No Room for Dissent (2016)

Journal Review from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxist World Issue 1 – Spring 2016. £3.50 inc.

This is the first issue journal of the small split from the Trotskyist so-called ‘Socialist Party of England and Wales’ (known as SPEW and not part of the World Socialist Movement) ostensibly over the causes of economic crisis. The journal carries articles on the character of China’s economy, experiences in the Labour Party, Marx’s Capital, Bernie Sanders, a reprint of an article by Peter Taaffe, ‘The Greek Road to Socialism’, Electronic Voting in the Trade Unions and a book review.

Marxist World claims SPEW hold an underconsumptionist view of economic crisis; that there is not enough purchasing power to buy back commodities produced, whereas they claim the ‘tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ since the 1970s has caused the current economic crisis. This did not sit well with SPEW leader Peter Taaffe, and after some debate two critics were ‘indefinitely suspended’ and eleven ended up leaving.

The Labour Party account included here is one of left-wing Labour members’ disagreements with right-wing Labour members (business as usual in the Labour Party) and the left-wing author concludes by seeming happy to remain on this merry-go-round. The Peter Taaffe reprint argues the old Communist Party was reformist, Marxist World use this to argue SPEW are reformist. The Bernie Sanders article is a good exposé of Sanders, but boils down the problem to the wrong leader, never considering that leaders are unnecessary if not harmful.

In fact this goes to the heart of the problem of Marxist World, who welcome only activists adhering to general ideas of ‘Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky’. They claim willingness to ‘join any revolutionary organisation’ that ‘guarantees genuine democratic centralist rights and faction rights based on open discussion.’ But where has ‘democratic centralism’ ever allowed factions for long? Where has ‘democratic centralism’ allowed challenging incumbent leaderships? Where has ‘democratic centralism’ allowed public dissent?

Trotsky answered at a Bolshevik party congress in 1924 ‘Comrades, none of us wants to be or can be right against the party. In the last analysis, the party is always right, because the party is the sole historical instrument that the working class possesses for the solution of its fundamental tasks. I have already said that nothing would be simpler than to say before the party that all these criticisms, all these declarations, warnings, and protests – all were mistaken from beginning to end. I cannot say so, however, comrades, because I do not think it. I know that no one can be right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the party and through it since history has not created any other way to determine the correct position.’ And ‘We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right’.

The lesson here we should conclude is: don’t swap leaders, especially not living ones for dead ones.

DJW

50 Years Ago: Eight Years of CND (2016)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Always, there are groups in protest against some aspect or other of this social system. CND’ers come into this category. They leave intact the very thing which spawned nuclear weapons  –the private property basis of Capitalism –so their cause is hopeless.

Supposing the Bomb could be banned. If two Nations, possessing the necessary technical knowledge, should quarrel seriously enough over the things wars are really fought for – markets, sources of raw materials, strategic Bases, etc. –and even supposing they commenced fighting with ‘conventional,’ ‘moral’ weapons, would not the losing side set its scientists to producing nuclear weapons in order to stave off defeat? If history is anything to go by, the side which was winning would use the Bomb and justify this by claiming it had brought hostilities to a speedier conclusion.

It would require several volumes to deal with every ‘solution’ which CND’ers have dreamt-up over the years. From World Government or alignment with the ‘uncommitted Nations’ (some strange bedfellows in this lot), to ‘disengagement’ and the farcical ‘Steps Towards Peace,’ every straw has been clutched at.

Anyway, even if it were possible, Capitalism minus the Bomb would not solve the problem of war; a world based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, alone, will do that. So, being after something fundamentally different, we have no alternative but to oppose CND.

One final point. We do not deny the sincerity of many campaigners; the energy and ingenuity they displayed in tackling a job they considered important provided further proof that once working men and women get on the right track Capitalism’s days are numbered.

(from article by V.V., Socialist Standard, April 1966)

Rear View: Revolutionary romantic (2016)

The Rear View Column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionary romantic

‘A TV interior designer and curators at the William Morris Gallery were among the speakers at a school’s exhibition and celebration of his life last week. Over 330 people crowded into the chapel at Forest School in College Place, Snaresbrook last Thursday (March 24) on the artist’s birthday for an evening of talks and an exhibition of his work. One of the guest speakers was TV personality Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, who is part of the campaign to put Morris on British bank notes ahead of the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2034’ (guardian-series.co.uk, 31 March). What a silly way to celebrate the birthday of a Marxian socialist, author of the Socialist League’s manifesto – upon which our Declaration of Principles, written some 30 years later, drew heavily – countless pamphlets and polemics and the utopian novel News From Nowhere, which describes what life could be like in a moneyless post-capitalist world of common ownership and democratic control.

Ferengi-free future

Morris and those who founded the Socialist Party would likely be astonished and appalled that worldwide capitalism continues into the 21st century. Even the confused James Connolly saw over a hundred years ago that the day for patching up the capitalist system had passed and that it must be replaced. Yet we must not despair as more recently groups and individuals who would not necessarily describe themselves as socialist embrace ideas that are clearly part of our tradition: ‘what makes Star Trek particularly attractive for many viewers is its progressivism. Star Trek depicts a future where the scourges of sickness, racism, poverty, and war have been eradicated on Earth and throughout much of the Federation, an inter-planetary alliance of which the Earth is a founding member. The elimination of poverty, hunger, and wage slavery has resulted from overcoming capitalism, markets, and currencies’ (dissidentvoice.org, 1 April). Add to this books such as Life Without Money and Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek and we just need to convince those excited by a world of free access and production for use to join our movement and make it so.

War and want

‘Weapons spending worldwide increased in 2015 and now stands at a mind boggling $1,676 billion, according to new data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute today. This 1% increase from 2014 marks an important shift: since 2011, military spending stayed at more or less at the same level. It is now going up’ (greenpeace.org, 5 April). War is endemic to capitalism as is poverty. Ending the latter would cost just a fraction of the wealth spent on weapons: ‘eradicating extreme poverty and hunger – two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations in 2015 – may seem far out of reach. But, according to a new study, it could done with about ten percent of the world’s military spending’ (commondreams.org, 6 April), yet, armageddon aside, ending war and want can only achieved in a world without wages.

