes the following from a German Conservative organ, the "Post":

  “The reform of our domestic policy will mainly depend upon whether a fruitful co-operation between the Government and the non-Socialist parties, on the one hand, and the Socialists, on the other, is possible. This, in its turn, will depend upon whether Social Democracy will finally abjure the class war and its aims. The Leibneckt Ledebonr group is ruled out in advance. It remain unchanged. Hence it deserves, after the war, to be treated in the same way as it was treated before—and preferably in accordance with Bismarckian methods. It is different with the majority of the Socialists, whose representatives in Parliament have voted for the war credits and the Budget. But even so, their future conduct is uncertain and one must wait and see."

“It is different with the majority of the Socialists.” As we have endeavoured to show all along, the parties in this country claiming to be Socialist while not organised on the basis of the class war (the I.L.P., B.S.P., and the like), only practise fraud when they impose such a claim on the working class. The latter accept their statements too freely; they evidently think it does not matter much either way. The capitalists, however, are better instructed and know how to discriminate between the genuine and the spurious, as we see from the above. In this connection an anecdote illustrating [the same point was told in “Reynolds's" of August 30th last. The Kaiser for some time before the outbreak of the war had been endeavouring to conciliate German Socialists. While travelling in Switzerland his train was conducted by a well known Socialist representative of the Cantonal Labour Party. The Emperor bad a long chat with the guard. It is said that he afterwards overheard some of his entourage commenting on his having received the Socialist, and that he replied : “One must distinguish between what a man is and what he chooses to confess. My son also will come to that conclusion when be is older.”

The nature of the “Socialist” organisations on the Continent is easily seen from the decisions of the "Confidential Session” of the Austrian and German "Socialists" held at Vienna in the week ending April 17th. What could be more childish, for instance, than their demand for the “ transformation of the courts of international arbitration into compulsory institutions for the solution of all conflicts between the different States"? There can be no compulsion at all without either the display or the exercise of physical force, and if the capitalists of every country could trust each other sufficiently to set up such a force for the purpose of keeping the peace, they could quite conceivably employ the simpler and lees expensive method of the arbitration court.

The demand of the Session for “international limitation of armaments by treaties, with general disarmament in view" is equally unattainable for similar reasons. While national groups of capitalists dictate the national policy, the nations will always be at loggerheads over markets. The friction and mistrust between these groups will not permit them to disband, the tendency being rather in the direction of greater friction as the backward nations enter into keener competition for a share in the world's market. Quarrels may possibly become lees frequent with the advent and progress of a genuine Socialist party in each country. But such a party will certainly not follow the example of the International or the “Confidential Session" and make itself ridiculous by demanding disarmament. It will know why armed forces are maintained.

  "Furthermore, the representatives of the Social Democratic parties of Germany, Austria, and Hungary declare: The fact that the Socialist parties of the belligerent countries are defending their country and their people must not constitute an obstacle to the maintenance of international relations among the Socialist parties and the continued working of their international institutions."

In other words, the German and Austrian "Socialists” plead for reconciliation with the labour decoys of other countries after the war, it being impossible to meet while the conflict is on, “less on account," as Mr. Bruce Glasier says, "of the difficulty of getting together a representative delegation from the belligerent countries than from the fear lest national animosity should burst forth in the congress, and the danger of prejudicing the political and military situation."

So little do these so-called Socialists understand the class war and its aims. True, the International sometimes passes pious resolutions about the “tried and victorious policy based on the class war,” but in the main their deliberations are confined to such impossible demands as have been quoted above, and to capitalist reforms, most of which are already in operation in one country or another, or are advocated by the Liberals or Tories themselves—which is sufficient in itself to condemn them as harmful to the working class.

The difference between the Socialist and the anti-Socialist is just that emphasised by the “Post” Stated clearly, the Socialist is one who takes up the prosecution of the class war to its final aim: the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. He who, claiming to be a Socialist abjures this, is therefore no Socialist and of necessity must be anti Socialist

F. Foan

Obituary: Albert Grayson (1996)

Obituary from the March 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Albert Grayson joined the SPGB in 1953 and was active in the Manchester area, supporting meetings, selling literature at outdoor meetings and demonstrations, and patiently explaining the party's case wherever he went. He did not seek the limelight, but will be remembered by Manchester members of that time for his reliable and steadfast support at all party activities.

In 1971 he left to live in New Zealand where he joined the SPNZ and became an active member of the Wellington Branch.

Albert will be remembered as a loving father and grandfather, a good friend, and a comrade.

The Material and the Tangible (1996)

Theatre Review from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Park by Botho Strauss. The Pit Theatre, Barbican Complex.

The engine of modern capitalism is commodity production. Goods are produced and services made available because it is profitable to do so. “Things” are a potential source of profit with the result that capitalism elevates the material and the tangible to positions of exclusive supremacy. That which is measurable and which has currency in dollars, marks and pounds, etc. is—by definition—more important than attributes and experiences which are not so quantifiable.

Capitalism is disconcerted by beauty, truth, dignity, generosity of spirit and so on, because these are intangible and elusive. You may have to pay ten pounds to buy a record of a Mozart symphony and perhaps a million times that amount for a landscape paining by Renoir, but in neither case does the cost reflect the beauty sublimed in the experience of listening to the music or looking at the painting. On the contrary it is the scarcity of the two artefacts which is crucial. If only one record of a Mozart symphony was available but several million paintings by Renoir existed, we would expect the prices of the record and the paintings to reflect these facts. Capitalist economics might now make the record a million times more expensive than any one of the paintings. To paraphrase Marx: in capitalist society their price is related to scarcity and not to intrinsic value.

