Letter: Submission (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I would like to complain about the article The Waiting Game" in the otherwise excellent December Socialist Standard. It stated that "Religion has always preached submission in one form or another". This is dearly rubbish, as anyone who knows of Islamic "holy jihads" will realise. I would have thought Christ's crucifixion as a "subversive" by the Romans was hardly a likely punishment for submissiveness either.

I have no religious belief myself and was in full agreement with the way established religion was shown to prop up capitalism. However, to allow this analysis to degenerate into a series of insults, albeit witty ones, does nothing to further your cause and is a poor substitute for an objective historical analysis.

C S Hedges 

Milton Keynes

Reply

The submission which religion involves does not always take an obvious or simple form. The list of examples of religion being apparently rebellious or aggressive could be added to. There are also, for example, the Latin American priests who have been active in opposing many of the regimes there in recent years.

All religious thought, however, assumes there is an outside force or power which we can never control or even comprehend. It makes human beings the tools rather than the makers of history, and therefore condemns us to a perpetual repetition of the suffering of the past.

The jihads or “holy wars" are as much an example of human submission to authoritarian dogma as were the Christian crusades of the Middle Ages. The Koran, like the Bible, destroys human dignity by commanding servile worship of a non-existent "power". The name "Allah" derives from Al-llah, which means "the one God, the strong, the mighty one" and failure to offer absolute obedience is said to result in everlasting punishment. The Koran justifies the jihad against unbelievers, who often were given the choice of accepting the Moslem religion or death. This doctrine may not be pacifist: but it is certainly submissive in human terms. Religion is at loggerheads with working class emancipation.

As for our treatment of the subject having been somewhat light-hearted, most of the rival religions which are fighting over our non-existent "souls" take themselves quite seriously enough without us fuelling their self-righteousness for them.

Editors

50 Years Ago: Population and Poverty (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have long been familiar with the argument that poverty is due to over-population, and that if the workers would only decrease the size of their families they would all be better off. Now we are introduced to the opposite argument, from a catholic, Father Woodlock. In a statement to the Evening Standard (January 15th) he pointed out that a falling population means fewer soldiers to defend the Empire, and that in addition it means greater poverty for the workers.

 Only short-sighted economists fail to notice that fall in the birth rate will not help the condition of the working classes, but accompanied by the noticeably increased longevity of our people, will put a much heavier burden on the workers.
 They will be fewer, but in the future they will have to support a much increased number of aged and unemployable dependants. Propagandists of the spread of the birth-control movement never seem to aver this.

We can agree with Father Woodlock that those who preach birth control as a cure for poverty and unemployment are completely in the wrong, but in rejecting that fallacy Father Woodlock embraces another. It is true that a population containing a large proportion of people unable to work may be at a disadvantage compared with one containing a higher proportion of able-bodied men and women in the prime of life, but we are not living in a system of society in which the problem of wealth production is as simple as that. Under capitalism large numbers of people — the propertied class — are not engaged in wealth production and have no desire or necessity to be so engaged. Consequently the burden resting on the shoulders of the workers is not that of keeping only themselves and their own dependants, but, in addition, of keeping the propertied class in luxury and idleness or non-productive activity. and of keeping all the military and civil hangers-on of the capitalist system. The wealth producers are not engaged in producing for themselves, but of producing wealth for the capitalist class alone to own and control.

(From an editorial Quins, Quads and Poverty, Socialist Standard, February 1936.)

Here and There: Colonel Blimps (1937)

The Here and There column from the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Colonel Blimps

J. B. Firth, reviewing the sixth volume of Mr. Lloyd George's War memoirs in the Daily Telegraph (October 26th, 1936), quotes from Mr. Lloyd George as follows:— 

 In the grand army that fought the World War the ablest brains did not climb to the top of the stairs, and they did not reach a height where politicians could even see them. Seniority and society were the dominant factors in army promotion. Deportment counted a good deal. Brains came a bad fourth.

It is a fitting commentary on the traditional snobbery of our ruling class when engaged in a life and death struggle that promotion depended upon social standing and deportment (!) before brains.

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On Property

“If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field, and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking as much as it wanted and no more) you should see 99 of them gathering all they got in one heap, reserving for themselves nothing but the chaff and refuse, keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps the worst, pigeon of the flock, sitting round . . . and devouring and wasting it, and if one pigeon more hardy or hungry than the rest touched a grain of the hoard, all others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men."—From Moral and Political Philosophy, by Archdeacon W. Paley.

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Misleading Housing Statistics

The Housing Act of 1935 lays it down that an excess of 2½ occupants per room to a house constitutes overcrowding—children counting as ½. The Manchester City Council (Manchester Guardian, December 9th) considered this standard too narrow, which is not surprising. They therefore adopted a standard of their own for statistical purposes (for argument’s sake, so to speak). The Manchester standard assumed a house to be overcrowded when it had more than 2½ persons to a bedroom. Even this standard, which allows for a living-room, does not err in being a too-palatial conception for working-class houses. Slight though the difference is in the basis of calculation in the Manchester standard and that of the Housing Act, it was found that under the Manchester standard overcrowding in Manchester was five times greater than under the Housing Act. Even under the Manchester standard nine persons, including three children, could occupy three small bedrooms, providing there was a kitchen or a scullery which could be described as a living-room, and still not be classed as overcrowded. The real housing conditions of the workers are obscured rather than brought out by the figures used as the standard by Government statistics.

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American Contrast

In an article on the depression in America, the Daily Telegraph (January 19th, 1937) New York correspondent estimates unemployment in America as being between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000. He also quotes a statement by a prominent Chicago administrator who believes that there will still be 7,000,000 unemployed in America if the peak production figures of 1929 are reached and a minimum of 4,000,000 unemployed even if the production figures of 1929 are “materially exceeded.” The unemployed are provided for by an inadequate relief system which leaves the unemployed and their many millions of dependants in a state of intense poverty and privation. Despite this, however, things are brightening for the American capitalists. Production is expanding, profits and Stock Exchange prices are rising. “Confidence” is being restored and money is being spent more freely.

And how ?

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The Amusements of the Ruling Class

The Daily Mirror (January 18th, 1937) shows us how by condescendingly giving us a peep at the refined pastimes of our superiors. It gives a report of a party given by Miss Elsa Maxwell “in honour" of Mrs. Laura Corrigan and Mrs. Randolph Hearst at a New York luxury hotel. There were present prominent members of English and American society. The hotel was transformed into a country farmyard: "Squealing pigs, mooing cows, chickens and a donkey wandered over the floor. There were goats, too—but before the party began they were sprayed with scent. A model cow that yielded champagne instead of milk and a well containing frothy beer were two more novelties.” Just another novelty was a large pair of lady's Victorian bloomers which hung across the ballroom. The animals were apparently scented to obliterate smells. The climax of the party was reached when the scented animals were released and chased the “horrified” (scented) ladies. It is just possible that the animals scented a natural and mental affinity.