Chinese capitalists

The Panama Papers are a reminder that the 1 percent, like capitalism itself, exist worldwide. They also add another nail to the coffin of Chinese so-called communism. ‘Directly connected to Xi is his brother-in-law, Deng Jiagui, who is named in the documents. Deng married Xi’s elder sister, and it was reported in 2012 the couple already held hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets including real estate and shares. In 2009, at the time that Deng was the sole director and shareholder of two British Virgin Islands-based firms under Mossack Fonseca’s purview, Xi was rising within the Chinese Communist Party, en route to becoming its head. The documents also name Jasmine Li, the grand-daughter of Jia Qinglin, a top ranking official in the Communist Party. Li reportedly received her first offshore company as an undergrad at Stanford University, and through a number of complicated ownership agreements, Li was able to hide her holding of several offshore companies (mashable.com, 5 April). Putin, his family, and entourage have also apparently stashed funds overseas. Joshua Kurlantzick adds to the socialist nail gun: ‘the most serious threat from state capitalism is that the two big state capitalist authoritarian powers, China and Russia, will use their state companies as weapons in conflicts with other countries, as vehicles to control certain types of natural resources, as vehicles for obtaining and stealing sensitive technology from other nations, or as tools for undermining environmental and labor norms in countries where their state companies invest’ (State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World, OUP USA, June 2016).

50 Years Ago: The Law and Homosexuality (2016)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the election out of the way, Wolfenden ― or rather his famous report ― may get back into the news again. This document, presented to Parliament in September 1957 after more than three years of painstaking work, called forth at that time a mixed public response of support and violent opposition. The government of the time fairly quickly implemented the committee’s main recommendations on prostitution (incidentally with a resultant increase in call-girls and a more highly organised poncing system), but did not make any move concerning the law on male homosexuality.(…)

In May last year, Lord Arran managed to get a second reading in the Lords for his Bill to make private homosexual acts between consenting male adults no longer a criminal offence. But a similar measure introduced into the Commons a fortnight later by Labour MP Leo Abse was defeated, the opposition to it having been led by that self styled guardian of our moral welfare and champion of intolerance Sir Cyril Osborne, Tory MP for Louth. However, not long before the election, a Bill on the same lines was sponsored by the Tory Humphrey Berkeley and managed to survive a second reading. (…)

When the law is eventually changed, then, a minority will be released from the shadow of vindictive penalties (although only in one provision of Wolfenden is this so; his proposal for the under twenty-ones is that the penalties be retained and in some cases even increased), but this will not be the end of the homosexual’s problems. Apart from the backlog of fear, ignorance and prejudice which will impinge on his life still, the legal change will at most be an offer to absorb him, so to speak, more easily into the present set up. Which will mean, if he is a worker (and most homosexuals certainly are), that the grey day-to-day existence and struggles to make a living will still be there.

(From article by E.T.C., Socialist Standard, May 1966)

Rear View: Rage against the machine (2016)

The Rear View Column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rage against the machine

‘Decelles, a scientist at Princeton, has just published some very telling research that illustrates the broader social costs of unequal treatment by focusing on a very specific instance. She looked at what happens when those travelling in economy class on a plane pass through the first-class section on the way to their seat, and found that this encouraged bad behaviour . . .  Much less predictable was the discovery that when economy-class travellers have shuffled past the luxurious first-class seats on their way to the back of the plane, first-class travellers become more badly behaved too. In fact . . . it’s possible the first-class traveller is just as prone to raging at the cabin crew as the one in economy, when – and this is the bit that matters – they both are made unavoidably aware of the difference in their status’ (theguardian.com, 4 May). These remarks would come as no surprise to Marx. He made a similar observation: ‘a house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain’.

Work, work, work

Socialism will not see the end of all boring work, but many occupations considered so will simply not exist as a result of automation or historical redundancy. A world of production for use not profit will have no use for banks, bookmakers, cashiers, economists, estate agents, loan sharks, security staff, stock brokers, etc. This should be of interest to wage slaves everywhere, including 44-year-old Parisian Frédéric Desnard, who ‘. . .  is demanding more than $400,000 from his former employer, a perfume enterprise, as compensation for the boredom it allegedly caused. According to the Frenchman, the company should be held responsible for mental and other health damages’ (washingtonpost.com, 5 May). Frederic also states that he was ‘ashamed to be paid to do nothing’. Usually being paid to do nothing, or nothing useful, is the preserve of the capitalist. Bored members of the 1 percent are welcome to apply for membership of the Socialist Party and do something more meaningful instead. Capitalism stinks: vive la révolution!

Money first, medicine second

Who needs gods when we can make the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and bring back the dead? We can perform many other miracles, but capitalism rather than lack of ardent prayer gets in the way. We can cure many diseases once considered fatal. ‘Hepatitis C-related deaths reached an all-time high in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday, surpassing total combined deaths from 60 other infectious diseases including HIV, pneumococcal disease and tuberculosis. The increase occurred despite recent advances in medications that can cure most infections within three months’ (cnn.com, 4 May). Treatments are developed with profit not people in mind. Can’t pay, can’t have. This is the situation throughout the world. In central and west Africa as many as five million AIDS sufferers have no access to anti-retroviral drugs. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki promoted alternative remedies such as vinegar rather than ARVs, which saved the state’s funds at cost of at least 300,000 lives.

Abortion

‘There are 49 countries in the world today where abortion is still completely illegal. In many more, it is legal only under the narrow pretext of saving a woman’s life, and many other countries have strict regulations relating to abortion that ultimately take away a women’s control over their own bodies even in cases of rape or incest’ (indy100.independent.co.uk, 1 May). Celibate men dressed in frocks, often with more interest in young boys than women, expect their pronouncements on sex to be taken seriously. Lack of sex education and access to contraception as well as the pervasive poison of long dead generations are driving pregnancies among girls and women throughout the world. Lack of pre- and postnatal care for millions results in unnecessary deaths. You know the solution.

50 Years Ago: China’s Bomb (2016)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good news for all lovers of militarism and destruction was that China detonated her third nuclear bomb ― it may even have been a hydrogen one.

Good news, also, for all lovers of the distortion of words was that this latest test was described by Peking as ‘a great victory for the party’s general line of Socialist construction.’

Good news for all connoisseurs of hypocrisy was that the State Department condemned the test because of its effect on the atmosphere ― as if the United States had never exploded nuclear weapons in the air, and as if they are not continuing to test the things underground.

The Chinese bomb is yet another lap in the desperate nuclear arms race which has been in progress since Hiroshima. As each new country joins the race it justifies its presence with lies about its concern for peace and world security.

And the countries who are already in the race always ‘deplore’ and ‘condemn’ and murmur about having a disarmament conference somewhere, sometime ― because they are concerned about any threat to their dominant standing in the world.

China is a rising capitalist power, and she has paid for her entry in the race in the coin which all the others have used and which is the only one universally recognised ― force.

If it were not so terrifying it would be laughable that this onward march to destruction should be called Socialism. We live now in a society of madness, in which the very words we use often lose all sense and meaning.

Happily, there is one band who work determinedly to keep the word Socialism sane and clean, and who will not have it confused with the terrorism and hypocrisy of capitalism.

[From News in Review, Socialist Standard, June 1966.]

