More Labour dishonesty (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little over fifty years ago, in the first general election after the First World War, the Socialist Standard had an historic front page. It was an enlarged reproduction of a ballot paper; there were the names of the various capitalist parties—Labour, Conservative, Liberal and so on. And written across all of them was the one word—Socialism.

This cover was saying, with what the public relations men might call instant visual impact, that no working class voter should use his vote to support any of the capitalist parties and since there were no socialist candidates standing in that election, the only thing worth doing was to state a preference for Socialism by writing the word on the voting paper.

Here was an uncompromising stand. There was in fact no point in compromise, since there was no fundamental difference between the other parties and they all stood for some method of running capitalism. No one who understood Socialism and wanted it could vote for any of them.

It is not surprising that this attitude has provoked a lot of criticism. Socialists have been accused of splitting the vote, of refusing to opt for the least, or the lesser, of many evils. This argument was based on the assumption that there was something in common between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the capitalist parties—that there was a vote to split. It also assumed that there was something to choose between, say, the Labour and Conservative parties—that there was a lesser evil. These assumptions are quite false—and if there were any grounds for doubting this in 1918 the subsequent experiences of Labour governments should have effectively removed them.

Another criticism of our stand was that spoiling a ballot paper was wasting the vote; we were advising workers to waste and abuse a right which had been established only after a long and sometimes bloody struggle. This argument again was based on false assumptions—that workers somehow protected their interests by choosing between one capitalist party and another; and that the vote must be go to some candidate or other, even though he was anti-working class. In fact, all the evidence indicates that the only way to use the vote properly is against all the parties of capitalism and in favour of the establishment of Socialism.

With all this in mind, it is interesting to notice an event in last month’s municipal elections in Wolverhampton, which is already famous enough because Enoch Powell is one of its MPs. In one of the wards there the official Labour nominee forgot ( yes, forgot) to hand in his nomination papers in time and so was prevented from entering the contest. This left only two candidates — a Tory and a member of National Front.

Here was a situation in which Labour Party strategists of expediency and double-dealing should have been in their element. In this straight fight which was the lesser of the two right wing evils—Tory or Fascist? How should the frustrated Labour supporters in St. Peter’s ward cast their votes?

The Conservatives, perhaps expecting the Labour Party to act honestly, promptly appealed to the Labour M.P. Mrs. Renee Short, . . . to do all she could to ensure the defeat of the National Front candidates by persuading Labour supporters to vote Tory.” (The Guardian, 28 April).

Now in accordance with the Labour Party tariff of political virtue there should have been no problem about their agreeing to do this. In fact what happened was the Mrs. Short’s agent replied that she would ". . . never advise Labour supporters to vote Tory in any circumstances.” And just to ram home the point that Labour are confused and dishonest, he said :

  At the same time, we would never advise them to vote for the National Front. They can either abstain or simply mark ‘Labour’ on their ballot paper.

We shall have to stifle our natural feelings of pique at this stealing of our idea and instead try to draw some lessons from it. First, we should notice the bare-faced expediency of Labour tactics. When they feel safe to argue that they are the least of the available evils they want to win votes from workers who are actually opposed to them. But when some other organisation stands to gain from the application of this theory, Labour suddenly finds that it is alright to “waste” votes —even to abstain.

The other, perhaps more important, point is that there is every reason for the Labour Party to extend their argument. It is true that there is no fundamental difference between the Conservative Party and National Front and therefore there is no reason to favour one over the other. But equally there is nothing to choose between Labour and the other parties — Tory, Fascist. “Communist” and so on. That is why workers should vote for none of them. The better, in fact the only, use of the vote is for something basically different from them all—for a new social system.

Which brings us to the final point. Socialism is an idea which implies certain political principles and one of these is an unshakeable refusal to compromise with the enemies of the working class—with any political party, whatever it calls itself, which stands for capitalism. When a worker goes into a voting booth and, where there is no socialist candidate, writes Socialism across the paper he is doing several things.

He is saying that he hates capitalism, is declaring for a social revolution to replace it. He is standing up as the enemy of all the capitalist parties. And in all these he is, simply, stating a principle and when it is all over, when all the votes have been cast and counted, there is no avoiding the fact that expediency can offer nothing to compare with that.

Ivan

Power & Principle (1996)

From the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have always argued that the Labour Party is nothing more than a vehicle for careerist politicians to achieve power — Blair and company have merely proved our assertion

It was probably the late Harold Wilson who made Labour’s naked thirst for political power so clearly obvious. In the succeeding years, as Labour leader followed Labour leader, the frustrated urge to become the political king of the castle has forced Labour leaders to abandon utterly any pretence of principle beyond that of achieving power. In Tony Blair, known to Tories as Tory Blair, Labour has achieved its contemptuous zenith.

Neil Kinnock, before he and his wife found rich rewards in European politics, always seemed somewhat troubled by the undignified and unprincipled thrust for political power. Unlike Blair, whose granny would be in decided danger if she stood between him and the realisation of his personal ambitions, Kinnock, stirred, perhaps, by the memory of working class sacrifice that had made the Labour Party, felt obliged to explain. Principle was, he said, useless without power.

In so far as he went, Kinnock spoke the truth—a truth, we must acknowledge, exemplified by the history of the Labour Party and the Socialist Party. The latter was born in 1904 and the former two years later, in 1906. But, whereas the Socialist Party was structured in strong democratic socialist principles the Labour Party came into existence as a coalition of interests, often conflicting interests, whose broad spectrum of principles were scattered to the wind when it first achieved political office in 1924.

But that is not the end of the story, nor does it fully illustrate the valid point Kinnock was making. In the years between, the Labour Party became a “broad church” whose various “wings” espoused those single issues which the Tories—and, sometimes, Labour itself—opposed. It became a party of government holding the reins of power on eight occasions since 1924.

