Don’t sweat the small stuff (2019)

From the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’ve been hearing a lot about traditional politics being ‘broken’. There is deep dissatisfaction and disillusionment with all political parties, with their failed promises, their increasingly transparent dishonesty, the personal ambition of their representatives, and their idiotic circus of privileged shouting matches in the Palace of Westminster. But beneath the surface, our discontent is really a frustration at the social system itself, and its perpetual inability to deliver genuine comfort and security for all, regardless of which party has its hands on the wheel.

This is an era of profound social crisis, both culturally and economically. We are witnessing new levels of corruption, decadence and mendacity in public life. Decades of intelligent discourse and positive social evolution seem to be unravelling in front of our eyes. Frustration with the way things are is leading to a new surge in irrationality and abuse. The past year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of violent racist attacks in the USA, Britain and throughout Europe. The gap between rich and poor widens, and the rich and powerful are succeeding in persuading large numbers of the impoverished to scapegoat those even poorer or more vulnerable, rather than focus on their actual exploiters.

More and more the issues facing us are global and deadly in their urgency. In that context, the petty squabbles within the British Labour and Conservative parties are irrelevant and absurd in their self-importance and pomposity. There is an increasing risk of major and possibly nuclear conflict, which could kill millions. Even though Britain is one of the world’s most developed states, the figures for poverty are chronic and worsening. Confidence in the democratic process is plummeting to new lows. There is evidence of the French gilet jaunes, who started by protesting against fuel price rises, now being partly hijacked by expressions of anti-semitism, whilst groups of political thugs in Britain have also donned high-vis tunics in a crude, confused and blunt protest against the so-called ‘liberal elite’.

The social problems which have vexed us throughout modern history could have been solved long ago, by a radical and imaginative change in the basis of society, but true radicalism has at each turn been dismissed, as much by the Left as by conservatives, in the name of ‘realism’ and reasonable expectations. We inhabit a social system of brutal capital accumulation and dehumanisation which can only get worse, and periodically implode as it is doing now. This could be a time for a great positive change, if we question and replace the underlying economic system – or for a plunge into the abyss, if once again we don’t.

Whilst Labour and Tory seem to be falling apart at the seams, the new groupings are essentially no better. There was a very telling moment when Kirsty Wark interviewed Anna Soubry for Newsnight about the new Independent Group. Wark pressed her on what they stood for and she had absolutely no answer. Eventually, she actually paused and laughed patronisingly at Wark, pityingly saying: ‘You see, you’re still in the old way of doing things. This is something new!’ However, she then admitted that they had ‘no policies’ yet. Pushed again, she said they ‘believe in sound economic policies, and a sound economy’. So, that’s clear, then! That moment when she tried to reverse roles and criticise the reporter questioning her was similar to what Trump does, attacking reporters for asking the right questions, turning the question back on them, switching roles in order to avoid scrutiny.

Within three hours of being formed, one of the Independent Group, Angela Smith MP, referred to ‘people of a funny tinge’ in the context of saying that discrimination against minority ethnic groups was not just about colour, and had to apologise for her offensive phrase.

On a much more positive note, February saw the beginnings of a new global movement for change from school students, with strikes and protests about the lack of action on climate change. Inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who protests every Friday outside her country’s parliament, the British action (Youth Strike 4 Climate) was swiftly condemned by Theresa May and others as ‘wasting time’! – wanting to avert global catastrophe is clearly sneered at by these dinosaurs of political depravity. These advocates of a rotten and murderous system, who would herald a new dark age if we let them, should be held in utter contempt.

There is one thing which ties all of this together, and overshadows the petty, parochial politics of Britain, Brexit, Labour, Tory, Independent Group and all of the other intellectual pygmies bleating to sell us into slavery on the altar of the profits of a few. The uniting thread running through all of these crises, of climate change, militarism and war, insecurity, racism, violence and political cynicism is the unspoken, open secret of ownership and control. On this, Karl Marx was spot on, and the clarity of his observations is even now becoming more and more compelling. Capitalism is still the social system which exists throughout the world and its effects get worse every day that it staggers on. Wealth concentration is now even more extreme than it was in his day, increasing the already extreme social power of a tiny and largely anonymous elite, which cuts across every country and culture.

Such an absurd system can only continue to cultivate support and acceptance by persuading us to see a world divided into rival states, cultures and religions rather than realise that the absolutely fundamental divide, between the billionaire class and the rest, between capital and labour, in fact cuts across such cultural contrasts and is blind to them. British billionaires like James Dyson and James Ratcliffe of Ineos (Britain’s richest man) supported Brexit, but have recently both moved their headquarters and assets away from Britain in order to protect their value. This simple point is often missed. For example, why do so many industries, businesses, and governments resist the need to reduce carbon emissions? Because they believe that to do so might cut into certain profit flows. Because we inhabit a system which depends, regardless even of the greed or kindness of individual investors, on maximising profits.

To resolve the climate change crisis will absolutely necessitate ending the economic system of minority ownership and of profit. Likewise, wars are fought between rival groups of those who own and control the planet’s resources. More than 99 percent of us have no real stake in any country. We are already ‘the dispossessed’. All of our problems in society will be solved by dispossessing the tiny but all-powerful global minority, and replacing private and/or state ownership of the world and all its resources with a new and thoroughly democratic system of common ownership, democratic control and production not for profit, but instead purely to meet needs.

Clifford Slapper

The human nature argument (1993)

Book Review from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most frequent arguments used against the possibility and viability of socialism is that the ideas and behaviour it requires are against “human nature”. So any book that makes a detailed, well-researched and thoughtful analysis of the whole subject is likely to be useful to socialists. Such a book is Alfie Kohn’s The Brighter Side of Human Nature published in America in 1990. His references to capitalism and socialism are few but he is no apologist for the status quo. He is aware that most of what has been written on human nature has focused on its darker side. So his aim is to present examples of and discuss “altruism and empathy in everyday life” (the book’s subtitle).

Cynical consensus
Described as “an independent scholar, lecturer and journalist”, Kohn previously wrote No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986). He starts by asking us to consider a curious set of facts about our culture:

  Someone who thinks well of himself is said to have a healthy self-concept and is envied. Someone who thinks well of his country is called a patriot and is applauded. But someone who thinks well of his species is regarded as hopelessly naive and is dismissed.

When you think about it, this set of facts isn't so much curious as characteristic of capitalism. Individual-ism is lauded as superior to social-ism, so that when some individuals cream off the profits while others go short of what they need this is regarded as “natural". Patriotism is the individual expression of nationalism, and the capitalist world is divided into nation-states because it suits leaders to divide and rule. Thinking well of one’s species is what people do when they overcome individualism and nationalism—when, as socialists, they identify with humanity as a whole.

In the following passage it is necessary to read "we" as referring to the current majority viewpoint, not that of the author and not, of course, that of socialists:

  The phrase “human nature” . . . is reserved, as if by some linguistic convention, for what is nasty and negative in our repertoire. We invoke it to explain selfishness rather than service, competition rather than cooperation, egocentricity rather than empathy. On any given day we may witness innumerable gestures of caring, ranging from small acts of kindness to enormous sacrifices, but never do we shrug and say. "Well, what did you expect? Its just human nature to be generous".