Another report (Daily Express) tells us that Mrs. Peter Widener gave a party for her 17-year-old daughter. It occupied three floors and 1,500 rooms of a luxury hotel; cost £20,000 and £2,000 for music. The same newspaper announced another party to be given by Mrs. Evelyn Maclean, "owner of the famous Hope diamond." This, however, was to cost a mere £10,000 or thereabouts.

If evidence were needed that the capitalist class do not owe their privileged position to intellectual superiority, that idleness and wealth is often the breeding ground for debauchery, mental stagnation and crass stupidity, then the capitalist Press provides it.

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Magic Words by Roosevelt

  I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meagre that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
 We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.

And here is one comment on that piece of eloquence by the Evening News (January 21st, 1937)

   Probably no inaugural address by a President of the United States has made so great a sensation as that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In Wall Street, the nerve centre of a nation, traders bent over the tape machines scanning the speech as it appeared in instalments.
  What was it that sent stocks sky-rocketing as the President’s words became known? Just this— that first impressions among the men of money in Broadway’s canyon were that the speech consisted solely of high-sounding and harmless generalities.
  In other words, the market soared because Roosevelt said nothing.

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Hero Worship in Russia

The wives of Russian army officers attended a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, at which Stalin was presented with an address from them. It read : —

  Dear and beloved Comrade Stalin, with immense excitement we have come to Moscow to gaze upon our well-beloved friend, teacher and leader. . . .
 We come to you carrying in our hearts the fullest and warmest gratitude any human heart can contain, for your tender care of us, for the life which now so brightly blooms on Soviet soil. . . .
  Wherever we may be—on the Pacific Ocean, in the frozen North, on the sands of Central Asia, on our Western frontier—everywhere we feel the majestic breath of your Government, the powerful rhythm and the never-equalled genius of your leadership.—(Daily Telegraph, December 22nd, 1936.)

The adoration in that address resembles a prayer to a deity. The imagination staggers at the thought of the extent to which the teachings of Marx have been emasculated by the Russians to permit of religious fervour of this kind side by side with the claim that they are Marxians.

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Workers’ Conditions in India

According to the Daily Telegraph (December 22nd, 1936), 208 workers were killed in a mining disaster at the Poidih Colliery, Bengal, on December 18th, 1936. Among the victims were 63 women. The disaster was reported without dramatic headlines, appeals for funds, or unctuous leading articles deploring the employment of women in mines. As it happened in India, the disaster aroused no exceptional interest. Industrial development in India is a century behind England. Its growth will result in the development of the working class and struggles for a better standard of living. Meanwhile, the conditions of the Indian workers are characteristic of those of the English workers in the days of early capitalism here: long hours, low wages, and the vicious exploitation of women and children. The Daily Telegraph gave a strong hint that the regulations governing the employment of women in the Indian mines had callously been ignored by the employers. One is reminded of the English capitalists of the early nineteenth century, who, under the pretence of apprenticeship, bought workhouse children for exploitation in the factories.

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Costly Peace

The Daily Telegraph (January 6th) quotes from a report issued by the German Institute for Business Research, which gives the figures spent on armaments by the various capitalist countries to-day in comparison to 1914.

The figures are : —

1913: £833,000,000.
1928/9:    £1,250,000,000.
1936 : £2,500,000,000 to £2,900,000,000.

Another comparison is given: In 1913 the outlay for armaments accounted for 4 per cent. of the world’s net industrial production. In 1936 the figure was at least 11 per cent.

The more armament production grows the louder is the protest that it is for the maintenance of “peace.” Whether war is averted or not, the constant increasing use of their surplus wealth in production of armaments, which bring no return, is likely to create more problems for the capitalist class in future.

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Purpose of Kingship

Writing in the Evening Standard (December 28th, 1936), Mr. Winston Churchill, commenting on the recent abdication, and Mr. Baldwin’s handling of it, says:—

  It is now clearly his duty, whatever his inclination, to watch over the inauguration of the new reign and the Coronation of a King and Queen, upon whose success British hopes are centred, and British fortunes in no small measure depend. (Italics ours.)

There it is. British fortunes are the measure of the British capitalists’ interest in the Crown. “For King and Country” is obviously a much better slogan than “For Capitalists’ Markets and Profits,” when gullible wage-slaves need persuading to give their lives in their masters’ interests. So also do the capitalists use the Crown as a soporific in all parts of the earth where they require obedience and fear in their wage-slaves.

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Poverty and Profits

The following quotation is taken from The Times' Literary Supplement (November 28th, 1936), who quote it in reviewing “A Short History of the Future,” by J. Langdon Davies

  Natural causes have again improved the wheat position, when schemes for the artificial raising of prices failed. In 1934 the drought in the United States assisted producers to obtain more remunerative prices, and in 1935 adverse weather conditions in Argentina resulted in a further improvement in the world wheat situation.

The statement originally appeared in The Times’ Annual Financial and Commercial Review for February 11th, 1936. The reviewer in the Supplement takes Mr. Davies to task for reproducing it several times in his book as an ironic comment upon capitalism. He himself sees no contradiction in the fact that scarcity is considered an “improvement” by capitalist economists—and that in a world where millions are in need.

It's a mad world.

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Fascist Bread and Circuses

There is food shortage in Germany. In order to discourage the German people from buying certain foods, shopkeepers have been ordered, under penalty, not to display cooking fats and other foods. According to The Times (December 22nd, 1936), “three million poor children were entertained by the National Socialists at Christmas parties throughout the Reich.” They were given presents (doubtless having propaganda value) and an address on the joys of Nazism by Dr. Goebbeb, who represented Hitler to be some kind of semi-divinity.

In Italy, developments follow similar lines. In order that the poor can attend the theatre and enjoy operas, plays and musical comedies, “Theatrical Saturdays” are to be inaugurated throughout Italy (Times, January 5th, 1937). The prices of admission will be from 1½d. to 6d. Ten per cent. of the total number of seats are to be distributed free by the relief committees to those who cannot afford even 1½d.

Just a few examples of Fascist window-dressing to offset the intense poverty of German and Italian workers.

