Pie in the sky (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Faith is the supernatural gift of God, which enables you to believe without doubting whatever the Church has decreed.” This is the answer to the first question in the Catholic catechism. Adam’s sin was that he ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He “became like God” and therefore didn’t need him any more.

Since the beginning of history man has invented supernatural beings to explain things he did not understand. This was logical when knowledge did not extend beyond the immediate concern with keeping alive. Today’s religion is a survival from the time when we still had tails. So although the various gods of fire, water and so on ‘made sense’ to primitive people who could not understand or control their environment, the person who today contends that storms happen because the thunder god is angry would be assigned a place on the ladder of commonsense somewhere below the flat earthers. Feeling themselves at the mercy of the elements, primitive peoples, not knowing how they could help themselves, called upon superior beings to come to their aid. This aspect of primitive religion has survived to the present day. Together with a refusal to accept that human life is as finite as of all other forms of life, it is the basis of most religions today. A better life hereafter is promised to the oppressed and the sick of mind and body under capitalism, as it has been throughout the ages. The exploited have ever been encouraged to follow a leader—temporal as well as spiritual—to the nirvana of a better life. The servant should follow the master, the plebian his lord, the ordinary person the politician, the laity the priests and officials of their religion, who would lead them according to the wishes of the ‘highest commander’—the god or gods of their particular brand of superstition.

There are many religions, but the basic story is the same: the gift of life, the sacrifice of a saviour, the ‘superior being’, the life hereafter. The message is the same, placatory obedience, suffering, penance and self-sacrifice on earth for the sake of rewards hereafter. The priest or mediator interprets the message and dispenses rewards and punishments in the name of his particular deity. Each religion, in its own way, requires to dominate its followers.

Christian and Jewish religions are not alone in putting women in an inferior position and excluding them from all but menial responsibilities. Their pre-ordained place in life is as homemakers and child-bearers. In the Christian church the Virgin Mary is only another in the long line of fertility goddesses. The male ideal of womanhood — as mate, comforter and homemaker in return for protection and provision — is still prevalent in society.

In the Christian churches the deviations are many and varied, but there is irrefutable evidence that not only Western civilisation has been imbued and brainwashed into the moralities of the Christian tradition.

The Gospels

Opinions vary widely as to when the gospels were written, but it is now generally thought that the four used today first appeared between 65 and 100AD. From these, the New Testament evolved between 150 and 350AD. Many other gospels were written by the early Christians, and Luke, one of the 'official' quartet, said that his gospel was only the latest of many.

Several of the gospel stories are lifted directly from the Old Testament. For example, the story of the feeding of the five thousand is first told in the Book of Kings about the prophet Elisha. The birthplace of Jesus, the virgin birth, the visit of the three kings, the flight into Egypt; sometimes even the wording is almost identical.

  “The boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favour with the Lord and with men” (1 Samuel 2:26) becomes “and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and men” (Luke 2:52).

The story of the nativity — “The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s crib”, the stilling of the storm, walking on water, the bodily ascension into heaven (Elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire) — in fact nearly all the ‘supernatural’ aspects of the gospels are paralleled in the Old Testament. Galileans were considered credulous and superstitious and it is interesting to note that nearly all the miracles are supposed to have happened there.

There are serious discrepancies between the gospels. There is a world of difference, for example between “blessed are the poor” (Luke) and ‘blessed are the poor in spirit ’ (Matthew). Mark speaks of the Son of God — a title applied to Israelite kings in the Old Testament. “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (Psalm 2:7) or “The King is God’s first born (Psalm 89:27). John says “The Son of God” — implying a ‘divine being’.

The earliest gospel (Mark, 65AD) was written thirty-two years after the commonly accepted date of Jesus’ death in 33AD. (There is disagreement between the gospels even on this. John implies that he lived nearly fifty years, Luke says a little over thirty.) It has recently been argued that many of the gospel stories are not reported fact but owe much to the Jewish technique of embellishment. The Sermon on the Mount and the Lord’s Prayer do not go back to Jesus himself but are creations of the early church. It is almost impossible to say how much of the gospels is fact and how much modification, interpretation and embellishment in the twenty to sixty years between the events and their writing down This explains the differences between and downright contradictions in the four gospels.

Whereas Islam and Buddhism grew directly out of their founder’s message, the Christian religion altered in some cases almost beyond recognition what was taught by and happened to the historical Jesus. An interesting point here is that Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God on earth. and the Church has turned this upside down and has always taught: 'Be good and suffer here in order to come to the Kingdom of God in heaven — after death'. The itinerant preacher is portrayed in Christian art as a Roman emperor type of god in heaven, even the halo around his head is that of an emperor.

Who was Jesus?

The early church had two images of Jesus: the radiant, noble, idealised one in his transfigured state, and frail and ugly in his human state. Eventually only the former was recognised, and Christian art and images for hundreds of years have portrayed only this aspect. Yet historical writings are quite clear. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215AD) says his face was ugly. The pagan Celsus (c.178) asked, “How can the Son of God have been such an ugly little man?’’. The Latin Father Tertullian (c. 160-220) likened him to a ‘puerulus’ — a wretched little boy. Robert Eisler put together the various descriptions by Josephus: “three ambits tall, crooked or stooping, long-faced, long-nosed with continuous eyebrows, scanty hair, dark-skinned, looking older than his years”. No connection with the aesthetically beautiful, pale-skinned, luxuriously curly-haired Jesus portrayed in Christian churches and religious art for hundreds of years.

In history Jesus was a man who lived and died about two thousand years ago, a practising Jew of Jewish parents. He was one of several children of Joseph and Mary. James, his elder brother, is mentioned in Paul’s message to the Galatians, and there were also Joseph, Judah and Simon, as well as at least two sisters. His family were respectable, and not as poor as the Christian religion would have us believe. They worried about the effect of his activities and tried to stop him, he disowned them (Mark 3:21, 31-35). He was executed on an unknown site by the roadside north or west of Jerusalem. According to Mark (the earliest gospel) no disciples were present and his reputed last words are therefore hearsay and their accuracy as reported in later gospels must be in doubt.

The way we see the world arises out of the structure of our society. Seen in retrospect, the myths and miracles of religion are as understandable in the societies in which they arose as primitive beliefs in gods of fire, water and fertility. In the light of modern knowledge there is no excuse for the continued blind belief in and reliance on a supreme being who determines the course of events.

Eva Goodman

The State and the Socialist Revolution (1940)

Pamphlet Review from the January 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The State and the Socialist Revolution by J. Martov. (International Review, New York.)