Illustration by George Meddemmen

After giving some examples of the ways in which characteristics such as aggression and competition, selfishness and egocentricity are persistently overstated, and their opposites understated, Kohn goes on to present what he describes as a more balanced perspective, "an affirmation of what there is to appreciate about humankind without ignoring the reality that people sometimes act rotten”:

  In response to a stubborn refusal to recognize what is heartening about humans, I am chiefly interested in showing that there is more to us than the negative qualities we have come to identify with human nature. Most of us have heard only half the story. Human beings are selfish and self-centered, looking for any opportunity to take advantage. But human beings are also decent, able to feel others' pain and prepared to try to relieve it. There is good evidence to support the proposition that it is as “natural” to help as it is to hurt, that concern for the well-being of others often cannot be reduced to self-interest, that social structures predicated on human selfishness have no claim to inevitability—or even prudence. In short, the cynical consensus about our species is out of step with the hard data.

The evidence that Kohn presents later in the book is all the more remarkable because it is evidence of how people behave in capitalism, a society that encourages and, indeed, depends for its very existence and continuation upon, a set of beliefs that emphasizes competition, being tough, accepting market forces, looking after yourself, and so on. In other words, people today are shown to behave much more pro-socially than the system urges them to. How much more pro-socially would be likely to behave in a system that emphasized the brighter, rather than the darker, side of human nature.

Pro-social behaviour
In his chapter on pro-social practices, Kohn gives us a number of examples from the literature on the subject. Some of them are findings from artificially contrived "research" situations of which experimental psychologists are unfortunately so fond. But other examples are from the author’s own experience or from studies of everyday life and are thus more credible:

  In my experience, cars do not spin their wheels on the ice for very long before someone stops to offer a push. We disrupt our schedules to visit sick friends, stop to give directions to lost travelers, ask crying people if there is anything we can do to help. According to polls, nearly 90 percent of Americans give money to charitable causes and nearly half take the time to do some sort of volunteer work. In one study, 83 percent of blood donors indicated a willingness to undergo anasthesia and stay overnight in a hospital in order to donate bone marrow to a complete stranger. And if we, like some researchers, choose to expand the idea of pro-social behaviour to include cooperative activities—working with others for mutual benefit, such as in structured collaboration at work—we would find even more evidence of prosocial inclinations. All of this, it should be stressed, is particularly remarkable in the light of the fact that we are socialized in an ethic of competitive individualism.

Kohn spends 15 pages tackling the question of whether aggressive behaviour is part of human nature. He concludes that it isn't. Here are some extracts:

  The frequency with which nations draft their citizens into combat (and invoke stiff penalties for those who resist it) qualifies as powerful evidence against the idea that wars reflect natural human aggressiveness. 

  There is absolutely no evidence from animal behavior or human psychology to suggest that individuals of any species fight because of spontaneous internal stimulation. 

  Like other beliefs about the intrinsic unsavoriness of our species . . . an assumption about aggression can also be explained . . .  in terms of images presented to us by the mass media, and in terms of the powerful interests who are benefited by just such an assumption. 

  The simple assumption that we cannot help being aggressive helps us to continue being aggressive. No circle is more vicious than the one set up by the fallacious assumption that we are unable to control an essentially violent nature.

A lengthy account is given of what a military historian of World War II discovered about the unwillingness of American soldiers to kill enemy troops. After interviews with hundreds of military companies in the central Pacific area and Europe, he found that on average not more than 15 percent of the men had actually fired at the enemy positions or personnel. This reluctance to kill was true not only of novices but also of those who had been through several battles. The historian concluded that the average and normally healthy individual has such resistance towards killing a fellow human that they will not take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility.

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

One-sided individualism
Kohn devotes three chapters to altruism, after having introduced the subject earlier in the book. The famous study by Titmuss of blood donors gives perhaps the best example of altruism. When asked why they gave blood, most donors spoke about having either a duty or a desire to help others, or talked about wanting to express gratitude for being in good health or for having received someone else’s blood in the past. Less than two percent said they were hoping to receive some benefit from donating. A further example is given of altruistic behaviour among French civilians in World War II. Residents of a village agreed to hide Jews despite the enormous risks this involved. The helpers did not see themselves as heroic: they typically said that they simply did what had to be done, they answered a call, they made the obvious choice.

Kohn is highly critical of the doctrine of individualism, as expressed from Hobbes to Freud and from Ortega y Gasset (“human life as radical reality is only the life of each person”) to Margaret Thatcher (“there is no such thing as society"). Of psychology he writes “almost every branch, school, speciality, and theory within it is based on individualism”. The separate self as the fundamental level of analysis is one way of making sense of the world. But something is missing from the picture—and that is human relationship.

The belief that concern for self is more real than concern for others results from a very partial view of human behaviour. In the last century Toqueville remarked of the United States "the individual is free . . .  to expand as a standardized individual". Kohn updates this judgment: “Our miserable individuality is screwed to the back of our cars in the form of personalized license plates”.

Part of the “human nature” argument for preserving the status quo is that the worlds work will only get done if people are paid to do it. Of course, the system does get people to work, up to a point. But, as Kohn observes, “People do their best work when they find it fun. not when they are in it for the money”. Rewards actually erode intrinsic interest. Encouraging pro-social behaviour by the use of incentives or other appeals to self-interest doesn’t work very well or works only in the short run:

  When we are rewarded for pro-social behavior, we tend to assume the reward, and not altruism, accounts for our having acted as we did . . . encouragement to think of oneself as a generous person—an appeal not to self-interest but to genuine altruism—seems to be the most reliable way to promote helping and caring over the long haul and in different situations.

Economists and other egoists have long claimed that we make all our decisions on the basis of trying to maximize our individual gains. But people (in the US) regularly do things like contribute to public television and radio stations even though self-interest theory predicts everyone should wait for others to contribute and then watch or listen for free. Actually it is not too difficult to promote behaviour that is in everyone's best interests:

  People will usually cooperate with others in a group so long as they are given an opportunity to feel a sense of belongingness to that group. Allow someone to meet and talk with the others and he or she will subsequently tend to make decisions in the group’s interest rather than trying to take advantage of the others.

Kohn makes the important point that our thinking about what is natural is affected by our economic system (he actually says “may be affected" but that seems too weak). Also there is the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

  If we have been socialized to expect a tat for every tit, to keep score silently in relationships so that things are nearly symmetrical (and to feel uncomfortable when they are not), to construe the act of helping as doing a favor that ought to be repaid, then these expectations can create a reality as real as any determined by natural egoism.

However, social anthropologists tell us that in some cultures the emphasis is on gifts rather than exchanged commodities, gifts made with no assurance of anything in return. That is no doubt how it will be in socialist society. After all, even in today's mercenary society we sometimes give help to strangers just because they need helping, not because we expect to get something out of it.

Humanity
In his last chapter “Beyond Altruism" the author has a tantalizing section Where Humanity Begins. He suggests that we need a morality of thought and of feeling, of principle and of care. Throughout the book he emphasizes questions of morality and philosophy, although he is obviously aware of the economic—and to a lesser extent the political—implications of what he writes. Earlier he refers to the need to detoxify "the poisonous We/They structure of nationalism”. But his main message is summed up in one sentence: “Altruism—one self helping another without consideration of personal gain—is both realistic and commendable”.

The last paragraph of a book is often important because it contains the thoughts the author wants to leave us with:

  No imported solution will dissolve our problems of dehumanization and egocentricity, coldness and cruelty. No magical redemption from outside outside of human life will let us break through. The work that has to be done is our work, but we are better equipped for it than we have been led to believe. To move ourselves beyond selfishness, we already have what is required. We already are what is required. We are human and we have each other.