Harry Waite

Our Parliamentary Fund (1937)

Party News from the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Parliamentary Fund is growing but it is not growing fast enough. The Party has decided to contest the East Ham North constituency at the next general election and a candidate has now been appointed. It is essential that our Socialist message should be spread as widely as possible in the constituency and the Party is determined to spare no effort in a propaganda push.

In order to make the most of the opportunity we sadly need finance. We want to hire halls and publish Socialist literature, and for this a good deal of money is required.

After all the Party is composed of working men and women and we put our hands as deeply into our pockets as we are able, but the depths of our pockets are not great. We therefore urge all who are in sympathy with our principles and our policy to spare what they can for our Parliamentary Fund so that our candidate can go to the poll with the knowledge that all those in the particular constituency understand who we are and for what we stand.

There has never yet been a candidate for Parliament in this country representative of nothing but Socialism. Surely it is worth while sparing a little cash to get the best result from the opportunity now offered.

What is Patriotism? (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reprinted from "The Socialist Standard," December 1915)

The answer depends largely upon the point of view. From one standpoint patriotism appears as the actual religion of the modern State. From another it is the decadence and perversion of a noble and deep-rooted impulse of loyalty to the social unit, acquired by mankind during the earliest stages of social life. From yet another viewpoint, that of capitalist interests, patriotism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination.

Its Origin
The word itself, both etymologically and historically, has its root in paternity. In tribal days the feeling of social solidarity, which has now become debased into patriotism, was completely bound up with the religion of ancestor worship. In tribal religion, as in the tribe itself, all were united by ties of blood. The gods and their rights and ceremonies were exclusive to the tribesmen. All strangers were rigidly debarred from worship. The gods themselves were usually dead warriors. Every war was a holy war. Among the ancient Israelites, for instance, the holy Ark of Jehovah of Hosts accompanied the tribes to battle. It was this abode or movable tomb of the ancestral deity that went with the Jews in their march through the desert, and even to Jericho, playing an important part in the fall of that remarkable city. All the traditions of the Jewish religion, in fact, were identified with great national triumphs.

A Bond of Union
Thus tribal religion was completely interwoven with tribal aspirations and integrity. Tribal “patriotism" and religion were identical. Indeed, without the strongest possible social bond, without a kind of “patriotism" that implied the unhesitating self-sacrifice of the individual for the communal existence, it would have been utterly impossible for tribal man to have won through to civilisation. Natural selection insured that only those social groups which developed this supreme instinct of mutual aid could survive; the rest were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Is it a matter for wonder if it be found that such a magnificent social impulse, so vital to the struggling groups of tribal man, received periodical consecration in the willing human sacrifices so common in primitive religious ceremonial? Bound up with the deliberate manufacture of gods for the protection of the tribe and its works, there is indicated a social recognition of the need for, and value of, the sacrifice of the individual for the common weal.

A Bond of Another Kind
This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore, with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.

Patriotism and Religion Part Company
With the decay of society based on kinship, religion changed also, and from being tribal and exclusive it became universal and propagandist. “Patriotism” at the same time began to distinguish itself from religion. The instinctive tribal loyalty became transformed, by the aid of religion and the fiction of kinship, into political loyalty. In a number of instances in political society, as in Tudor England, the struggle for priority between religion and patriotism became so acute as to help in the introduction of a more subservient form of religion. Thus patriotism became emancipated from religion, and the latter became a mere accessory to patriotism as handmaiden of class rule.

Patriotism Always Obliges
Though universal religion did not split up at the same time as the great empire that gave it birth, patriotism did so. The latter has, in fact, always adapted, enlarged, or contracted itself to fit the existing political unit, whether feudal estate, village, township, county, kingdom, republic or empire. No political form has been too absurd for it to fill with its loyalty. No discordance of race, colour or language has been universally effective against it.

What, then, is patriotism in essence to-day? It is usually defined as being devotion to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live is an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other races. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribesmen we are hirelings; we possess no country.

The One Common Bond To-day
Nationality, of which patriotism is the superstition, covers no real entity other than that of a common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixity of territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us to-day is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality that is little more than a manufactured unit of discord: a mere focus of economic and political strife.

Ignoble Exploitation
Thus one of the noblest fruits of man’s social evolution—the impulse of sacrifice for the social existence—is being prostituted by the capitalist class to maintain a system of exploitation, to obtain a commercial supremacy, and preserve or extend the boundaries of a superfluous political entity. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many so-called Socialists have fallen headlong into this trap.

Had social solidarity developed in equal measure with the broadening of men’s real interests, it would now be universal in character instead of national. The wholesale mixture of races, and the economic interdependence of the whole world, show that nationalism is now a barrier, and patriotism, as we know it, a curse. Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can the instinct of social service find its highest and complete expression. The great Socialist has pointed the way. He did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose only loss could be its parti-coloured chains. And in this alone lies the consummation of that tribal instinct of social solidarity of which patriotism is the perverted descendant.

Capitalism the Barrier
Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “Mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men’s sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each other's throats.

Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from; wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of to-day and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.

A Vile Use of a Noble Sentiment
That is our hope and aspiration. For the present, however, we are surrounded by the horrors of war added to the horrors of exploitation, and subjected to the operation of open repression as well as to the arts of hypocrisy and fraud. With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers obedient, the false cult of nationality and patriotism is being exploited to the full. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters, and utilised desperately to lure millions to the shambles for their benefit. Thus is an heroic and glorious social impulse perverted and debased to the support of a régime of wage-slavery, and to the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule.

F. C. Watts

Some Lessons from Spain (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the war clouds are fast gathering in Europe, the Spanish Civil War continues its devastating course, taking heavy toll of working-class lives and spreading ruin and misery over Spain.

Although six months have passed since it commenced the murderous attack of Franco and his international cohorts has not yet accomplished its object. While the avowed aim of Franco and his supporters is to keep the old order in Spain as it was the indiscriminate bombing and artillery barrage of towns is fast wiping out the objective evidence of old Spain.

We are accustomed to the sanctimonious reverence of the ruling class for the art treasures of the past but the savage methods of the Franco group shed a dear light on the object that inspires the real reverence of the property owner. Pictures, statuary, fine buildings, cathedrals and all the other irreplaceable relics of the artistic passion of the past weigh as nothing in the balance against the possible loss of revenue to the erstwhile rulers of Spain. And so it has always been and always will be while one set of people see an opportunity of living on the backs of the rest of the population. .

Again and again we are given evidence of the emptiness of the protestations of the property owners and their mouthpieces when an opportunity comes to give effect to their views. When war is called for, or resistance of any kind, by the rulers of society then priest and politician will find reasons why the war should be prosecuted or workers should be prepared to lay down their lives for a State that is not theirs.

