Coping with the car (1964)

From the January 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of these days, we have been told by Mr. Marples, we’re going to wake up wondering what's hit us. In rather more elegant language, and at much greater length, the Buchanan report has warned us of the same thing. What is going to hit us, both literally and metaphorically, is the motor car.

Only recently the inhabitants of Kingston on Thames were given a foretaste of what Mr. Marples meant when one Saturday afternoon the whole of the town came to a complete standstill. For a couple of hours no vehicle could get into the town and nothing could get out. The panicky thought even occurred to some of those marooned, apparently, that they never were going to get out.

Is this really what is in store for us? Is the motor vehicle really going to end by overwhelming our cities, wiping out community life, completely dominating our existence? Or will capitalism, which has generated the monster, be finally forced to come to terms with it? And is it really capable of doing this? Are we to be impressed by Buchanan, or is he going to go the way of all the other Utopians up against the harsh realities of private interests and individual ownership? Let us consider a few facts first.

At the beginning of 1963, there were about eight million four-wheeled motor vehicles on this country’s roads; by the end of if, they will have been joined by another million. Estimates are for 13 million in 1970, and for 20 million by 1980, an average of one for every three people or one for every 20 yards of road (actually less since the population is concentrated into certain areas and not evenly spread). All this is prophecy, of course, and one hefty slump in a year or two's time could knock all these figures for six. But the essential problem has already posed itself and will only get worse unless it is dealt with one way or another.

This headlong development is not peculiar to this country. France already has nine million vehicles and will have increased on this number by a further half million by the end of the year; , with a much larger area the problem is not so far quite so acute, but Paris has even worse traffic jams than London, and the other big towns will soon be as bad. Germany will probably have 8½ million vehicles soon and Italy 4 million; many of the smaller European countries have traffic densities at least the equal of, and sometimes greater than, their bigger neighbours.

Far in excess of all of them, of course, is the United States, with the fantastic total of 80 million vehicles. The effects of this are, however, localised and in many areas one measures the number of square miles to the car and not the other way round. But the problem is no easier in the built-up areas where most of the population is concentrated, in fact, it is often much worse. Los Angeles, and similar towns, stand as terrible warnings of what the unrestrained advance of the motor car can do to man and his way of life.

At the same time, the car manufacturers of the world are busily expanding output, installing new plant, going in for more and more automation, opening up new factories. Spurred on by state financial aid and other encouragement, Ford go to Liverpool, Rootes to Linwood, Citroen to Rennes, Renault to Caen and Le Havre, Volkswagen to Emden; so linked has the motor industry become to the general health of modern capitalism that governments hardly dare interfere to control its booms and fall over themselves to stimulate it out of its slumps.

Whole industries have become its subsidiaries. Sheet steel and rubber are its hangers-on, petroleum pays it homage. It feeds upon vast quantities of glass, paint, plastics, chrome, and electrical equipment; it requires huge investment in heavy plant and machine tools. When the internal combustion engine misfires, the whole of capitalism begins to cough; when it is turning over well, the economy feels buoyant.

So far the motor vehicle has carried all before it. But the problem now threatening capitalism and its governments is how to reconcile this ever-increasing production with the need to keep the products on the move. Even its die-hard supporters can see the absurdity of turning loose hundreds of thousands of additional cars on to roads where the traffic already can hardly turn. Yet capitalism is on the horns of a real dilemma—how to impose restrictions on the car (which to be effective will need to be drastic) without disastrous repercussions on the industry itself.

Capitalism's Sacred Cow

In spite of all the evils and inconveniences it has brought in the way of noise, noxious fumes, dirt, nervous frustration, congestion, economic waste, death and injury from accidents, the car has so far had things pretty much its own way. It has become capitalism’s sacred cow, which nobody has been allowed to hinder or harm. Over the years it has steadily been allowed to reduce the public transport services to a joke and a travesty, and nobody has dared raise a hand to stop it.

The United States has always believed itself to be a step ahead of the motor vehicle (in contrast to this country which has always been a step behind it), but the net result, in the towns, at any rate, has not been very different. Driving magnificent motorways into the towns seemed a wonderful idea at the time, but all they did was to attract even more traffic and congest the centres still further. In the interests of the car, the Americans have assassinated their towns as decent, pleasant places to live in. Los Angeles has spread itself into a vast, inhuman sprawl over thousands of square miles; only now, after spending thousands of millions of dollars on super highways is it belatedly trying to put right its mistake with a new public transport system.

In this country and most of Western Europe the crunch has still to come, but it is not very far away. After the meters come the devices for charging for using road space—all very ingenious but a wonderful example of the fundamental idiocy of capitalism. The Buchanan report puts forward all sorts of inspiring ideas but one of the first very mundane things Mr. Marples is going to use it for is to provide independent weighty backing to his plans for restriction.

We referred to the idiocy of capitalism and it is true. Hundreds of thousands of cars, each taking up about 70 square feet of road space to carry seldom more than one passenger, crawl into our cities between certain fixed times in the morning, and crawl out again at another fixed period in the evening. It is only matched in idiocy by the way in which the urban public transport systems are geared to millions of commuters doing the same thing by bus, train, and tube. Many of these same commuters have themselves left a car in the garage taking up useful space at home or littering the streets, a car which they probably never take out on a journey worthy of the name more than once a week, plus the fine week-ends in the summer when they sally forth en masse to join the traffic jams, and the annual holiday when they often meet the same thing. The situation certainly has its ironies, as well. It is hardly more than ten to fifteen years ago that no Socialist meeting could go its allotted span without some questioner asking “And what are you going to do if everybody wants a motor-car under Socialism?," the implication being that there would never be enough to go round and matters would end in a mad free-for-all. How far away those days seem now! Today we are hardly asked the question—nobody questions that production will be a problem.