What value can be attached to a Mozart symphony, a Renoir painting, the exhilaration of a sunny day in May, a mother’s love, a teacher’s power to enthuse, the integrity and conviction of a stunning piece of acting, the sense of being a respected member of a team, congeniality, generosity and fraternity? Capitalist economics has nothing to say about such matters. It is as though they were part of another world—a nether world remote from the “real” world of buying and selling and the market. Because they are not the subject of commodity exchange they are—in capitalism’s terms— capricious and unimportant, insubstantial and trivial. Yet for most people they are the essence of what makes life worthwhile.

I was reminded of such matters by Botho Strauss’s play The Park, which is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Park is an enigmatic, often confusing, play. It is made the more inscrutable because Strauss also makes reference to a Greek mythology and the story of Pasephae who, like Titania in A Midsummer’s Night's Dream, falls in love with an animal, and then (unlike Titania) she and her half-man/ half-bull offspring, the Minotaur, are hidden by her enraged husband in the Labyrinth. Perhaps Strauss is drawing deliberate parallels and for this reason the story is also labyrinthine? But whatever, it would certainly help people who are unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s play if they read a digest of the story before viewing Strauss’s play.

Oberon and Titania appear in The Park as flashers: Shakespeare’s lovers are a pair of ill-matched, mean-minded bourgeois couple; Puck is a latter-day artist intent on making a killing: the fairies are homeless punks, and the mechanicals rapacious businessmen. But if the story line is enigmatic, it is very clear what Strauss is saying. A society obsessed with markets, with buying and selling, with profits before all else, transforms humankind, and in doing turns potentially creative, altruistic and sociable people into materialistic monsters.

C. Wright Mills, the American sociologist, suggested that a key question to ask about any society is: "What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and this period? . . .  In what ways are they selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted?" (C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination). In this dense, complex, often funny and always interesting play it is very clear what kind of people Strauss sees as being "formed" in western capitalist society and. by implication, the revolutionary potential that exists for a different kind of society people by different kinds of human beings. The Park is exhilaratingly staged in the enveloping intimacy of The Pit. If the last few minutes are especially inscrutable the play is presented with such great skill and panache that these last moments did not spoil what for me was a splendidly iconoclastic evening.

Michael Gill

Falklands Comment (1982)

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is There Life After Jingoism?

The children who were taken off the requisitioned ship Uganda might have been bitterly disappointed at losing their cruise but instead they lined its rails singing Rule Britannia. The message that South Georgia had been taken was in a style which might have been used by Nelson and ended with “God save the queen”. Jingoism is not dead.

More significant was the absence of any popular protest of a size to disturb the government. Have the working class been duped yet again, after two world wars to end war, after Korea, Cyprus, Suez? What now of the peace movement, of the great marches and demonstrations, and the gentler protest of flowers slipped into the advancing rifles? We were told then that this movement was irresistible. that it was the way to build peace in the world and that peace was a priority above socialism. Yet another reform movement has been exposed as futile.

Workers who support capitalism are easily overborne by the propaganda supporting its class rule, exploitation, poverty, famine, war . . . Only the socialist—who is conscious to the facts of capitalism and the need to replace it with socialism—is immune. Socialists are not alone in hating what capitalism does to its people but they are unique in their understanding of why it does and of how to end it. Only a socialist society will abolish war. Socialists are the only true peace- mongers.

Gutter War

That prime example of gutter journalism, the Sun, published an article boasting that its man with the British Fleet in the South Atlantic had signed a missile sent to blow up an Argentinian ship. The missile, according to the Sun, had written on it, “Up Yours, Galtieri”. Needless to say, the missile was not aimed at Galtieri, but the uniformed wage slaves who serve his regime.

Church Comment

The Archbishop of Canterbury announced that he is opposed to wars unless they are necessary in order to protect life and property. So now we know: “Thou shalt not kill, unless . .."

His Own Petard

Even before the sinking of the Sheffield it was expected that the Argentinians would be pretty tough opponents—especially as they would be using a lot of weaponry made in Britain.

It was not, in fact, ironical that British servicemen should be shot at by ships, guns and missiles made in this country, directed by Argentinians who had been trained to use the weapons effectively over here. Britain is one of the world's great arms manufacturers and the armaments trade is highly competitive. Every arms producing country sends its salespeople out into the world to get orders, trying to persuade other states that their weapons are the most accurate, destructive and murderous on the market.

Armaments are commodities, made to be sold at a profit. Workers in the weapons factories use their abilities to turn out things which may at some stage be turned against them or against their fellow workers abroad. It is all good business, strictly in accordance with the precepts of capitalism. In any case, the country of origin of the missile which kills a worker is of no importance. What matters is that he or she dies in the interests of their masters, when they should be living and struggling for a society free of war.

Smashing Fascists

“Fight the fascists wherever they dare to show themselves”, said the Socialist Workers’ Party. Now that the Tory government is giving them the opportunity to pursue their futile fight against the fascists, SWPers are nowhere to be seen. Can it mean that they favour fighting ignorant fascist bootboys on the streets of this country, but they oppose the same dangerous tactics on an international level?

Money and Life

“Let’s get on with the war and damn the expense’’, demanded excitable Manny Shinwell in a House of Lords debate on the Falklands. It was assumed that the ageing ex-boxer, left-wing rebel, pacifist Labour minister, was talking about money but workers’ lives are also part of the expenditure of war.

As the first British ships sailed out of Portsmouth, one reliable estimate was that it would cost about £50 million just to get them across to the South Atlantic and back again, without staying for any length of time or doing any actual fighting.