Dismal future

On the other hand, the Socialist Party has remained small and without influence other than the respect it retains, even among its opponents, for its strong adherence to its socialist principles. Consistency, someone said, is a virtue for fools but that is consistency for consistency’s sake. In a situation where the three main parties, Tory, Labour and Liberal, each of which upholds the political and economic status quo, have conspired to ensure that only the case for capitalism is given a voice on the public media, the principled consistency of the Socialist Party is clearly justified not only by the logic of its case but by the unfolding absurdity of the Labour Party’s attempts to humanise capitalism.

Probably many of Labour’s troubled supporters—loyal only because of the utter ruthlessness of the Tories—would argue that adherence to socialist principles is a waste of time if there is no obvious indication that they are going to lead to winning the political power to implement those principles.

If that is the case then the working class, not only here but throughout the world, is confronted with a dismal future. The political vehicle on which they have in the past pinned their hopes for change and a better future, parties of reform such as Labour and Social Democratic parties, have been given power time after time and the outstanding memorial to their wielding of power is their utter failure to solve even one single problem of the working class.

When reform parties achieve political power, when they become the party of government, its members who make up the government have each a personal vested interest in remaining in office and that interest is reflected in the activities of their parliamentary' followers who, if they are to do their job in the terms in which they see that job, must aspire to political influence and promotion within the party. Effectively, the party and its members are in the business of politics, economically harnessed to maintaining their job in the same way as any other person who is dependent on a wage or salary.

Obviously the pressures this puts on the individual member of parliament and on political parties is not conducive to the nourishment of principles. This is not to suggest that every member of parliament is devoid of principle but it does mean that, when there is a conflict between continuing in power and standing by a principle, the greater “principle” of power retention comes into play.

Continued betrayal

Kinnock’s contention that, without power, principle is politically impotent is perfectly right but the achievement of power in conditions in which principles—if they exist, in the first place— have to be jettisoned in the face of the inevitable consequences of power is perhaps even more overwhelming for—as we have seen with Labour, continual betrayal emaciates and endangers even those principles to which the party and its members falsely lay claim.

Given the undemocratic set-up that prevails between the media—especially the powerful electronic media—and the main political parties which effectively imposes a ban on ideas that challenge capitalism, the false claims made by those parties thwarts democracy. Unfortunately, such is the flagrant dishonesty that exists in capitalist politics that most people will find difficulty in countenancing that claim. But the same people will readily accept the need for legislation such as the Sale of Goods Act to protect the public from false claims made by either manufacturers or retailers of even comparatively inexpensive or trivial items. Yet the political parties can inveigle people into parting with their votes—and the democratic determination of their future—on the basis of promises that can be thrown in the wastepaper basket immediately following an election.

Such are the direct consequences but the results are even more destructive of democratic practice. In the ease of Labour and its various Left supporters, the exploitation of supposed socialist principle to achieve political power has not only grossly deceived the working class but has proven vitally protective of capitalism in that it offers an image of “socialism” as something which is vitally flawed in practice. Not only has Labour—and, indeed, the Left generally—perverted the nature of Socialism, but they have been as assiduous as the Tories—and the Right generally—in ensuring that real socialists are not afforded the opportunity to challenge their misrepresentation on the electronic soapbox.

Kinnock’s assertion that principle without power is useless is equally valid when stated in reverse: power without principle is not only useless, as the history of Labour governments shows, it is worse since it is destructive of the principles it pretends to have.

Historical proof

Where, we might ask, does this leave the Socialist Party? Our principles are based on the logic of our socialist theory; on the knowledge that human society has developed to the point where the potential exists to provide for the material needs of every human being on the planet; on the assumption that, faced with the ultimate reality of capitalism’s failure to solve the ghastly problems that it creates, human beings will take into their common ownership the means of life; that common ownership, and the abolition of all the wasteful activities that capitalism makes necessary, will permit society to function on the basis of free labour in the production of goods and services and free access to the fruits of that production.

That is the socialist proposition, the root of our socialist principles and the Socialist Party does not seek power for itself to enthrone those principles. We seek to promote and spread a knowledge of Socialism and whether the majority that ultimately takes the required political action to bring about Socialism uses the Socialist Party or some other political vehicle to take power from the political agents of capitalism and establish Socialism is of no consequence to us. Our task will be completed with the achievement of Socialism; politics will disappear as government over people gives way to a straightforward democratic administration of social production and distribution.

The important thing is the historical proof that the record of reformist political parties gives to socialists: capitalism cannot be made to function in the interests of the great majority of people, the working class, who are the real wealth producers. However long it takes for that truth to percolate the consciousness of the working class, for that period we will suffer the social problems that have been the identification marks of capitalism since its inception.

Conversely, until that consciousness begins to take root, the Socialist Party will retain its principles and seek its purpose in the dissemination of those principles.

Richard Montague

Running Commentary: Refugees (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Refugees

The aim of the United Nations at the time of its establishment was to “cut the causes of war at their roots”. But because the causes of war are related to the struggle among sections of the ruling class, organised in separate nation states, for markets, trade routes and natural resources, and because the United Nations was not established to end class-divided society, it is hardly surprising that the organisation has failed completely in its objective.

Since its foundation the destruction and slaughter of war has continued unabated all over the world. Even in recent times, over Vietnam, Korea, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan and now in the Falklands, we have seen its manifest impotence to control military disputes with sanctimonious resolutions of the “502” variety.

Another aim of the UN was to deal with the problems of refugees. What are refugees? They are walking, sandwich-board-like indictments of the lunatic way society is presently organised. They are millions of people, both en masse and dissipated, escaping from one part of the globe to another. People from Afghanistan escaping to Pakistan while people from Pakistan escape to the West. People fleeing from El Salvador and Guatemala. People on the run from one part of Africa to another. Recently, the UN Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Poul Hartling, told a press conference that:

  In global terms, we can say that the UN is responsible for some 10,000,000 refugees throughout the world at present. Of these, between four and five million are to be found in Africa, between two and 2½ million in South East Asia and the rest in South America and elsewhere. (Guardian 2014/82)

Unrecognised as “refugees” (although that is what they really amount to) are the thousands of people who depart from places like Britain, particularly in times of economic recession, for Australia and Canada to seek a way out of the grimness of life in their country of origin. But for members of the working class there is no escape from poverty by travelling from one continent to another.