Capitalism itself has in fact already solved the problem of the production of the motor-car. Its real problem today is how to cope with what it has produced; how to reconcile social production with individual ownership. Its politicians, its experts, its planners, all accept without question that whatever else may happen the cars must still come rolling off the assembly lines in their millions. The Buchanan report puts forward the most grandiose schemes, all to deal with 13 million cars by 1970 and even 20 million by 1980; a BBC discussion on the report mentioned a figure of £9,000 million for town rebuilding alone and everybody seemed to think that that was quite normal to allow half a nation of car-drivers to go from one side of a town to the other or to stop half way through to do the shopping. And as for the really revolutionary suggestion—the one that would operate under Socialism—that perhaps we already had enough cars and that all that was necessary was for them to be utilised sensibly as a supplementary to a comfortable, convenient and generally well-run public transport service, this side of the equation was obviously not thought of, let alone considered.

The fact is that the cars will continue to roll from the assembly lines but that capitalism’s governments will do only so much to accommodate them as the necessities of private property will allow. Most of the Buchanan proposals, for example, will probably be quietly shelved; the government has already turned a cold eye on the suggestion that land for road schemes should be compulsorily acquired at a “reasonable price,” and hardly anybody believes that much of the drastic re-planning mentioned in the report will ever be realised.

What we shall probably get, as is usually the case, is a hotchpotch of a compromise that will ease the system where it is being pinched hardest with the rest left to look after itself as best it can. There will be restrictions in one form or another to keep the city centres reasonably free for commercial traffic and give essential services, such as getting the workers to work, more scope to operate. No doubt, also as usual, the wealthy will find ways round the permits and licences, and the charges will be chalked up with all their other odd financial items on the side against business expenses. Priority will also certainly be given to such things as motorways to carry capitalism's merchandise more quickly and thus more cheaply. But anything to do primarily with making our cities convenient and safe places to move about in, beautiful places to look at, and enjoyable places generally in which to live, will be well down the list of priorities. In other words, little is going to be done to rid us of the noise, the noxious fumes, the congestion, the waste of resources, the deaths and injuries, we mentioned earlier; indeed, they will probably become worse.

In short, we see little prospect of capitalism coping with the car, save perhaps in the sense that it will have to intervene to some extent to save itself from being strangled economically. And, to judge by the way it has been setting about the job so far, it looks as though it will not do even this too successfully either.

Where are you going? We may well ask. But wherever it is, or wherever you think it is, you're not going to find the car much of an asset.

Stan Hampson

One way to solve the traffic problem (1964)

From the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is always pleasant to see non-Socialists putting forward views in support of our case even though sometimes they go further than we ourselves are prepared to go.

In our special issue last January we discussed the motor car and how capitalism was incapable of coping with it. What it was unable to reconcile, we stated, was social production with individual ownership; the cars come rolling off the lines in millions to be used to a negligible extent by millions of individual owners. Perhaps, we suggested, society already had more than enough cars, and all that was necessary, as would be the case under Socialism, was for them to be used sensibly as a supplementary to a comfortable, convenient, and generally well run public transport system.

Now Dr. E. J. Mishan. Reader in Economics at the London School of Economics, has put forward proposals even more far-reaching. In the March issue of the F.B.I. Review, hardly a Socialist paper, he says:

  Indeed, the one radical alternative we should take a long look at before contemplating compromise solutions is that of a gradual but total abolition of all privately-owned motor cars.

Such a solution, he goes on to say, would point a much simpler and less expensive way to a sane and sensible pattern of living:

  For a small fraction of the money we are currently spending on the maintenance of private cars and on all the Government services necessary to keep the traffic moving—to say nothing of the enormous investments required to implement the Buchanan proposals—we could simultaneously achieve three socially desirable objectives:
  1. Provide a comfortable and highly efficient (and in the interests of amenity) preferably electrically powered public transport service, bus and train, in all major population areas;
  2. Through Government control of public transport to restrain and perhaps reverse the spread of population that has followed in the wake of post-war speculative building which has done so much to ruin the beauty of the countryside; and
  3. To restore quiet and dignity to our cities and to enable people to wander unobstructed and enjoy once more the charm of historic towns and villages.
  Motorised freight should be minimised, substituting as far as possible the use of railways in built-up areas.
  London's underground, for instance, could be adapted to carry freight loads during the small hours, with shop deliveries taking place when people were off the streets.

But Dr. Mishan, like Professor Buchanan, reveals himself as yet another idealist. All that he suggests, however sensible and desirable it may be, hasn’t the slightest chance of coming about while capitalism lasts. He talks of his proposal “being worthy of consideration in a nation that prides itself on its political maturity”; unfortunately for him, the greater part of the nation are not politically mature. If they were, they would no longer tolerate a system of society based on the profit motive and on the belief that everything must be subservient to it.

The great majority support such a system. They think it right and normal for the wealth of the world to be produced primarily for sale at a profit, to be owned individually and used individually. The idea of giving up their private motor cars is as far from their minds as is the idea of Socialism itself; Dr. Mishan is yet another, therefore, who sees clearly where reason and common sense lie yet fails to see that the particular problem he is concerned with is only part of a wider issue — the issue of Socialism versus capitalism.

Dr. Mishan is at least able to see some things free from the gloss of the shallow and the spurious which capitalism attaches to everything in the modern world. His aspirations are worthy ones —he seeks to “recapture the lost sense of community and citizenship, a more leisurely and dignified way of life" — but such aspirations are doomed to failure from the start in a framework of thought which accepts capitalism as eternal.

He talks of a radical alternative, but it is in fact nothing of the sort. The radical alternative is to get rid of capitalism and replace it by Socialism.

Stan Hampson

The Passing Show: Keep young and profitable (1964)

The Passing Show Column from the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep young and profitable

It is not very pleasant to reflect that many of us, when we reach our sixties, face the prospect of life on an old age pension. Generally speaking, our productive powers will have declined to the point of unprofitability, and like so many worn out machines, we will be of only scrap value to the owners of the means of production. That is what it really means, despite the gallons of crocodile tears which capitalist politicians have spilled at election times over the plight of the aged.

Not that the politicians are necessarily callous by nature, but they are administering a system, and this system works by exploiting human beings. So it will look after its young a bit more because they are much more exploitable than the old. And if that means misery and hardship for old workers, well it is only part of the overall picture of misery and hardship anyway. And with a shrug of your mental shoulders you tell yourself that you are not going to lose much sleep over it. That's if you are a capitalist politician.