This pamphlet consists of a number of essays written during the years 1919-23 by the Russian Marxist, Martov

Who was Martov?

“Integer”, the translator, gives a detailed account of Martov in his Foreword. He was a Russian Marxist who accepted neither the point of view of the Bolsheviks, nor that of the Mensheviks, but was very well known in Russia for his writings both before and during the revolutionary days. He was “one if the founders and collaborators on the Iskra, the publication around which the Russian Social Democracy developed”. After 1917 he opposed the infliction of capital punishment on workers who thought differently from the Bolsheviks, and he demanded trial by jury for political prisoners. Because he persisted in examining critically the policy of the Bolsheviks, he was driven into exile, where he died, poverty-stricken and a victim of tuberculosis.

Martov’s writings are of particular interest to the working class, for therein he carefully examines the content and lays bear the meaning of the Russian Revolution. In addition, he covers such important questions as “Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and “The Commune of 1871”.

It is worthy of note that Martov, possibly ignorant of the S. P. G. B., arrived at conclusions on a large number of subjects which coincide with the views of the Socialist Party of Great Britain expressed in the Socialist Standard in the early years of Bolshevik rule.

Martov on “Soviets for All Countries”

After 1917, the Bolsheviks and their followers in other countries announced to the world that a new weapon, a new political form, had at long last been discovered which would enable the working class everywhere to win its emancipation. This “perfect” political form was, of course, the Soviet. Time and place were of no importance. All that was necessary was for the different peoples to make use of Soviets and each and every one of them would achieve Socialism. Soviets, the Bolsheviks claimed, would be equally efficacious in backward countries like Russia, Bulgaria and Hungary, and in highly industrialised countries like England and the United States. “Soviets are the perfect form of State. They are the magic wand by which all inequalities, all misery, may be suppressed”  (p. 14).

Martov ridiculed the Bolsheviks for their belief that revolutions were ready to break out everywhere, for their belief that workers and peasants, by embracing Soviets (a world merely meaning Council), could establish Socialism. He held the Marxian view that no political form can enable Socialism to be won, unless the material conditions are ripe for such a change, unless capitalism has reached a high degree of development. Says Martov: “No less than mystic is the concept of a political form that, by virtue of its particular character, can surmount all economic social and national contradictions” (p. 15).

Marx’s view on the impossibility of peasant communities passing directly to Socialism without passing through the intermediary stage of capitalism, can be found in his preface to the first edition of Capital. There Marx says: “And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement . . . it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development.”

It can easily be seen, therefore, how little the Bolsheviks understood the teachings of Marx (whose apostles they claim to be), and how badly they followed the advice he had to give.

Reality has shattered all these illusions

To-day, we hear little of Soviets. The reality of experience has taught that they are not “a magic wand”.

Reality, too, shattered many of the Bolsheviks’ early illusions. In his essay on “Dictatorship of the Minority”, Martov shows how the Bolsheviks were forced by conditions of the time to change their tactics and ideas.

In 1917, Lenin urged that the Russian workers would shatter the old bureaucratic and oppressive features of the State, once they had gained political power. He wrote of “the substitution of a universal popular militia for the police”, of the “electiveness and recall at any moment of all functionaries and commanding ranks”, of “workers’ control in its primitive sense, direct participation of the people at the courts” (p. 17). Indeed, Lenin claimed that the triumph of the Bolsheviks would bring to the Russian workers a more real democracy than that found in capitalist countries with the parliamentary system.

This soon proved to be an idle dream. (And yet, perhaps, it was not so “idle”, since such talk helped Lenin and his clique to gain support and power.) In any case, the programme above outlined was soon abandoned. It was found impossible to put it into effect in face of the backward condition of industry and agriculture, and of the peasant outlook. Alread, by1919, Martov could observe that the machinery of State in Russia was being strengthened, and that the apparatus for repression was being improved and extended. Martov sums up the matter in these words:

  Reality has cruelly shattered all these illusions. The ‘Soviet State’ has not established in any instance electiveness and recall of public officials and the commanding staff. It has not suppressed the professional police . . . It has not done away with social hierarchy in production . . . On the contrary, in proportion to its evolution, the Soviet State shows a tendency in the opposite direction. It shows a tendency toward the utmost possible strengthening of the principles of hierarchy and compulsion. It shows a tendency toward the development of a more specialised apparatus of repression than before . . . It shows a tendency toward the total freedom of the executive organisms from the tutelage of the electors” (p. 18. Our emphasis).

Again, on page 55, Martov tells us how things developed after 1917.

  “In Russia the evolution of the ‘Soviet State’ has already created a new and complicated State machine, based on the ‘administration of persons’ as against the ‘administration of things’ based on the opposition of  . . . The functionary (official) to the citizen. THESE ANTAGONISMS ARE IN NO WAY DIFFERENT FROM THE ANTAGONISMS THAT CHARACTERISE THE CAPITALIST STATE” (Our emphasis).

Naturally, Martov, like the S.P.G.B., held the view that the form of State in Russia was not as advanced as the “democratic parliamentarism” found in Western Europe. Whilst ridiculing the democracy of the more highly developed  capitalist countries, the Bolsheviks did not fail to make use of the features of repression existing in those countries (p. 19).

To put the whole matter briefly, after the Russian upheaval of 1917, as before it, the State Power continued to be in the hands of a minority, though it was a different minority (p. 19).

What was the historic role of the Bolsheviks?

In his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels showed that after the proletariat has gained political power for the purpose of introducing Socialism, the State would become unnecessary, and die out. “State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production” (Our emphasis).

If the conclusions of Engels given above contain the truth, the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was not followed by the introduction of Socialism. Or why the continued development and strengthening of the Russian State Power?

What DID the capture of political power by the Bolsheviks mean? Briefly stated, it meant this. The Bolsheviks became the instruments for the furthering of a capitalist revolution in Russia.

After a life-time of experience of working-class movements, Engels, in his preface to The Class Struggle in France, wrote:

  The time has passed for revolutions accomplished through the sudden seizure of power by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses . . . As soon as the situation calls for the total transformation of the social order, the masses must participate in it directly, and they must have an understanding of what is at stake and what must be won. This is what the history of the last half-century has taught us” (Quoted by Martov, pp. 57-8).

Both Engels and Marx knew from experience that before there could be a Socialist revolution, capitalism must have reached a high stage of development for “no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room within it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society” (Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy).

The Bolsheviks, however, thought it possible for an active minority, representing the vague aspirations of the workers, to gain political power before the capitalist revolution itself had been completed. (See Martov, pp. 58-60.) What would happen if such a minority gained a political victory over the capitalist classes?