Cashing In

Down in deepest Surrey is a firm called Pubjoy Mint, which is in the business of producing medallions to commemorate all sorts of forgettable events like royal weddings and anniversaries. These are then sold to people who are impressed by Pubjoy’s enthusiastic utterances that the medallions are of lasting beauty, intrinsic value and historic significance.

Nothing is safe from this firm. Any day now, they could announce a medallion—which everyone will cherish and show to their children in its unique plastic clearview cover and handsome display case—marking the achievement of three million unemployed.

Meanwhile they are cashing in on other events. Their latest creation commemorates the Falkland Islands Task Force. On one side are the aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes; on the other the indomitable Britannia stands, trident across the Falklands.

“It is not an approval of war in any way,” said The firm’s marketing manager. “It is to commemorate Britain’s response to what has happened in our territory.” The medallions cost £600 for the 22 carat gold version and £7.50 for one in silver plated base metal.

The Task Force was sent to protect the property and the investments of a section of the British ruling class (the sort of people who can afford that 22 carat medallion) against the ambitions of a part of the Argentinian ruling class. Workers on both sides (who can afford only the silver plated medallion) have no interests at stake in the struggle, although they take their masters’ part in it and will suffer and die in it.

Such episodes are black tragedy in world history. That they can be further exploited by the sale of ghoulish mementoes is evidence of the urgency to end the social system which causes it all. The only fitting commemoration in these cases would be the workers’ strengthened resolve for a basic change in society.

Sick Pay

Most people who have to spend time in hospital leave the place profoundly impressed by the work of the nurses. Often unpleasant, physically and emotionally stressful, unrelenting, usually under extra difficulties caused by shortages and “economies”. And very badly paid, although it would be difficult to imagine a wage high enough to be “fair” for such work.

The Confederation of Health Service Employees states that nearly half of all full-time nurses, most of them in training or auxiliaries, are getting wages which are below the poverty line the level at which they qualify for Family Income Supplement.

The employers may argue that the union has produced these figures in support of its current pay campaign, in which it hopes to raise the government’s 6.4 per cent offer. This is the latest episode in a long battle over nurses’ pay (remember Selwyn Lloyd in 1961?) in which successive governments have cynically exploited the fact that, when it comes to the point, nurses shy away from the ultimate and in their case the frighteningly powerful weapon of a strike.

Because of this we can expect the nurses always to be among the lower reaches of the wages league. Workers’ pay is not a matter of morality, a reward for the job which they do, a reflection of how stressful or how necessary their work may be. If those guidelines did apply in society at large there would be a lot of members of the Stock Exchange and aristocrats starving to death.

Wages are the price of a worker’s labour power and, like any other price, they move up or down in response to pressures like booms and slumps, a shortage or a surplus of the labour power. This is a hard, unromantic reality of capitalism—a system which must first concern itself with its profitability and leave human welfare a long way behind.

Nurses are not angels. They are just another bunch of motivated, essential—and harshly exploited—workers without whom life under capitalism would be even more unpleasant than it is.

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

Increasing Poverty

According to a report published earlier this year by the Low Pay Unit and the Civil and Public Services Association the poor are getting steadily poorer. The same day the report was issued (April 3) it was confirmed that the salary of Michael Edwardes, the chairman of British Leyland, had been increased last year from £65,400 to £95,500.

The job which Edwardes performs for this modest reward is to keep down pay rises for the workers and to ensure that the company pays out as little as possible on improving the conditions of the workforce—as little, that is, as is compatible with the best efficiency which can be squeezed from the wealth producers.

The week after the poverty report of the Low Pay Unit, the Department of Health and Social Insecurity released figures which showed that the number of people in Britain living below the official poverty line—supplementary benefit level—has risen to over two million for the first time. New statistics sent to a Labour MP in reply to a series of parliamentary questions disclosed a rise from 1.9 million to 2.1 million between 1977 and 1979.

The Labour MP who requested the information was that self-righteous friend and patron of the poor, Frank Field. On learning the facts, Field became very indignant and described the revelation as “alarming”. One fact that must have slipped his mind, what with all that ringing in his ears, is that there was a Labour government in office between these years.

Gary Jay

The Hungarian Uprising (1965)

Book Review from the January 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hungary 56 (Solidarity book 3/6) by Andy Anderson is an interesting account and analysis of the Hungarian rising of October-November 1956, written from what is basically an Anarchist point of view.

When the Red Army overran East Europe at the end of the war they had to install some sort of government in the areas concerned; in Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary all they could use were the remnants of the previous pro-fascist ruling groups. Eventually, through their control of the police force they were able to set up police states, manned by loyal native stooges, similar to their own in Russia. The countries of East Europe were particularly harshly exploited—even by capitalist standards—to rebuild the Russian economy. As time went on the police state regime began to have an effect on economic growth. Attempts to drive the workers too hard merely resulted in increasing inefficiency, absenteeism and even sabotage.

Following the death of Stalin in 1953 the Russian rulers began a new course; a similar process began to take place in other parts of East Europe. Riots in Poland eventually brought the Gomulka regime to power. In Hungary the Stalinists under Rakosi were a little more short-sighted towards a demand, led by the Petoti Circle and the Writers Union, for a more “liberal regime.” The Russians realised that the situation was explosive and Rakosi was removed. A number of former Titoists, including one Janos Kadar were rehabilitated.