At the same time, you will never quite forget the question of the pensioners, but from another point of view. What a vast source of labour power would be here, if only they could be given a new lease of life—sort of reconditioned—for a few more years at least. Just think how the financial burden of pensions could be reduced, to say nothing of the prospects of increased profits.

So perhaps your pulse will have quickened with interest when you read the recent Evening Standard “KEEPING YOUNG SECRET UNVEILED.” Apparently there's this% London Doctor Tiberius Reiter, who has managed to find a synthetic copy of the key male hormone testosterone, which, when given to men in specially controlled dosage, gives them back some of their youthful vigour. The whole body is revitalised, it is claimed, by this chemical, and the doctor was sufficiently enthusiastic about it to tell findings to a joint meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Endocrinological Society.

No mention was made of the possible side-effects of this treatment. Maybe these will come to light later on, and perhaps then some of the enthusiasm for it will wane a little. Nevertheless, it is a sign of the times and if the capitalist class can see any prospect in it for widespread use, the chances are that they will give it their blessing. After all, the problem of a steadily ageing population has bothered them quite a lot in recent years.

Don't get us wrong, by the way. Good luck to you if you can get a spell of new vigour to your latter years. But don’t think that if this chemical is made widely available, it will be because your rulers feel sorry for you. Nothing is an unmixed blessing under capitalism.


Noise Problem

That may seem a sweeping statement to make, but a moment or two's reflection will show its truth. And why? Because the profit motive is the driving force behind production within capitalist society, and takes precedence over human interests. So problems linger on, not because they are physically incapable of solution, but because it would at present be too costly for the ruling class to tackle them. A glaring example is the growing health menace of noise. Its increase has been alarmingly rapid, and its effects on our nerves devastating, but those living near such places as busy main roads and airports are perhaps the worst afflicted.

It must have been a pretty frantic delegation of residents from the London Airport area which lobbied M.P.’s at the beginning of March, but for all the help they got their fare money would have been better spent buying earplugs. The noise from the airport is a round-the-clock evil now, with jets roaring low overhead at frequent intervals. Time was when night flights were a rarity, but such is the pace of competition between the airlines, that it has now become normal.

The MP’s were “sympathetic” of course but told the delegation that night flights must go on “for obvious economic reasons” and it would be “impractical” to demand blanket sound proofing in the area. ". . . I should think that everything human ingenuity can devise has been tried,” said the Conservative member for Brentford and Chiswick (Dudley Smith) inanely. Poor Mr. Broadbent, leader of the delegation, was not very happy at the results of the meeting; he could see that they were getting nowhere fast. “An absolute abomination” he called the noise level at night. Agreed, Mr. Broadbent. But so is the crazy system which has produced it, and frustrates your every effort to remove it.


No more slums

In about ten years time, we shall have got rid of most of the slums in Britain — according to Housing Minister Sir Keith Joseph. What’s that you say? You don't believe a word of it? Well, to tell you the truth, neither do we. Capitalist politicians have been making such statements for donkey's years. Duncan Sandys, for example, said in 1955 that the back of the problem would be broken in ten years, and similar thoughts were expressed in a government white paper in 1961. Then there was Labourite Ernest Bevin who astounded even his own supporters during the 1945 election by saying that the whole housing problem could be solved in two weeks under a Labour government.

Back in the days before the war, apparently, it was just as fashionable to be optimistic about slum clearance particularly if, like Health Minister Sir Hilton Young, you did not have to live in one. These were his words in 1934:—

  Twelve months hence the slums should be falling, according to present prospects, five times as fast, till the work reached its maximum speed two years hence. Five years was not an unduly long time to cure an evil which had been growing for a hundred. (Times 8/3/34).

Less than eighteen months later his successor, Sir Kingsley Wood, was hastening to assure us that:-

  So far as slum clearance is concerned, record progress was being made (Times 1/7/35).

which cheerfulness should be paired twenty-one years later with that of Mr. Duncan Sandys, thus: —

  I think things are going pretty well. The slum clearance drive is steadily gaining momentum. (Hansard 13/12/56).

We could add to these quotes many times over, but the point has been made and, we hope, taken. We are painfully aware that slums are still very much with us, despite all the speeches over the years, although it would be futile to blame the individual politicians concerned. This is just another of the monsters which capitalism has created, and which politicians are largely powerless even to contain, let alone destroy.

Eddie Critchfield

Let’s look at work (1964)

From the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we speak of work in the social or economic sense, we mean the expending of physical and mental energies upon means of production—either directly, in the creation of wealth, or indirectly in the distribution and administration which arise from production.

Because under capitalism the means of production belong to a minority, the capitalist class, work is earned out under the antagonistic relationship of employer to employee. Therefore, when the Socialist refers to members of the working-class as wage-slaves, he is sticking strictly to what is socially and economically accurate. Workers are compelled to seek out a member of the owning class, or someone who acts on his behalf, like a foreman, manager or state official, in order to offer for sale his physical and mental powers to work. These powers are part of his person and cannot be sold apart from him. The price, be it relatively high or low, which the worker obtains, is commonly referred to as wages. There are, unfortunately, many workers who find the acceptance of their class position distasteful and prefer to call their wages a salary. Such attitudes are skilfully pandered to by the capitalist class and by the politicians who shape their vote-catching accordingly. But they do not affect the facts of the situation one iota.

In order to wrest from nature the wherewithal to live, men have always had to work. Regardless of the claims made for electronics and automation, they will always have to do so. Nor is a situation wherein men did not have to work the least bit desirable. The great crime of capitalism is that it reduces the class that works to simply chasing pay-packets, so that money becomes the object of all social productive activities, and the work itself regarded as an evil necessity.

The idea of doing something useful and taking pleasure in doing it well, is something which survives only faintly, and against tremendous pressure. Capitalism, with its profit motive, so distorts and debases everything that people, for example, whose job it is to tell lies on television commercials are held in higher regard than road-sweepers.