Marx himself answers this question in clear-cut terms in his article, “Moralising Criticism”. Briefly stated, his answer is the following: In those circumstances, the minority become merely the tools of the capitalist class, which has not been virile enough to gain or hold power. Such a minority finds itself in the position of having to develop and run capitalism for a class unable, at the time, to do it successfully itself. Hence, let it be remembered, in running capitalism, the minority will be compelled to use its power to keep the working class in its slave position. Says Marx:

  Its victory will only be a point in the process of the bourgeois (capitalist) revolution itself, and will serve the cause of the latter by aiding its further development. This happened in 1794, and will happen again as long as the march, the movement, of history will not have elaborated the material factors that will create the necessity of putting an end to the bourgeois methods of production and, as a consequence, to the political domination of the bourgeoisie” (p. 59, Martov’s emphasis).

Hence, we see the real content and meaning of the Russian Revolution. It was “only a point in the process of the capitalist revolution itself”.  The Bolsheviks, finding Russia in a very backward condition, were obliged themselves to do what had not been done previously, i.e., develop capitalism. The Bolsheviks performed the task of setting Russian capitalism on its feet and helping it through a very stormy period. “For the proletariat can score a victory over the capitalists—and not for the capitalists—only when the march of history will have elaborated the NECESSITY (not merely the objective POSSIBILITY) of putting an end to the capitalist methods of production” (p. 59).

We had hoped to include in this article reference to two other essays by Martov; first, “Metaphysical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism”, and secondly, “Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, but, owing to lack of space, we must leave them for a future issue.

Enough, however, has been said to show that we consider The State and the Socialist Revolution worthy of careful study. Like the books by Gide and Yvon, reviewed already in the Socialist Standard, Martov’s appears to add further proof of the correctness of the attitude taken up by the S.P.G.B. [about] the Russian Revolution.

We recommend it to all workers. We are confident that, if widely read, it will dispel many of those illusions which have been hindering the growth of a solid Socialist movement during the past twenty years.

Clifford Allen

(The State and the Socialist Revolution is obtainable from the Literature Secretary, 42 Great Dover Street, London, S. E. 1. Post free, 1s. 1d.)

News in Review: Beeching’s rail cuts (1963)

The News in Review column from the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beeching’s rail cuts

Doctor Beeching’s casuality list was as long as anyone could have expected.

Nearly a third of the passenger route-miles to be withdrawn; almost a half of the stations to be shut down; seventy thousand railwaymen, by one means or another, to be got rid of.

The Tories have always claimed that they are the party of free competition, which is supposed to be something which will bring enormous benefits to us all. According to Conservative propagandists, the worst thing that can happen to us is to be left at the mercy of a monopoly, which will do dreadful things to our standards of living. Yet the Beeching Plan will give, over large areas of the country, a transport monopoly to the road interests. What if these interests act as the Tories have assured us monopolies always act?

This is not the only example of how flexible is the Tories’ regard for their own consistency. At one time the British capitalist class, with the support of the Labour and Conservative Parties, thought that nationalisation of certain industries was in their own overall interests and was, therefore, inevitable, desirable and morally sound.

But since 1945 the capitalist class have been taking a second look at State control. Slowly but definitely they have changed the internal structure of some of the State industries; nowhere is this so apparent as on the railways.

Which brings us to the question of whether nationalisation, apart from being a fraud upon the working class, has also disappointed the capitalists?

The Beeching Plan seems to be going out for an immediate profit from the railways, without providing the kind of facilities which the capitalist class as a whole must require from a railway system. That was exactly what nationalisation was supposed to avoid.

There will probably be a big row over the Beeching report, with both sides representing their case as the one which has everyones’ interests at heart. And inevitably the working class will be wasting their time in another fruitless controversy while the real problem—the private ownership of society’s means of life—is left to do its worst.

Minister’s morals

Macmillan's government, perhaps on its death bed, continues to provide the popular press with some juicy front page copy.

The Vassall case, as far as the TWTWTW set is concerned, is still going strong. Jokes about the Admiralty are still sound social currency.

The case of the junior minister who lent his car to a delinquent youth was deprived of its news value just in time by the minister’s quick resignation.

And on top of all this, the missing model—missing, at any rate, until the press ran her to ground in Spain. (The Guardian reported her discovery with a sober couple of inches; The Daily Express with a giant, predictably leggy picture of her.)

The ministers' denials that they were engaged in what are coyly known as “improper" relationships in any of these cases, are convincing enough. Yet however subtly it has been done, mud has been thrown; the kind of mud that sticks.

A capitalist government can do all manner of unpleasant things to the working class who put it in power. It can break strikes. It can try to hold down wages. It can take the working class into a war which they know a lot of them will not survive. The working class do not seem to object to this kind of treatment sufficiently to turn the government out.

But a government cannot for long get away with anything which smells of corruption or sexual licence. Perhaps the working class, whose teeth are cut on capitalism's morals, feel that their leaders should themselves be beyond reproach. And perhaps there is an element of envy, at the easy, glamorous lives of rich men and powerful politicians,, contrasted to the drab existence of most workers.

In fact, the personal morals of members of a government are quite unimportant. There is no evidence that impeccable family men administer capitalism any more humanely than those whose private life is rather more complicated.

While workers click their tongues over the front page stories, capitalist society—the real scandal—quietly continues.

The budget

The theme of this year's Budget, claimed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expansion. Cheers, it seemed, all round. They are all Keynesians now and therefore believe that reducing taxes and increasing government spending will actually stimulate an industrial revival.

If this were so, then capitalism would have solved one of its big problems. There would never be any more recessions; no industry need ever collapse again.

But facts say, quite plainly, that economic setbacks are as much a part of capitalism as ever. In fact, the Chancellor's financial juggling, far from preceding and guiding economic trends, is the result of those trends and trails some way after them. Maudling's tax cuts, for example, were widely forecast to happen in some shape or form, because the economic and political situation indicated that the time was ripe for them.

In any case there is nothing new about “expansion" Budgets. Butler introduced one in 1953. So did Amory in 1959. A short time after these Budgets, both Chancellors forgot that they had been telling us that the way to prosperity was to expand by cutting taxes and increasing spending. The government brought in other measures which increased taxes and reduced spending. There is no reason to assume that Maudling's optimism will not be similarly forgotten.

This is the economic switchback of capitalism, which Budgets and the other measures try to control.

They never succeed; the problems of capitalism live on, long after the Chancellors who try to solve them are forgotten As each Budget Day draws near, the Chancellor is swamped with advice from all manner of reformist organisations. Some of these have recently come to the conclusion that the financial affairs of British capitalism are exceptionally complicated and need an enormous administrative effort to keep them going.