Now we all know that these are hard times. There must be cuts. There must be no wasteful spending, so frivolous things like hospitals and old people’s homes must be slashed to the bone or we shall all sink beneath abject penury.

There were in fact a few feeble protests, from the customary feeble quarters, at spending so much on a military expedition instead of on schools, hospitals. social services and the like. The protesters, as usual, missed the fact that we live under a social system in which the priority is profit, not human comfort and safety.

Capitalism is always prepared to spend a huge part of its resources on destruction, regardless of how much deprivation there is in the world. It is no coincidence that it is at its most inventive, efficient and productive in wartime, when its aim is to destroy as much, and murder as many, as it can. It will need no help in this from outworn cynics like Shinwell.

Messages in the Media (1982)

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is increasingly difficult to take in the flood of words which is poured out daily by the various media, and we offer a few definitions in the hope that they may help the reader to make sense of the world.

Aggression: use of force by a hostile state,
    cf Self-defence: use of force by one’s own state.

Anti-colonialism (Argentine): seizing by force a small group of islands 400 miles away, entirely inhabited, by foreigners.

Anti-colonialism (British): killing Argentine servicemen in order to re-establish the right of the Falkland Islands Company to exploit the people of the islands.

Bicycle ride: the means by which three million unemployed could find jobs immediately.
  cf Bicycle rider: Norman Tebbitt’s father.

Bicycles, shortage of: the only reason why three million unemployed stay out of work.

Capitalism: a system of society in which the great majority of people own no capital.

Catholic priest: a man who thinks all Catholics should have large families, who refuses to have any family at all himself, and who is known as Father,
  cf Monk: a man who has renounced his family, and is known as Brother,
  and Nun: a woman who has renounced her family, and is known as Sister.

Day off: a month at Windsor.
   cf Brief break: two months at Sandringham.
   and Short holiday: three months at Balmoral.

Defence: attack.
  cf Defence expenditure: money spent preparing to attack other states in the next war.
  and Ministry of Defence: government department in charge of attacks on other countries.

Democracy, definition of Theodore Parker 1810-60: government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.
 cf British democracy. 1982: government of the people, by the politicians, for the capitalists,
 and Socialist democracy: system which will replace the government of people by the administration of things.

Education: process of preparing the children of the rich to give orders, and the children of the poor to obey them.

Food: trace elements found in some supermarket groceries.

Freedom of the press. British version: right of any very rich person to spread their views effortlessly to millions every day; right of groups of workers to spread their views with great difficulty to thousands every month.

God is on our side: message from Christian British chaplains to British troops fighting in the Falklands conflict.

God is on our side (in Spanish): message from Christian Argentine Chaplains to Argentine troops fighting in the Falklands conflict.

God: one who seems to have difficulty making his meaning clear in two different languages; one who needs to brush up his Spanish (or his English, according to the view taken of the Falklands conflict).

God save the king/queen: request to someone who doesn’t exist to preserve someone who shouldn’t.

History lesson: recruiting drive (“we have a passionate attachment to the [Falkland] islands which has been imbued throughout our schooldays”-young Argentine, The Times 5 May 1982).

Human nature: unexplained compulsive urge to murder, rob, rape and pillage possessed by everyone except the speaker and friends.

Human nature theory: an invention of the ruling class for use as an alibi explaining away the excesses of their system.

Idle dreamer: anyone who believes that the producers of the world’s wealth could produce it for themselves instead of for the property owners,
  cf Practical politician: person who believes the exploitation of one class by another is part of the natural law.

Inflation: device (advocated c.g. by J. M. Keynes) consisting of printing more and more paper money, by which governments have tried to keep wages, and salaries, in check.

Inflation, advantage of: the government that creates inflation then alleges that it is caused by the workers who try to defend themselves against it.

Inflation, expert on: person who says workers trying to achieve the same real wages they agreed to work for a year ago are in fact causing inflation; one who believes that workers can force up indefinitely or in some way fix the level of their own pay; one who believes (theoretically) that all workers therefore must be millionaires.

Inhuman behaviour: human behaviour under the stresses and strains of capitalism

Murderer: person punished for killing one human being.
   cf Military leader, person rewarded for killing many.

National catastrophe: hundreds of workers not working for several days after disagreements on wages and conditions.
   cf Salutary economic re-adjustment: millions of workers not working for years.

News: what is left in a newspaper after discounting the advertisements, instant-wealth competitions, attacks on strikers, salacious details of entertainers' lives, agony columns, strip cartoons, astrology, pictures of sporting heroes, praise of rich men, photos of nude women, gossip about the royal family, denunciations of workers’ idleness, stock-market prospects, snapshots of kittens, proprietor’s opinions, letters from the converted, forecasts of women’s fashions, speculation on sporting events, and rude gestures at the Press Council.
   cf Dissatisfied reader: one who has discounted editorial bias as well, and finds nothing whatever is left.

Patriotism: blind obedience to the group of capitalists who live in the same country.

Patriot: worker who is exploited by capitalism, and who is prepared to die in defence of the right of capitalism to do so.

Peace: war (peace “means being prepared to fight for that peace”, Rhodes-Boyson, The Times, 4 May 1982).

Poor, the: a large group of self-denying people who produce the world’s wealth and hand it over to a small group of rich individuals.

Rewards of religion: pie in the sky; meals beyond wheels; in the great by-and-by we shall eat you and I.

Right to life campaigner: person who supports the right to life of a two-day- old fertilised egg, but not the right to life of a twenty-year-old worker in uniform.

Right to strike: an integral part of human liberty in all foreign countries,
   cf Right to strike in this country: slogan of a gang of malcontents and trouble-makers.

Schooling: indoctrination.
   cf Free schooling: compulsory indoctrination.