We are taught that it is important to be successful. But here again, capitalism measures success in money terms. If one is an architect, one is successful. If one is a bricklayer, despite the mutual dependency of the two, success is somehow not thought to be a relevant term. To be a good carpenter has nothing to the social esteem that being a pop-singer has. Carpentry can be immensely interesting creative work, but here another aspect of capitalism comes in—the lack of fulfilment. It is the repetition and frustration in most people's lives under capitalism that gives pop-singers and such their exaggerated importance. They represent outlets—avenues of escape from a world which would otherwise drive more people mad than it already does. Even the carpenter has to use cheap materials and speed up his work because capitalism says, “time is money." What pleasure can he get from making hundreds of front doors out of battens and hardboard and filling the hollow with chippings?

It is a remarkable thing that workers in many industries, such as clothing, food and building, spend their lives producing the sham and the shoddy for themselves, and the expensive and luxurious for the wealthy. But despite the absurdity, few seem to notice it.

The answer is to be found in what passes for the “ideology’’ of capitalism. The worker is taught from the earliest age to keep his place and to regard himself as one of the lower orders whose good fortune it is to be allowed to work for an employer. The pulpit, the press, the schools and the state combine to persuade the worker that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” The employer is presented as a noble fellow, a veritable pillar of society whom we would all be lost without. He has got where he is through drive and enterprising zeal and if we work hard enough, and long enough, we too can rise to be captains of industry.

The capitalist class themselves find it necessary to devise a variety of means to make wage-slavery more acceptable. Having removed the pleasure from work and spread the notion that the only possible incentive is money, they have made work a drudge. Instead of workers willingly and happily doing something which they find interesting and can see to be useful, they largely resent the daily grind. It is common opinion that nobody really wants to work. Yet what is really objectionable is the oppressive conditions under which work is carried on. The time-clock, the army of foremen, music while you work, and the constant attempts to speed up, all testify to the antagonism between capitalist and worker. Although the existence of the class struggle is strenuously denied by the apologists of the system, we still find workers organised in trade unions, and employers in various associations, to wrangle interminably about the degree and conditions of exploitation.

The antagonistic relations of production will be abolished with the establishment of Socialism. The merchandising of human energies will end when the separation of the producers from the means of production is finished. The poverty and insecurity of the working-class is inseparable from the wages-system. Workers can be hired and fired according to the state of trade. When a slump comes along, the mass of unsaleable wealth coexists with the increased privation of the producers. Socialism means making the productive resources the common property of society. When people are socially equal there will be a real incentive to work. The only end in view will be the satisfaction of human needs. Money will no longer dominate our thoughts and actions. With the removal of capitalism from the world, all the dirty work of armaments, armies, navies and air-forces and the useless monotony of banking, insurance, and commercial advertising will disappear.

Harry Baldwin

Before and After (2019)

Book Review from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Protest: Stories of Resistance, edited by Ra Page  Comma Press £12.99.

Here is an interesting idea: twenty short stories, each dealing with an example of resistance and accompanied by an afterword. The stories range from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to the demonstration against the Iraq war in 2003, though most deal with the twentieth century. The afterwords are by a variety of authors, from historians to activists, and deal with various different issues. Most of the examples discussed are fairly well known, but some will be familiar to fewer people, such as the Radical War or Scottish Insurrection in 1820 and the National Blind March of 1920.

In his introduction, the editor notes that the stories are not about leaders or heroes but the ‘ordinary’ participants, about whom history usually has little to say. The only real exception is one scene dealing with a visit by Malcolm X to Smethwick in 1965, shortly before his assassination (this is based on a real event). A small amount is known about Andrew White, the central character in Laura Hird’s fine story of the Radical War: he was transported to Australia but later returned to Britain and probably became an active Chartist.

Three participants in that rising were executed, and state brutality is one aspect of the book. Michelle Green makes very vivid the trauma of suffragette prisoners being force-fed: the doctor ‘finds the gap … left by my treacherous missing tooth , and the steel jaws open with each turn of the screw, forcing bare the softness of my throat’. There were spies and agents provocateurs at Pentrich in 1817, and police violence at the Poll Tax demo in 1990.

A natural question to ask is how successful the various protests were. The Blind Persons Act of 1920, following from the March, did lead to improvements in the lives of blind people, and the repeal in 2003 of the notorious anti-gay Section 28 happened after a great deal of LGBT protest (though, as Em Temple-Malt says in her afterword, it probably also came after social attitudes had changed). At the end of Martyn Bedford’s story on the Miners’ Strike, one character says that the miners won, as you only lose if you don’t fight. But it is hard to see how the strike and the suffering and bitterness it caused resulted in success in any way.

Many of the stories emphasise the importance of co-operation and solidarity, but sadly also reveal how many struggles within capitalism do not deliver what was hoped for.

Paul Bennett

Reflections on the Tolpuddle Festival (2019)

Party News from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The festival, deep in the Dorset countryside, was held this year on the weekend of 20/21 July to remember the six farm labourers who in 1834 were convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers (engaging in trade union activity), and sentenced to seven years penal transportation to Australia. We were represented at the event by our South West Regional Branch and whilst, unfortunately, our numbers were small we managed to make a fair impression at this well-attended event. However, examining most of the stalls on display made one realise that in general the task of our movement is a difficult one as the theme of reformism still dominated.

The Tolpuddle Festival has a trade union background so it is not surprising that most of the stalls are related to various campaigns and it is not unique compared to other similar events in that its basic message is reforming capitalism rather than replacing it. However, for those who have been involved in putting forward the case for socialism over a long period it is disappointing to see the same slogans and demands that we have been witnessing for so many years.

The stall opposite ours was the so-called Socialist Party, formally known as the Militant Tendency and now Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW). It was quite remarkable to gaze over at the amount of reforms they were advocating. Their various posters read; Tories Out – Fight the Cuts – Save the NHS. Alongside this they were attempting to get people to sign a petition calling for an early general election. This they obviously saw as a way of defeating the evil Boris Johnson. Whether or not their dreams of a humiliating defeat for Johnson and a glorious victory for Corbyn’s Labour Party would be the result of such an election is open to doubt, to say the least.