Rear View: A Load of Koch (2016)

The Rear View Column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Load of Koch

If you wish to have some understanding of what is happening and how the 99 percent are suffering in Venezuela, who better to call than Daniel Mitchell? He has a PhD in economics and is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, originally known as the Charles Koch Foundation. With such a background, Mitchell’s musings should come as no surprise: ‘I feel sorry for the Venezuelan people, but I’m perversely glad that the country is collapsing. That’s because it’s nice to have proof that Margaret Thatcher was right when she famously warned that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. To be sure, we already had proof from Greece, France, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and many other places. But it’s still nice to have another piece of evidence that big government eventually produces very dire results. I also confess that I’m enjoying Venezuela’s economic decay because I get a warm feeling of Schadenfreude when watching leftists try to explain what’s happening in that formerly rich nation ‘(cnsnews.com, 2 June).

Mitchell takes pleasure in the suffering of our class but conveniently forgets to mention that a small minority continue to enjoy the comforts available in what blogger Agustin Otxotorena describes as the ‘upscale sectors of Caracas’. Shopping shelves there are not empty as elsewhere. ‘If you have money’ there is champagne, vodka, Belgian chocolates, lobster, brand-name clothes, etc. Exclusive restaurants, nightclubs, beaches, yachts, golf clubs, private schools and universities form ‘a whole country within a country where there are no poor’ – other than those working there. Such ostentatious privilege exists regardless of the government’s orientation – left, right or centre.

Thatcher was right, at least when she stated: ‘There is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism. The difference lies in whether the capital is in the hands of the State or whether the greater part of it is in the hands of people outside of State control’ (House of Commons speech, 24 November, 1976). Venezuela is not and never has been socialist. Neither are or were Brazil, Greece, France or the Soviet Union. Lenin wrote of Russia in 1918: ‘reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us’ (The Chief Task of Our Time). That same year, the old lie about Russia being socialist or communist (Marx and Engels used the terms interchangeably) was exposed in the August 1918 edition of this very journal. The idea of socialism in one country is rather like being a little bit pregnant.

Parasites beget parasites

The 1 percent exist worldwide, in Russia and Venezuela, Norway and Italy. ‘The world’s youngest billionaire is worth an eye-popping $1.2 billion, around £862 million. Alexandra Andresen comes in as one of the richest people on the planet, after inheriting millions from her businessman father Johan Andresen. The Andresen family own Ferd, a long-running private investment company’ (mirror.co.uk, 2 June). We are also informed later of one major reason for Alexandra’s wealth. ‘her great-great-great grandfather bought J.L. Tiedemanns tobacco factory in 1849, which later became the country’s market-leading cigarette maker.’

Elsewhere (aljazeera.com, 4 June), we learn that ‘the tobacco industry has annual revenues of nearly $500bn. The number of cigarettes manufactured and sold has risen to six trillion every year worldwide – nearly double what it was four decades ago. Tobacco stocks outperformed the market in 2015 and have in fact done so for the past decade. The . . . electronic cigarette market is now worth $7.5bn.’ Our labour, that of adults and children as young as five years old, is the source of this wealth. The tobacco products are then sold back to us at a profit and kill an estimated six million of us annually.

Wealth is product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. We work, they take and pass on. Some of today’s capitalists have many centuries of legalised theft behind them. The richest families in Florence have been at it for the past 600 years. This fact was confirmed recently by two economists doing useful work for a change. Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti studied the records of Florentine taxpayers in 1427 with those in 2011 and after comparing the family wealth to those with the same surname today, concluded the richest families in Florence six centuries ago remain the same now.

God, Broadband and Buddhists (2016)

The Halo Halo Column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in November David Cameron pledged that by 2020 every home in the UK would have access to fast broadband, although there was some doubt as to whether this could be achieved.

Now, however, the Church of England has come to his aid and is to allow some of its churches to have their spires adapted as broadband beacons bringing broadband access to the approximately one million homes in remote or rural areas of the UK still without it (Guardian 17 May).

We don’t have the full details of God’s involvement or his IT expertise yet, but think of the possibilities. Gone will be the hassle of using that old technology where you had to get on your knees to pray whenever you wanted to contact the Almighty. Now (as long as heaven has a reliable connection) you will have direct access to God whenever you want, and from the comfort of your own home or laptop.

Hopefully Judaism and Islam will modify their synagogues and mosques to operate a similar service for Jews and Muslims, and all the smaller, independent gods will get in on the act too. Assuming all areas of heaven have the necessary technology and are aware of the marvels of Skype, everyone down here will be able to enjoy a face to face discussion, confession, or whatever, with the god of their choice, whenever they want.

One advantage is that by allowing us to see what God gets up to in heaven it may put an end to all that bickering about which god is the best: well, nearly all the bickering, Zen Buddhism may still present a bit of a problem.

It’s like this. Although Buddhists appear to be mainly inoffensive ex-hippies whose only concerns are meditating and not stepping on beetles, some Christians are concerned about what they actually believe in. They may not sacrifice babies to Beelzebub, but they don’t have a bible, they don’t have a god, and to be honest, they don’t appear to be in any kind of hurry to get one.

And according to another Guardian report (18 May), this is causing a bit of friction at York Minster were some evangelicals have been complaining that Zen Buddhism just isn’t Christian enough.

What has happened is that for the past two years, much to the annoyance of the regular users, Zen Buddhists have been meeting in the cathedral precinct every two weeks for ‘silent meditation’ sessions. These were set up by the canon chancellor of the Minster who himself practices Zen meditation, describes himself as ‘religiously bilingual’ and admits that ‘there are those who think I’m an out and out heretic’. ‘There is a recognized phenomenon now’ he said, ‘called “dual religious belonging” where people have a foot in more than one religious camp’. Well, if religion is all it’s cracked up to be what’s wrong with having two, or more, different ones?

Christian Concern however, the conservative evangelical organization, are wary about putting their feet anywhere where the Buddhists have been meditating. ‘The archbishop of York must take swift action’ said one member of the Church of England’s general synod,  ‘this type of confusion undermines the Church of England’s current initiative to encourage Christian prayer’.

Don’t know how you’re going to sort that one out God, have you tried teaching them to love their neighbours?

NW

The SPA: Dashed on the Rocks of Compromise (2016)

Book Review from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Other than in our Socialist Party, way too much thought on revolutionary socialist organisation gets written advocating Lenin’s way as the one and only way and applying historic conditions under Russian feudalism to Western democracies today, and whose justification amounts to thinly veiled apologetics for ‘history is written by the victors’. The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History by Jack Ross, published last year, joins the comparatively smaller range of literature not from this vanguard perspective, and even opposed to it. Ross declares that the Socialist Party of America was unique in the history of American politics as a minor party that enjoyed a consistent level of public support, a wide ranging impact and respected place in the national conversation for half a century. The term ‘social democracy’ he argues, captured more accurately and precisely their goals marked also by a commitment to the ballot box as a means of advancing a political economy in the interests of the working class represented by the trade union movement.