Tomorrow: point of time at which the workers will be prosperous under capitalism.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: propaganda title for the Russian state-capitalist empire.

Visionary: person who believes we should work for a sane social system in the world we live in.
    cf Realist: person who knows he will be rewarded after his death with a splendid time in Heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana, Elysium, Paradise, etc.

Youth Employment Scheme: project to keep the young unemployed off the streets and out of the unemployment statistics, paying them small sums of money.
   cf Life Peerages: project to keep a few of the old unemployed off the streets, paying them large sums of money.

Alwyn Edgar

The NHS, from Birth to Old Age (2018)

From the July 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Health Service began seventy years ago, on 5 July 1948. One initial consequence was an enormous rush of patients who needed treatment that was now free at the point of use. One doctor, who had qualified on that very day, referred to:

   the colossal amount of very real unmet need that just poured in needing treatment. There were women with prolapsed uteruses literally wobbling down between their legs … It was the same with hernias. You would have men walking around with trusses holding these colossal hernias in. And they were all like that because they couldn’t afford to have it done. They couldn’t afford to consult a doctor, let alone have an operation. (Quoted in Nicholas Timmins: The Five Giants)

There had of course been progress in medical care before the NHS, such as big reductions in infant mortality, increases in life expectancy and much-improved treatment of infectious diseases such as TB. Better sanitation and so on had helped, but medical knowledge had improved too. During the Second World War, the Emergency Medical Service had provided free treatment, not just to war casualties but also to war workers, child evacuees and so on, and had resulted in the creation of a national blood transfusion service.

The Beveridge Report of 1942 advocated the establishment of ‘A national health service for prevention and comprehensive treatment available to all members of the community’. In reality, it was a way of getting workers who were ill well enough to go back to work; and, like most things under capitalism, it was done on the cheap. The talk of prevention entirely missed the point that much illness – both physical and mental – is caused by the way society is arranged, with dangerous and unhealthy living and working conditions and a great deal of stress inflicted on people.

The idea of free treatment lasted just three years, as in 1951 charges were introduced for dentures and spectacles. For the NHS cost far more than the government had expected: two-thirds more than predicted in its first nine months alone. The view that, as better care made people healthier, the cost of the NHS would fall turned out to be an illusion. As time went on, the idea of treatment that was free for all was gradually abandoned more and more, since the capitalists’ taxes simply could not pay the full cost and patients had to bear some of the burden. Free eye tests, for instance, were dropped in 1987. Nowadays only certain categories of people receive free dental care, and a medical prescription costs £8.60 per item (with a number of exemptions).

There were many changes over the years, partly as a result of advances in medical technology, such as transplant surgery, and the introduction of magnetic resonance imaging. But a constant theme was the mismatch between what was needed for patients and what could be afforded. Technical advances meant expensive new equipment had to be purchased; and people are living longer, resulting in them having more and more conditions that need to be treated. There have been frequent reorganisations, and privatisation and outsourcing have become commonplace, all undermining further the original vision of free and equal treatment for all, and they have been introduced in similar ways by both Labour and Conservative governments. Problems with, and cuts to, social care mean increasing difficulties for the NHS, which has more patients to cope with.

A nurse who is a socialist was interviewed in the June 1991 Socialist Standard. She made the point that the reforms brought in that year in April were to ensure that the NHS conformed to the demands of the market. She noted too the absurdity of applying price considerations to the provision of health care: ‘many pieces of technical equipment are unused because nobody can afford to buy their use’.

A particular problem in recent years, though no doubt it existed before, is that of stress among NHS staff. Almost two-thirds of young hospital doctors ‘say their physical or mental health is being damaged because pressures on the NHS are putting them under intolerable strain’ (Guardian online, 11 February 2017). There are also issues with recruitment, some but not all of them due to Brexit and the uncertainty that has created. Employing and retaining general practitioners is a particular problem, with many GP surgeries closing because they simply cannot be staffed. At present there is in all a shortage of at least forty thousand medical staff.

According to the British Social Attitudes survey, public satisfaction with the NHS was at 57 percent in 2017, a drop of six points on the previous year. The main reasons for being satisfied were the quality of care, treatment being free at the point of use, the attitudes and behaviour of staff, and the range of services and treatments available. Dissatisfaction was due to staff shortages, long waiting times, lack of funding, and government reforms. Despite all its problems, though, people consider that the NHS remains a key part of the welfare state.

A decent health care system would have increased resources, and treat both staff and patients far better than happens now. The socialist nurse mentioned above stated, ‘socialist hospitals will keep patients in for longer periods. At the moment hospitals do their best to throw patients out so that their beds can be filled, new money can be made. People need to be properly looked after and capitalism isn’t letting us do that as well as we can and should.’ In fact it is arguable whether keeping patients in for longer is such a good idea, and a socialist health service might well put far more emphasis on prevention rather than cure. But decisions about such matters will be made on the basis of what is in the true interests of those being treated, rather than what serves capitalism and profits.

Paul Bennett

Obituary: Bill Pritchard (1982)

Obituary from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Bill Pritchard died last October at the fine age of 93 the socialist movement in America lost one of its Old Timers, for Bill had been active in Canada during the first World War. He played an active part in the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 when he was arrested, made his own defence speech and received a year’s gaol. Part of his speech appeared in a paperback, Winnipeg 1919. Bill arrived in Vancouver in 1911 and immediately joined the early Socialist Party of Canada. He became the editor of their journal the Western Clarion. He joined forces with Charlie Lestor in speaking and writing activities. Charlie edited the OBU Bulletin in which he wrote a column headed “Lestor’s Corner”, a title taken from his speaker’s site in Vancouver. An interesting item in one of Bill’s letters was that his Father, at the age of 9, worked in Erman & Engel’s mill in Manchester. Along with Charlie Lestor, Bill was well known for his articles in the Western Socialist over many years. At the age of 91 he travelled by air, coast to coast, from Los Angeles to Boston to attend a WSP Conference. In co-operation with local Comrade W. Z. Miller, he produced and distributed several Marxian socialist leaflets. I'd like to conclude this tribute to Bill with one of his poetic endings to a letter:

When the Frost is on the Pumpkin
And it’s cooler in the Fall,
I may be in better spirits
And in better shape to call.