Last October Dr. Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking at a Diocesan Conference at Canterbury, urged that complete pacificism was harmful as it left the State at the mercy of violent men. The object of his remarks was to impress upon his audience and the world at large that a defensive war was a just war. As all combatants in war claim that they are on the defensive (witness the last European War, and the statements of all leading European spokesmen now that they all want peace) this is equivalent to supporting any war on behalf of capitalism.

In the course of his remarks the Archbishop is reported as having put forward the following points: —

  The use of force of the sword by the State was the ministry of God for the protection of the people. If that were true of the State in its domestic relations, it was equally true for the State in its international relations. It all depended upon the motive or intention with which it was used.
 If the force of an army were used for national aggression or acquisition or self-assertion it was wrong. If it were used for the defence of the people it was right.

(News Chronicle, 13/10/36.)

In Spain a democratically-elected government has been subject to the onslaught of a rebellious military and land-owning clique who have carried out the attack with extreme brutality and have enlisted in their support native tribesmen as well as thousands of alleged volunteers from aggressive dictatorships. As far as we are aware neither Dr. Lang nor his friends have taken any practical step to see that aid was given to a government that was employed in just that defensive action for which he pleaded. Are we to assume that in reality Dr. Lang was simply giving his blessing to the rearmament projects of the British Government and thus fulfilling his function as a pillar of capitalism? It certainly looks as if this were the case.

The agony of Spain is only a matter of concern for the capitalists of other nations if any of them have interests involved or if there is any prospect of gain by fishing in troubled waters. For the rest it is a matter of minor importance to them that thousands of Spanish workers are losing their lives just because landowners and the Catholic Church want to keep intact their privilege to rob the wealth-producer of the product of his toil.

One of the spokesmen of the Spanish Government recently said that over a million lives had already been lost in the present civil war. It is a sad thought that in spite of the many and bitter lessons during the last hundred years, in which millions of workers’ lives have been sacrificed, the mass of the workers of the world still fail to grasp the fact that capitalism offers nothing to them but toil and misery, and they still turn away from the Socialist message. Yet, in the advanced countries at any rate, the workers produce and distribute the wealth upon which all live. While the capitalists control this wealth they use their position to live in idleness and luxury. The workers can, and some day will, obtain control of the means of production. When they do so they can banish want and economic misery and the bestialities of the struggle between classes. The lesson is a simple one and so easy to learn if only workers will look facts in the face.

Gilmac.

Letter: Is Socialism Possible? (1937)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter was received before the abdication of Edward VIII but has been held up owing to pressure on space.

November 8th, 1936.

To the Chairman and Members of the Editorial Committee, The Socialist Standard,

42, Great Dover Street, S.E.l.

Gentlemen,

In your current (November) issue you quote from an article in The Daily Telegraph, of October, 19th, that a snatched victory at the polls would be utterly useless for the purpose of achieving Socialism, because the whole of the forces of capitalism, including the Crown, would successfully repel any such bluff.

With that statement of position you express your agreement, but, unless I am mistaken, within your expression of agreement lies the implication that if a victory at the polls were not a snatched victory, such victory would be quite good enough for the effectuation of Socialism

But is there one solitary Englishman who believes that to be the case ?

Real Socialism never can or will be achieved in this country for the very simple reason that Article 6 of the S.P.G.B.'s Principles of Socialism is no more a practical possibility in this country than it has proved to be in Spain. In fact, the position in this country is worse than it has proved to be in Spain, for to this country’s armed forces can be added the police forces, the aristocracisation of which (commenced under Trenchard) can quite certainly be taken as a deliberate policy of leaving any Socialist government nothing to fight with but words.

Any attempt at implementing the S.P.G.B.’s Principles of Socialism in this country would mean civil war. And can there be any questioning who would win it?

Yours fraternally,

P. P. M.

Reply.

In the November issue we expressed our agreement with a statement made in the Daily Telegraph that the ruling class would be well able to prevent the overthrow of capitalism if it were to be attempted by a group coming into office through a snatched victory at the polls. This has always been the view of the S.P.G.B., and the various Labour and Popular Front Governments, led by men who professed to desire Socialism, have proved our view to be correct. The idea that a Labour Government, elected on a programme of pettifogging reforms and vague promises to introduce the millennium, could seriously menace capitalism is a matter for laughter. Most people recognise this to be true now that they have seen Labour Governments at work. The S.P.G.B. did not have to wait for practical examples to discover this for it arises out of the facts of the situation. In the last resort capitalism continues because capitalist parties (including some which masquerade as anti-capitalist) can go on getting the consent of the electorate for the maintenance of capitalism. That condition will continue until a majority understand Socialism, are agreed on fundamental Socialist principles, and are politically organised in the Socialist Party. Then, and only then, will the cunning appeals for the retention of capitalism fall on deaf ears.

We say that a snatched victory at the polls will be useless for Socialism and that much more is required, viz., a politically-organised Socialist majority. Having come into possession of the machinery of government that organised Socialist majority will be able to use the machinery of government, including the armed forces, for the overthrow of capitalism and establishment of Socialism.

To this our correspondent, “P.P.M.,” says no! But he evidently has not stopped to consider what it is the S.P.G.B. advocates, for he proceeds to refer to Spain as if there were some parallel between Spain as it is and England and other countries as they will be before a Socialist electoral victory becomes a possibility. For 34 years the S.P.G.B. has insisted on the need for a Socialist majority united in the Socialist Party. Did this exist in Spain ? So far as we know there was no party in Spain, among a very large number of parties, which advocated Socialism at all. The Spanish population were (and still are) divided into all kinds of antagonistic organisations: Conservative, Fascist, Monarchist, Catholic, Capitalist-Republican, Basque and Catalonian Home Rulers, Syndicalists, Anarchists, Communists, Trotskyists, Labourites, etc.

At the last election these numerous warring sections grouped themselves into three, one of which was the "Popular Front,” which got a majority of seats but received rather less than half the total of votes. The “Popular Front” was composed of at least half-a-dozen separate organisations normally at bitter enmity with each other and none of them Socialist. Did they fight the election asking for a mandate for Socialism? Of course they did not. Their leader, Azana, expressly and repeatedly affirmed his opposition to Socialism. They fought the election on a string of reforms and demands such as the release of political prisoners.

In other words, not one of the conditions which Socialists say are essential before capitalism can be overthrown was in existence in Spain. Yet in face of this our correspondent, “P.P.M.,” says that Spain proves us wrong. What it does is prove that "P.P.M.” has not yet grasped what it is Socialists have been telling the working class all these years.