Election Fund: £3847 (1993)

Party News from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

That is the amount standing in our Election Fund at the time of writing, including £2428 raised in the last few months from these appeals.

This is enough to pay the deposit to stand in 3 constituencies as we have in mind. Having achieved this we now need at least the same amount again to pay for publishing hundreds of thousands of election addresses for free distribution by the Post Office.

Contributions (made payable to the “Socialist Party of Great Britain”) should be sent to: Election Fund, The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Biology and Behaviour (1993)

From the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is clear that the biological characteristics of human beings have a great effect on the things we can and cannot do. For instance, the fact that we walk upright, can focus on the same object with both eyes, and have an opposable thumb determines various aspects of the way we interact with the world. If we had wings to fly or could breathe in water or survive by eating sand, we would behave and live very differently from the way we actually do. But how much of human behaviour is determined by our biological make-up? Are we the prisoners of our genes and of our animal forebears, or can we learn from experience, adapt to our surroundings and act in a manner that is not purely ordained by our biological inheritance?

Different
A few moments’ reflection probably suggests that human beings are very different from other animals, that we can learn and invent and discover and develop in ways that no non-human can. Language gives the ability to pass on knowledge to the next generation, so that they can build on the expertise of those who have gone before, and do not need to start all over again at solving the problems they encounter. Some other animals have rudimentary languages, or make some elementary use of tools in obtaining food, but none of these is any way as sophisticated as humanity. While human beings are related to other members of the animal kingdom via the workings of evolution, we seem on the face of it to be animals with so many extra powers and abilities that we are quite unlike even our nearest non-human relatives.

Nevertheless, in spite of what common sense appears to tell us, it has often been argued that many aspects of human social behaviour are directly due to our animal inheritance. This implies that such behaviour is innate and unchangeable, and is as much part of being a human as upright gait and binocular vision. If it is claimed that aggression and genocide are an unalterable part of human nature, a challenge is thrown out to the socialist view that a society of harmony and co-operation is not just possible but is the sole answer to working-class problems.

For instance, back in the 1960s, writers such as Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz wrote best-selling books in which they argued that our instincts made us violent, just as the instincts of many animals make them. Human beings have access to far more powerful weapons, thus rendering our ingrained capacity to violence all the more lethal. Ardrey even argued that it was hunting which made proper humans out of our closest ape ancestors; hunting and killing, then, is not just part of being human, it is what made us human in the first place. Socialists pointed out that these accounts were sheer fantasy, not supported by any evidence and totally ignored the fact that so much human behaviour is learned behaviour. Moreover, these views have a clear political role:

  The lie of innate depravity is a weapon in the hands of the capitalist class: it prevents criticism of capitalism, since there is supposed to be no possible alternative. (Socialist Standard, June 1969).

The Ardrey-Lorenz view tends not to be heard in quite such a blatant form today.

However, comparable ideas can be encountered in a more sophisticated form, even among those who take pains to criticize Ardrey’s distortions. A recent example of this is the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (Vintage £6.99). The author presents a synthesis of a great deal of research in anthropology, biology and archaeology, aiming to show how human beings changed from being just another large mammal into a species that has an unprecedented geographical spread and impact on the world, and yet by its pollution and violence may well be responsible for its own destruction. The title refers to the fact that the closest relative to humanity is the chimpanzee, and that we share over 98 percent of our genes with chimps. We are thus the third chimpanzee species (alongside the common chimp and pygmy chimp).

Are We Chimps?
Diamond’s essential technique in explaining human development is a materialist one, in that he argues the need to survive and reproduce drives our various responses to our surroundings. Unfortunately, he has not managed to rid himself of all the influence of biological determinism. While he acknowledges that our uniqueness as a species lies in the cultural traits (language, technology, etc) that rest on our genetic foundations he can still appeal to our genetic inheritance to explain certain aspects of human behaviour. Specifically, he provides an appalling catalogue of historical instances of genocide, and concludes:

  of all our human hallmarks . . . the one that has been derived most straightforwardly from animal precursors is genocide. . . . Chimpanzee behaviour suggests that a major reason for our human hallmark of group living was defence against other human groups, especially once we acquired weapons and a large enough brain to plan ambushes. If this reasoning is correct, then anthropologists’ traditional emphasis’ on “man the hunter” as a driving force of human evolution might be valid after all – with the difference that we ourselves, not mammoths, were our own prey and the predator that forced us into group living.

Let us look at the evidence behind this. It used to be argued that our nearest animal relations were essentially peaceful, and that there was therefore no reason in terms of evolution to consider humanity as innately aggressive. This exact argument can no longer be maintained, though: evidence cited by Diamond, and mentioned by a correspondent in the January Socialist Standard, shows that chimpanzees certainly can act aggressively, and ambush and kill each other. But what follows from this? Very little, since there is no evidence that chimp aggression is built-in to them. Furthermore, it is simply not possible to draw conclusions about human behaviour or human nature from observations about non-humans. One could pick and choose almost any aspect of animal behaviour, and point to it as a precursor of some similar human trait, but clearly this would prove nothing.

Peter Rigg cartoon from the May 1993 Standard.

Adaptable
In any event, the case for innateness of genocidal instincts is non-existent. Only a tiny percentage of human beings have committed acts of genocide, and, as Diamond shows, they need to convince themselves that their victims are “sub-human”, or at least different from themselves, before they can bring themselves to undertake these acts. Moreover, they do so in certain specific conditions, usually when they are under the orders of rulers or leaders who think they see some political or economic gain. If genocide was a part of being human, it would surely be far more prevalent and far easier to people to commit. The whole point, which the biological determinists ignore, is the fact that humans can learn and change our behaviour drastically. Diamond himself points out that New Guineans whose parents lived virtually in the Stone Age now drive cars and fly planes; plainly they have learned to do this, not undergone some sudden genetic modification. No matter how genetically close we are to chimps, our unique ability to modify our behaviour makes all the difference in the world.

In conclusion, it can be said that the combination of our genetic and cultural characteristics makes humanity a superbly adaptable being, well-equipped to deal with the problems that the natural and social worlds throw at us. Not even human ingenuity, however, can make capitalism an acceptable social system. In a socialist society, all our abilities will be exploited (in the good sense) to the full, and claims that humans are born to fight rather than co-operate will be seen as truly laughable.

Paul Bennett

Hunger amidst plenty (1993)

From the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

To say that millions of human beings suffer from hunger because there are too many people is to subscribe to a myth. It is an explanation of a situation which is not based on an examination of the facts. The continued existence of millions of lives endured under the scourge of hunger, malnutrition and starvation is not “natural” or “unavoidable” but is entirely artificial.

The so-called population problem is in reality a poverty problem—a problem of capitalism. Who is not moved at the sight of famine victims depicted on TV screens, newspapers and magazines? The desire to do something about such an appalling situation is natural and worthy. Socialists argue that the first step to be taken in solving the problem of hunger is to recognise that famines are artificial and that the miseries that they bring are unnecessary and avoidable.

There are three dangers to be avoided, however.

First is the danger of believing that charity is any sort of solution. The danger here is that giving money to organisations such as War on Want or Band Aid diverts attention from the real causes of hunger and does nothing to remove them. It also encourages the “it’s all right. I’ve done my bit” attitude which is the basis of political apathy.