In The Guardian on April 2nd, Christopher Layton was hoping:

  Will tomorrow’s Budget be a milk and water affair, or will it at last demonstrate that the Government is seeking, to get to the roots of the country’s economic sickness?

And his question was partly answered by Samuel Brittan in The Observer on April 7th:

   . . . Mr. Maudling will need luck as well as skill if the gamble is to come off.

and

  Unfortunately the international financial system is full of weaknesses; the U.S. economy lost its zip several years ago and the European boom looks very old and tired. It is on these world uncertainties that we must keep our fingers crossed.  . . . 

Budgets, just like the rest of capitalism’s efforts to control its own anarchies, are a gamble. Maudling’s may be designed to allow Britain's ruling class to breathe more freely, but it is just as likely to fail in this as its predecessors.

Typhoid in Zermatt

One by one, some ugly facts have trickled out about the typhoid outbreak in Zermatt.

At first it may have seemed like a simple case of bad luck, the sort that could happen anywhere, any time.

Then an article in the Swiss paper Gazette de Lausanne suggested that the first case of the disease was diagnosed last September, that the village’s water supply had a doubtful origin and was not properly cleansed. A couple of letters in The Guardian of April 1st, written by people who had recently returned from Zermatt, offered additional evidence that all has not been well in the Swiss resort for several months. The lid was really blown off by a merciless TV programme. Later in the year, we shall probably know the full facts and it will not be a pleasant story.

In the height of the holiday season the population of Zermatt usually rose from its permanent 2,000 to about 15,000. Its prices were high, its hoteliers thriving. To keep up its attraction for winter sports enthusiasts, Zermatt installed a lot of machinery to take the visitors up to the top of the snow slopes. But behind this facade, it seems, the resort was neglecting essentials like a pure water supply.

Its own water resources were not sufficient to cater for the . influx of holidaymakers and so Zermatt has been tapping other, more risky, sources. Some of these were damaged by severe frost and that, possibly, is where the disease started.

In other words, Zermatt preferred to concentrate upon the gimmicks which it knew would bring in a quick profit and to take a chance on the safety of its public health facilities. Capitalism in general has come to realise that this is a short-sighted policy which can lead to serious loss of profits in the long run.

This is how it has worked for Zermatt, The typhoid outbreak has ruined the image of Switzerland as a hygienic country of sun and snow and healthy holidays.

And it has brought the unfortunate typhoid sufferers face to face with a principle which capitalism, in one way or another, always applies; profit first, the rest a long way after.

Nicky

- Who's Nicky ?

- You mean what's Nicky. It’s the National Incomes Commission.

- Who commissioned it?

- It was set up by the government.

- What for?

- To consider wage settlements which the government thinks are too generous to the workers.

- Has it got a chairman?

- Yes.

- Paid?

- Yes.

- How much?

- Er — £12,500 a year.

- But . . .

- No more questions, please.

Housing: Both Sides (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Both Sides (1)

  It’s a proper home for my kiddies I want—you can’t bring them up in a place like this. We'd go to Hong Kong if necessary to get one. (Mrs. Ford, London slumdweller—News Chronicle, 27.11.56.)

  

  Mr. Colin Tennant, 32, Princess Margaret's friend, is buying, on behalf of his family, an island in the West Indies. It is Mustique Island, in the Grenadines. Extending over 1,250 acres, it has eight magnificent beaches. I understand that the price to be paid will be in the region of £50,000. (Sunday Express, 5/4.59.)

Both Sides (2)

   It’s the rats are the worst. They even come out in the daytime when it‘s dry. I’ve never left the pram outside my door since one jumped out from under the blanket (Mrs. Doyle, Liverpool slumdweller — Observer, 27.11.60.)

  The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk moved from Arundel Castle to their new dower house in Arundel Great Park yesterday. The house has taken over two years to build and has cost £60,000 . . . The Duke and Duchess will hold a “housewarming" party tonight. (The Guardian, 7.11.61.)

Both Sides (3)

  Now they are seeking a house so desperately that they are prepared to offer their youngest child, nine-month-old Andrew, in exchange. He and the other children . . . have been in the care of Staffordshire County Council for the past 10 months. . . . (Andrew’s mother) said today: “You have to be pretty desperate to offer your child for a house." (Observer, 11.12.60.)

   

  He (Lord Snowdon) was very keen to tell me about the new house that people have been making such a fuss about. He told me he would be just as satisfied with a small cottage. (The Lord Mayor of Nottingham, talking about Princess Margaret's home in Kensington Palace, The Guardian, 20.6,62.)

Both Sides (4)

   ". . . a man in poor health who, with his wife and three young children, had for some time been living in one room. They had been living on National Assistance for more than a year, and after trouble with the landlord had to leave their room. The children had been taken into care because in the only alternative accommodation the couple could find, children were not wanted.” (From a Family Service Unit survey, The Guardian, 14.2.63.)

   After weeks of house-hunting, Princess Alexandra and Mr. Angus Ogilvy, who marry on April 24th, have found a home.

    It is Thatched House Lodge, Richmond Park, a house chiefly of the early Georgian period, standing in 2,200 acres of royal parklands and deer forest. It is on high ground with fine southern views over Petersham and Richmond . . . The house has twelve bedrooms, six bathrooms, six reception rooms, two cottages, a passenger lift, a squash court, a heated swimming pool, and stable block of five loose boxes. (Evening Standard, 12.3.63.)

Halo Halo!: Born in Sin … or Living in Fantasy? (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s only one thing worse than being cornered in the pub by a drunk Sun reader who insists on explaining, in detail, his personal analysis of the weakness in the defence at Arsenal’s last away game, together with the meaning of life and his recommendations for dealing with ISIS; and that’s being cornered by a bible thumper who recognises you as someone who needs, urgently, to be assured that Jesus is your Lord and Saviour.

At least with the Sun reader it’s obvious, right from the start, what he is. He doesn’t kick off by exchanging pleasantries about the weather and then start introducing Jesus into each sentence after twenty seconds. With the Sun reader you make allowance for the fact that the images tumbling around in his brain, formed by years of exposure to page 3 and lurid accounts of the private lives of footballers and models, will transform themselves into a stream of verbiage which can then be gushed out to explain any topic under discussion.

With the born-again believer it’s more difficult. What explanation is there for their surreal view of the world? OK, they may also be Sun readers which won’t help, but what other nightmares shape the fantasies of the self-confessed ‘sinner’? What is it that makes them ashamed of being human, convinced that their only purpose in life is to prepare for another, future one, in which an invisible tyrant will reward, or punish them, for every thought or action taken now?