Eugene Debs
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was formed in 1901 by the merger of the Populist movement remnant led by Eugene V. Debs and the dissenting faction led by Morris Hillquit of the ‘increasingly sectarian’ Socialist Labor Party (SLP) of Daniel De Leon. Before Lenin, revolutionary insurrection was not the goal and Marxists looked to the electoral success of the German SDP. The founding principles, the Rochester platform from 1899, adopted by 125 delegates, were compromised from the start, adopting the short and succinct list (albeit as an addendum) of ‘immediate demands’ of the Social Democrats such as Debs, Job Harriman and Victor Berger.

The SPA believed in independent action on class conscious lines and refused to seek to wrest control of the main trade union body, the American Federation of Labor (AFL). They believed themselves worthy of trade union support. A Chicago convention they packed in 1901 saw them voting down forming a Labour party. They respected the autonomy of unions engaged in struggle and rejected movement towards a general strike. Ira Kipnis wrote in The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912 that ‘by the 1904 convention, the party had already divided into three loose factions, left, right and center.’ Ross argues this history is discredited and no-one in the SPA pre-1905 rejected the ballot box outright but the adoption of ‘immediate demands’ (other than socialism) was to prove its undoing.

In 1904 these ‘immediate demands’ were an eight hour day, social insurance, an income tax, inheritance tax, abolition of child labour, women’s suffrage, the initiative referendum and recall at all levels of government. A resolution also passed against the syndicalist idea of dual or ‘revolutionary’ unionism. Ross says it was probably in the platform debates of 1904 that the label ‘impossibilist’ emerged describing the ‘utopian’ belief that socialism was impossible through legislative reform and could only be created through revolution. Nevertheless SPA Presidential candidate Eugene Debs declared ‘Government ownership of public utilities means nothing for labor under capitalist ownership of government’ and won just under three percent of the vote.

In 1908 the immediate demands from 1904 were made ‘more comprehensive’, ‘but still concise, establish[ing] the general program that would remain largely unchanged through the end of the 1930s’ and a train ‘the Red Special’ was even leased for the 1908 presidential campaign. The American trade union body the American Federation of Labor (AFL) endorsed the Democratic Party, a rare constant for the twentieth century. Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset argues the obstacles could all have been overcome had the AFL endorsed the SPA. This conclusion is the wrong way round and the AFL probably quite correctly judged the Democrats as better able to deliver immediate demands, and the immediate demands of the SPA as a poor imitation departing from socialism. Ross tacitly acknowledges ‘popularity of the SPA did not come from any ‘boring from within’ of parliamentary trickery whereby the unions were to be put on record as supporters of socialism, but by socialists … converting them to their way of thought.’

Keir Hardie visited in 1909 calling for an Independent Labour Party as a united formation. Thankfully this wasn’t without opposition, although (p. 139) Ross seems to conflate the majority ‘impossibilist’ opposition (and the IWW) with the minority ‘Left-wing’ opposition (under International Socialist Review).  One member W.E. Walling summed it up: ‘Labor parties adopt the ethics and philosophy of capitalism . . .  denying the class struggle.’

That anti-Labor party impossibilism was not synonymous with ‘the Left wing’ was aptly demonstrated when Berger, Hillquit, Harriman and Spargo all agreed ‘any member who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working-class to aid in its emancipation, shall be expelled.’ Even Debs was ‘against sabotage, and every other form of violence and destructiveness suggested by what is known as direct action.’ Both peak vote and peak membership were achieved in 1912 when Debs ran for President and achieved six percent of the vote and membership reached 150,000 paying dues.

At this point, it should have been clear that a long-term strategy of rejection of Labor party immediate demands, commitment to the ballot box and rejection of direct action insurrection and respect for trade union autonomy was not only sustainable but an effective strategy. If their strategy was good, the same could not be said for their policy. Immediate demands were kept, with Roosevelt ‘annexing a large slice of the reform program’ and the large Debs vote was misleading (‘The Pseudo Socialist Vote’, Socialist Standard January 1913).

There were two other factors that came into play, one was World War I and the other was Bolshevism. The mainstay SPA publication Appeal to Reason (under new ownership) came out in favour of the war, and while Keir Hardie was helping conscription efforts in Britain (contrary to Ross’ assertion on p. 157 that Hardie was anti-war), Eugene Debs was locked up for publicly calling to resist conscription. This imprisoning of those perceived as socialists was part of the first Wilsonian Red Scare. The Daily Kos review of Ross’s book (LINK) comments ‘organized labor swung firmly behind the war effort … There is little evidence to support the idea that the anti-war tradition would have continued to be dominant in a genuine Labor Party.’

As we commented in the Socialist Standard at the time: ‘Victor Berger, one of the most anti-Socialist leaders of the SPA, has also been given 20 years, though he supported the Mexican War and militarism. He was widely known as a pro-German. While Berger wrote the pro-German articles for the Milwaukee Leader, Simons did the pro-Ally work on the same periodical.’ ‘The mass of S.P. membership can be estimated by their continual support of the official clique and by their sticking to such a rotten organisation. Morris Hillquit, the “brains of the S.P.,” one of the many lawyers on the National Executive, offered to organise an army of Socialists to help to explain democracy to the Germans overseas. He also admitted that if he had been a member of Congress he would have voted for the war’ (‘Class Struggle in the USA’, Socialist Standard, September 1919).

At this point, 42 SPA members left the Detroit local. With others who had not been SPA members they formed the Socialist Party of the United States on July 7 1916. They later described the SPA as confused reformers and confused direct actionists (Western Socialist #4 1966). The SPA threatened them with a lawsuit over their name and so they renamed themselves the Workers Socialist Party of the United States. No mention is made of them in Ross’ book.

The second factor of interest, was a personal visit by Trotsky to an SPA member in Brooklyn on Jan 14 1917 who ‘personally initiated and inspired much of the left-wing fury, … motivated by his pathological hatred for Hillquit in particular.’ At the 1919 August 30 convention, John Reed assaulted SPA chair Julius Gerber leading one member to comment ‘Many believe it is not only possible to follow the Russian example but mandatory. They declare that they alone hold the secret of success and it is their duty to impose it on the party.’ Ross mentions the expulsion of John Keracher’s Proletarian Party from Michigan as a ‘tiny sect almost entirely based in Detroit until the end of the 1960s.’

A measure of the socialist understanding of the members of the SPA was the anti-war St Louis Platform. This lost more pro-war members from the SPA than were lost to Bolshevism and the American Communists who boasted that they could change their line in 24 hours. Victor Berger commented ‘in this game of would-be radical phrases, the emptier the barrel the louder the sound.’