Let us approach the matter from another angle. "P.P.M.” believes that the small British ruling class will be able to get the armed forces to resist the organised, united demand of a majority of the population after the latter have constitutionally obtained possession of the machinery of government. He assumes, in other words, that the workers in the army, navy, police, etc., although coming in the majority of cases from families of Socialists, will back an unconstitutional movement of armed rebellion. This is so extraordinary an assumption, so contrary to experience and reason, that we must ask for the grounds on which “P.P.M.” reaches his conclusion.

Now that Spain has been disposed of we would also ask ”P.P.M.” to give us a single example of a ruling class in an advanced industrialised country being able successfully to resist the unanimous, united demand of a majority of the population.

There is one other aspect of the matter which needs mention. While it is the job of the worker in each country to organise to obtain control of the machinery of government there, the idea of Socialism in Britain alone in the midst of a capitalist world is illusory. Socialists, therefore, accept the necessity for concerted international action.

In conclusion, we would draw attention to the

position occupied by “P.P.M.” of believing that Socialism is impossible, whatever the method used. He writes: ” Real Socialism never can or will be achieved in this country.”

As no sane person can do other than oppose efforts to achieve the impossible, “P.P.M.” writes himself down as an opponent of Socialism.

Editorial Committee

They Hide the Truth (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Facts about Riches and Poverty
There are still many people who believe that we are mistaken when we charge the Press and politicians with deliberate suppression of information affecting the vital interests of the working class. Those who believe this should study the way in which newspapers and statesmen of repute conspire to hide from the workers the extent to which the ownership of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small minority of the population. Never a week goes by without speeches articles and editorials assuring the workers that wealth is evenly distributed in democratic Britain, and that any inequalities there may be are lessening year by year. The huge fortunes of the Ellermans, Houstons, Nuffields and so on are dismissed as rare exceptions, which, anyway, are supposed to be vanishing because of the death duties levied on them when they pass to the heirs. All of this is a deliberate mockery of the truth. The journalists who write the articles—at least the better-informed ones—know that the truth is far different, but they have their living to get and must obey their proprietors' orders. Behind the journalists are the newspaper proprietors, the big business men and the politicians, who have no excuse for what they do except the excuse that if the workers knew the truth they would soon want to do something about it.

A case in point, just one out of many, is an editorial in the Daily Telegraph (January 16th, 1937) entitled " Britain a Nation of Capitalists." It is based on a familiar piece of camouflage which consists of presenting a huge-seeming figure of "small savings" totalling £3,000 million gathered together in the savings banks and other institutions, and saying that this belongs to the working class. As nothing is said of the far larger sum that belongs to the small number of big property owners there appears on the surface to be justification for the Telegraph's claim that wealth is "diffused through the whole community in quite considerable amounts."

Let us, then, look closely at the figures.

Even if they were accurate they do not mean much. For, as the Telegraph admits, the £3,000 million belongs to 15 million people, equivalent to £200 per head. The interest on £200 at 2½ per cent, (the rate paid in the Post Office Savings Bank) amounts to a mere £5 a year, less than 2s. a week. Yet it is on the strength of this 2s. a week that the Telegraph describes the wage-earners as a "nation of capitalists.” Moreover, the figures are not correct. The sum mentioned does not belong wholly or even mainly to wage-earners. As Mr. Hargreaves Parkinson points out in The Small Investor (Blackie & Son, Ltd., 1930) much of it belongs to relatively wealthy persons, professional men, small business men, etc. Then G. W. Daniels and H. Campion, in The Distribution of National Capital estimate that there are 17 or 17½ million persons aged 25 or over who own less than £100, the total, being well under £1,000 million or less than a third of the Telegraph's inflated figure.

Moreover, even if a larger figure is taken the glaring fact remains that it is only a tiny percentage of the accumulated wealth which belongs to the small minority who are the real owners of Great Britain. As Mr. Parkinson and many other investigators have shown, less than one-quarter of the population own between them nine-tenths of the accumulated wealth. They do not get from their investments a mere 2s. a week, but vast sums enabling them to live in luxury and idleness and yet accumulate fortunes running in some cases into 10 or 20 million pounds. The Telegraph, along with other papers, and along with the capitalist politicians, does not attempt to deny these facts. Instead it ignores them and merely presents part of the picture in a distorted form. The Telegraph writes of the savings of small investors but says nothing about the immensely-greater sum, £13,000 millions to £14,000 millions, owned by the 5,000,000 persons who own over £100. Particularly it does not mention the handful of 10,000 or 11,000 persons aged 25 and over who own £3,200 to £3,500 millions between them. Thus does capitalism lie and suppress in order to maintain itself in face of mass poverty.

Another piece of lying propaganda is the constant assertion that workers own large numbers of shares in public companies. Here, again, there is a part-truth in the statement, at least it is true that in most companies there are many shareholders who own only small blocks of shares. On the strength of this it is pretended by the defenders of capitalism that the shareholders are wholly or mainly wage-earners, and conveniently forgotten that even big investors habitually spread their investments over many companies, having only a comparatively small part in each. Even so, any proper examination gives a very different picture. Recently the Economist (December 5th, 1936) published an analysis of the shareholdings of ten big well-known companies, including Imperial Chemicals, Coats, Unilever. The figures show 442,720 shareholders (many of whom may be and are counted several times through having shares in more than one of the ten companies). The total number of shares or units of stock is 155,552,966, which makes the average holding £351 per person at par value. As many of the shares are now worth far above their original price, the present worth of the average is much more than £351, but even so the average holding would not appear very large. The significant part of the inquiry is, however, the further information as to the extent to which a few individuals own very large holdings of shares. A mere 193 shareholders hold between them 36,778,624 shares, that is about a quarter of the whole amount. These 193 shareholders are those who own upwards of 50,000 shares each. It was further found that 41.4 per cent. of the shareholders own less than 100 shares, 67.5 per cent, own less than 200, and 87.7 per cent, less than 500.

This is the true picture of capitalist monopoly—a picture the capitalists take care to hide from the working class. It need hardly be said that Germany, France, the British Dominions, etc., present a similar concentration of wealth. For example, the Journal of Electrical Workers of America (November, 1936) publishes figures brought out in a recent official inquiry concerning the great group of Bell Telephone companies. These companies make it their boast that their shares are widely held and that among the shareholders are large numbers of their own employees. The inquiry shows that there are, indeed, 657,465 shareholders, but the great majority of them own only very small amounts. There are 124,820 shareholders who are employees of the companies but their holding amounts to only 1,423,000 shares —an average of less than a dozen each! By contrast, at the top of the scale there are 957 wealthy individuals who own between them 3,156,803 shares, an average of 3,300 per person!