The second is getting involved in political action to pressurise governments to give more aid. Charities themselves admit that the scale of world hunger is beyond their means and call on governments to put money into schemes meant to alleviate the suffering of poor people. Those who urge the adoption of this “solution” would do well to remember the words of Tom Clausen (President of the World Bank) who said in 1982 that it was

  not in the business of redistributing wealth from one set of countries to another. It is not the Robin Hood of the international financial set. (Quoted in Anne Buchanan Food, Poverty and Power. 1982. p. 68).

The third danger is that of blaming the victims, blaming the poor for their poverty. This attitude dehumanizes the poor so that they become “hordes”, “floods”, “a cancerous growth" or “a plague of people”. It also, by making the problem seem so enormous, saps the political will to do anything let alone take any meaningful action. In addition it patronises the Third World poor in particular as they are seen as being helpless victims unable to do anything for themselves. The attitude of the neo-Malthusians is to condemn the poorest of the poor to death because, as Paul Erlich has written, “the battle to feed humanity is already lost” (The Population Bomb, 1971, p. 15).

Enough food

World population is about 5,700 million. That figure is set to reach 6,000 million by the year 2000. Estimates of the number of hungry vary. According to the US President’s Science Advisory Council 450 to 500 million people are hungry. The World Bank's estimate (using different criteria) is 730 million without enough to eat to enable them to have an active working life: of these 730 million 340 million have diets insufficient to prevent serious risk to health and they suffer arrested mental development and have stunted growth.

The question then arises could the hungry' be fed?

Current world food production is in the region of 3,800 million metric tons. Half of that by weight is grain. Equitably distributed it would give each man, woman and child on the planet 5lbs of food per day. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation statistics show that this food represents 2709 calorics per head per day and 71 grammes of protein per head per day (United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 37th edition, 1993. Table 24, p. 17). Nutritionists calculate that on average human beings need between 1800 and 2500 calories a day (for energy) and 45 to 50 grammes of protein (for body growth and repair).

The amount of food currently being produced would adequately feed the expected world population for the year 2100.

In the mid 1980s the US Department of Agriculture made some calculations based on actual nutritional needs and estimated that the 67 poorest countries (those with the lowest income per head of population) required 25.8 million metric tons of food to meet their needs. The FAO estimated needs to be 20 million metric tons. The 1984-5 global cereal carry-over was 294 million metric tons, not counting the butter, beef, milk powder, etc kept in storage because the market could not absorb the supplies. (It cost £1,570 million per year for the UK alone to keep it off the market).

These figures do not take into account the fertile land withdrawn from production in an attempt to keep up prices and maintain profit. The agricultural economist Colin Clark calculated in the early 1970s that world resources of agricultural land could feed 47,000 million people at maximum standards (Population and Land Use, 2nd edition, p. 153).

In the face of this overwhelming abundance why do millions of our fellow humans continue to starve? The situation is clearly intolerable.

Cartoon by Peter Rigg from the May 1993 Standard.

Not produced for need

What needs to be done first is to recognise something so obvious that it might be thought not worthy of restatement and that is this: food is not produced primarily to satisfy human need, but to be sold on the market so as to realise a profit. No profit, no production. Because the market only recognises effective demand (i.e. demand backed by the ability to pay) people starve within sight of food. The economist Keith Griffin (President of Magdalen College, Oxford) pul the problem this way:

  The fundamental cause of hunger is the poverty of specific groups of people, not a general shortage of food. In simple terms, what distinguishes the poor from others is that they do not have sufficient purchasing power or effective demand to enable them to acquire enough to cat. The problem is the relationship of particular group of people to food, not food itself. (World Hunger and the World Economy, 1987, p. 18).

That academic assessment is backed by the findings of aid charities in the field. War on Want’s Don Thomson has stated:

  Experienced disaster and officials now admit . . . that they know of hardly any famine in living memory where there has been an outright shortage of food locally. They found instead that the victims did not have the means to buy. (New Scientist, 7 November 1974).

In a world of buying and selling a bumper crop of food cannot be guaranteed to feed the hungry. Take for example the situation in Mozambique where up to 4 million people were facing starvation largely because the country's agricultural production had been wrecked by years of civil war. In 1987 neighbouring Zimbabwe had a 2.8 million ton “maize mountain”. A stack of white maize three storeys high stood alongside the railway linking Zimbabwe and Mozambique 55 miles away. The food would have met Mozambique’s needs for several years but as Pat Henderson. chief executive of the Zimbabwe Commercial Grain Producers Association said at the time:

  It's not only a human problem, it's a financial problem. We cannot give our maize away (Observer, 15 February 1987).

Henderson was right. It is commercial madness to give free access to food in a money economy. The human problem of hunger cannot be solved within the framework of production for profit.

The challenge that faces humanity is that of organising things on a different basis. Class ownership of the world’s resources must be replaced by common ownership. This will be done when the majority of the world's population—we who own no productive resources other than our ability to work—organise to take democratic political action to dispossess the profit-seekers who currently own those resources.

Gwynn Thomas

Socialism or Zombyism? (2000)

Front cover for the 2001 revised edition.

Book Review from the January 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two Hundred Pharaohs, Five Billion Slaves . . . Manifesto. Available from Box 100, 178 Whitechapel Road, London. E1 1BJ.

“In short the conditions already exist for us to build a world better than utopia.” This is an inspiring statement for any contribution to revolutionary thought to kick off with, and this manifesto continues in similar style; analysing capitalism’s current trends and the prospects for working class revolution and the achievement of the classless society we call world socialism. This is a thought-provoking publication, and one of scope and detail that a review of this length can’t deal with satisfactorily.

The title refers to the situation we are now faced with: that of the subjection of humanity’s billions to the class interests of a couple of hundred billionaires: the real bourgeoisie. The vast wealth and power of such a numerically tiny class has been accumulated through the process of turning the world population into an exploitable working class, eradicating the peasantry and locking us into the global factory of world capitalism. This class, as this manifesto points out, has waged war to proletarianise the world, making capitalist relations universal. In doing so though it has created its own gravediggers. That’s us: the five billion plus, united by class position and interest, capable of abolishing class society and beginning the beautiful adventure that will be the future human society.

Though we in the Socialist Party would wish some debate on the means by which the working class majority can achieve a transformation of society, there is much here we can agree with. The need, for instance, for revolutionaries to organise openly and democratically, and in complete opposition to the “vanguards” of the Left, who are always on hand to protect and serve the capitalist system. Also, socialists will disagree with the view of “socialism” as some sort of utopian capitalist business strategy rather than a description of a classless society. Nevertheless this is a publication that socialists will find very interesting.

Of great insight, for example, is the analysis of capitalism’s efforts to colonise every second of our lives, fully subsuming our “leisure” time as it has our working time:

  “A situation in which every waking moment of a worker’s life is an uninterrupted experience of either factory labour (the regimented labour of the office, factory, retail unit or commercial hotel etc.) or intensified shopping.”

Epitomising this process is the march of the Mega-Malls, which began with Canada’s West Edmonton Mall in 1984, and now includes developments such as the MetroCentre, Bluewater etc. in Britain. The Mega-Mall, an “awesome neon cathedral” of retail and “leisure” is the environment in which we are meant to wander, controlled and spellbound. This it seems is capitalism’s vision of the future in its “advanced” nations: a docile, profit producing working class who will revert to being Consumer Zombies when we are let out to play.

Which is all very reminiscent of George Romero’s film Day of the Dead, where the Living Dead converge on The Mall, as it is the only thing they remember from their human existence. But we are not zombies; we are human beings and we need better than this. We can choose life. We can choose revolution.