The Hungarian uprising actually began on October 23rd when the Secret Police, the A.V.O., fired on a crowd demonstrating outside the radio station. The next day Russian tanks were called in but were forced to retreat. The government now under Imre Nagy, had lost control. Workers Councils, loosely linked together, organised the distribution of food supplies and the resistance to the Russians. On October 26th.. the rebels, published their programme which included demands for the withdrawal of Russian troops, a popular government under Nagy, recognition for the Workers Councils, higher wages, higher pensions, less piecework, higher family allowances, more houses and so on. During the next week the Nagy government tried to regain control by offering concessions. Nagy himself went so far as to call for a neutral Hungary. This was too much for the Russians, who launched a counter-attack on November 4th. Nagy appealed to the U.N. and took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. A puppet government under Kadar took over. Eventually, with the help of the Red Army, the central government regained control. Resistance continued for many months but the rising had been crushed. Estimates of how many Hungarians were killed vary between 20,000 and 50,000.

What was the significance of this? There is a lot of truth in the saying that revolution is delayed reform. Political power can't hold back economic forces for ever. In East Europe, bureaucratic state capitalist regimes were standing in the way of economic efficiency. A modern capitalist economy cannot for long be run by police state methods; it demands the consent, even if only passive, of the workers. Skilled and educated workers cannot be coerced into working to the best of their ability. Yugoslavia was the first to move away from this system, when decentralisation was begun there in 1950. The rest of East Europe was held up by Stalin's grip. After his death, however, the Russian leaders were able to act on what must have been obvious for some time: that Stalin’s methods were inefficient. With “de-Staiinization” encouraged in Russia, the satellites also were able to adopt a less onerous policy.

In Poland, the change was achieved by opportune reforms and concessions. In Hungary the story was different. The Stalinist government there left the reforms too late and lost control. In circumstances like this, where the established machinery of government breaks down, a substitute appears. In Russia this took the form of the Soviets or Councils. Something similar happened in Italy in 1921 when the workers look over the factories. What these episodes show is that where the capitalist government machine breaks down and the capitalists lose control, the workers don’t simply let anarchy reign, they do their best to organise something themselves. So it was in Hungary.

Anarchists have always made great play of happenings such as these. They did so over the Paris Commune of 1871, which they saw as the beginning of the dissolution of the State into a federation of free communes. The anarchists were against all permanent machinery and the principle of representation. To imagine that the modern productive system can be controlled without a permanent administrative machine is so much Utopian nonsense. Nevertheless such views are encouraged by events like the Hungarian rising. Anderson tells us that this was:

  far more than a national uprising or than attempt to change one set of ruler; for another. It was a social revolution in the fullest sense of the term. Its object was a fundamental change in the relations of production, in the relations between ruler and ruled in factories, pits, and on the land.

and,

   New organs of struggle were created: the Workers’ Councils. which embodied, in embryo, the new society they were seeking to achieve.

This is going too far. The Hungarian working class were not organised consciously for Socialism.They were organised, certainly, but organised to keep life going and to resist the Russians.

Under capitalism there are many kinds of working class organisations: trade unions, political parties, tenants associations, friendly societies and so on—formed for a variety of different purposes. A working class organisation can only be considered revolutionary when it consciously aims to replace capitalism. The Hungarian Worker,’ Councils do not come into this category. This is not to belittle them; they were examples of what the working class can do in difficult circumstances. The heroic resistance of the Hungarian working class to totalitarian Stalinism will go down in the annals of working class history. There is nothing to be gained from seeing in the Hungarian tragedy something which just wasn’t there; it wasn’t the beginning of a social revolution.

Adam Buick

Oxfam: the alternative (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food Resources: Conventional and Novel by N. W. Pirie Penguin, 5s. 

Dr Pirie is head of the biochemistry department at Rothamstead Experimental Station. His short book gives brief indications of some of the possibilities for developing food production in such fields as polar agriculture, distillation of sea water, and the farming of the sea.. He also mentions research on new crops which could revolutionise farming (and eating) as much as the potato did in its day.

But Dr Pirie recognises that there is more to the problem of world hunger than simply producing more food. After all, what is the point of building vast glasshouse systems to grow vegetables during the brief but hot summers in such places as Alaska or Tadzhikistan when in the United States more than 33 million acres of fertile land is now withheld from agriculture because of ‘overproduction’? Or what is the point of India soon having the potential to produce 1.9 million tons of fertiliser a year when the road system throughout the sub-continent prevents efficient distribution ?

As a trained scientist Dr Pirie understands that “the work of charitable foundations such as Oxfam is magnificent and it has relieved a great deal of human suffering, but it is essentially palliative and does not get to the root of the matter". What is really needed, he says, is political action. So why is he donating all the profits on the sale of his book to Oxfam? Presumably because up to now he has seen no worthwhile political alternative to Oxfam’s well-meaning but feeble attempts to palliate capitalism.

This, then, is our job. To explain to thoughtful and involved individuals like Dr Pirie that only Socialism will liberate man's ability to produce a world of abundance—and also to make use of the information which experts like him can supply us with. In their way, books like this are bombshells to capitalism—and socialists have the detonator.

John Crump

Capitalist reformism (1969)

Book Review from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Functional Socialism: A Swedish Theory for Democratic Socialization, by Gunnar Adler-Karlsson. Bokforlaget Prisma, Sweden.

This is an unusual pamphlet. For it is actually a defence of the reformist policy of the Swedish Social Democratic party in the name of Socialism. This party of course is no more a socialist organisation than the British Labour Party and has managed the affairs of Swedish capitalism for the past 35 years.