The lessons to be drawn are simple but important. The capitalists everywhere have an interest in hiding the facts of their own monopolistic ownership behind a screen of half-truths about the small shareholders. The workers have an interest in ending the system of society which rests on this class monopoly. In the meantime they have a duty to themselves in refusing to be deceived by the calculated misrepresentations of the capitalist Press.

Edgar Hardcastle

Snorts of derision (2019)

From the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the papers had a field day with Michael Gove’s scandalous confession (forced by a new tell-all book) that he had done multiple lines of coke while as a journalist writing an article demanding tougher laws to stop the cocaine trade. The sheer Class A hypocrisy of this got right up everybody’s nose, as you would expect, so it seemed like poetic justice that he should be hoist on his own petard. It is truly a shocking thing to discover that politicians say one thing and do another. Who would have guessed?

But soon it emerged that virtually all of the Tory leadership frontrunners had indulged in one or more illicit drugs. Bojo snorted coke, but said he thought it might be icing sugar (imagine having a Prime Minister with his hands on nuclear codes who can’t even tell cocaine from icing sugar). Matt Hancock, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom and Dominic Raab all smoked weed although presumably not all at the same orgy. Jeremy Hunt had a cannabis lassi (jeez, what Indian restaurant does he go to and how can we book?). Not to be outdone on the exotic stakes, Rory Stewart smoked opium at an Iranian wedding. Most people would have settled for a slice of cake, Rory.

The fact that to date eight out of ten Tory leadership candidates had done illicit drugs tells you everything you need to know about how the ‘war on drugs’ is really progressing. Nobody, not the press, not the police, not even the Tory bigwigs who have imposed it on the rest of us, takes it seriously anymore.

Of course they all swore they hated the experience and that it was a terrible mistake. But this is surely wrong. Taking a drug is just a lifestyle choice. Taking a drug and then turning into Boris Johnson, now that’s a mistake. But then again, just look at the politicians who (claim they) haven’t taken drugs. Mark Harper anyone? Who he, you ask? Exactly. Sajid Javid? Well, the mesmerizingly handsome Home Secretary will only admit to the odd cigarette, but nobody could be that urbane, charming and charismatic and not be on something. Nigel Farage? He’s enough to make you take drugs.

When rapper Professor Green went to the House of Commons for a BBC documentary and asked former LibDem leader Nick Clegg why politicians never wanted to discuss drugs and legalisation, Clegg responded that the matter wasn’t deemed important enough (LINK). Doubtless the LibDems didn’t think it was important either but, desperate for any stray votes, Clegg happily spoke in favour of legalisation. Now that they’ve had something of a renaissance in the Euroelections owing to being the worst major political party in the UK apart from all the others, they might decide to roll back on that particular commitment.

Nowadays you can hardly walk through any inner-city street in the UK and not smell weed blowing in the wind. This will be all the young people trying to get high and forget how their future is being wrecked before their very eyes. Or else it’s young people doing what it takes to be the next local Tory candidate. Skin up, anyone?

PJS

50 Years Ago: Scotch Mist (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Scotland today it’s true that there is a struggle – as there is in England, Wales Ireland, or the rest of the world for that matter. But the struggle in Scotland is not, as the Scottish National Party would have us believe, the struggle for home rule, self-government, self-determination, or self anything. The struggle in Scotland, as in the rest of the world, is a class struggle: the struggle between the working class and the capitalist or owning class.

The SNP tell us, the workers, that independence from England and the control of our own purse strings will cure all our problems. What they do not seem to realise is that the problems they are going to try to solve are an integral part of the capitalist system, and history has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that within this system there is no satisfactory solution to these problems apart from Socialism.

The SNP talk about Scottish culture and the Scottish way of life. But in what way is the life of a Scottish wage slave basically different from that of an English, an American, or for that matter a Russian wage slave? There is no basic difference in the way of life of the world’s working class because we all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because there will still be the wage labour and capital relationship.

There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this, and our own experience here in Britain, especially since 1964, should have brought it home to us. The past few years should have shown us just how independent Britain is, when foreign ‘bankers’ tell the British government how it must spend money, and how it must not spend money, in order to keep the international capitalist class happy.

(From the Socialist Standard, July 1969)

Cooking the Books: For the few not the many (2019)

The Cooking the Books Column from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article headed ‘Why is the City falling for Comrade McDonnell? (Times, 11 May) Sky News Economics Editor Ed Conway made a shrewd point:

‘Despite promising to govern for the many not the few, some senior Labour insiders have had an epiphany: unless they get the few on board they may struggle to govern at all.’

The Labour Party, under long-time left-wingers Corbyn and McDonnell, may employ the rhetoric of the many against the few, but it has no intention of abolishing the few. In fact, in the event of a Labour government, the few would continue to own and control the means of production in the form of profit-seeking private enterprises. There is not even any intention to turn them from shareholders into government bondholders by a state take-over of ‘the commanding heights of the economy’, as Labour left-wingers used to advocate. These will remain in private capitalist hands.

So, a future Labour government would be governing in the context of a capitalist economy dominated by private enterprises. This was Conway’s point. It means these can’t be ignored. They will continue to be those who decide what is produced, when and where. And their decisions will be motivated by the consideration of what is profitable or not.

Corbyn and McDonnell will have to take this into account. They will have to allow them to continue to make profits and avoid doing anything that might interfere too much with this. If they don’t avoid this, they will provoke an economic downturn as the private owners stage an investment strike, refusing to produce what can’t be sold profitably. That will provoke dissatisfaction amongst the electorate who will kick the government out, at least unless it changes its economic strategy and accepts that profit-making has to come first.

This has happened so often with Labour and similar left-wing governments in other countries that it can almost be said to be one of the economic laws of capitalism: that any government which disrupts profit-making will provoke an economic downturn. Unless Corbyn and McDonnell do what Neil Kinnock once cynically called getting their betrayal in first – by declaring that they won’t harm the profit-making of the few (which is what ‘Comrade McDonnell’ might be doing on his visits to the City) – this will be their fate. In government, it will just be a matter of time before they come to accept this or get booted out.