Our sincere condolences to his son, Arthur, and relatives.

G. R. Russell

The Capitalist Never Learns. (1932)

From the July 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

For two-and-a-half years the world has been in the throes of a severe business depression. The consequences of that depression have been far-reaching. Unemployment has mounted to fantastic heights, until to-day about 30 million workers in the leading countries are unable to find jobs. In fact, the world-wide incidence and growth of unemployment are so pronounced that even those who but a short time ago were seriously alleging that unemployment was due to the unemployed being too lazy to work, if the chance to do so were offered to them, have been effectively silenced. Nobody now pretends that there are jobs waiting round the corner, and that it is only love of lining up in a queue that keeps workers on the “dole" or the bread line. There are no jobs, just as there are no markets for the thousand and one commodities produced by industry and which the producers find they cannot sell. Plant stands idle just as men and women stand idle. If there are 300,000 miners in Great Britain who will never again be employed to go down a pit, there is likewise redundant plant of all kinds which will cease to be operated. The only difference is that capitalism has to feed its redundant workers in order to avoid trouble; its redundant plant it sooner or later scraps. For examples of this scrapping of plant, it is sufficient to refer to the Lancashire Cotton Corporation, Ltd., and National Shipbuilders' Security, Ltd. The first of these companies was incorporated in 1929 on the initiative of the Bank of England. According to a prospectus published in “The Times" of March 26th, 1931, “the aim of the Corporation is to acquire between 9 million and 10 million equivalent spindles, and it is intended that production shall be concentrated in the most efficient mills . . . the remaining mills being scrapped." The National Shipbuilders’ Security, Ltd., was also begotten by “the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” It was incorporated. “for the purpose of assisting the shipbuilding industry by the purchase and dismantling of redundant and obsolete shipyards . . .  and the re-sale of the sites under restriction against further use for shipbuilding" (see prospectus in “The Times" of January 21st, 1931). It is a pretty commentary on a social system that it has to devote new savings to the destruction of existing capital equipment because it has too much!

Not only has capitalism come up against the problem of surplus workers and redundant plant, but it is struggling to live down the effects of a too bountiful Nature. Vast areas in America are being thrown out of wheat cultivation, cotton acreage is reduced, Brazil is burning coffee, and wondering whether all her efforts to get stocks down to an “economic level" will be nullified by a bumper crop in 1933-34, sugar cane is not being cut in Cuba, oil wells are shut down in nearly every field, copper output is restricted, as is that of nitrate, the stocks of which equal three-and-a-half years' consumption. The list could be extended to include practically every raw material, but these few examples will suffice to show that want exists to-day, not because there is too little but because there is too much. All that is lacking is the opportunity to make profits, and because of this workers and plant stand idle, misery is widespread, and since Nature will not withhold her gifts they have to be refused or dissipated.

Under conditions such as these, which if we had not experienced them might be unbelievable, it is not surprising that universally the question is raised: “What has caused this crisis? What is its cure?” If the answer given to this question is to be of any value, there must be brought to the consideration of the subject an historical knowledge of previous crises. Such knowledge is conveniently provided by the late H. M. Hyndman's “Commercial Crisis of the 19th Century,” published in a new edition with a preface by J. A. Hobson (Allen & Unwin, Ltd.: 3/6). This book is probably the best Hyndman ever wrote. It is a classic of its kind; it has always been so recognised in interested circles. No one who wishes to understand economic development during the nineteenth century can afford to ignore it. It undoubtedly has its defects. The chief of these is a certain scrappiness in the treatment of the subject. In a work which attempts to cover so wide a field in less than two hundred pages, incompleteness is, however, inevitable. One thing for which the reader will search its pages in vain is, as Hobson points out in his preface, an explanation of why a system of production based on profit-making “expresses itself in a recurrent failure of demand to keep pace with supply.” Nevertheless the book is exceedingly useful, particularly at the present time. Hyndman confined himself to an “historic account of these successive failures.” He succeeds sufficiently well in his purpose for us to be able to agree with the statement, made in Hobson's preface, that “those who witness to-day in almost every trade and every country masses of idle workers facing idle machinery and untilled fields will be disposed to give close and serious consideration to Hyndman's declaration that 'the capitalist class has virtually declared its own inability to conduct the business of the community.' ” In those words of Hyndman are summarised our case against capitalism, and our justification for urging the workers to become Socialists.

It is usual to hear the present crisis spoken of as being unique. It is explained as being due to reparations and war debt problems, the hoarding of gold by Central Banks, the failure of creditor countries to lend to debtor countries, and again in the same quarters as being caused by over-borrowing by debtor countries. Economic nationalism and the raising of tariff barriers are blamed to a greater or less extent. Finally, every explanation involves a reference to the stultifying effects on business of the fall in prices. The explanations are as numerous as the suggested remedies, of which the most popular are those which aim at raising the price level through manipulation of the currency. In this group of proposals fall the suggestions for the introduction of bimetallism, managed paper currencies, and international monetary conferences. Only a slight knowledge of economic development during the past century is necessary to show that far from being a unique phenomenon, the present crisis is of the same kind as those of the past, and that the so-called "explanations" only repeat the explanations put forward by the men who lived through the crises of the nineteenth century. Further, the remedies now proposed merely represent a refurbishing of old ideas.