What Adler-Karlsson calls 'functional socialism' is basically what was put forward here by Labour Party anti-nationalisation thinkers in the 1950s. Ownership, the argument goes, is made up of a set of functions which the capitalists exercise. If we control these functions in the interests of society then there is no need to formally take all industry into state ownership. "We have", claims Adler-Karlsson on behalf of Swedish Social-Democracy, "limited the rights of the owners of the means of production to use their goods in an unsocial way" and he instances measures like profits taxes, state control of banking, anti-inflation moves, etc., etc. All we can say is that if this is socialist then the Tories must believe in so-called functional socialism too.

The whole argument is absurd. When the modern state intervenes in economic affairs and limits the activities of individual capitalists it does so in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole. This has nothing to do with Socialism. Besides, it is based on the false premise that nationalisation is Socialism. Once you realise that it is only state capitalism then you can leave it to the reformists to argue among themselves as to the desirable degree of state ownership and control in a particular capitalist country.

We will leave Adler-Karlsson arguing with the supporters of Russian state capitalism. Unfortunately, he wrongly believes them to be genuine Marxists with the result that his own references to Marx are mostly inaccurate.

The pamphlet ends with a call to "strip and divest our present capitalists of one after another of their ownership functions". We are sure that, after 35 years of Social Democrats rule, Swedish capitalists like the Wallenberg family are trembling at the prospect!

Adam Buick

Lambeth Branch (1911)

Party News from the February 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are running a series of discussions on Friday evenings after their branch meeting closes, at 38, Brixton Road (first floor). All friends or foes are invited to attend and take part. Every facility will be afforded for questions and opposition, and opponents eau rely upon courtesy being extended to them.

On Feb. 3rd the subject for discussion will b “Can Trade Unionism better the conditions of the Working Class?" On the 8th the subject will be “Why John Holmes left the I.L.P. and joined the S.P.G.B." On the 15th : “Reform or Revolution—which?” On the 22nd: “The British Workman and the Alien. Commence at 8.45.”

Party Pars. (1911)

Party News from the February 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Seventh Annual Conference of the Party will he held at Easter. Resolutions for the agenda are now in order. Already there are signs this will be a very important meeting. Every effort should be made to make it worthy of the cause.

*   *   *

A new Branch of the Party has been formed at Gravesend—Secretary, W. J. Wragg, Denton Hospital, Gravesend.

*   *   *

At the special Christmas morning propaganda meeting of the Tottenham Branch held at West Green Corner, the collection amounted to £2. This sum was forwarded to the Party treasury, and the Treasurer, greedy man, wants to know why other branches don’t do better.

*   *   *

The Battersea Branch have already secured the Latchmere Baths for the purpose of a Paris Commune celebration on March 19th. This will prove one of the events of the year. Bravo! Battersea.

*   *   *

Readers in and around Woolwich are invited to attend a course of lectures to be delivered at the A.S.E. Institute. Glyndon Rd., Plumstead, on Sunday evenings at 7.30. Admission free. Questions and discussion allowed.

Feb. 5th   A. Reginald : “The Great Man Theory ”
Feb 19th  H. Newman : “Reforms and Palliatives.’’
Mar. 5th   F. C. Watts : “ Socialism and Religion.”

50 Years Ago: Socialism Hard To Grasp (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

No part of the Socialist proposition seems more difficult to the average worker than the proposal to abolish money, price and trade. So deep has the idea of commerce been driven into the working class that they have come to believe themselves formed for the sole purpose of working and increasing trade.

In capitalist production the toiler is, indeed, just a piece of mechanism, necessary to the progress of trade, and he has been taught to believe that such is all he is fitted to be.

To-day we live to work, and the proposal of the Socialist—undoubtedly a revolutionary one—to reverse the sequence, to produce wealth in order to live, seems to be beyond the comprehension of the wage-slave. His brain, stored with capitalist ideas, cannot get away from the notions connected with capitalist methods of production and exchange, hence the information that under u Socialist system no wages would be paid comes to him as a shock.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1911.

50 Years Ago: Might is Right (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man has a right to live only — if he can. The mightiest beast and the meanest parasite have as much right to live—and as little. . . .

Yet nature is not cruel: she knows nothing of emotions. She leaves her children to fight things out for themselves, giving them one universal law: Might is Right. . . .

The revolutionary requires no other justification than that of expediency. No revolutionary in history ever really did. True they have paid much lip service to Justice and other figments of the popular mind, but that has been only because they have required the assistance of those who were to gain nothing from revolution, and who had therefore to be inspired with empty phrases and confused with humbug. But the highest sanction revolutionaries ever have required has been—opportunity.

The Socialist asks no more. Let who will grovel at the feet of Justice, or slobber over the “Natural Rights of Man”—the Socialist has no use for such meaningless vapourings. . . .

Against the might of the strong few shall be put the might of the many weak ones. Before that might capitalism and private ownership will go down for ever. Then, when society founded upon common property in the means of life, has become one harmonious whole, the brutal dictum, might is right, will hold good only between the social organism and external nature, while between man and man a new ethic will arise—or rather the old ethic of gentile society under a new form—that only the social good is right.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1911.

Back to Normal (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the last two General Elections we heard much about the wonderful affluent conditions in which we were living.

“You’ve never had it so good” was a Mac Wonder phrase much in the air. We have also distinct memories of “doubling our standard of living within twenty-five years”. The air was as, Hamlet said “promise-crammed" but as he himself tartly added “you cannot feed capons so”.

These promises have now come home to roost. All the other old and well-worn phrases and threats have now been dusted and polished and taken out of storage. The air is now full of them, as threatening. For example, Selwyn Lloyd:

   I will simply point out that no one in the world owes us a living and if we don’t earn it by hard work in this field, the standard of living in this country will go down. It’s goodbye to dreams of expansion and social progress. 

Translated this means—“Work harder. Don’t ask for higher wages or else ... ” 

And another pearl from Mr. Lloyd, "The whole emphasis should be on saving labour, or increasing efficiency and on being competitive”. Then as if to sugar the pill—“Far from that being a threat to full employment it is the only way to maintain it ”.