One of the participants at the SPEW stall had a UNITE trade union t-shirt pleading with Honda to remain in the UK. In addition to all of this they were selling or giving out Trump Out badges. How people displaying Trump Out badges in this part of the world is going to remove the President of the United States from office is rather beyond our comprehension. However, we could suggest many other candidates from various parts of the world for similar treatment, perhaps Putin or how about Bolsonaro the current President of Brazil who is overseeing the destruction of the Amazon where in the past year an area the size of 500,000 football fields have been destroyed, nearly half a billion trees have been torn down and entire indigenous communities are threatened with eviction from their lands?

The point, of course, is that the removal of individual leaders from office is not going to change the direction that world capitalism is leading us in. The only logical way to remove leaders is to stop following them. As a Trotskyist party SPEW believes that if they can con people into supporting such reforms they will become willing workers for their state capitalism revolution. Thankfully this strategy has failed to work so far and is unlikely to be successful now or in the future.

SPEW were not, by any means, the only reformist tendency on display. Jeremy Corbyn T-shirts were available, supporters of the Palestine cause had posters and shirts with the message Stop Arming Israel. But why, people might ask, stop at Israel? What about the bombing and other military action being inflicted on the populations of, for example, Yemen and Syria and of course you could name so many other areas of the world where a call could be made to impose a ban on the sales of military equipment. However well-meaning, the problem cannot be dealt with in such a piecemeal way. The only way to do away with the war-torn world that capitalism has created is to do away with its cause which is the system itself.

You could almost feel sympathy for Corbyn with the weight of expectation the Left in this country have been placing on him. To criticise the belief that a Corbyn Labour government, if elected, can really create a society which is ‘for the many, not the few’ is almost to commit heresy. There were some who visited our stall who posed questions on why we stood a candidate against Corbyn, or why we would not be urging people to vote Labour at the next election. The answer, in short, was that we are socialists and Corbyn and the Labour Party are not, as whoever their leader is their intention is to administer capitalism. A brief examination of political history, not just in this country, but around the world shows the reality that running a society based on minority ownership of the means of living alongside production for profit for the purpose of capital accumulation is at complete odds with the concept of a society ‘for the many not the few’. The latter can only be achieved by creating a majority world-wide movement whose sole purpose is to abolish capitalism as a world-wide system and establish a society which can operate for all its members in harmony with the planet we inhabit.

Of course it is very tempting to engage in reformist activity in the belief that solving particular problems is far easier than removing the system itself. However, just a glance at your TV screen during one of the many commercial breaks highlights the sheer volume of problems we would need to solve to create a world fit to live in. In most cases these issues are highlighted by various charities and involve damage inflicted on people, animals and the planet. But charities or attempts at reform have failed to make a dent. Today there are more charities in existence than ever before but the problems they aim to cure persist. The time has come, in reality it came some time ago, when we need to concentrate attention on the cause of the problems we face. Hopefully future years at events similar to the Tolpuddle Festival will begin to show signs that a large minority, at least, are coming round to a rejection of the reformist road and turning to a more radical perspective.

Ray Carr

Easy Rider: Remembering Peter Fonda (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Transcript of a scene from the film in which Peter Fonda who died last month played Wyatt.

Billy: Oh, wow… what… What’s that, man. What the hell was that?

Wyatt: Huh?

Billy: No, man, like, hey man, wow! I was watching this object, man, like the satellite we saw the other night right and it was going across the sky, man, and then it just suddenly, yeah, it just changed direction and went whizzing right off, man. It flashed . . .

Wyatt: You’re stoned out of your mind, man.

Billy: Oh yeah, I’m stoned, man. But like, I saw a satellite, man, and it was going across the sky and it flashed three times at me and zigzagged and whizzed off, man, and I saw it.

George: That was a UFO beaming back at you. Me and Eric Heisman was down Mexico two weeks ago. We seen forty of them flying in formation. They’ve got bases all over the world now. They’ve been coming here ever since 1946 when the scientists started bouncing radar beams off of the moon. And they have been living and working among us in vast quantities ever since. The government knows all about them.

Billy: What are you talking, man?

George: Well, you just seen one of them, didn’t you?

Billy: Hey man, I saw something, man, but I didn’t see it working here, you know what I mean.

George: Well, they are people just like us, from within our own solar system. Except that their society is more highly evolved. I mean, they don’t have no wars, they got no monetary system, they don’t have any leaders, because I mean each man is a leader. I mean each man . . . Because of their technology they are able to feed, clothe, house and transport themselves equally and with no effort.

Wyatt: Wow!

A Trouble-Saver for Communists (1936)

From the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the moment we are receiving a steady stream of letters from Communists and their sympathisers explaining why the case for joining the Labour Party is absolutely unanswerable. In 1929 the same people-were proving that it was absolutely necessary to oppose the Labour Party. In 1923 they proved why it was absolutely necessary to support the Labour Party. To save trouble when the Communist Party stands on its head (or its feet) at the next somersault, we print below brief extracts from their statements of policy of 1923 and 1929. 

From the Communist Party General Election Address, 1923: —

  Therefore our immediate object in the present struggle must be the establishment of a Labour Government. . . . Vote Labour and Communist. No Divided Ranks!

From the Communist Labour Monthly, January, 1929: —

  Until a comparatively recent period many revolutionary workers still believed in the possibility of a constitutional conquest of the Labour Party and its eventual transformation, as the workers became disillusioned in the reformist leadership, into a revolutionary party by a change of leadership . . . To-day, however, the facts are clear to all. The Labour Party is . . .  a machine of reformism, devised by reformism, for the control of the mass organisations, and which is prepared abundantly to protect itself against any danger of transformation. The decisive fight of the revolutionary workers is and can only be outside that machine and against it . . . The conception of a Socialistic transformation of the Labour Party needs to be denounced, not only as a Utopian dream, but as a reactionary deception and misleading of the workers, and passive support of MacDonald. With this goes equally the conception of the advance of the workers through a Labour Government, or a Left Labour Government, or Left pressure from within the Labour Party upon a Labour Government. The path of advance lies through the independent leadership of the revolutionary workers.