Ben Malcolm

Between the Lines: Return to EastEnders (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Return to EastEnders

The piece in this column in the March issue on the BBC’s EastEnders provoked a mixed response from readers. Michelle Howard, of London, protested:

  I wish to comment on Steve Coleman’s review of the TV series EastEnders in which he describes the characters as, amongst other things, “unlovable, mindless lowlives” and “working class trash”.
 Using the “self-fulfilling prophecy" theory, he argues that viewers “internalize these ‘negative’ images as portrayed in EastEnders" and actually become “detestable specimens of the worst in humanity".
  I meet many, many people who are similar in personality and character to some of the “EastEnders” and, far from being the scum of the earth, are warm likeable and intelligent human beings. They may not be University-educated but that does not make them stupid. The essence of EastEnders is surely about human relationships and the kind of problems that can arise in everyday living.
 Whilst I feel that the programme romanticizes working-class life in the sense that we see a community where isolation is impossible and mutual support in abundance, I feel that it has handled a number of topical issues in a very sensitive and educational way (Cathy’s rape, Mark's HIV).
  I have shown the review to four friends (all Marxists) and they also find it patronizing. Can we have an explanation?

Joe Kenyon of Barnsley, on the other hand, asked if he can reproduce it in the newsletter he prepares for the Claimants and Unemployed Workers Union:

  The Between the Lines article by Steve Coleman was very, very apt and most interesting. It echoed my constant criticism of the East Enders. Indeed in our house we often refer to the EastEnders as "What a Rotten Lot". We sing it along with the signature tune. I was wondering if Steve Coleman would let me use it, with a few more expletives added, in a future newsletter which I am preparing (Of course you can use it—anyone can— but don't forget to say where it came from—Editors).

Please send in more letters like these: the TV column seeks to arouse heated debate. Needless to say. whether or not you are a socialist is not determined by your view of EastEnders: being a socialist means an active commitment to the establishment of a global society where resources are owned in common, controlled democratically and there is production solely for use. Whether you think that the Mitchell Brothers or Pat Butcher are “warm, likeable and intelligent human beings” is secondary.

It is secondary, but not irrelevant to how you see the world. Most novels published in the last century either ignored reference to the working class, lest the presence of the majority disturb the prettified imagery of the free and wealthy “characters” or it depicted workers as being somewhat slow-witted, untrustworthy and mob-like. In many respects the soap opera is the much more popular contemporary successor to the novel. We know that soaps have a huge influence upon viewers by offering a picture of reality to serve as an image of what living in this society is really like.

Some American soaps repeated the old novelists’ pattern of completely ignoring the working class. For example, Dallas relegated the wage slaves to voiceless Mexican servants, while the "real characters” (mainly oil millionaires, billionnaires and their lovers) dominated the action. In Britain there has been more of a tendency to try to depict the workers in soap operas. Now, there is no doubt much about workers in EastEnders which you would find amongst any group of workers in any area.

If Michelle Howard really knows people like that and really likes them, good for her. The present writer would rather sit in a cold bath with copy of the telephone directory than have to spend a social evening with a bunch of any three of the detestable characters of Albert Square.

The assumption of the people who produce EastEnders is that the working class are, as Joe Kenyon amusingly suggests, a pretty rotten lot. In the idealised world of Albert Square there is a mean mindedness to life; nobody ever does anyone much of a favour unless there's something in it for them: every expression of affection can usually be expected to conceal dishonesty and corruption; in discussions, the politics of the fascistic gut feeling is rarely far beneath the surface.

That is a very patronising image of the working class. It is one which leaves this viewer feeling that there is no coincidence in the fact that workers who read, workers who play musical instruments for pleasure, workers who attend serious political meetings and workers who care and share with one another are so conspicuously missing from EastEnders. It is as if the programme producers are of the view that mere prolies would never do those sort of things.

So. the argument with EastEnders is about what reality is actually like—and what was argued in this column two months ago was (a) that workers are not as one-dimensionally brutish as EastEnders shows them to be, and (b) the depiction of our class in this way on their media is no coincidence, but a political choice, even if an unintended one.

Any more views?

Steve Coleman

Sting in the Tail: A dog’s life (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A dog’s life

Points of View (BBC1, 26 March) dealt with a TV story about an unemployed man and his family in Barrow who were struggling to survive on state benefits. After paying the bills they were left with about £20 to feed themselves.

The man had said that they couldn't afford to feed their pet dog so it might have to be put down. The viewer reaction to this was amazing. The BBC was inundated with letters from people who offered to send food for the mutt or even provide an allowance to feed it!

“Tragically”, said Anne Robinson the presenter, no one offered the man a job. Of course the real tragedy is that people are prepared to accept a society which, even though it can provide an abundance of food, still condemns other people to feed themselves on the princely sum of £20 a week.

It’s official

After the fiasco of last October's Black Wednesday, chancellor Norman Lamont appointed seven of Britain's most notable economists, ranging from monetarist diehard to Keynesian blowhard, to give the government the benefit of their collective wisdom on the economy.

The press quickly dubbed them “the seven wise men" and they had their first get-together in February. Now one of them, Professor Tim Congdon, has given his verdict on the other six:

  It turned out that none of the other members of the panel had any clear notion of how the quantity of money affects economic activity and the price level (Guardian, 9 March).

The Prof waded into his fellow panellists and, according to the Guardian, concluded that “they did not have a clue about how the economy really worked".

Socialists are forever pointing out how little the bourgeois economists know about the capitalist system they so admire, but could we have put it more brutally than has one of their own number?

The money go-round

The budget's reduction of tax credit on company dividends could mean that 70 percent of shareholders can look forward to smaller dividends. This immediately caused share prices to fall by £5 billion while government fixed-interest bonds suddenly became more popular with investors.

Switching funds around to get that little bit extra is something investors, especially the big institutions such as pension funds, must constantly do. During the Gulf War vast numbers of shares were sold to buy gold, the old stand-by in troubled times, but when the war ended investors “sold huge quantities of gold yesterday to raise the cash needed to buy into the booming stock market" (Guardian, 18 January 1992).

When interest rates were sky-high in the early 1990s investors moved funds into bank deposits which were bringing them 15 percent, but once rates fell then those deposits were switched back into shares and this has helped raise share prices to record levels.

And so it goes on, with capital moving endlessly between shares, gold, banks, bonds, etc, and back again in the restless search for the highest possible return.

Happy Endings

Charles Dickens was forced by public opinion to change the ending of Great Expectations. Many years later Hollywood film makers learned the same lesson. Never mind the plot's progression, give 'em a happy ending. People like happy endings? How about this scenario then?

For almost 400 years the working class have been exploited. Our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and even worse our daughters and sons have lived in chains. Frightened and poor we have done as we were bid.

But change comes. The working class grows up. It learns of its great potential power. It organises and it abolishes the wages system. It brings about a new system of society based on common ownership.

Hey, Steven Spielberg, we'll give you the film rights for nothing!

Just in case

ICI has won the contract to re-cycle or destroy US Army surplus explosives held in one of the world's biggest munition dumps.

This is a real big deal. This INAAP—Indiana Army Ammunition Plant—is an 11,000 acre site containing 1,400 buildings. 1S5 miles of roads and 80 miles of railroad track.