It would be interesting to hear the comments of the recently sacked motor workers (and those put on short time) on that last bit.

The facts of the matter are that in present-day competitive capitalist society goods can be sold only if, in terms of quality and price, they match up to, or improve upon similar or identical products from elsewhere: the ultimate purpose being to provide a profit for the owners. If this purpose of profit-making is threatened, production eases off, and workers are put on short-time or sacked. Of course, you may rest assured that no capitalist politician is ever going to make this plain to you.'

Max Judd

Sting in the Tail: Missing the point (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Missing the point

Paul Foot of the SWP, writing in the Guardian (20 November) bemoaned the closure by a Labour council of a day centre in Newcastle.

This had him recalling past arguments with Labour Party members in which they “scorned the luxuries of Utopian socialist visions” (presumably the SWP’s ease) and “boasted of their practical down-to-earth ‘municipal socialism’”, and asked:

  “Where are those arguments now? What is the point of joining the Labour Party if Labour councils are forced to cut the services which their predecessors provided to assist the people who vote Labour? ”

True enough, but by the same token shouldn’t Paul Foot be asking himself what is the point of him and the rest of the SWP urging workers to vole for the Labour Party at every election?


Blacker than black

The Advertising Standards Authority is the in-house watchdog of British advertising. It is supposed to ensure that advertising meets the criteria of honesty, legality and decency. Like most things associated with advertising it is a complete con-trick.

Hunter Marsden, a high-rolling American ad-man who works for the giant J. Walter Thompson agency, is reported in the Observer (5 November) on the present level of duplicity in world-wide advertising as saying:

  "Superiority claims are delicately stitched together by legal wordmeisters, aided by a hairy menagerie of weasel words, mouse type and squirrelly logic."

In other words, to paraphrase Disraeli, “there arc three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and advertising”.


No change there

The conference of the Scottish Young Conservatives in November threw up the usual quota of reactionary spoutings. For example, guest speaker Leslie Sharp, Chief Constable of Strathclyde "delighted the Tory faithful in Edinburgh with a robust attack on the link between poverty and crime, coupled with a strong defence of stiffer prison sentences” (Herald, 27 November).

And conference chairman Murray Roxburgh was loudly cheered by delegates when he blamed the strike by Scottish postal workers who were resisting the imposition of worsened conditions, on “lefty scum” (Teletext, 27 November). Roxburgh insisted that “management must have the right to manage”, meaning that workers must meekly accept whatever bosses throw at them.

However, the Herald also noted that:

   "Not so long ago, this event would have been big enough to take over a large hotel for an entire weekend. On Saturday, barely 70 gathered in a conference room at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. ”

The conference also showed that although the SYC’s numbers have diminished, their obnoxious outlook certainly has not.


“Middle-class” nonsense

What a lot of daft and contradictory definitions there are of the so-called “middle class”.

In Britain many politicians and academics would have us believe that this middle class is getting bigger and bigger and even constitutes the majority of the population, but in America, Republican congressman F.K. Heineman of North Carolina takes a very different view:

   “When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000 a year, that’s middle class,' said Mr Heine man, a former New York City police officer and Raleigh police chief. ‘When I see anyone above that, that’s upper middle class’” (New York Times, 29 October).

The story reveals that the US Census Bureau has just released figures showing that only 5 percent of American households earn more than $109,821 a year, so the percentage earning from $300,000 to $750,000 must be even less.

Going by Heineman’s definition, the American middle class, far from getting bigger, is practically non-existent.


Dear Brutus

In the desperate competition for customers, banks and building societies spend millions of pounds on advertising, marketing gimmicks and giveaways. The Abbey National, though, has surely scraped the bottom of the barrel in its latest gimmick. It is offering a booklet “Your Astrological Guide to a Secure Future”.

It is written by Jonathan Cainer, described as “Britain’s most authoritative astrologer”. This is akin to descriptions like “most pregnant virgin” or “wisest idiot”.

Presumably the Abbey National are only being humorous in this latest gimmick, but given the “success” of predicting the market by the various “experts”, who is to say Cainer will be less accurate?

To understand how capitalism operates workers would be better advised to consult Marx’s Capital than squinting at the stars. As usual. Shakespeare had a helpful couple of lines to say on the subject:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. ”

Countdown to Murder (1996)

From the March 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent resumption of violence by the IRA has brought forth the predictable, worn-out denunciations and justifications. For socialists, the twin ‘issues’ of nationalism and political violence are surrounded on all sides by capitalist hypocrisy and nonsense

Some time before the 9th February, the Army Council of the IRA met somewhere in Ireland. These seven people, representing the minuscule Irish Republican Army, decided to recommence their war with a massive bomb in London. Effectively, this decision resulted in the death of two men and the injuring of scores of people none of whom had any power of decision in relation to the political situation in Ireland.

The seven members of the Army Council based the legitimacy of their right to kill other human beings on the result of elections held in Ireland in 1918 when, with a minority vote of the people of Ireland, Sinn Fein won a decisive electoral victory and an endorsement of its claim to speak for tile people of Ireland. Even the name that the 1996 Army Council used in its statement ending seventeen months of ceasefire was a throw back to the twenties and as fictious as the historical myths on which tlie IRA and Sinn Fein base their claim over the lives of others.

According to the IRA and Sinn Fein the results of the 1918 election remain valid today — more than three quarters of a century later — because the British government of the time used violence to frustrate the establishment of a politically independent Ireland by Sinn Fein who, in accordance with the peculiarities of what passes for democracy in capitalism, had been given a mandate to establish an Irish republican state.

Transfixed in time

Based on this logic the IRA and Sinn Fein see the changing population of Ireland as transfixed in time without the right to waver from the decision of its dead generations. Those dead generations were essentially conservative and reactionary; largely Catholic, they would have bitterly opposed womens’ rights, abortion, divorce and many other issues that Sinn Fein supporters currently espouse.