This month we’re taking you on a guided tour of a bible-thumper’s brain, or rather the ideas on which it is fed, courtesy of a couple of religious websites. Fasten your seat belts and hold on tight: First, the titles of a selection of articles showing what’s important to Christian Post readers:

‘Muslims Will Continue Beheading Non-Believers Until Jesus Slays the Antichrist’. … ‘If Islamic Terrorists Are Devout Muslims, Why Are They Hooked On Porn?’… ‘This Pastor Chose Against Acting on His Same-Sex Attractions’. … ‘Former Megachurch Pastor Tells Oprah the Church Is “Moments Away” From Embracing Gay Marriage’. … ‘3 Reasons You Must Not See Fifty Shades Of Grey’. … ‘I Witnessed Men With Size 13 and 14 Shoes Kissing Each Other’.

A selection of well-balanced articles there, clearly making the point that Jesus loves you. Now, what can the Charisma News add to that?

How about –‘Evil Empire: The 10 Plagues, Islam and the Judgement of God’. … ‘Psychopathic Porn: The X-Rated Path of Destruction’. … ‘9 Prophetic Keys For Binding the Homosexual Spirit’. … ‘Have You Committed the Unpardonable Sin? … ‘Pop Evil Rocker Casts Demon Out of Brother’. … ‘Sex Trafficking Expert Has 5 Alarming Concerns About ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. … ‘Franklin Graham Speaks Bluntly About Transgender Bathrooms’.

Having digested these, and now safely in the arms of Jesus, you may now like to add: ‘Jeb Bush to Make Case for Stronger U.S. Role in World’. And don’t miss ‘Dilemma for Jeb: How Bush 3 Would Deal With Iraq’.

Ah well, it could be worse. At least it’s not just pointless tabloid sex and violence is it? Oh, hang on  . . .

NW

Guns Before Needs (2015)

From the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Normally under capitalism it’s profits before needs but sometimes, since capitalism can’t exist without the state, something else is granted priority. Not meeting any of people’s needs of course but a state’s need to have armed force at its disposal. This, not just to protect sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets for its capitalist firms but also because, in the diplomatic jockeying between states for power and influence on the world stage, “might is right”.

The US government is concerned that austerity in Britain has gone too far as the war (or,  in Orwellian, the “defence”) budget has also been cut.

The US government knows that Britain, thanks to its imperial(ist) past, has in its armed forces a highly efficient killing machine that it can rely on to back up its own killing machine. The militarist lobby in Britain has wheeled out retired generals and admirals to support more money for the killing machine they once commanded.

And the attitude of the Labour Party? “Labour has pledged to outspend the Conservatives on defence in the next parliament, heaping pressure on David Cameron as he faces a growing rebellion over armed forces expenditure.

Ed Balls promised yesterday that Labour would go “nowhere near the huge scale of defence cuts you are going to see under the Conservatives”.

After a speech in London, the shadow chancellor said that he would prioritise defence in the spending review after the election, adding: “I think that it’s really important that we live up to our international responsibilities.”

Mr Balls added: “A Labour Treasury will want to back the defence of our country at a critical time, and that’s why I am refusing point-blank to sign up to the extreme plans that George Osborne has set out before us as his election manifesto.” (Times, 10 March).

Not that we should be – or are – surprised. The Labour Party has always supported the war preparations of the British state and the wars in which has been engaged. And yet there are some who still see it as the lesser of two evils.

But how do you tell the difference?

Proper Gander: Putting Protest To The Test (2015)

The Proper Gander column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unfortunately, ‘growing up’ usually means swapping your youthful enthusiasm for the decades-long sentence of stress and boredom we’ve learnt to call adulthood. Hopefully this won’t happen to the five young activists featured on BBC3’s Fighting The System. Showing enviable amounts of passion for their beliefs, animal rights campaigners Phoebe and Jayne protest at shops selling angora rabbit fur, and hand out leaflets reminding people in burger joints what they’re eating. Danielle is part of a group of climate change protestors who occupy power stations, bravely not letting the consequences of getting a criminal record stop them. Yaz is an 18 year old feminist taking a stand outside the Sun newspaper’s headquarters against topless models on page three. Sarah joins in with the occupation of empty-but-useable council houses in Newham, London by the Focus E15 Mothers group. All appreciate the strong friendships, new skills, and rushes of adrenaline they’ve found through their protests.

Direct action like this only comes about because the vast majority of us have little say in the important decisions which affect us. People end up going to extreme lengths such as jumping out in front of Rupert Murdoch’s limousine or climbing power station chimneys because they don’t have much influence otherwise. And why should they? Corporations and institutions are owned by a distant minority with their own interests to protect. They only take on board the wishes of protestors when it becomes advantageous for them to do so. Direct action hasn’t been able to make changes to the basic way society is structured to exploit and restrict us, and therefore new causes to protest about keep springing up. So, Fighting The System has a misleading title. The young activists it features aren’t fighting the system as much as fighting against some effects of the system, but that doesn’t sound quite so snappy. Hopefully, the activists will turn their energy to making real, fundamental changes to society.

Mike Foster

50 Years Ago: Malcolm X (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to his autobiography, Malcolm X expected to die violently, but probably most people expected that, if this happened, it would be by the hand of a white man.

The assassination provoked an outburst of hysteria and apprehension—even regret from people who were only recently denouncing the doctrines which Malcolm X had expounded.

The murdered man moved in a world of violence. His mother, he said, was conceived after a white man had raped his grandmother. His father was also murdered, his skull smashed in and his body flung under the wheels of a street car.

It was only after the seemingly inevitable career of crime and drug addiction that Malcolm X became interested in the Black Muslims—an event which, he wrote, gave him “a little feeling of self-respect.”

He soon became prominent in the movement, attracting a lot of publicity with his teachings that the Negro should be strong, disciplined and ready to answer violence with violence. A few months ago he came to the Oxford Union to defend his own interpretation of Barry Goldwater’s famous remarks on extremism.

It is perhaps surprising that there was not a Malcolm X before. The oppressions and indignities to which the American Negro are subjected are so extreme that it was predictable they should develop their own, counter-extremist, organisation.

If history is any guide, it was also predictable that this organisation should split, and that the struggle between the two factions (the Black Muslims and Malcolm X’s Organisation of Afro-American Unity) should be as bitter and as ruthless as that against their common adversary.