Certain unimportant characteristics of each crisis are, of course, particular to the crisis concerned, but in their broad outlines, all crises present the same features. The resemblance between one crisis and another even goes to the point, of those who live through any particular crisis, imagining that it is something entirely different from anything that has gone before, and of those of them who advocate remedies always thinking that the adoption of their proposals will prevent the recurrence of crises in the future. But just as a war to end war only sows the seeds for another war, so the melting away of a crisis in a burst of renewed activity only prepares the way for the next crisis. Until that fact is clearly realised, the true cause of a crisis cannot be appreciated, for not until then will it be seen that the fundamental cause of all crises must be the same. This is to say that it must be a continually operating cause, and cannot be something, such as reparations or war debts, particular to the individual crisis. Such special factors may, of course, intensify a crisis when it comes, delay its solution or help to determine the time of its occurrence. Their responsibility for causing it cannot be carried further than that.

Crises are inherent in the capitalist system of production owing to the fact that production is based on the principle of profit-making, not on that of satisfying needs. Goods are produced in order to be sold at a profit. When trade is booming productive capacity is extended in order to increase the opportunities to make profits. New plant is installed, new sources of supplies of raw materials are opened up to enable the output of finished products to be increased. Competition between producers to secure the lion’s share of the profitable markets leads to production being extended further and further. Finally a point is reached when the supply exceeds the demand. Markets are glutted. Production has to be curtailed, first in one sphere and then gradually in others. Prices fall as stocks are unloaded. Workers are dismissed, and as their wages cease the demand for commodities further declines. The spiral is then leading downwards to business stagnation, bankruptcies and widespread unemployment. The boom has dissolved into a depression. There is a crisis. Then in time stocks run off, there are a number of bankruptcies, demand revives, and the mad dance through the figures of boom and slump goes on again.

This is a brief description of the course and cause of all crises. Any attempt to explain or deal with a crisis that ignores the profit-making basis of capitalism ignores essentials, and can only deal with what are, more or less, irrelevancies. Once it is realised that crises arise because the object of production is the making of profit, all remedies, such as those for currency reform, of which so much is now heard, must be dismissed as futile. As they fail to take account of the fundamental cause, they cannot hope to prevent its operation in the future, whatever temporary relief they may afford. The only means by which economic crises, such as the present, can be permanently banished from the world is by the overthrowing of capitalism. Until the present system of society is superseded by one from which profit-making has been eliminated, crises will, and must, occur periodically.

A study of past crises by revealing the correspondence in events between them and the present crisis will help to put the popular explanations and suggested remedies for to-day’s depression in their proper perspective and to demonstrate the truth of the assertion made above that crises are inherent in the capitalist system of production. Here it is impossible to consider the crises of the past in detail. That has been done by Hyndman, and readers are recommended to study what he has written on the subject. Certain features of past crises will, however, be discussed so that the similarity between present and past events may be demonstrated.

Before doing this, however, it is worth referring to one aspect of economic crises which is too frequently overlooked. To appreciate the real significance of an economic crisis it is essential to realise that what takes place in a time of crisis over the whole business field and in several countries is taking place continuously locally and in particular spheres of business. In some industry or place, plant, workers, and commodities are always proving to be redundant, as the supply of the particular commodity outruns the demand. It is when this condition becomes general and pronounced that the disease is glorified with the title of crisis and the general manifestation is treated as some rare event. 

B. S.

(To be continued.)

Part 2 here.

Not a Private Matter (1996)

Pamphlet Review from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Foundations of Modern Humanism by William Mcllroy (Sheffield Humanist Society. £1.)

The Socialist Party doesn’t take the position that religion is a private matter, beyond rational criticism. All religions have something to say about how we should live our lives on this earth and, when looked at dispassionately, what they do say is thoroughly objectionable. Of course not all religions say exactly the same thing. They can be viewed as a spectrum: at the one end there are religions such as Taoism which are more philosophies of life than religion proper. Moving through the spectrum we find numerous religions, each offering salvation only through their God, and at the other end we find the three main religions of the twentieth century: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In Britain the most important of the specifically atheist organisations is, and has been for over a century, the National Secular Society. Its monthly journal. the Freethinker, is the best of its type and well worth reading for the ammunition it provides against religious superstition. Bill Mcllroy was for many years its editor and is the author of this pithy pamphlet He shows how, as a general rule, religion upholds the existing state of affairs. For instance, take this little ditty penned by a bishop's wife:

"The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them, high or lowly
And order’d their estate"

His explanation of the foundations of modern humanism, as a rejection of religious beliefs, is a history of the doings of liberal reformers. The writings of Thomas Paine is the most obvious example (although Paine himself was not an atheist). As is usual in this sort of account there is no mention of the socialist argument against religion. But it is from Marx that we have the most useful way of looking at religion—as a narcotic growing out of the material circumstances of life. For humanists, criticism of religion is a process towards the eventual triumph of reason. But they ignore the material conditions which give rise to superstition:

     "Consequently, in his worship of the ‘idea' the bourgeois freethinker is, like the Christian, attributing miraculous powers to the figments of men's brains" (Socialism and Religion, Socialist Party pamphlet, 1911).

On the new basis of material security and social co-operation, provided by socialism, individuals can gain a sense of meaning in their lives, with hope for a future free from the dead hand of religious belief. Rather than being abolished, religion can be expected to (as Engels said about something else) “wither away”.