As for Sinn Fein itself, in 1918 a primary object of its vision of independence was the legislative right to afford trade protection for a fledging southern Irish capitalism. Again and again, from its establishment in 1905, Sinn Fein leaders had reiterated the importance they placed on the question of protecting the south’s nascent capitalist industries. Indeed it was the implications of this very policy for the northern capitalists, whose highly developed industries were dependent on the British home market and Empire Preference that fuelled much of the conflict and which was translated by the politicians into nationalistic and religious bigotry.

Sinn Fein might still emphasise its national capitalist credentials for its American backers but at home it uses the lexicon of the Left. In essence, its strategy for employment, housing and education is to demand — ironically, from what it sees as the British occupying power in Ireland — massive financial intervention. In other words, it has reserved the right to change completely the policies on which it fought the 1918 elections and yet insists that the people of modem Ireland have to abide by the electoral decisions of their grandparents!

The Army Council

Given the power which the IRA reserves for its Army Council, the power over life and death for anyone on these islands — or indeed, further afield, if these mysterious seven people so decide — it is fair to ask who are they and how did they come by their awesome power.

The secret lies in the interpretation Sinn Fein and the IRA put upon the results of that famous election in 1918. Sinn Fein became the government of a mythical Irish Republic, a new 32-county independent Irish state and the IRA became the army of the Irish republic. The new ‘government’ reserved the right to delegate its powers to the army’s controlling body, the Army Council of the IRA. With the luxury of perpetual power without the inconvenience of accepting any of the subsequent electoral verdicts of the people of Ireland, north or south, the IRA, which, at some points in its history has numbered only a score of largely inactive members, can elect seven people, unknown to the general public and even to republican supporters, who have power over the lives of people and power to repudiate any democratic decision of the people.

It is the current Army Council, seven people who can seriously believe they have rights over and above the whole people of these islands or of Ireland alone, who have decided to revert again to the bomb and the bullet. That people who can accept such nonsense can wield such power is frightening but, despite the selective and blinkered condemnations of politicians and opinion formers — whose grossly undemocratic powers are, also, frightening — what passes for freedom and democracy in capitalist society has usually been founded on force and, always, capitalist peace is, at best, an accommodation between conflicting interests.

John Major and his pompous representative in Northern Ireland, Patrick Mayhew, were indignant about the decision of the IRA Army Council to end the ceasefire. Both pointed out, as we have so often done in the past, that the Provisional IRA have no democratic mandate to wage war. This, of course, can not be challenged but when Major and Mayhew make the claim it is on the back of the assumption that Britain has a democratic right to wage war in Ireland — for, of course the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland has been to resist a challenge to British power in Ireland. When, it is reasonable to ask, did a British government seek a mandate from the people of Ireland, or, even, the people of the UK, to rule Ireland and to wage war in pursuit of that rule?

Violence

Pressed to a defence of its violence, the IRA draws analogies with its opponents and, of course, the British and the Unionists have been as ready as the IRA to use violence, or the threat of violence, when it suited their interests. To the socialist, however, the claim that you are no worse than your opponents seems a poor defence!

Britain’s role over the centuries has been brutal in Ireland and at times almost genocidal. Neither the Irish nationalists nor the unionists have been shy about using violence and in the present century it was the threat of illegal armed violence by the Unionists and their friends in the British Conservative Party that presaged the nationalist violence of 1916 and 1919/22.

The ceasefire broke down because of the utter hypocrisy of the British Government and the Unionists and the absurd strategy of the seven people who form the IRA’s Army Council. The argument that they will not negotiate with men of violence used by interests that are themselves no strangers to violence is hypocritical and when viewed empirically, shown to be nonsense. When Unionists use this form of cant it simply means that they see the IRA as militarily defeatable; if they envisaged the IRA as having the potential for a military victory, ‘common sense’ would gain a new fashion within Unionism!

Unfortunately the politicians in Northern Ireland have learned little over the past twenty-five years, especially the Unionists — apart from ‘loyalist’ spokespersons thrown up by the paramilitaries. Paisley was rabble-rousing and Trimble was looking over his shoulder and trying to compete with Paisley and both were intent in translating the IRA ceasefire into a victory for old-style Unionism. Ironically, Unionism’s potential victory was in the willingness of the IRA, for the first time ever, to discuss the establishment of agreed and stable institutions in Northern Ireland which the whole of nationalist Ireland had traditionally proclaimed to be an ‘unstable political unit’.

Decommissioning of illegal weapons became the peg Unionism decided to hang its policy on — as though the problems that created the desire for weapons would disappear if the guns were out of the way. There was no ‘decommissioning’ of angry tongues; Paisley bellowed the sectarian nonsense which is his political stock-in-trade and, when wiser council was called for, Trimble was competing with Paisley at Drumcree!

Of course the IRA are murderers; killers of innocent men, women and children. But they are not alone; they are part of a grand conspiracy against real peace and democracy in Northern Ireland and the components of that conspiracy are the self-interested politicians who see in the possibility of peace the eclipsing of their squalid political careers.

And after the recent killings by the IRA, the predictable reaction — indeed the nearest thing the IRA may have had to an excuse — was the latent hatreds which its actions re-awakened especially among prominent politicians and journalists. It was hard to believe that the baying voices with the quite proper accusations of senseless slaughter and challenges of right were around a few years ago when Major and his ‘army council’, without any recourse to democratic consent, undertook the slaughter of the innocents of Baghdad.

Behind all the ideologies and conflicts that underlie all wars and all violence are the contradictions created among peoples by the divisive interests of capitalism. It follows that the only real ‘peace process’ is the struggle to end capitalism and institute a democratic system of social equality in which such interests could not exist. 

Richard Montague

Our Parliamentary Campaign (1938)

Party News from the June 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Local Labour Party Wakes Up

For months past we have been making an organised move to contact the electorate in East Ham North, where we are running a candidate for Parliament at the next General Election.