1936. (Same as (1923.)

193—?. (Same as 1929.)

P. S.

Answers to Correspondents (1936)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will the Workers ever become Socialists?

R. A. Gilbert (Stroud).—Your view is that it is a disservice to Socialism to attack the Bolshevist Government and deny that “Socialism is being born in Russia.” It all depends, of course, on the facts of the case. If you could show that Socialism is being born in Russia we would have no choice but to accept that, but you cannot do so. Like many others who in earlier years have denounced our attitude, and told us to wait and see while this or that Liberal-Labour or Labour Government introduced the millennium, or while this or that minority party seized power and introduced Socialism without first converting a majority to Socialism, you act on faith, and take no regard of the forces which really govern the situation. Socialism cannot be achieved by the “inflexible determination” of leaders, or the inspiration of non-Socialist masses, but only by a politically organised Socialist majority. You suggest that the workers, ‘‘in their present environment, are incapable of emerging from the serf-like mentality which obsesses 95 per cent, of them.” We would ask you to consider two points: (1)Why are the 95 per cent. not capable of doing what the 5 per cent. have done? (2) On what ground do you assume that the leaders of the Labour Party are more enlightened than their followers? Have you ever contemplated the difficulties of converting the Macdonalds, Thomases, Bevins, Morrisons, etc., from reformism to Socialism? 

Editorial Committee

#    #    #    #

Socialists and Strikes

C. F. Jansen (N. S. Wales).—Your letter only just to hand. Although the hypothetical case you state may seem clear, yet in practice the problem sometimes presents surprising difficulties. We have known of a case, for example, where war-mad workers came out on strike to force a Socialist to signify his support for the war by entering his name under a recruiting scheme. Does he thereby become a blackleg because he defies the Union? What of the cases where men are trying to prevent the employment of women, white men trying to exclude coloured men, or where an outside body is trying to engineer a strike for reasons of its own, irrespective of the interests of the workers directly concerned? Remembering that these and similar difficulties have to be reckoned with, the position of the S.P.G.B. is that we support the workers on strike against the employers when the strike is for objects that are in the interests of the working class.

Editorial Committee

                         

#    #    #    #

Bolshevist Notabilities and the Workers

A correspondent (Mr. T. Grenfell, Bath) writes to protest against what he considers the unnecessarily bitter reference to prominent Bolshevists who attended the funeral of King George V. (See The Socialist Standard, March, p. 38.) In an article contrasting that funeral with the case of a woman who had to push her dead child in a perambulator, the statement was made that ‘‘Needless to say, Maxim Litvinoff and Marshal Tuchaschevsky were not there.” Mr. Grenfell takes this as suggesting that the two men “were even less considerate of the sufferings of the bereaved mother than the agents of British imperialism.”

We need hardly say that was not the intention of the article, and it had not occurred to us that it would be so understood. The main point was that life and death are little regarded under capitalism unless the persons concerned are wealthy or powerful. A second point was that the representatives of the Russian Government play their part in the official ceremonials of capitalism just like the representatives of other Powers, and attend unofficial ceremonies, such as the Shakespeare commemoration, where their presence is gratuitous and has no bearing on working-class questions. That they and other official personages are sympathetic towards the workers' sufferings is beside the point. The sympathy of the privileged for the unprivileged has no practical effect in social questions. Opposition to capitalism and its representatives is required of all who stand for Socialism.

Editorial Committee

#    #    #    #

N. Lafferty (Edinburgh).—In a letter running to nearly 1,000 words you range over a very large number of points of varying importance. If you will write briefly, telling us what is your essential criticism of the S.P.G.B., and what alternative you advocate, we will publish it, and our reply.

Editorial Committee

Marxism — The Philosophy of Action (1936)

Book Review from the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Dialectics, The Logic of Marxism,” by T. A. Jackson (Lawrence & Wishart) 10/6

Marx in his early days was a profound student of philosophy, and proclaimed himself a follower of “that mighty thinker" Hegel, whose system of philosophy had as its central principle the dialectal conception of the universe. This conception is that everything, including human thought, reveals itself as in a process of being and becoming. But, to cut a long story short, how the being and becoming was effected in human thought and social relationships was a question upon which Marx took leave of Hegel, turning the latter's “dialectic right side up.” Where Hegel thought the motion of all things to work through the unfolding of an “Idea,” being and becoming from God-knows-where, Marx saw the movements of human society to arise from the action and interaction of man and external nature. There is, therefore, no “Idea” in the Hegelian sense, there are only ideas, and common, human ones at that. Marx applied the criterion of practice to philosophical speculation —“the question whether objective truth can be attributed to (attained by) human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. In practice, man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the 'this sidedness' of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.” (Marx.)

Reducing this to common phraseology, it means: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

Now we of the Socialist Party of Great Britain have always insisted that the teachings of Marx and Engels provide an indispensable foundation for working-class Socialist activity. The theories of Marx have been stated and re-stated by us almost ad nauseam, as well as ad infinitum. We have battled for the recognition of Marxism amidst abuse and misrepresentation, not to mention the boycott of silence concerning our existence maintained by the pseudo-Socialist, Communist “revolutionist,” and everything “elsist” Press. But as Marx so aptly observed: “Time is the room of human development.” The theories for which we have worked are now being studied and discussed with increasing vitality.

The causes leading to this need not detain us here to discuss. Suffice it to mention that it is a remarkable tribute to Marx and Engels that their theories are interpreted in the light of, not only the age in which they were written, but more forcibly in connection with the happenings of to-day. The volume before us is a “weighty” addition to the various works on Marxism which have appeared in the last few years. In this case it is by one who claims to be an "out and out Marxist,” who tells us his work is “an attempt to clear the ground for a better and fuller appreciation of that which gives Marxism its living unity, namely, the Dialectal Materialist Method.” But for whose benefit, may we enquire, is this attempt made to unravel the method of Marx?