It is always good to see the end of arms build-ups, but alas the story is not one of undiminished joy. According to the Independent on Sunday (21 March):

   The company gets to use a state-of-the-art. well maintained factory. In return, it will employ local people and keep the production lines warm—just in case the previous occupant needs to make a sudden return.

With memories of Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, the US Army are merely putting INAAP in the back burner for future use.

Rejoice?

Mrs Thatcher's famous Downing Street remark at the end of the Falkland Islands conflict of “rejoice” seems even more inappropriate with the news that Scotland Yard are to investigate the claim that British soldiers shot Argentine prisoners.

Commenting on this, the Independent (27 March) reported:

  Investigations of war crimes perpetrated by the victors in a conflict are rare. “The victors can usually shut this kind of thing up", said a Ministry of Defence official. It was the publication in 1991 of Lance-Corporal Vincent Bromley's book, Excursion In Hell, with its account of the shooting of Argentine prisoners by British soldiers, that made these alleged crimes an exception.

Socialists are opposed to all capitalism's wars. To us they are all crimes. We will do our rejoicing when we get rid of capitalism.

Editorial: The Need is Socialism (1979)

Editorial from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904—seventy-five years ago this month. Any organisation which has lasted that long must be tempted to look back and congratulate itself simply on the fact of its own survival.

We have seen two world wars, prolonged international slumps, the rise of fearsome dictatorships and innumerable smaller crises, economic and political. Progress in political understanding has been hampered by the distortions of Labour government in this country and by the misnaming of the Russian dictatorship as socialist. The intensity of working class exploitation has been increased by developments which, in a sane society, could only be for human benefit. The very existence of human life is threatened now by the stockpiles of destruction which the power blocs of capitalism keep at the ready.

It has not been, then, a happy seventy-five years but yes, we have survived. And by survival we mean as a socialist party; we have kept the socialist case extant and active. Whatever minor mistakes we have made, the basic validity of the case for socialism has not been threatened by anything that has happened during our lifetime. Indeed, the opposite has been true; the need is for socialism now. as it was in 1904.

For socialists, then, this might be a time for self-congratulation, for complacently reviewing our achievements as if that is enough. But capitalism—an impossible, menacing turmoil of a society—remains and its abolition is urgent. Working for socialism is vital and at this time of our seventy-fifth anniversary we reaffirm our resolve to carry this on.

The socialist movement offers something unique. We alone analyse the events of capitalism from a consistent, Marxist standpoint. We alone are not misled by promises of reform of easing one social ailment here, another there, at the cost of capitalism’s continuation. Experience teaches us that this is futile. So we shall continue to stand, alone, for the only effective way of dealing with those ailments—the establishment of socialism.

But capitalism can move fast. Since the war we have seen developments in travel, communication and production which could scarcely have been dreamed of in 1904. Technical problems only recently regarded as insoluble have been solved. Recent progress in the field of micro-processors makes the computers of twenty years ago, then considered the ultimate in ingenuity, seem rudimentary and clumsy. And we are still only just beginning to scratch the surface of knowledge. The socialist movement alone consistently relates such developments to the realities of capitalist society. As long as capitalism endures, all such progress will be allowed only as it answers the demand for profitable production. Only socialism will truly set free the people’s talents to build an abundant world of free access to wealth.

Socialism will bring the uniting of the human race. Capitalism divides its peoples—in real terms on the basis of their class and in the mythology of the patriots and the racists on the basis of their country or their physical characteristics. These latter divisions, unscientific as they are, are the roots of much violence. The Socialist Party stresses the essential unity of the majority of the world’s people, to give mutual support during the class struggle of capitalism and-more importantly—in the struggle to end class society and replace it with the classless society of socialism.

This struggle is long and hard and, as the socialist movement is at present so small, lonely. It might seem easier to be diverted into some vote-catching gimmick but in the long run this would make our work harder still. It would signal the end of the socialist movement and leave us with the task of rebuilding. Our weapons in this struggle are words—debate, argument, comparisons, knowledge—and these we must bring to bear with all the power at our disposal.

So accuracy, clarity, cogency are vital to our work. This has been our pride; we do not indulge in smears, or in a distortion of what our opponents say—they condemn themselves out of their own mouths. Socialists tirelessly put our case, in debate, discussion, in speaking and writing. We do this not just to win our point but also to test the validity of what we are saying—and thus the case for socialism has been proven.

We are confident that this will continue. Socialism has been searchingly tested by reality and it has stood the test. There can be no doubt that a new society based upon common ownership is the only way to end the problems of modern society. Our task, seventy-five years old, is to keep that case alive, to sharpen our propaganda and to make our party into an ever more dynamic force for socialism.

Changes in the political scene (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1925, Joseph Clayton, in his Rise and Decline of Socialism wrote that “The Socialist Party of Great Britain, which was the Marx, the whole Marx and nothing but Marx . . . never had any luck.” His single test for all political parties was ‘how many members have they?’ If their membership was small he wasn’t interested. Indeed he admitted, in correspondence, that he had not even troubled to find out if the SPGB and the fading Social Democratic Federation were still in existence. So he did not have to examine the proposition that only socialism will solve the problems of the working class, or attempt to show that the big membership parties could either solve the problems within capitalism or could establish socialism.

But the scene constantly changes. Parties, both the openly capitalist ones and those claiming to have a different and quicker policy for achieving socialism, rise and decline and new party names—if not new policies—come along.

During the 19th Century and up to 1914 power was in the hands of Liberals and Tories alternately with, towards the end, the Liberals being supported in Parliament by their allies the growing Labour party. The last Liberal victory was in 1910. Then their decline set in and after World War 1 the Liberal vote at general elections never reached that of the Labour party. By 1951 it was only about 2½ per cent. Since then, owing to voters’ dissatisfaction with Labour and Tory governments, it climbed to 18 per cent in 1974 but fell back to 13.8 per cent in 1979.

Among the smaller parties claiming to be socialist the first “success” as measured by Mr Clayton, went to the Social Democratic Federation, which in 1892 claimed 7,400 members. Thereafter, with various changes of name, regroupings, and the loss of many members to the Labour party in 1920, it faded away and disappeared in 1939. Its first rivals had been the Fabian Society which still exists, though with diminished influence on the Labour party, and the Independent Labour Party, the greatest “success” of all. In 1925 it had 50,000 members, and at the general election in 1929 more than 200 Labour MPs were members of the ILP. But as the Labour party attracted Liberal voters, and many Liberal politicians joined its ranks, it had no further use for the ILP, which broke away and ceased to count. It finally wound up in 1975, telling its members to join the Labour party.

Next on the scene was the Communist Party of Great Britain. It followed the unsuccessful policy of street fighting, armed revolt and “heavy civil war”. Now it has become an ordinary reformist political party, its earlier policies being taken over by several new ‘left-wing’ organisations.

The Labour party too has changed. In its early days, though some of its leaders like Phillip Snowden tried to play it down in order not to offend the Liberals, it represented its prime aim as the abolition of capitalism and establishment of socialism. In debates, the Labour speakers would usually declare their full acceptance of socialism as defined by the SPGB, and maintain that the difference was only about how to get socialism. As late as 1925 Attlee, who became Labour Prime Minister in 1945, declared that the Labour party believed “in the abolition of classes and in an equalitarian society”. (The Will and the Way to Socialism). There were to be no rich and no poor, no cramped dwellings and no luxury mansions. All were to be ‘equal’. It is ironic in view of the efforts of his own, and succeeding, Labour governments to hold down wages that, according to Attlee, a Labour government would seek to achieve the equalising process by a policy of “wage increases”. In 1945 the Labour party election programme declared “The Labour Party is a socialist party, and proud of it”. Nowadays, in spite of some feeble efforts of Callaghan and Michael Foot during the recent campaign to resuscitate the “socialist” appeal for the benefit of the “faithful”, Labour Party propaganda and policies are openly directed to proving that the Labour party is better at handling capitalism’s problems than is the Tory Party. In a recent interview Callaghan said

  Socialism has always been a matter of controversy in the Labour Party and there are millions of Labour Party supporters who aren’t socialists and never have been.