Lew Higgins

Cooking the Books: Riding for a fall (2018)

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

John McDonnell is portrayed by his critics as an opponent of capitalism. He goes along with this but is riding for a fall. An interview with the BBC on 20 May was reported the next day in the Times under the headline ‘McDonnell: I’d overthrow capitalism’:

  ‘The shadow chancellor said he wanted to transform society “in a way that radically changes the system”. Asked if his job was the overthrow of capitalism, he replied: “Yes it is. It’s transforming the economy.” Pressed on whether there was a difference between transforming and overthrowing capitalism, he said: “I don’t think there is . . . I want a socialist society.’

These days, this sounds quite radical but in fact is merely what previous generations of Labour Party reformists have held. They envisaged the state capitalist economy adopted as their long-term aim in 1918, and which they called ‘socialism,’ coming into being gradually through a series of nationalisations and social reforms enacted by successive parliaments and Labour governments. This is what McDonnell means when he talks of ‘transforming the economy’; this to be a gradual process, ‘overthrowing’ capitalism piece by piece. It’s the classic reformist position.

This involves presiding over the operation of capitalism for a long period. However, capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of ‘the many’. Capitalism runs on profits and any government which takes on the task of presiding over its operation is sooner or later forced to recognise this and, in the end, to allow and even encourage profit-making to take priority over pro-worker reforms. This has been the fate of all Labour governments.

A Labour government, with McDonnell as chancellor, would be in an even weaker position than previous ones. His ‘transformation of the economy’ is to begin while leaving production entirely in the hands of private profit-seeking businesses:

  ‘Asked by the BBC what he would do to private businesses Mr McDonnell replied: “We’d follow France’s example – they legislate for profit-sharing. We’d expect companies to profit-share as well as ensure they have a decent wage policy.”’

Profit-sharing, that old swindle! It’s what the Tories used to promote as ‘people’s capitalism’ and as a way to get workers to believe that their interest was the same as their employer’s. Trade unionists opposed this as it substituted a contracted wage of a regular amount by one in which a part of wages varies with the profitability of the employer’s business.

The best known profit-sharing business in Britain is the John Lewis 'Partnership ' (as it calls itself). Its latest annual report shows how profit, and so the ‘profit-sharing’ part of wages, can go down – and down – as well as up:

   ‘John Lewis Partnership (JLP) has cut its annual staff bonus to the lowest level in 64 years after profit plunged at the group, which owns Waitrose and a chain of department stores . . . Sir Charles Mayfield, the chairman, said it had been a “challenging year”. He blamed the downturn in profit and the staff payout – which has been cut for five years in a row – on subdued consumer demand and “significant changes to operations across the partnership, which affected many partners”. Mayfield said the coming year was likely to put further pressure on profit’ (Guardian, 18 March).

McDonnell, apparently, regards schemes which allow take-home pay to be cut five years in a row as ‘a decent wage policy’. And, of course, ‘profit-sharing’ implies that production for profit continues.

Elementary Union Rights (1996)

Book Review from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Our Freedom and Yours, A History of the Polish Solidarity Campaign 1980-1994. (PSC. £5.)

No one committed to the interest of the working class could have failed to have been moved by the events in Poland of August and September 1980. Here, under a dictatorial regime which had not hesitated to shoot down striking workers in the past, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike to obtain elementary trade union rights, formed their own inter-workplace liaison committees and eventually forced the leaders of the dictatorship to come and negotiate in public, with loudspeakers relaying the negotiations to the assembled workers outside.

We, naturally, were moved and immediately issued a statement on "The Class Struggle in Poland" which began:

  “The Socialist Party of Great Britain applauds with sympathy and admiration the courageous stand of the Polish strikers in their struggle to independently organise and negotiate over the wages and conditions. Their action bears out what we have consistently claimed and what no amount of repression, censorship. and pretence can indefinitely conceal. Poland is no "workers state on the road to socialism’’ but a state capitalist, one party regime, where the working class inevitably comes into conflict with those who control the means of wealth production and distribution."

Others who were moved were some ex-Trotskyists who took the initiative to set up a Polish Solidarity Campaign in September [1980]. This book is a detailed. almost blow-by-blow history of that organisation. Its original aim was to get the TUC and the Labour Party to withdraw their "support” and recognition from state employer-run puppet organisations" as they correctly described the official so-called trade unions in Poland.

Believe it or not, they had some difficulty in achieving this, with the TUC and other unions continuing to invite representatives from the official state "unions” to their conferences, and with Tony Benn, for all his talk about the need for more democratic and trade union rights in Britain, playing a particularly shameful role as what Lenin once called a "useful idiot".

After General Jaruzelski imposed martial law in December 1981 the PSC had more success but another problem arose. Two separate Trotskyist groups tried to take the PSC over. They failed and the sort of manoeuvres they resorted to—and still resort to with regard to other organisations—are well-documented and exposed in this book. One reason they failed (apart from the fact that the ex-Trotskyists in the PSC knew from their own Trotskyist days exactly what was going on) was that they weren’t wholeheartedly opposed to the Polish regime. They regarded it as a “deformed workers state" but a workers state nevertheless. A "workers” state that oppresses the workers—such is the absurd position of orthodox Trotskyism.

In the following years the PSC's emphasis shifted from supporting working-class struggle in Poland to supporting the demand for an independent (of Russia), democratic Polish State. In other words, Polish nationalism replaced working-class solidarity. In fact, the PSC became little more than a publicity organisation in Britain for Solidarity, even after it evolved into the right-wing Catholic trade union and political organisation it is today.