We have seen this before. We have seen it in Cyprus and in Algeria and many, many times before that. We saw it in Ireland, in the days when Michael Collins was shot down on the far South road from Skibbereen to Cork.

In many ways, the United States today is a cauldron of savagery and hatred. In an ugly situation, the Negroes themselves offer scant hope. The summit of their ambition is in fact to be exploited on equal terms with the white wage slaves who now stand just a little above them on the social scale.

(from ‘News in Review’, Socialist Standard, April 1965)

How We Could Live (2015)

From the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Already, working together, we produce a great deal of wealth. But most of us don’t get to see or benefit much from it. Imagine how much more needed things could be produced and useful services provided if the 200 million unemployed people in the world were allowed to work.

It is not laziness stopping them. The barrier is profit. The people who own the world’s factories, machines and tools must make a profit or they won’t hire. If we owned these resources together, we could use the fruits of our labour for our own benefit. We could share out the wealth we create together.

We wouldn’t need markets and the waste that goes with them. We could directly produce enough for all. We could save all the work and effort that goes with buying and selling and shuffling money around and instead create more of what we need. No more tax  collectors, benefit officers or bankers. It would be more efficient to simply share out our produce freely and according to need.

Working together, we can free up our time so we can take control of the communities where we live. We could have democracy at work too. We would be able to control the real decisions that affect all our lives. There would be no privileged, rich elite able to buy their way to influence and power

We need to organise ourselves to demand common ownership and democratic control of the productive wealth of the world. It will take all of us, standing together, debating, discussing and planning in order to make the change possible. It can be done.

Voice From The Back: Once as history, twice as farce (2015)

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Greasy Pole: Goodbye (?) to All These (2015)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are close now to that minute or two at the ballot boxes when we have an opportunity to state what we think of the capitalist social system and its wars, famine, and diseases amidst its class privileges. Nationally the voting papers will be missing some famous names. Like Sir Peter (‘my biggest mistake in politics was to listen to Mrs Thatcher’) Tapsell, the Father Of The House. And like Austin (‘… even if we selected a raving alcoholic sex paedophile we wouldn’t lose Grimsby’) Mitchell. So where, among this confusion, can we find Aidan Burley the MP (for a short while yet) for Cannock Chase where in 2010 he clocked up the country’s biggest swing –– of 14 percent – to the Tories and who is such good pals with David Cameron that they are compelled to greet each other with a High Five whenever they meet to discuss how they are straightening out the kinks in British capitalism. Burley is 36 and since arrival in the Commons he has been a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. But it has not been all easy going for him.

Nazi Chants

During his time as a student at Oxford he managed to fit in his studies of theology with involvement in an ‘incident’ on a dance floor which led to his being ejected from his St. John’s College accommodation. Another event contributed to his decision – or perhaps his surrender to pressure from outside – to stand down from Parliament. In December 2011 he organised a stag party for a friend – Old Etonian Mark Fournier – at a crowded posh restaurant in a French ski resort. The slim chances that this would be a happy, peaceable celebration were not realized when Fournier arrived in a black Nazi SS uniform – arranged by Burley – which he flaunted full face to the camera. The guests enlivened the evening with Nazi salutes and chants of ‘Mein Fuhrer, Himmler, Eichmann’. When it was time for toasts Burley was among those raising a glass to ‘… and if we’re perfectly honest, to the ideology and thought process of the Third Reich’. Unluckily for him and his gruesome mates their behaviour was reported in The Mail On Sunday. There was an internal enquiry by the Tory Party at which Burley denied his active participation but the evidence proved otherwise. Cameron had to face the inevitable and remove his incautious friend from the job as a PPS. A French Court fined Fournier the equivalent of £1250.

St. Helens

Aidan Burley’s fragmented political career is not typical of the MPs who are leaving the Commons this May. Shaun Woodward was first elected in 1997, at first as a Conservative in the safest of seats at Witney (now represented by none other than David Cameron) and then, after being sacked from the Front Bench for voting against instructions on Clause 28, as a Labour MP. It might have been expected that he would do what in the Commons is regarded as the decent thing and resign to fight a by-election under his new colours (like the two recent defectors to UKIP) but he chose to ignore the pressures from his former colleagues and was rewarded by Labour’s leadership with the candidature for St. Helens South in the 2001 election. This was rather different from Witney, for St. Helens was still suffering from the closure of its coal mines and regularly ran up Labour majorities of well over 20,000. For Woodward in 2001 it fell to under 9,000. But Tony Blair was delighted, regarding this recruit as evidence of New Labour’s appeal, a kind of paragon ‘…clever, articulate…economically and socially liberal…genuine’ (he did not mention that he was also very rich). The lower benches were less exuberant; Chris Mullin, representing a Sunderland seat, was pretty blunt: ‘…one of New Labour’s vilest stitch-ups … made my flesh creep’ and on another occasion ‘The awful Shaun Woodward, his every word a sneer’ while on the opposite benches Michael Heseltine forecast that Woodward would ‘… soon become a dot on the horizon’. Among this passion of outrage and mockery in 2007 Gordon Brown elevated Woodward to Northern Ireland Secretary.

Sainsbury

Now that Woodward is leaving the Commons, he will probably have to sell his modest house in St Helens, leaving him with the choice of six other homes in places such as the Hamptons and Mustique, which vary in price up to about £7 million. He is married to Camilla Davan Sainsbury from the family who have made their fortune through flogging supermarket food to the wage class in society. Sainsburys are unlikely to be supplying refreshments to the monthly meetings of the Sybil Club of which Woodward is a founder member. The club was set up with the objective of its members gorging themselves on food and drink in honour of ‘interesting’ MPs. As an example of a particularly ‘interesting’ meeting, one member described an evening at one of Woodward’s London houses closing with them all ‘completely stupefied’ but relieved that Woodward had a butler who would feed the parking meter in the morning.

Not all of the MPs leave the Commons willingly, congratulating themselves on a job well done. Two of them – Ann MacIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) and Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) have been deselected – a polite word for kicked out – by the popular vote of their constituency members. Eric Joyce (Falkirk) transformed himself from Labour to Independent after initiating some drunken punch-ups in the House of Commons bar. Then there are those whose motives we may speculate about because they are The Disappointed Ones, who once nursed an ambition to be their Party Leader. Like Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) and Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles). In this company William Hague is best left unremarked. All of them endured by virtue of the delusion that they represented a remedy for the chaos and vanity of capitalist politics. Like all those who by some means remain as our Parliamentary rulers. None of them will be missed.