(Observer 3 December 1978) 

It was a different story when the Labour Party took office in 1929. The Labour Daily Herald (1 June 1929) said

  This great appeal to the public has shown that socialism has no terrors for millions of men and women in this country of all classes and callings. The magnificent results we record today are an earnest that at no very distant date the banners of socialism will be carried to that final victory of which the present triumph is only a prelude.

So the Socialist Party of Great Britain has still, by Clayton’s standard, “never had any luck”, but the parties which said they knew how to humanise capitalism have failed, and the parties which thought they had discovered short cuts to socialism have come and gone and the socialist proposition still holds the field.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: After the election (1979)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

How and why is it that the majority of the people are worse off than their employers—the few? Mainly because the workers do not realise that their vote plays so important a part in influencing their conditions of life. Let us remember that whatever government has been in power its influence has been used, for instance, in deciding industrial disputes, even to the extent of using the police, soldiers etc; and don’t forget that those who have to work for a living are those who have the majority of votes and are themselves responsible for having elected the governments which have used their power against the workers . . . But if the majority have no decided views or are divided, the capitalist minority will go on as now, turning the world in the way which is very comfortable for them, but not for us. We tell you the way out, and we are sure that if you think about it you will sooner or later agree with us. You have tried Conservative, Liberal and Labour. We ask you to try socialism instead.

(From an article “To wives, mothers and others” by Hilda McClatchie, Socialist Standard June 1929)

Small wall of China (1979)

Democracy Wall

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the downfall of the “Gang of Four”, the Chinese ruling class have embarked on a policy of rapid modernisation and industrialisation. The extent of their plans can be seen in some details from the Ten-Year Plan for 1976-85, which was formulated by the State Council in 1975 and endorsed by the National People’s Congress in March 1978. It is envisaged that between 1978 and 1985 the gross investment budgeted for capital construction will be equal to that for the entire period 1950-78. By 1985 it is intended that ten new iron and steel complexes, ten oil and gas fields and thirty power stations, among many other undertakings, will have been constructed. The gross value of agricultural output is supposed to increase by four to five per cent per annum, and of industrial output by over ten per cent (figures taken from Chairman Hua Guofeng’s speech to the Fifth National People's Congress).

To achieve all this will require vast resources, which will come from two sources: loans to the order of hundreds of millions of pounds from overseas banks to finance purchases of goods and technology, and the unpaid labour of the working class. The amount of the latter is to be increased by urging China’s workers to work harder and stifle any complaints, largely by dangling the carrot of piece-wages before them (see the Socialist Standard, December 1978). The first method seems to have been pretty successful, since banks are only too keen to lend money when they know their customer won’t do a moonlight flit and is likely to return cap in hand again and again. But the second method has run into problems.

At the same time as calling on the workers to put their backs into it, and with a sense of timing such as to make Jim Callaghan look like a political genius, it was announced that members of the so-called “national bourgeoisie”; the “patriotic industrialists and businessmen”, would have money and property which was confiscated during the Cultural Revolution returned to them. This is said to be because such people are experienced in the ways of the world (the capitalist world) and can help in China’s dealings with other countries. It is also pointed out that the earlier confiscations were illegal, and indeed according to the constitution “The state protects the right of citizens to own lawfully-earned income”. The beneficiaries of the repayments are former private capitalists whose property was nationalised in the 1950s in return for interest-bearing government bonds. Now they are having cash and personal possessions returned to them. The existence of privilege and inequality is thus flaunted and endorsed by the government, while the other side of the coin is seen in the recent ruling that families with more than two children will suffer cuts in their income. For instance, workers who produce a third child will have five per cent of their wages deducted for welfare expenses a kind of reverse family allowance which not even an English Tory would dare to propose.

Cynical Treatment
There are signs, however, that not all of China’s workers are prepared to accept this cynical treatment. For over the last few months there has been a remarkable upsurge of dissident activity, much of it centred on the “Democracy Wall” along Peking’s main street. It seems possible to discern three main tendencies within this activity. One, the most active in the production of wall posters, is the demand for “human rights”, specifically for freedom of speech. One poster asked President Carter to turn his attention to the state of human rights in China, on the grounds that China’s record in this field does not compare favourably with other countries.

There have also been at least two demonstrations for food and the “right to work”. One, in mid-January, was held outside Zhongnanhai, the compound in central Peking where the top rulers live. A fortnight later, as thirty thousand officials gathered at the Great Mall of the People to celebrate the Chinese New Year, a hundred and fifty peasants stood outside with banners proclaiming “We want to eat” and “We want clothes”; the demonstrators were dispersed, and an organiser arrested.

Lastly, there have been protests by young people against their being assigned to jobs in distant cities or deep in the countryside. This practice (which obviates urban unemployment) has long been unpopular among those affected by it, and Chinese newspapers have in the past given prominence to urban youths living in the countryside who have married local commune-members and decided to settle there permanently. In early February, Shanghai youths staged sit-ins along railway tracks and protested outside the offices of the city’s employment bureau. Others have returned without authorisation to their home cities, where they have turned to begging and theft in order to live without the ration coupons necessary for the purchase of rice and cotton clothing.

Infringement
The government’s reaction to these protests has been typical of dictatorships everywhere. Critics have been arrested, the area available for wall posters has been progressively reduced, and anti-government posters have been speedily removed. In Shanghai new by-laws were passed restricting where posters could be placed; demonstrators protested that this was an infringement of their democratic rights, only to be told that the purpose was simply to reduce congestion in the streets. Nevertheless, the fact that protest still continues strongly suggests that the government feels itself unable to stamp down on it completely—presumably because the dissidents, however few they are in number, are too strong for this to be successful.

It is not reported that any of the protestors have appealed to the Chinese Constitution (adopted at the Congress mentioned earlier) in defence of their freedom to protest, though they may well have. Article 45 states: “Citizens enjoy freedom of speech, correspondence, the press, assembly, association, procession, demonstration and the freedom to strike”. Mind you, as well as enjoying such marvellous freedoms, citizens also have certain duties, for instance they “must support the leadership of the Communist Party of China” (Article 56).

The provisions of Article 45 are of course a complete dead letter. There are no such freedoms in China for any but the tiny minority of the country’s ruling class: the newspapers and other media are entirely government-controlled, and the arrests of demonstrators show that the other freedoms mentioned are inapplicable in practice. Strikes do occur, but not often, and in any case can be declared unconstitutional under Article 8, according to which no person may “disrupt the economic order of society”. The Chinese case shows clearly the limitations of paper rights and freedoms as enshrined in constitutions.

This does not however mean that the de facto ability to organise and discuss under capitalism is of no value to the working class. Without political democracy in this sense there is no possibility of establishing socialism. The events in China are evidence that at least some workers there have come to realise the necessity of achieving such freedoms and are prepared to run the considerable risks involved in acting on that realisation. It is tragic that their protests should be mixed up with nonsense about “human rights” and appeals to leaders of other capitalist countries. But at least some Chinese workers are well aware of the undemocratic nature of the society they live in, and others are not prepared just to accept their poverty.