The result is that the local Labour Party has issued a circular warning its members against the Socialist Party. The following is an extract from ; the circular: —

   “. . . . Socialist Party of Great Britain. Some of our members may have been confused by the campaign for members which has been run by the above-named organisation. We want it to be clear that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is a small, intensely bigoted organisation, claiming to be the only pure disciples of Karl Marx. They have no connection with the Labour Party, are not affiliated, and have no belief in Parliamentary Government, except to demonstrate its futility. They have announced that they intend to run a candidate in opposition to the Labour Party in East Ham North at the next General Election. Members ought to know where to place an organisation which is insane enough to split the working-class at a General Election". 

So far so good! But why Labour Party members should be “confused” between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and their own party is difficult for us to comprehend. Perhaps the authors of the circular would care to try again with an explanation of their statement. Perhaps they mean that our activities have set the minds of their members to doubt the validity of the Labour Party’s claim to be a Socialist organisation. We can assure them that our own propaganda will do that good and proper. Our exposure of capitalist politics and economics must inevitably reveal the Labour Party as an organisation which is pro-capitalist in outlook and method.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never announced that we intend to run a candidate in opposition to the Labour Party. What we have stated is that our candidate will stand for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. As all the other candidates, including the one from the Labour Party, will support capitalism in one way or another, we shall be in opposition to them all.

*      *     *

“A Small Organisation”

What a statement! The Labour Party was small at one time, and we well remember in its early days it was constantly charged by the Liberals that it was “splitting the votes of the progressive forces" whenever it ran candidates for Parliament.

We would hardly remind the East Ham Labour Party that there was a time when the entire Labour Party representation could have been carried to Parliament in a four-wheeled cab.

” Parliamentary Government”

We challenge the East Ham Labour Party to substantiate their statement that we do not believe in "Parliamentary Government.” We charge them with confusing the minds of their own members, inasmuch as underlying their statement is the suggestion that we think that Parliament is futile. We flatly deny this misrepresentation of our position. May we ask them to read some of the literature we have distributed in the constituency, in which we show the importance of controlling Parliament and the whole political machinery as a means of establishing Socialism ?

We suggest that the East Ham Labour Party might care to arrange for a public debate with us; we are as anxious as they are that their members should not be confused.

*      *     *

More S.P.G.B. Canvassers Wanted

Now for a few words to our own members. The campaign in the constituency is steadily and surely gaining ground.

The East Ham Branch has arranged a series of lectures, and this must be made widely known.

Outdoor propaganda meetings have, and are, being held, but all this is not enough. A number of members have already canvassed some of the wards with satisfactory results. Some of them report that a discussion about Socialism on the doorstep, in the passage or the parlour, is sometimes welcomed by people who dislike answering the door to the landlord and the men with the vacuum cleaners.

We know that personal contact is a most effective way of making our case known, and we are sure that no member of the Socialist Party would like to feel that, but for his or her inactivity, our campaign would have been more successful. Therefore, we appeal to all who can do this to let us know as soon as possible. We must have more canvassers, and we intend to run a school, if necessary, to show how canvassing is done. Let us hear from you.

Robert Reynolds

(The Parliamentary Committee.)

These Foolish Things: One World (1996)

The Scavenger column from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

One World 
  

“. . . A Brave New World is being created out there. Not, as one hoped, by one world idealists or UN diplomacy, but by the global corporations for the simplest of all reasons—profits. The state can either play along with them or have delusions of grandeur. The cost of delusions will be severe and will, be paid not by politicians but by the citizens.” Meghnad Desai, Professor of Economics, London School of Economics. Letter in the Guardian, 24 October 1995


Mine!

Over 100 million landmines have been laid in 64 countries. They are still being laid. Eight million old ones still lie buried. Five hundred people are being killed and injured by them every week. But mines are a very profitable product, so the likelihood of production and sales being halted in capitalism is rather small.


Top Gun
  

 “No amount of impassioned argument by lawyers and no predictions of the tragic human costs of possible conflicts can obscure the fact that international law simply does not prohibit per se the use of nuclear weapons.” Conrad Harper, legal adviser to the US State Department, said. The US held nuclear arms for self-defence and deterrence, he said. Reuters.


Up

Serious accidents in the mining industry are up by more than 28 percent, according to the first official figures since privatisation . . .  [At Thoresby] one worker died and seven were given hospital treatment after a huge outburst of oil and gas 1,000 feet underground. Guardian. 2 November 1995.


Down
  

 “I am one of the miners involved in the tragedy at Thoresby Colliery on October 12. Just 48 hours before the underground accident that killed Andrew Fielding, we were visited at the face by members of the management team and the safety engineer. We reported that the fumes gave us headaches, dizziness, nausea and some of our men were vomiting. The fumes were getting stronger each shift. The management’s attitude was that we would have to persevere. They told us: ‘The fumes are like dog shit—you might not like the smell, but it won’t hurt you.’ We were actually sent a bottle Olbas Oil to put into carbon masks to disguise the smell and 100 paracetamol tablets for our headaches . . . “ Peter Davies, letter in the Guardian, 2 November 1995.


Out

The report of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 15 November 1995, states that the number of refugees in the world being looked after by the Commission is now 27 million, but that contributions to the fund for improving their conditions are decreasing . . .


Social cancer

Booming sales of cigarettes to developing countries including China, Russia and Brazil have helped BAT Industries, Britain’s seventh biggest company, to record pre-tax profits of £1.8 billion in the nine months to the end of September.

BAT, whose brands include Lucky Strike, Kool, Kent and State Express 555, said the figures, up 22 percent on the same period last year, reflected an exceptional performance from its tobacco division. Guardian, 9 November 1995.

The Scavenger

The Scavenger thanks readers for items sent in. Regrets some will have to be held over to next month.