Norman Thomas
The 1919 conference saw the ‘Communist Left-Wing’ depart the SPA to form their own party. And in 1920 the SPA reaffirmed its disinterest in a Labour party by declaring its refusal to work with other groups. In 1927 the SPA launched its own radio station called WEVD which managed to broadcast until the 1980s. Two founding figures were lost when Eugene Debs died in 1926 and Victor Berger in 1929. A new faction rejecting the ballot box appeared, called the Militant faction proving past lessons hadn’t been learned.

In 1934 the SPA held a rally at Madison Square garden which was attacked by Communist Party members. Against the insurrectionary rhetoric of the Militant Faction inside the SPA stood the ‘Old Guard’ of the SPA who issued a 1934 restatement of principles calling themselves the Committee for the Preservation of the Socialist Party. It argued for education and propaganda not direct action and insurrection. In 1935, the SPA went on the offensive, Norman Thomas debated Earl Browder the new leader of the Communist Party and the ‘Old Guard’ dissolved twelve New York Militant branches.

The new presidential candidate Norman Thomas’ vote peaked in 1932, proving not quite as popular as Debs. New president Franklin D. Roosevelt received Norman Thomas and Morris Hillquit at the White House following the 1932 election shortly before Hillquit died a year later. Roosevelt’s New Deal would successfully co-opt all radical opposition and the following election in 1936 saw the SPA not on a record number of state ballots. This is the dire consequence of political trading with shrewd operators like Roosevelt.

Some resolve prevailed intermittently, with Norman Thomas observing and commenting: ‘Trotsky and above all Stalin, pioneered in that contempt for pity, and that Machiavellian ruthlessness in which Hitler has become so adept’ and expelled Trotskyist entryists in the SPA, leading one prominent Trotskyist, Hal Draper, to form the Socialist Workers Party (US). The SPA unambiguously opposed World War II and in 1940 expelled the Militants, but on the other hand also watered down even their immediate demands.

It is strange that Ross should neglect to mention at all (even in the footnotes) the World Socialist Party, a non-Leninist and non-reformist group but he also dismisses the SLP (US) as ‘sectarian’ without fully explaining why (where Kipnis devotes at least one chapter to the SLP). The SLP (US) expelled SPA members from the IWW union, seemingly disenchanting the SPA with syndicalism, before the SLP (US) found themselves expelled (see ‘Marxism in the USA’, Socialist Standard December 1968). To explain this would highlight Ross’ attachment to syndicalism and forming a Labor party by trade unions. Ross casts the 19th century Populist Party and the early 20th century Progressive Party as missed opportunities for the SPA. Ross claims ‘a Labor party, had it emerged would have profoundly differed from post-war liberalism’. This is to go against the experience of the Labour Party in Britain.

Trotskyism and the New Left
In 1952, the SPA presidential candidate Darlington Hoopes polled so disappointingly poorly that the SLP (US) outpolled them for the first time ever, and the SPA stopped fielding presidential candidates for good not long after. The SPA had survived the Commies in 1919 and survived the Militants in 1934, but it was one-time Trotskyist Max Shachtman who would prove their undoing in the 1960s.

One SPA member wrote ‘I can’t see why the official pacifist groups have to spend so much time on piffling projects like those temporary fasts, White House picketing etc. when all it does is impress its terrible weakness applying some of the minor Gandhi tactics where their chance of success is infinitely smaller that it makes them look ridiculous’.

Ross observes ‘This transformation of the American left that began with the rise of the Popular Front in the 1930s amounted to the displacement of historic American Socialism by a deeply undemocratic approach to politics. Throughout the 1960s, Erich Fromm’s ‘Let Man Prevail’ SPA manifesto was constantly in demand from the national office whereas Max Shachtman’s tome on the development of Stalinism, ‘the Bureaucratic Revolution’ gathered dust on the shelves’.

Ross writes ‘The Shachtmanite SPA majority endorsed the Democrats at the 1968 SPA conference.’ ‘A long wave of SPA resignations began.’ ‘In November 1970 the SPA and Democratic Socialist Federation jointly sponsored a rally for Israel, a merger had been in the works since 1969.’ ‘In December 1972 the SPA announced it would be known as the Social Democrats USA. The Wisconsin Socialists passed a resolution that they interpreted this to mean the SPA had ceased to exist.’ ‘In 1980 the SDUSA endorsed Ronald Reagan and invited the Nicaraguan contras to speak at their 1985 conference’.

The Socialist Party of America ceased to be in 1972 when the Chairman, Michael Harrington, resigned in October. Then in December it changed its name to ‘Social Democrats, USA.’ There was a minority without legal entitlement to the membership or assets, determined to continue. One minority later launched the SPUSA, a ‘broad multi-tendency democratic socialist’ organisation which exists to this day. It runs candidates for President and is doing so again this year.

Ross writes that the SPA was an exceptional party in an exceptional nation. The review of his book  in the American Conservative argues ‘Ross pays little attention to ideas and proceeds chronologically rather than analytically’ and concluded that socialist parties in Europe embraced much the same blend of social welfare, economic corporatism, and militarized internationalism that had defined the Democratic Party at least since FDR. So perhaps America is not exceptional after all.

Two excerpts from our history demonstrate the foresight of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and our American companion party and provide a rather more fitting conclusion:

  ‘If the Socialist Party of America had preached Socialism and got votes for Socialism, neither Republican nor Democrat could have enticed their votes away’ (‘Lessons from the American Elections’, Socialist Standard, January 1929). 

‘Labor Parties are the same everywhere. They are all parties of reform. Names mean nothing. The Social Democratic Party of Germany, The British Labor Party and the Socialist Party of America—where the P. P. came from in 1919—are Labor Parties, whose purpose is to reform the capitalist system. They gather into their ranks all kinds of cranks and misleaders voicing hazy notions of a land of promise somewhere in the future. Their history shows that their leaders were ever willing to betray the workers. During the war all the Labor Parties supported their respective governments. Even now in Britain where the Labor Government rules, nothing has or will be done to endanger the steady flow of profits into the coffers of the capitalists’ (The Socialist, March 1930).

DJW

Twentieth Century ‘Socialism’? (2016)

Book Review from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Twentieth Century Socialism: A Minority Rule’. By Paresh Chattopadhyay. (Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai). 14 May, 2016.