Ivan

Cooking the Books: A Thirst for Profits (2015)

The Cooking the Books Column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

A study has confirmed that you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Or, rather, its modern equivalent that you can reduce interest rates but you can’t make capitalist firms invest.

The study, published last year by three US business studies academics, found that over the period from 1952 to 2010 there was no consistent relationship between interest rates and corporate investment. Corporate investment did not go up when interest rates were low and did not go down when interest rates were high (LINK).

So, what did influence business investment? ‘It turns out’ said the press release on the study, ‘that healthy profits and stock prices are the strongest predictors of corporate investment.’ To Marxian socialists this is rather obvious: the capitalist economy is driven by the quest for profits; so capitalist firms invest when they consider that their investment will bring them a profitable return; an indication that good profitable investment opportunities exist will be that the economy is growing and that firms are already making good profits. Or, as the press statement reported the lead author saying:

  ‘“What corporations really respond to is what sort of profit outlook they face, and the general environment for growth,” Kothari says, noting that investment also closely correlates with gross domestic product growth. Practically speaking, the results make sense in that companies have more money to invest, more investment opportunities, and more pressure to spend from investors when things are good; all those factors dry up when the economy slows down.’

But there is a downside to this, as the study also found. When the profitable investment outlook is good, capitalist firms act as if this is not going to stop, with the result that they come to invest too much in relation to market demand, so provoking an economic downturn and a consequent fall in profits and profitable investment opportunities:

  ‘The research reveals that corporate executives have their own foibles, including a propensity to over-invest at exactly the worst time in the economic cycle. While profits and stock prices rise before a spike in corporate investment, both decline almost immediately afterward.’

The authors are at a loss to explain this apparently irrational behaviour:

  ‘The main reason for the negative relationship between capital expenditure spikes and business performance, Kothari believes, is a behavioural one: irrational exuberance. “As stocks and profits go up, corporations keep investing,” he says. “But rather than stopping at an appropriate point in time, they go a bit too far. If they had stopped at the right point, it could have been great.”

But is this behaviour – keeping on investing while the prospects for profit-making are good – really irrational? Capitalist firms are all competing against each other for profits. For one firm to stop investing when the profit-making outlook is good would be to risk letting its rivals take a share of its potential market. It is that that would be irrational.

In any event, how could capitalist firms know when to stop investing and, if they did, how could they reach a collective decision to all do this. Given the anarchy of capitalism they can’t do either. Once a capitalist horse has started drinking you can’t stop it.

50 Years Ago: Profits Before Life (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The profits will not allow it.”

Rarely has the plain, tragic truth been so bluntly stated by a capitalist as on April 28th in the Westminster Coroner’s Court.

The Coroner was holding an inquiry into the “accident” that took place upon a building in course of erection in High Holborn.

Two and a half tons of iron was being hoisted by a crane “made to take three tons.” “Everything was brand new.”

Henry James Matthews a lad of 18, acting as a crane signalman, was killed as the result of the chain of the crane breaking.

After the poor lad's brother had given evidence, the Coroner called a member of the firm that made the chain.

After great difficulty the Coroner got the makers to give evidence. The secretary of the company that supplied it offered the Coroner some certificates, but said that he knew nothing about the chain itself.

The Coroner was forced to remark that “it seems a very casual way of doing things when a man's life is at stake.”

Finally a member of the manufacturing firm told the Coroner that he had been asked to attend “to listen to the evidence.” He was asked by the Coroner: “After testing do you go over the chain to see if there are any cracks?”

The answer was a remarkable indictment of this cursed system of society, for he said: 

“NO. THE PROFITS WILL NOT ALLOW OF IT”!

“ I am not talking about profits,” retorted the Coroner, “ I am talking about the safety of human life.”

After some further questions the Coroner was led to say: “You are perfectly well aware of what you are talking about. It is no use trying to befool me. You are trying to ride round the subject.”

A link of the chain was handed to the witness and he was asked why, although the link had snapped, it showed no signs of fracture. All he could say to the point was: “It shows no signs of fracture.”

The Coroner said that “looking at the surface of the link you can see it is not a fracture, and that the metal had never been properly welded.”

Frederick John Parkes, Factory Inspector, said that the quality of the workmanship of the link was very bad indeed and that the metal was defective. It had not been properly welded.

Even the representative of the building company had to confess that he “found the rest of the chain not perfect.”

(from the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard)

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Annual Conference is over and now is the time when outdoor propaganda really starts, and what better aid for success in this field is to have available a big and well-produced Socialist Standard to help spread the word of Socialism. This May issue has been prepared with this end in view and if everyone who normally takes one or two copies each month, at least doubled that quantity we should have sold the whole issue. A well worth achievement!

Glasgow Branch is contesting the Municipal Election in Woodside during May and the Branch members with their usual enthusiasm have been busy canvassing and holding many indoor and outdoor meetings. It is hoped that this issue of the Standard will help them in their task.

The Mid-Herts Group founded last year has been holding meetings at intervals in homes of members. A regular meeting place has been obtained and a programme of lectures and discussions is planned. This summer, some members of the Group intend to help Paddington Branch in the running of outdoor meetings at Stevenage. An “Any Questions” meeting was held by the Group at Welwyn on April 3rd. This was well attended and very successful. Good literature sales and collection resulted.

The third meeting of the three-branch effort (Paddington, Bloomsbury and Ealing) takes place at the small Conway Hall, Red Lion Square on Monday, May 13th at 7.30. There is ample room and again the meeting will be Any Questions. It is hoped that refreshments will be available. Bloomsbury Branch is organising this meeting.

Please note the May Day meetings (on May 1st and May 5th), good support by members will mean good meetings. Members please co-operate and support the speakers.

The severe winter curtailed Wembley Branch Socialist Standard canvassing efforts, but with the better weather, the recent sluggishness and inertia have given way to renewed activity. The May Socialist Standard will have special attention, and several evening canvasses have been planned in addition to the usual ones at weekends. Again, in support of the Special number we have arranged a public meeting at Barham Park on May 20th. Subject—of course— “Housing”. Every branch member is asked to support this very important meeting and see that it is well publicised. There will at least be leaflets, distributed well in advance, and the usual local press adverts.

Other events in the offing are two propaganda trips to Southsea in June and August, a film show, and the opening of outdoor meetings at Earls Court alternate Fridays, commencing June. Full details will be announced as they are known. Watch the Socialist Standard for these, also for the dates and titles of future branch discussions and lectures (suspended recently to make way for Annual Conference business). Finally, well designed posters advertising the branch's regular meetings are still displayed prominently on two of the Wembley Railway Stations and we shall try to keep them there for as long as we can. Who knows, perhaps some of our many visitors will in future be disgruntled victims of Dr. Beeching’s axe.