The worker-student who comes fresh into the field of Marxian thought will find in this volume a veritable maze of terminology to drive him into bewilderment. In about 650 pages there are literally hundreds of quotations from the flower of the world's intellects. Besides this there are innumerable phrases appearing in inverted commas and brackets, whilst the exclamation marks are as pronounced as tombstones in a graveyard. From this aspect alone any would-be student might easily be persuaded to adopt the advice which Mr. Jackson cites from Heine: "If you who read become tired of the stupid stuff herein, just think what a dreary time I must have had in writing it. I would recommend you, on the whole, once in a while to skip half a dozen leaves, for in that way you will arrive much sooner at the end.”

Of course all this is what Mr, Jackson would call "swank.” He wants people to read his book and for that reason alone should have concentrated upon making it "readable.” Obviously, if Marxism is to become a weapon in the struggle for working-class emancipation, it should be stated in a way that is within the grasp of those who have need of it. But one easily gathers from this book that Mr. Jackson has been little animated by the need of the enlightenment of "untutored workers.” Rather does he seem to have contrived his effort in the spirit of the ever so clever boy who is ever so eager "to tell the class all about it.”

His habitual use of long-winded, involved and even flashy statements, together with his readiness to knock lumps (spots seem not to be big enough) off all and sundry, will hamper any student who may mistake this book for an easy guide to Marxism.

Much of what Mr. Jackson has written here is comprehensible only to those who have had the opportunity of years and years of study, and into the bargain have been free from necessity of earning their daily bread under capitalist supervision in the workshop.

We cannot hesitate to offer the following example from among many which could be given of what we have said above. Mr. Jackson is explaining Hegel's phrase “Negation of negation,” and this is what we get : "The Hegelian method was 'pelmanised' for its followers in the 'sacramental formula' (as Marx called it): 'Negation of negation.' Both Marx and Engels used the phrase—it was an instance of their ‘coquetting with Hegelian terminology'—with telling effect. Since the phrase is a scandal and abomination to all bourgeoisdom to this day, and is made a chief count in the indictment against Marx by several of his recent critics, we may profitably give it a little attention.

  "Terrifying though this phrase may sound, mystifying to the last degree as it becomes in the hands of an idealist, this formula is none the less capable of a simple and, what is more, an illuminating explanation. Light begins to break through the mystery as soon as it is seen (a) that it summarises the conclusion of a logical operation; (b) that it is preceded by a process whose formula is in turn that of Spinoza, ‘All determination is Negation.'
  "What does this phrase mean? What it says: that all distinguishing of things in thought is a de-term-ination, a setting of limits to that which, the thing is. Or, otherwise stated, all distinguishing of things is an act of mentally separating a thing from that which it is not. Thus all 'determination,' which is particularisation, consists in 'negating’ or breaking up an undifferentiated generalisation. Furthermore, the process of discriminating one particular thing from a general mass is simultaneously a process of distinguishing the counter-particularity of that from which it is distinguished. Hence (and it is here that Hegel’s real contribution begins, all the foregoing being common to him and his predecessors)—hence a full comprehension of the thing involves comprehending it simultaneously in two opposite ways, namely, as distinct from and, at the same time, as one with that from which it is distinguished. Hence all logic consists in the performance with due circumspection of this operation of negating unity by resolving it into multiplicity (analysis) and re-creating it by distinguishing the unity persisting in the multiplicity (synthesis)."

One may gather from this why it was suggested that the study of philosophy is like looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The writings of Marx and Engels are in every way as clear as crystal compared with the above abracadabra.

However, having had our say so far, let us take Mr. Jackson as he is, as Cromwell preferred it, "Warts and all.” In tracing the rise and development of Marxism he well takes as his starting point an examination of Marx's theses on the philosophy of Feuerbach, which we have reproduced from time to time in these columns. All students of Marx should avail themselves of a study of these theses, since they indicate and illuminate the passage through which Marx passed from Hegelianism on to the philosophy of Feuerbach and thence to Marx. Mr. Jackson illuminates the fundamental distinctions between the older materialism of Hobbes and Locke, etc., the idealisms of Berkeley and Kant, which culminated in Hegel, and the materialism of the Marxian school of thought. If we allow for the drawbacks referred to previously, Mr. Jackson does this part of his work exceedingly well, and particularly so where he deals with the “ Objective Roots of Religion." Marx laid it down that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism," but as Mr. Jackson ably points out, although the “beginning,” it was by no means the end. In turn the criticism of religion involves a criticism of the legal-political-moral superstructure of human society as this arises from society’s economic foundations. Many passages from the writings of Marx and Engels are given in support of this thesis. But even here, Mr. Jackson cannot restrain his kink for “scalping,” and thus mars an otherwise excellent chapter by a piece of deliberate distortion. He quotes from Casey’s booklet, “Method in Thinking," the following: 

  “If we separate from men and things all thoughts of goodness, power, intelligence, perfection, life and such like, and add them together to form one thought of complete superiority in all matters, this thought is God. When we realise that thought is real and just as objective as anything else we have here!! the explanation!!! of why God is a real and very powerful influence!!! . . . If understanding were more general we should not have the silly quarrel between theists who take God on faith and the atheists who deny God also on faith!!! and agnostics who say they do not know one way or the other. . . .
   “The idea of God is built up just like any other idea, and therefore we can understand God! ! ! and consequently we are able to explain Him. . . . ”

The italics and exclamation marks are all Mr. Jackson’s, who describes Casey’s statement as an attitude of “facing-both-ways-at-once.” But Casey’s meaning is obvious, whatever one may think of his method of presentation. He does not mean what Mr. Jackson would have us believe, as the statement which follows on from where Mr. Jackson left him “ high and dry,” shows.

Says Casey: 

  "If after that any man wants to worship such a God it will be his own fault. Merely to deny God gets us no further, but to explain him is the best way, so far as serious argument is concerned, of clearing up all the nonsense associated with Him. We say nonsense, but it is not nonsense to those who trade on the faith in God, and in the name of God force their authority on their fellow-men, sometimes in sincere belief and sometimes with the utmost hypocrisy.” 