Although ‘Dedicated to the memory of the great libertarian George Orwell,’ in much of this article Paresh Chattopadhyay is spot on, carefully recounting some of the heinous misdemeanours perpetrated by Lenin, Trotsky and their Bolshevik coterie in Russia and upholding instead some pertinent positions and principles of Marx and Engels that are in opposition to them. However, he concludes this long interesting and informative criticism and citations with the Kronstadt revolt and massacre, wherein he affirms ‘The Kronstadt sailors and toilers called this incident the “Third Revolution,” after February and October.’ This he just cites without any comment presumably because of a ‘libertarian’ perspective. But Libertarianism, be what it may, is not Marxism. As world socialists we evaluate situations from a Marxist point of view. For argument’s sake, even if the Kronstadters happened to be victorious, it was not going to be a socialist revolution anyway. You cannot achieve socialism without an exclusively clear-cut socialist goal and class-wide revolutionary organization within a matured revolutionary situation. The Kronstadters had no socialist agenda and organization and circumstances were non-socialist. They were asking for some liberal democratic rights only.

He says nothing about what we socialists have to do today to end the rule of capital.

‘Twentieth Century Socialism’ is the name he gives to Leninism-Bolshevism as the most prominent form of ‘socialism’ in the last century. This term is ill-conceived as it suggests that not only was Leninism-Bolshevism a form of socialism but that all who worked under the same name ‘socialism’ during the twentieth century, whether to educate or mislead, to organize or disarrange the working class, were as well. This use of the term ‘socialist’ is one-sided and misleading and has to be contested, as no doubt it would by Marx and Engels were they alive today.

It ignores the fact that, in opposition to all the sundry ‘socialists’, there were, and till today are, the genuine socialists in the same sense as Marx and Engels – the  Socialist Party of Great Britain (ever since 1904) and the other Companion Parties of the World Socialist Movement, of which Professor Chattopadhyay is quite aware, being personally acquainted with the World Socialist Party (India) and familiar with our Movement’s relentless presence in the socialist milieu.

He creates an amalgam ‘party-state’, and equates this with the Leninist construct and frame. This is to confuse these two very different but transient institutions. True, the Leninist ‘party-state’ was a form of ruthless state capitalist dictatorship. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that party and state are of no use for the working class. Both are necessary and useful during the ‘political transition’ (Marx) from capitalism to socialism, though  certainly not in their present-day capitalistic forms. These organs will have to be revolutionized, transformed and converted from their present repressive forms into a participatory democratic form – as agents of emancipation in the hands of the victorious working class. Marx and Engels were neither against nor for the state and the party in the abstract. As scientists of the working class they analyzed their dynamics – their origin, evolution, and eventual ultimate demise.

To accomplish the revolutionary historical task of replacing capitalism by the ‘free and equal association of the producers’ (Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) the workers possess only two effective weapons at their disposal – universal knowledge of history and a class-wide revolutionary organization i.e. a participatory democratic party and movement. This is indispensable. Without such a party and movement the workers are nothing but defenceless, wretched, competitive, alienated and mutually hostile wage slaves. When workers unite for higher wages and reforms they are merely a class-in-itself. They become a class-for-itself when permeated with socialist knowledge about their common radical cause and by uniting themselves politically ‘to win the battle of democracy’ (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto) by unseating the bureaucratic ruling elites everywhere.

The working class will have to get this done by applying their franchise in elections state-wise and world-wide more or less simultaneously to seize the reins of states, and get them transformed to use to dispossess the capitalist class. This is done by lopping off their repressive organs, dismantling the bureaucratic-military structure, and by democratizing and absorbing the state’s useful organs into the new socio-economic formations of production for use in place of production for profit – rearranging administration of affairs of life on local, regional and global organizational scales. This will usher in, as Marx put it, a new era of equality and freedom replacing the pre-history of humanity with history proper.

Binay Sarkar

50 Years Ago: The Seamen’s Struggle (2016)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain supports the strike of the members of the National Union of Seamen for higher wages and improved working conditions. As workers ourselves we know that under capitalism we get nothing save through organisation and struggle. The social conditions of capitalism, where a tiny minority own the means of life, inevitably give rise to a struggle over the division of wealth. The class struggle will last as long as capitalism because the interests of workers and owners are irreconcilable. The seamen’s strike is an expression of this class struggle though it is fair to say that very few seamen fully understand this. They do not recognise that there is an irreconcilable conflict between workers and owners everywhere. They do not recognise that workers have no country and that patriotism is a delusion and a snare. They do not recognise that the wages system shows up the dependence of the workers on the owners for a living.

The strike has a wider significance than the wages and working conditions of seamen. The Labour Government, as caretakers for capitalism, have decided at last to stand up to organised workers in Britain.  (….)

The Government hope to make an example of the seamen and so deter others from opposing their policy. This means that if the seamen lose then the wages and working conditions of the rest of us will be adversely affected over the next few years. This has happened before. In May, 1958, a Tory Government stood up to the London busmen and won and for the next year or so their wages policy was “effective”.

Even if the seamen win and the dykes of Labour’s wages policy are breached the Socialist Party points out that this is not enough. All the cards are stacked against workers under capitalism. Being propertyless they depend on the owners for a living. On top of this there is a further disadvantage. The Government represents the interests of the owning class. Any Government in Britain has at its disposal a vast arsenal of political weapons to oppose any economic action by workers, not least the strike-breaking Emergency Powers Act invoked by the Government (and agreed to unanimously by Parliament, left-wingers and all) after a week of the strike.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, July 1966)

Striking Back (2019)

Book Review from the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the morning of 19 July 1984, a large number of shop workers at the Henry Street branch of Dunnes Stores in Dublin refused to register the sale of South African fruit. They were immediately suspended by the management and so walked out and took up positions outside the main entrance. However during the day, with the realisation that their actions might lead to the loss of their jobs, many drifted back to work so by the evening only nine remained; eight women and one man. So began an industrial action that would last for over two years, become a cause célèbre amongst the Irish Left (I can personally recall the pickets and solidarity demonstrations outside the store) and garner much international recognition and sympathy. From a socialist perspective it revealed the aggressive and uncompromising nature of certain individual capitalists to maximise profit and the weak and ineffectual response of government; torn between wanting to do what was ‘right’ and indeed popular with the public and the hard-nosed need not to disrupt the operation of capitalism. This story is told in a memoir, Striking Back, published last year by one of the leading strike members, Mary Manning.

The strike took place in an Ireland that was quite different from that of today. It would be hard to underestimate the political power that the Dunnes Stores organisation, headed up by the pugnacious Ben Dunne, wielded at the time. They were by far the dominant retail organisation in the country facing little real competition from any major rival (this was long before Lidl, Aldi, Tesco etc. entered the Irish market in a serious way). The Dunne family cultivated strong links with the upper echelons of both centre-right parties in Ireland, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Subsequent tribunals of enquiry (prompted by other public matters) revealed how nakedly and directly this influence was wielded in terms of payments to parties and politicians in return for favours or ‘considerations’. For workers, Dunnes had a well-deserved reputation for being an extremely hierarchical, top-down organisation where successful shop managers were judged by higher management as to how efficiently they worked those at the shop floor. Furthermore Ireland was a much poorer country then than it is now and full-time jobs were very scarce so employment in any large company, even in a firm with a reputation of Dunnes Stores, would have been very desirable. It took tremendous courage for Mary and her colleagues to go out on strike and then to persevere for so long. As she says, they were all working class women with no higher education qualifications and limited employment possibilities.