But this is to jump the gun. In the present state of politics, while Labour might emerge from an election as the largest party in the House of Commons, a Labour majority there seems much less likely. There is more chance of a Labour minority government propped up by the Liberals and/or the Scots Nats. This would mean that any pretence of adopting anti-capitalist measures will be dropped. The SNP want an independent Scottish capitalist state while Vince Cable, the outgoing leader of the Lib Dems, has made his support for capitalism explicit:

‘Capitalism is being questioned in Britain more intensely than for decades. Some want to destroy it. Others believe that it is the only economic system which works, but want to reform it. I am in the latter camp’ (City AM, 14 May).

Corbyn and McDonnell are too, even if they don’t admit it. Reforming capitalism to make it work for the many always fails for the simple reason that, as a profit-making system, it can only work for the few.

Radical politics (2019)

Book Review from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Manifesto. The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. By Bhaskar Sunkara. Verso, 2019.

Sunkara is the founder of Jacobin, the US left-wing magazine, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, an offshoot founded by Michael Harrington of the old Socialist Party of America that, when this broke up in 1973, decided to work within the US Democratic Party. His book sets out to explain what he sees as socialism to American readers who up till recently regarded it as a dirty word.

He describes himself as a ‘democratic socialist’ as opposed to a ‘social democrat’, the difference in his mind being that the latter seek to introduce reforms from above while the former want to see them introduced as a result of mass popular pressure. But this is a distinction without a difference. He is, then, a left-wing social democrat. His rather confusing conception of socialism is an economy of worker-run firms producing for the market with a free health service and a basic income scheme.

Despite this, his book makes a good criticism of capitalism and provides a useful history of those who, in the last century, called themselves socialists, the chapter on the German SPD in particular. It could serve as a basic introduction to the background to the debates about the meaning and best way to achieve socialism that we ourselves engage in.

Of course his point of view is not ours, but that of a social democrat who regards himself as a Marxist. He could be worse. He could have been a Trotskyist or some other member of the Russian Revolution re-enactment society. In fact he recognises that it is not possible to establish socialism unless the conditions for it exist, which they didn’t in Russia, China or the other economically backward countries governed at one time by people claiming to be Marxist:

 ‘The Third World’s experience with socialism vindicates Marx. He argued that a successful socialist economy requires already developed productive forces and that a robust socialist democracy requires a self-organized working class.’

He is aware of the criticism we have always made of the Labour Party and its Social Democratic equivalents abroad as, in discussing the failure of the 1929-31 MacDonald Labour government, he quotes both what we said before (‘No matter how able, how sincere, and how sympathetic the Labour men and women may be who undertake to administer capitalism, capitalism will bring their undertaking to disaster’) and after (‘it is not possible for the Labour Party or any other party to administer capitalism in such a way that the workers’ problems can be solved within the framework of the existing system’).

He seems to take this on board as he writes later on that ‘administering a capitalist state requires maintaining business confidence and corporate profits’ and that ‘Social democracy’s dilemma is impossible to resolve: even when nominally anti-capitalist, it is reliant on the continued profitability of private capitalist firms.’ And in his verdict on European Social Democracy:

 ‘Even with the more modest ambition of just humanizing capitalism, no national left government in Europe has been able to carry out its program in at least forty years.’

The one example of success, albeit temporary, he gives is Sweden until the 1970s, where the government and the trade unions reached an agreement with the private capitalists, leaving them to pursue profits in return for them handing over a part of these to be used for welfare and other reforms. With the end of the post-war boom in the 1970s, however, this collapsed.

He still thinks the best way to replace capitalism is via the election of a Social Democrat government, backed by a mass movement which, when the government comes up against the economic constraints of the profit system, can pressure it not to retreat (as all such governments have done) but to go on to break with capitalism. As he puts it, ‘we will probably only be driven down the path to socialism by practical necessity, by the day-to-day struggles to preserve and expand reforms.’ This is the old, discredited theory that socialist consciousness will emerge from the pursuit of reforms.

Sunkara quotes Michael Harrington (who wrote a passable book on Socialism himself) as saying that socialists had to ‘walk a perilous tightrope’ between being ‘true to the socialist vision of a new society’ and ‘bringing ‘that vision into contact with the actual movement fighting not to transform the system, but to gain some little increment of dignity or even just a piece of bread’. True, socialists are on such a tightrope and cannot be indifferent to the sufferings of workers under capitalism. However, history, specifically that of the political perspective Sunkara wants to revive, shows that to pursue reforms leads to falling off into the bog of reformism and forgetting all about socialism.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Half a century of shame (2003)

Editorial from the March 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, it’s fifty years since that other Great Dictator himself – Josef Stalin – finally departed this mortal coil. Fifty years on from the death of a man who probably did as much as anyone else in human history to sully the name of socialism. Today, few outside of Arthur Scargill’s mis-named Socialist Labour Party and their friends in the near-moribund Stalin Society have anything but contempt for one of the greatest destroyers of working class hopes (and lives) this century.

Stalin presided over a ruthless dictatorship over the proletariat which was the model followed by a host of other unsavoury regimes which believed that the only way to achieve a socialist society was to oppress the very class – the only class – capable of bringing it about. Their vision of this socialist society was, in any case, distorted virtually beyond recognition, where Marx’s dictum “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” was replaced with “from each according to their ability, to each according to their (supposed) work” and where the Party bureaucrats drove round in limousines and accessed shops only they could access while the rest of the population lived miserable lives of poverty.

It is difficult to think that a sane person could hanker back to the type of regime that Stalin helped develop in Russia and which was replicated across most of Eastern Europe and parts of Africa, East Asia and the Caribbean. And yet, thousands of people – even in a country like the UK – still do. Not that most of them would call themselves followers of Josef Stalin though – far from it. Unlike Scargill and his ilk, these are people who profess to abhor Stalinism and all that it led to: the fear, the intolerance, the labour camps and the murders. But they are people who still agree with most of what Stalin stood for, because even though they might be latter-day supporters of Stalin’s great rival in the Russian Communist Party, Leon Trotsky, they are united in their fervour for the politics of the man who mentored them both: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

The bureaucratic Russian police state which terrorised its political opponents (including genuine socialists) did not originate with Stalin, nor did it die with him. Neither was the idea that socialism was really state-run capitalism when operated under the dictatorship of the Russian Communist Party one of Stalin’s contributions. These ideas were Lenin’s and they were adopted by Stalin and Trotsky alike.

Today, many political parties exist which still extol the virtues of Lenin and Trotsky while supposedly denouncing Stalin and all his works. And yet they undoubtedly agree with 95 percent of his politics, including most of the bits others (rightly) find abhorrent. Groups like the Socialist Workers Party, Militant (now masquerading under a nom-de-plume), the Alliance for Workers Liberty and others all believe that the working class must be led to socialism (read state controlled capitalism) by a dedicated band of revolutionaries (them) who will then proceed to set up a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in time-honoured fashion.