We are receiving a number of enquiries from readers in North East England, and have also received two applications for membership. It has been suggested by members of Central Branch, living in the Newcastle-on-Tyne vicinity that a Discussion Group might be established. Would readers and sympathisers, interested in forming such a Group, please submit their name and address to the Central Organiser at H.O. so that the matter can be considered.

Phyllis Howard

Arguing with President Trump (2019)

From the World Socialist Party of the United States website

On February 5 our great flag-hugging president Donald Trump stood before Congress and delivered his State of the Union Address. Among other things he said:

  Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.

Standing behind him, Ms. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives and a Democrat, nodded vigorously in approval as he said this. President Trump was expressing a bipartisan consensus shared by most Democrats as well as Republicans. 

How would a socialist respond to this, if given the chance?

Was America founded on liberty and independence?

Very well, America was founded on liberty and independence. But whose liberty to do what? And whose independence from who?

The United States was founded by free English colonists who sought independence from the British crown and certain liberties or rights (such as the right not to be taxed without representation and the right to trial by jury). In other respects, however, full liberty and independence were enjoyed only by the wealthiest of the colonists. Then as now, many Americans were dependent for their livelihood on employers. Debtors were dependent on their creditors. 

What liberty or independence did the black slaves have? Or the white indentured servants, who paid for their passage across the Atlantic with seven years’ labor under conditions so harsh that they might or might not survive? Or the native people in the areas occupied or coveted by the colonists? After all, George Washington’s Revolutionary Army fought not only to free the colonists from British rule but also to conquer the tribal lands of the Iroquois League and Ohio Union. [See Barbara Alice Mann, George Washington’s War on Native America (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).]

So it is true that America was founded on liberty and independence – for some. It is equally true that America was founded on slavery, dependence, and genocide – for others.  

Are we free today?

How free are Americans today? Perhaps, as President Trump claims, we are all ‘born free.’ But as Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ 

Slavery has been officially abolished, but many people still live in conditions not far removed from slavery: 2,300,000 in jails and prisons, others forcibly confined and drugged in mental hospitals, victims of human trafficking, illegal immigrants held at the mercy of their employers and working for very little or even nothing. 

The majority of the population – those of us who have to sell our ability to work in order to earn a living – can count ourselves at best partially free. How free are you if for at least 40 hours a week, or double that if you work two jobs, you are controlled by a manager or supervisor and ultimately by a boss? How free do you feel? 

Only those whose wealth and property income enable them to live in comfort without working for a boss can be considered truly free. President Trump, whose net worth is estimated at $3.1 billion, certainly falls into this category, as do Ms. Pelosi and the other 50 or so members of the congress addressed by President Trump who own assets of $10 million or more. President Trump’s meaning becomes much clearer when we realize that by ‘we’ he has in mind, mainly if not exclusively, he and his fellow capitalists. 

When is ‘government coercion, domination, and control’ bad?

President Trump’s denunciation of ‘government coercion, domination, and control’ seems to be at odds with the real policy of his government. Are we really expected to believe that the current US government never coerces, dominates, or controls, either at home or abroad? For example, when it imposes sanctions on Venezuela and freezes its assets in order to create a crisis that can serve as a pretext to bomb and invade that country and seize its oil and other resources, surely that has something to do with ‘government coercion, domination, and control’? 

No. Because it is mainly capitalists who need to be protected from government coercion, domination, and control. The Maduro government in Venezuela stands accused of trying to coerce, dominate, and control domestic and foreign capitalists. Economic and even military action to oust that government is not therefore itself ‘government coercion, domination, and control’ but action against ‘government coercion, domination, and control.’

By contrast, should a government agency try to stop a corporation dumping poisonous or flammable waste into the public water supply, thereby encroaching upon its ‘liberty and independence,’ that is a flagrant exercise of ‘government coercion, domination, and control’ – of capitalists. We may rest assured, of course, that no abuse of this sort will occur while the agency is headed by a Trump appointee.

Calls to adopt socialism?

What ‘calls to adopt socialism’ is President Trump talking about? Is it the World Socialist Movement that ‘alarms’ him? I suspect not. Our movement is not yet large enough to give him cause for alarm. He and his colleagues are probably discomforted by the fact that they now have ‘socialists’ sitting among them in Congress. Exactly how many ‘socialists’ is unclear. Only a handful of congresspeople openly call themselves ‘socialists.’ However, according to McCarthyite sources many more are closet socialists. One especially vigilant commentator claims that all 81 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are ‘socialists,’ ‘progressive’ supposedly being a codeword for ‘socialist.’ The uncertainty must be nerve-wracking for right-thinking congresspeople, who must worry about inadvertently smiling at a ‘socialist’ or even, God forbid, shaking hands with one. 

True, there is nothing new about having even an avowed ‘socialist’ in Congress: Bernie Sanders has been there since 2007. But they may have found it easier to tolerate a lone socialist. And an avuncular and urbane figure like Bernie presumably disturbs them less than the new crop of impertinent and combative young women, some of them with almost unpronounceable foreign names like Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez.  

I am inclined to reassure President Trump that his alarm is premature. The ‘socialism’ of these ‘progressive Democrats’ is not of the full-bloodied kind, entailing the dispossession of the capitalists and the transfer of their productive assets to common ownership and democratic control. Their ‘socialism’ is of the milk-and-water variety – the ‘socialism’ advocated by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, with which quite a few of the ‘progressive Democrats’ appear to be affiliated. 

It would be more accurate to call such ‘socialists’ social reformers. They accept world capitalism, with its world market and great power competition, as givens. They never even talk (at least in public) about replacing it with a new system. Their ideal is capitalism on the West European and especially Scandinavian model. They seek merely to regulate the worst abuses – destabilizing financial speculation, for example — and implement programs like ‘Medicare for All’ and a ‘Green New Deal.’ The most far-sighted capitalists recognize that such reforms would make the capitalist system more stable and sustainable.  

The trouble is that American capitalists, unlike their West European counterparts, have never had to accustom themselves to the presence of moderate ‘socialists’ in government (arguably with the exception of a few years in the 1930s under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt). They have not learned how to tame, manipulate, and work with such people. Especially in recent decades, with neo-liberalism in the ascendant, they have grown used to having everything their own way. The prospect that soon they may have to make a few compromises comes as a shock to them.

Nevertheless, the capitalist system has repeatedly shown itself quite capable of co-opting and absorbing ‘progressive’ social reformers. Will today’s social reformers prove an exception? We shall see. 

Stefan