Trade unions
The origins of the strike are interesting and explain many of the difficulties that the strikers experienced. The retail workers were members of the IDATU trade union (which has subsequently become part of the MANDATE trade union). Historically it was very much one of those small ‘bread and butter issues’ organisations solely focussing on the day to day employment of its members without any real interest in the broader interests of the working class in society. Then a young, radical individual, John Mitchell, who had been involved in the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, became General Secretary and persuaded the union to endorse resolutions condemning apartheid and specifically directing its members not to handle South African products in their places of employment. His fellow members of the union Executive went along with this, content that this support was meant to be solely rhetorical and probably in their minds indulging his whimsies. Once the strike started and then continued for such a prolonged period, they became more reluctant to authorise the £21 per week strike pay. To be fair, they were probably more representative of the wider membership of the union. The book discusses how in fact only a small number of the union members in the particular shop on Henry Street went out on strike in line with official union policy and none of the union members in all the other stores throughout Ireland joined them until near the very end. Understandably for many of them, the issues in South Africa must have appeared remote and the personal costs of striking disproportionate to any small improvements that might have resulted to the lives of black South Africans. In fact not only were many Dunnes workers indifferent to the cause of the strikers, but as Mary discusses candidly, what she found upsetting was the hostility they experienced from some of their fellow workers who remained inside.

In addition to the union, the strike proved something of a quandary for the Irish Labour Party. As with many organisations that identified with the ‘Left’ they claimed to abhor apartheid and indeed the vast majority of their members surely did. The party formed part of the Irish government at the time and so theoretically at least could have aided the strikers in a meaningful fashion. Some of the senior Labour figures holding full cabinet positions were outspoken in their opposition to apartheid. However, their party was the junior partner with the much larger and more conservative Fine Gael party. Government ministers of that party felt they could not intervene in the action. Their opposition to intervention was either for the ideological reasons of not interfering in the operation of the ‘free market’ or for more pragmatic reasons of trade and employment. Ireland exported more to South Africa than it imported and South Africa had invested in some industrial plants in Ireland. The government was afraid of retaliatory action from Pretoria if they became involved and the harm the loss of trade with South Africa would do to an already fragile economy here. So Labour ended up being sympathetic to the strike while simultaneously being embarrassed by it because of their inaction. It’s another small example of how reformist parties find it difficult to deliver even minor actions when in a capitalist government.

Catholic church
The striking women also sought the support of the Catholic Church, still a powerful institution at that time, in their quest to obtain a successful outcome to their struggle. They wrote to Bishop Eamonn Casey who by the standards of the time was regarded as a liberal, people-oriented, member of the Catholic hierarchy with a particular interest (and to be fair a decent track record) in issues of overseas justice.  His (private) response proved a particular disappointment where he described their request for his support as ‘impertinent’ and their actions as potentially damaging to black South Africans. Probably the main reason for his dismissal of their cause was that while the Church liked to be involved with progressive issues, it was only when they were in control and when the Church itself would be the ultimate beneficiary of any campaigning action. Most curiously the book also highlights the ambivalent attitude of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement itself to the strike. Initially they gave it their full support but then their leader Kadar Asmal (later a minister in the first post-apartheid government) privately withdrew his support for reasons not clarified in the book. It is suggested that the Movement was becoming alarmed at the radical nature of the protest and how they were afraid it might damage their coalition-building efforts with more mainstream politicians and governments against apartheid. The strikers did receive wholehearted support from Bishop Desmond Tutu who invited them to South Africa to witness the plight of the population first hand although when their plane arrived at Johannesburg, they were refused entry and after a short detention sent home.

The strike at the store lasted for over two years primarily down to the stubbornness of Ben Dunne in refusing any sort of meaningful compromise and insisting to the end that workers in his stores ‘do as they were told’ without any question or debate. He claimed it was management’s sole right to decide what the store did or didn’t stock and made it a principle not to yield to the workers’ ethical reservations. At the time, the other supermarket shops and outlets in Ireland also stocked South African produce but usually the issue was finessed at a local level by allowing staff not to handle the goods if they had moral scruples about it. The strike formally ended towards the end of 1986 in a rather messy fashion though with the strikers ultimately vindicated. Embarrassed by the international publicity and support the strike was garnering, the Irish government finally stepped in and banned the importation and sale of all South African goods from 1987 onwards (one of the first countries to do so). In principle the strikers were free to return to work at Dunnes Stores. Clearly the company didn’t want them back, considering them as troublemakers but they were legally obliged to take them. Some of the strikers did not go back knowing full well the poisonous atmosphere that would await. Some did, including Mary herself, but the company resorted to underhand low-level intimidation in a bid to force them to resign. Within a year Mary felt she had to leave and feeling that her prospects in Dublin would be very limited due to her profile as an ‘agitator’ she decided to emigrate to Australia for a number of years.

As an epilogue, the strikers finally managed to collectively visit South Africa in 2013 for Nelson Mandela’s official funeral which on a personal level was a thrilling emotional experience, though Mary is realistic enough to comment that for many South Africans living in the townships very little substantial change has taken place since the fall of apartheid. Overall this is an interesting account of genuine working-class history conveying the complexity that is involved when individuals become politicised while simultaneously dealing with the threads of family life, personal relationships and hopes for the future. The book highlights the heavy price that workers can pay when taking political action against powerful interests. It also demonstrates the relatively weak position of a small group of people taking political action without broad support showing that real and substantial changes do need the committed involvement of the majority of the population.

Kevin Cronin

Leftist Wonderland: Militant in Liverpool (1986)

From the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

For those of you who are confused about what’s been going on at Liverpool City Council, here are the facts:

Militant is a newspaper. The people who sell it are members of the Labour Party, although they don’t support it, and supporters of Militant (the tendency, not the newspaper) although they are not members of it. The Labour Party leaders are neither members nor supporters of Militant (the tendency), and neither do they sell Militant (the newspaper), although you can never be sure since Militant newspaper sellers are notoriously shy about coming out.

The Labour Party leaders want to expel Militant supporters from the party since they think that they are wrecking Neil Kinnock’s chances of moving into Downing Street after the next general election. They claim that Militant (the tendency) is in breach of the Labour Party’s constitution since they operate as a party within the Labour Party, with different aims and objectives. But Labour’s leaders are worried that to expel Militant might upset other Labour supporters and also, presumably, damage Neil Kinnock’s election chances. So instead of expelling supporters of Militant, they have suspended the whole of the Labour Party in Liverpool—home of the Tendency’s most vociferous spokesperson, Derek Hatton, who they especially want to get rid of. (There are rumours that at least some supporters of Militant are no longer so keen on supporting Hatton, but maybe we shouldn’t make this any more complicated than it already is.)