Dissident Activity

It must be acknowledged that current dissident activity in China (it makes no sense as yet to speak of a dissident movement) is on a very low level. After all, ninety-eight per cent of the population do not live in Peking or Shanghai, and only a fraction of the population even of these cities are involved, though there may well be more going on than can be discerned from this distance (it is unlikely that the Western media will devote the same kind and degree of attention to Chinese dissidents as they do to their Russian counterparts as long as Western capitalism feels its interests to be served by trade and other close links with China). Moreover there is no indication that the current crop of protesters have managed to recognise the state capitalist nature of the society they live in, unlike many Russian dissidents and the Sheng-wu-lian group who flourished briefly in China during the Cultural Revolution.

In spite of the confused nature of their ideas and aims, the Chinese dissidents are an inevitable product of a class-divided society. We look forward to the day when socialist posters appear on the streets of Peking and the establishment of a socialist party is possible in China.

Paul Bennett

Letter From Europe: Congress of French reformists (1979)

French Socialist Party in session, Metz 1979. Mitterrand b/r.

The Letter From Europe Column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Congress of the so-called Socialist Party (PS) in France took place in Metz the week before Easter. It was marked by preliminary manoeuvrings for the position of the Party’s candidate for the 1981 Presidential elections. The two contenders were the present leader, Francois Mitterrand, a recycled wheeler-dealer politician from the old IVth Republic (1946-58) now posing as a socialist, and Michel Rocard, an ambitious technocrat who was once leader of the left wing breakaway “Parti socialiste unifie” (PSU).

Both have been Presidential candidates before. Mitterrand in 1965 and 1974 (when he missed by only 1 per cent beating the present President, Giscard d’Estaing). Rocard in 1969 when he was the candidate of the PSU, standing against the official candidate of the PS, which he did not rejoin till 1974.

The real issue before the Congress was not the choice of a Presidential candidate although this was at the back of the delegates’ minds. In France the conferences of trade unions and left wing political parties do not have before them, as in Britain, a list of resolutions to be voted on one by one. Instead they have to vote on rival global strategies, long wordy statements called “motions”, presented by “currents” within the organisation. For the PS congress at Metz seven such currents had been formed to propose a motion, only four of which were significant: apart from those of Mitterrand and Rocard, that of Pierre Mauroy, mayor of Lille and boss of the PS machine in the North of France, and that presented by CERES (“Centre d’etudes, de recherche et d’education socialistes”) which regards itself as the left wing of the PS.

Reversal of Alliances
In the end, the Mitterrand motion obtained 47 per cent of the votes of delegates, Rocard’s 21 per cent, Mauroy’s 17 per cent and CERES’ 15 per cent. These four currents will be represented proportionally on the Party’s management committee and executive bureau but at the start only Mitterrand’s supporters were on the National Secretariat which runs the day-to-day affairs of the Party. A few weeks after the Congress representatives of CERES were admitted to the Secretariat so that the Party is now run by a Mitterrand-CERES alliance. Since, for the previous four years, the Party had been run by a Mitterrand-Rocard-Mauroy alliance, with only CERES excluded, this reversal of alliances is regarded as a turn to the left by the PS.

But this all depends on what you mean by “left”. It is a virtually meaningless term that is best avoided, a position which is reinforced from an examination of CERES’ claim to be left wing. For CERES (like the so-called Communist Party in France) is a staunch defender of French national independence, opposing the Common Market as an American-backed threat to this independence. Again like PCF, it wants to see established in France a nationalist state capitalist regime, cut off from the rest of the world market. Policies which, before the last war, would have been regarded as “right wing” and even fascist. In addition, many members of CERES are practising Catholics even though they claim to be Marxists (no wonder Marx once said that he wasn’t a Marxist!).

Mitterrand too is a Catholic and this illustrates a change that has come over the PS since it was reorganised on a new basis in 1971. Up until 1969, it has been known as the SFIO or “French Section of the Workers’ International”, a name it gave itself when it was founded as a uniting of rival groups in 1905 under the auspices of the Second International with the open reformist and anti-Marxist Jean Jaures as leader. In 1920 most of its members voted to affiliate the Party to the Comintern and to become the Communist Party; the minority led by Leon Blum broke away reviving the old name of SFIO. By the 1930s, the SFIO had grown bigger than the PC and it was Blum who became Prime Minister of the Popular Front government in 1936. During and after the war it was the PC that emerged as what the trotskyites would call “the party of the working class” or the party that most factory workers and trade unionists supported.

The SFIO was a militant anti-clerical party—much more so than the PC—whose strength and support was drawn from traditionally Republican and Radical areas. For a reformist party, a party seeking the support of as many workers as possible on a programme of reforms, this was a handicap since it thereby cut itself off from half its potential supporters: the Catholic-minded workers. Overcoming this handicap, which enabled the Party to penetrate traditionally Catholic areas in the West and East of France, is the main reason for the success of the new style PS under Mitterrand’s leadership.

Rivalry
The PS has now once again overtaken the PC as the main left wing party in France. Despite an often acrimonious rivalry, the PS and PC are both committed to the strategy of the “union of the left”; in other words, an electoral alliance and coalition government (together with a much smaller group of breakaway Radicals who call themselves “Left Radicals”). The closeness of this alliance was one of the issues which divided Mitterrand and Rocard, with Rocard urging that the PS should take a more independent line. Another issue between these two currents was the degree of central State ownership and control of the economy. Expressed in terms of arguments that have gone on in Eastern Europe, Mitterand can be said to be for a more or less centralised State capitalism while Rocard favours so-called “market socialism” and workers’ councils.

In actual fact these differences are not important since, if the PS ever comes to power, it would be faced not with the problem of putting into practice some airy principles it might have adopted but with the problem of running capitalism. It would be capitalism that would dictate the priorities, just as it has done to the various Labour governments in Britain and to the various Social Democratic governments in the other countries of Europe.

No Experience
The PS has never had experience of trying to govern capitalism. though some of its individual leaders have including Mitterrand himself. But that was before he claimed to be a socialist and his record then was not particularly “left wing”: it was he who as Minister of the Interior banned a number of PC and trade union marches in Paris in 1954 and 1955 and it was he who as Minister of Justice signed the death warrant in 1957 of a member of the PC in Algeria. Because it has not had this experience the PS has many more illusions than similar reformist parties in other countries about what it thinks it will be able to do if it comes to power. Thus the Mitterrand motion, which obtained the most votes at the Metz Congress, declares:

  The object of the PS is not to modernise or to moderate capitalism but is to replace it with Socialism.

Such language has not been used by the Labour Party in Britain since 1945, even if by “socialism” is only meant “state capitalism”. The PS missed a chance of coming to power last year when it failed to win the March general election. Its next chance won’t come till 1981 when either Mitterrand or Rocard will be put up to challenge Giscard d’Estaing, who will be seeking a further seven-year term as President. But if it does come to power in 1981 it will be to try to modernise and moderate capitalism. Not having (not even having sought) a mandate for socialism, it will have no alternative but to continue capitalism. But capitalism can only be run in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits, which any PS or PS-PC coalition government in France would be sooner or later forced to recognise and put into practice.

Adam Buick

(Luxemburg)