We must point out that their politics stands in clear distinction to the honest, open and democratic political tradition of the Socialist Party. This is a political tradition which insists that the working class of wage and salary earners must themselves – organised democratically – bring about socialism: a society without class division, the wages system, a state or national frontiers.

Whatever our political opponents may say about us, we have a proud tradition of standing by our principles and of conveying a consistent analysis of capitalism and of how it can be democratically transformed into socialism. As all reminders of the Soviet Union’s murky existence demonstrate, our opponents on the political Left meanwhile have a past to hide from and a future that is merely a promise to repeat yesterday’s nightmares. In refusing to learn the lessons of the Russian debacle they have tarnished the words “socialism” and “communism” to describe the society that can replace capitalism. For these reasons, their protestations of innocence this month will ring hollow to all those with a decent knowledge of history and a political conscience to match.

Editorial: The new reality (2003)

Editorial from the May 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war is now over. Inevitably, given the technological superiority of the US armed forces and their complete control of the air, the US – with token support from Britain – won. Their trained killers were able to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqi soldiers and, if they got in the way, Iraqi civilians too, including women and children. Their warplanes not only rained down bombs on defenceless Iraqi soldiers – a repeat of the fire-bombing of the defeated and retreating Iraqi army in 1991 – but also on perfectly usable and empty office buildings. And they allowed the looting of hospitals and of museums containing items that were the cultural heritage of all humanity.

But this, the supporters of the war said in their defence, is inevitable in a war. And they are right. War does bring nothing but death and destruction to ordinary people. This for a cause that is never theirs. This was blindingly obvious in this war with the issue at stake being control of the world’s second biggest reserves of oil and of a country in which the US could establish military bases in strategic reach of both the Middle East and Caspian Sea oilfields. At the same time the US was able to demonstrate to potential rivals, such as France, Germany, Russia and China, that it is the Alpha Male in the world capitalist jungle and that this is the “new reality” they would be advised to take account of.

The US propaganda machine, echoed by the Bush and Blair Broadcasting Corporation and other media outlets, are proclaiming that the Iraqi people have been “liberated” and are now “free”. Certainly the Saddam regime, a brutal state-capitalist dictatorship, has been overthrown, but what is going to replace it? In the first instance, a military dictatorship under a retired US general. In time, when the occupying forces are satisfied that it is safe to do so, power will be transferred to a puppet regime of their choosing. This will be no easy task, but that’s their problem.

The emergence of even a capitalist political democracy in Iraq seems improbable. More likely is the rule of hereditary warlords in the North and of Islamic fundamentalists in the South. But that will be acceptable to the US as long as it ensures stability. The fig-leaf that this was a war to establish “democracy” in Iraq will then be seen to have been just that.

The Iraqi people – the workers in the towns, the peasants in the countryside – will merely have exchanged one set of rulers for another. Having seen what happens when a state machine collapses – workers help themselves to some of the products that were ultimately produced by their labour – the priority of any new regime is going to be holding “the masses” down, ensuring that they accept their poverty and deprivation, without kicking too much against the pricks. At the same time, the new regime will be required to make the assets of the overthrown state-capitalist regime available for looting by Western, mainly US, corporation and contractors.

But this is not the end of the story. Iraq could well be only the first of such wars to overthrow regimes considered to threaten the vital economic interest of the US. That’s the “new reality”, though the US government will be hoping that the fate of the Saddam regime will be an object lesson to any other state that might be tempted to challenge US interests and that the threat of war will suffice to make them back down.

In any event, the world is going to continue to be a dangerous place. That capitalism continues to be a war-prone society has been proved yet again. So has the urgent need for world socialism so that wars, the threat of war and preparation for war can become things of the past. It’s the only way to lasting world peace.

Editorial: Racism is bunk (2003)

Editorial from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists stand for a system of society based upon the principle of each individual having access to what they need, as a pre-condition of social activity. That is, securing for each human being the clothes, food and housing they need, as well as the cultural and social goods of life, should be the first priority of any sane society. Of course, each person getting what they need means that different people will get different things. People are, of course, born with different needs, so it is not a question of everybody getting the same.

Some people share genetically inherited features which are passed on through human reproduction. Genetic features, though, can be mixed and changed by the same process – there is no essential correlation between, say, skin colour and some disease. Merely, there is a chance that the genes for these two separate features will be passed on from parent to child. Just as there is no specific correlation between skin colour and facial features, or eye colour and hair colour. That these features seem to belong together is an effect of the fact that each parent passes on half their genetic characteristics to their off-spring, and that historically people of similar appearance (and roughly common descent) have tended to breed with one another in similar climates.

The fact of the matter is that we are all members of the same republic of genes, all related very closely to one another no matter what part of the globe we hail from. We are the surviving descendants of some less than 20,000 early humanoids. We share a common genetic trait, traceable back through the ages to just one female, many thousands of years ago.

It’s also a fact that we developed as a species to be dependent upon one another for our needs; but also able to communicate and co-operate with one another to meet those needs. Yet, today, we live in a society in which the needs of a great many people go unmet. It’s clear to Socialists that the ideas surrounding race and racialism are bunkum, un-supported by the scientific facts. We can point to the history of the development of capitalism, to show how the misapprehensions surrounding race developed along with the needs of capital to expand and control the globe, and to build loyal armies in pursuit of such conquest. Yet, they continue to do harm and deny our common humanity in the modern world.

But why do such mistaken ideas continue to exist in the world today, in the face of the evidence of the facts? We would point to the mutually re-enforcing tendencies of today’s modern world. On the one hand is the continued existence of poverty fed by ignorance, which nurtures the desire for people to cling onto what little they have, instilling in them a fear of a threat from apparent strangers. On the other, capital’s drives for efficiency, the need to cut out anything that interferes with or reduces the profit-making capacity of the industrial machine, which means that worker’s whose needs cause costs (such as dealing with language and cultural differences) are squeezed out in a “one size fits all” approach.

What socialists propose is a different world. Wherein everyone could have more than enough of the things they require, so they need no longer fear to lose it; where meeting and exploring our different needs becomes a past-time and an end in itself; where without conflicts of power and dominance – because we co-operate voluntarily and democratically – there is no limitation set on, nor distortion of, our endeavour to understand what it means to be a part of the human race. In short, socialism will allow us to be treated as unique individuals, rather than as a bureaucratically allocated “race” on an equal opportunities monitoring form.