Militant in Liverpool are very upset that the Labour Party is treating them in this way and assert that they, unlike the Labour leadership, are the real guardians of Labour Party conference decisions since they are resisting “Tory cuts” and fighting to “save the jobs and services for the people of Liverpool”, and want to institute Clause Four of the Labour Party’s constitution (the one stating that the Labour Party is committed to nationalisation). The Labour Party conference is supposed to be the main policy-making body of the party, but the leadership ignores conference decisions when they don’t like them. So, just to recap, Militant, which doesn’t agree with the Labour Party, is upholding its constitution and decisions made at conference, while the leadership, who do support the Labour Party, are ambivalent about nationalisation and Kinnock has said that he will ignore conference decisions if he doesn’t agree with them. But it is Militant that looks set to be thrown out of the Labour Party for a breach of the constitution, while Kinnock is increasingly regarded as the party’s saviour.

The Militant leaders of Liverpool City Council, as already mentioned, claim that they are fighting to preserve jobs and services. As part of their strategy to do this they sent out redundancy notices to 31,000 local authority workers and looked set to close down council-run facilities like day-care centres for the elderly and handicapped, children’s homes, libraries, sports centres and swimming pools. Their concern for the workers of Liverpool was such that they asked them to work for nothing after they received their redundancy notices. The workers however could not understand how this was helping them (not surprising, Militant would say, since to them workers are too stupid to recognise their real interests and so need leaders like Militant to protect their interests for them). Teachers in Liverpool took the City Council to court and managed to get an injunction against the redundancy notices. But it wasn’t just the teachers who were too stupid to understand that Militant were looking after their interests; just about every trade union with members working for the local authority have also shown signs of “stupidity” by expressing their hostility to the leadership.

Militant also claims to be working for racial harmony in Liverpool and to that end they appointed a community relations officer. That appointment has resulted in almost every community group representing black people in Liverpool refusing to have anything to do with either the council or the community relations officer and trade unions have advised their members not to co-operate with him. So much for racial harmony and community relations.

Finally, Militant claims to be “socialist”. Apart from the doubt cast on this idea by their membership of the anti-socialist Labour Party, their support for state-capitalism, their undemocratic organisation, their patronising attitude to their fellow workers, besides all that, this “socialist” tendency has just accepted £30 million from those well-known supporters of socialism, the Gnomes of Zurich, to bail them out.

So, to sum up: Militant are members of the Labour Party although they don’t agree with the Labour Party. Labour’s leaders want them out because they are in breach of the party’s constitution even though the leadership itself does not honour decisions made at the party’s conference. Derek Hatton and his fellow Militants on Liverpool City Council claim to be acting on behalf, and in the interests, of the working class of Liverpool and demonstrate this by threatening workers with the sack or asking them to work for nothing. They claim to be“socialist” but are quite happy to take money from a bunch of capitalist financiers who are no doubt rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of making a financial killing from all the interest they are going to receive on this loan.

Still confused? So you should be!

Janie Percy-Smith

Dreams in the Sky (2019)

Book Review from the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing’, by John Boughton (Verso. £18.99)

The first council homes in Britain were built in Liverpool in 1869 and the first council estate, in the Bethnal Green area of London, opened in 1900. But it was only after the First World War that council housing really expanded, with 1.1 million homes built in the inter-war period. These and other events are chronicled in Boughton’s informative and comprehensive history of council housing and the more general modern category of social housing. It is largely confined to England, but there are many discussions of individual areas and estates (from Wythenshawe to Park Hill) that mean it is more than just a general survey.

Reformers feared the filth and disease of poor housing, and often saw council housing as being for those displaced by slum clearance. But, like many others, the new Bethnal Green estate mainly housed the better-off working class (in the sense of manual workers) who had stable jobs, with those in insecure or badly-paid occupations left in privately-rented slums. Many people saw their new council homes as luxury compared to the dirty and overcrowded back-to-backs they had left behind. Even multi-storey blocks could provide decent homes with a sense of community, provided they were not built with the kind of cost-cutting measures that led to the disasters of Ronan Point and Grenfell.

The biggest number of council homes built in a year was 229,000 in 1953, under a Conservative government, but this was partly aided by a reduction in the size and quality of the homes. Labour government policy from 1977 required local councils to give priority to vulnerable groups (though this was absolutely not ‘a well-meaning socialist measure’, as Boughton claims). It led to the perception that council housing was for the most needy, a situation described as residualisation, an ugly term for an unpleasant concept.

There had been previous ‘Right to Buy’ schemes, but nothing on the scale resulting from the 1980 Housing Act, which gave discounts to long-term tenants; the income from sales could not be used to build new homes (just four hundred council homes were started in England and Wales in 1996–7, for instance). Owner-occupation was seen as a good thing, though the numbers are down since their peak in 2003. Most new council lettings now are for fixed terms of two to five years, so removing the long-term security previously offered. In 2016 1.8 million households in England were on waiting lists for local authority social housing.

Council estates in particular are often seen nowadays as a problem, and expressions such as ‘sink estates’ reinforce this view. But Boughton convincingly makes the point that social housing just reflects the wider problems of poverty and insecurity in society, rather than being a cause of these problems. His book is a bit optimistic about the positive results of council housing, but provides an excellent account of its history.

Paul Bennett

Rights. What rights? (2019)

From the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) was struggling with the feudal nobility, it was anxious to secure its ‘rights’ –  the ‘rights’ of the towns – the rising factor all through the Middle Ages – against barons and king, who controlled the state.

Rights were in the hands of the feudal state to bestow on its subjects. The word implies acceptance of one’s subordination to another, of whom you demand rights – the right to do something, express an idea, and so on. Rights are bestowed or withheld. Where there are no classes, no rulers and ruled, rights are an absurdity. They cease to be.

When the bourgeoisie stopped requesting its ‘rights’ and, instead, overthrew the nobility (namely in the French Revolution), it kept the language of Rights, and enshrined it in the bourgeois constitution. Now the bourgeoisie grants rights to, or withholds them from, its subject class, the working class.

Everyone thus today clamours about their ‘rights’ – the right to be a wage-slave, the rights of women, the rights of animals, the rights of minorities, ethnic or sexual. Like ‘freedom’, ‘rights’ is bourgeois language. We petition and plead with our masters for our “rights.”

No more rights! No more capitalist system! Abolish class by abolishing the wages system! Let’s get up off our knees and stop begging for treats.