We in the Socialist Party didn’t make this mistake since we never supported Solidarity as such but rather the workers’ struggle against their state-capitalist bosses. And our solidarity was with our fellow workers in another geographical part of the world struggling to establish elementary trade union and democratic rights, not with the "people of Poland" trying to establish a capitalist democratic state. 

Adam Buick

Rolling in Poverty (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

To most people the word ‘poverty’ means one of two things. Either life below the breadline, such as experienced by many in this country in the last century and by millions still today in the less developed parts of the world. Or simply being badly off, of having enough to live on but not being able to afford the extra comforts which most other members of the community enjoy. Socialists also discern poverty of a third kind, of which however more later.

Looking at the first type of poverty, where people actually suffer sickness or death from undernourishment, we find that it has virtually disappeared from Britain and the other economically advanced countries of the world. The second type however is still rife. It exists among various sections of the population, the low-paid, the unemployed, the old, the disabled. Government statistics describe as “poor” families whose net income, less housing and work expenses, is less than 20 per cent over the Supplementary Benefit rate. In Britain 5 million families, and altogether 16 per cent of the population, fall into this category.

If the first type of poverty has been wiped out, why then should the second type still be so prevalent? After all we are no longer in the dark days of the 19th century when wealth was limited and goods seemed scarce. Today our local supermarket bursts at the seams, gleaming newly-designed cars fill the showrooms, huge £2 million airliners carry large numbers of people from one country and one continent to another. Why in the midst of all this plenty does there still not seem to be enough to go round with fair shares for all? Why this continual inequality?

While the conditions in which people lived and worked 100 years ago now seem a far-off nightmare to most of us, the lives they led did have one thing in common with those we lead today. They, like us, depended for their livelihoods on selling their energies to an employer for a wage or salary. Under far worse conditions admittedly, but the very fact that their existences revolved round the fact of having a job meant that their standard of living, like ours, was determined by what today is termed the job market. If the economy, particular industry or occupation in which they were engaged went into decline or needed fewer workers, they ran the risk either of a reduction in real wages or of unemployment. And for them this could mean poverty of the first kind, or starvation. The same situation exists today but with the obvious difference that the low-paid and unemployed, instead of being left to starve, are “cushioned” by state benefits of various kinds and hence suffer the second kind of poverty, having less to spend than the average worker. Yet this promotion from absolute poverty to state-defined poverty does not hide the fact that the economic basis of society, the competitive lines along which the world is run, has not changed since the 19th century. The need to make profits is still the dominant feature. As long as an enterprise is profitable (or “viable” in the language of state-run concerns) jobs remain and wages can even go up. But as soon as, for any reason at all, profits fall or become losses, lower real wages or unemployment result. A change of attitude on the part of governments in recent years means that such economic downturn does not bring the absolute poverty of former times. Governments have learned from experience that a large destitute work force is both potentially explosive and in the long term a neglect of a valuable resource. So they now prefer to take a more active part in the management of affairs and to keep their low-paid and unemployed workers physically and mentally fit. For when next there is an expansion of trade and profits to be made, their abilities can again be put to work. As neither governments nor employers can forsee periods of boom and recession in the market, labour, trained and untrained, must be ready at hand to exploit the upturn when it comes. Otherwise opportunities are missed and the markets go to foreign competitors who have been quicker off the mark.

So if the “poor”, the 16 per cent are still with us, it’s not because there isn’t enough to go round (with today’s technology and expertise, resources, if used rationally, could be easily sufficient to satisfy all people’s needs), but because the anarchic, uncontrollable nature of the economic system under which we live does not allow for the elimination of poverty, only for unpredictable ups and downs in the production and distribution of the world’s wealth.

The vast majority of this wealth anyway is concentrated in a small number of private hands. What all those who sell their bodily and mental energies for money (the vast majority of the population) get, unevenly distributed among them, is the tiny amount of wealth remaining. And here we have a third kind of poverty, the one mentioned at the beginning as being discernible to socialists. It is neither complete destitution nor life on low pay or the dole but the relative poverty of all the world’s workers, those who run the system from top to bottom and yet, whether “high- paid", “low-paid” or unemployed, see only a tiny fraction of the wealth they produce. In absolute terms they are far better off than their fellow workers of the last century, but in relative terms they are worse off. Their percentage share of the total wealth is considerably lower than that which went to their 19th century counterparts.

This helps to explain why workers’ pay never seems to be enough. Even on high wages, the drabness of their lives and the comparative shoddiness of their possessions are as nothing compared with the vast wealth on view everywhere around them and, in particular, with the supreme comfort and luxury in which the small minority who own most of the wealth and don’t depend on being employed for their livelihood, are able to live. Not of course that the attainment of wealth necessarily leads to great personal satisfaction. But this is the illusion that everything in our competitive set-up, in particular advertising and the media, conspires to create. Furthermore to a society permeated by economic insecurity (how many of us do not tremble for our jobs at some time in our lives?) and the mentality of getting ahead at the expense of others envy and the urge to get as much money as possible “behind you” while the going’s good is a perfectly comprehensible reaction.

As an alternative to the system which produces and perpetuates poverty we have a completely different kind of society to propose, one which will do away with poverty in all its definitions. We propose a world community in which all the resources at man’s disposal are used to satisfy the needs of people, not of profits. There will be no poverty of any kind quite simply because all wealth will be owned in common and all persons will have free access to all goods. There will be no money, no employers, no wages, no frontiers. Only voluntary cooperation and economic equality In a society in which what you need will be readily available when you need it the “I want more” mentality will inevitably be absent. To achieve this change of society we need a revolution in ideas followed by a political revolution in which people by majority vote (not by minority violence) will usher out the present world system of buying and selling.

Howard Moss