We cannot think that Jackson is unaware of the fact that Casey is dealing with "God” as a concept, and not as an objective reality, independently existing outside the human mind. We suggest Mr. Jackson should hesitate next time he thinks of the "facing-both-ways” charge. When Mr. Jackson was speaking recently at a Church Hall at Hornsey on the subject of ” Communism and Christianity,” he stated that “it was surely criminal to emphasise the disagreements of Communists and Christians when people all over the world clamoured for goodwill.” "The common enemy is Fascism.” (Hornsey Journal, February 21st, 1936.) Is this not facing-both-ways, or is it a variation of Low’s two-headed ass?

However, when dealing with "The Dialectic of Revolution,” Mr. Jackson exposes himself as being no more than an idolator of the Russian Bolshevik regime. He likewise exposes the fact that the mere possession of the dialectal concept is no guarantee that the correct standpoint is taken by the dialectarian. Whatever the Bolsheviks have done, or are doing, or are likely to do in the future, Mr. Jackson perceives in their activity the working out of the Dialectal Materialism of Marx. But he flattens himself out in the task of substantiation. He says, “That which was victorious in Russia in November, 1917, was neither a local nor a national force—but the revolutionary force of the world proletariat, which broke through the bourgeois defences just exactly at that point, because in that section the defences of the world-bourgeoisie were weakest.” (Page 397.)

The revolutionary force of the world proletariat! As Jackson must realise, unless he, like most "Communists,” sees the revolution everywhere, here and now in 1936 the revolutionary force of the world’s working-class is practically negligible. How much more so was it in 1917? Those who bitterly remember the wartime days will recall the almost complete absence of any serious sign of activity to stop the war, let alone commence the social revolution. In Russia alone was there any serious indication to call a halt to the slaughter, and mixed up in that movement to end the war were the Bolsheviks. The “Revolution” came, the Bolsheviks came, but no Socialism. Not even the intense longing and hoping of Lenin for the revolt of the world’s proletariat had any effect. The forces making for “Socialism” were actually subdued in Russia, firstly by the economic backwardness of that country and next by the capture of power by the very people who had been screaming "Socialism.” The Bolshevik Government from its inception, and in order to maintain its dictatorship throughout, had to toe the line to capitalism. Stalin in one of his recent utterances flatly repudiated the notion of the Bolshevik interest in world revolution after 19 years of his party’s rule.

The essential moves for Socialist revolution, which is totally different from a mere uprising to end a war, or dethrone a government, or what not, will take place when the workers understand and desire Socialism. And this Mr. Jackson evidently realises. He contends against the notion that it was Marx’s theory that the idea of Socialism would arise “automatically in the heads of each and every individual proletarian," and says further that "for the idea to arise in the first place, and to become general in the second place, an objective social reality must exist from which the idea has arisen. There must exist, and be felt to exist, a social problem for which a solution must be found—and it is under the promptings of the urgency of the problem as well as their cogency and applicability to the needs viewed in the light of practical everyday reality, that ideas spread and develop into 'forms of public opinion.' " Exactly, Mr. Jackson; but no such form of public opinion existed to any serious degree in the vast expanse of Russia in 1917 with Socialism as its objective. There are many other points made by Mr. Jackson about Russia, which we have refuted over and over again.

In concluding this review we repeat that, with those who are immersed in dialectics, and mistake the Marxian Dialectic for a sort of logic-chopping apparatus for the “use of smart men only," there lies a source of danger to Socialist activity. The concepts of the unity of theory and practice and the unity of opposites might pass muster anywhere and in anything, but to square with the realisation of Socialism it will not do to take one step forward in Socialist theory and two steps backward, not to mention a whole flight, into capitalist practice as Lenin and the Bolsheviks have done. There are numerous other points we should like to have dealt with arising from this provocative, entertaining, polemical, philosophical, historical and generally sociological essay, but we must drop our pen for the present. To all students of Marx we suggest that they sample this.work, but only after they have first studied Marx and Engels.

Robert Reynolds

P.S.—As I concluded this article, the news was broadcast that Russia desires a naval pact with Great Britain. The dialectic scores again.

Editorial: Save the planet, share the Earth (2019)

Editorial from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

• Climate change is real and is a serious problem for all of us.
• Climate change has resulted from human activities, more exactly the activities of a minority privileged class of capitalists.
• Capitalism by focussing on the short-term is unlikely to take the longer term, and hence the environment, into account.
• Capitalists and corporations will seek to distort the facts of the matter so they can carry on as usual.
• Capitalists are ideologically blinkered against climate change since it exposes the dangers of capitalism as a threat to the environment.

Therefore, we cannot expect the problem to be solved within capitalism. All the signs point the opposite way. Consider the fact that this has been on the international agenda since the 1970s when scientists first expressed concern and nothing much has been achieved; emissions have even increased over previous decades. The agenda of all environmental activity groups, who seek to change things without completely scrapping this system, will prove to be futile.

Ultimately the issue of the environment is an issue of power, of who has the power to determine what happens to this planet. Only in a society where we have the power to determine what can and cannot be done will we be able to stop this headlong rush to environmental devastation. That means a world of common ownership and democratic control. Anything else which anyone offers is merely using band aids to seal a volcano.

Radical change is necessary, a change in our thinking leading to a radical change in our socio-economic system. To save the Earth, life and human civilisation, we have to replace existing, profit-based, exploitative, oppressive, manipulative, disruptive and dehumanising capitalist society with long-overdue socialist society. A worldwide association of humans irrespective of nationalities, race, ethnicity, and sex has to be organised, which will function on the basis of participatory democratic principles.

This socialist, resource-based sustainable economy, with democratic control over the means of production and distribution, will produce things as per social needs. Preserving ecological balance is only possible in a world, socialist society. The most serious barrier to doing this is the prevailing capitalist mode of production. It’s the responsibility of the working class, who create and sustain human civilisation, to protect it by establishing world socialism democratically with the force of our immense majority.

The exact class which is actively cranking up the global thermostat that threatens to inundate 20 percent of the world’s population currently controls the United Nations and the parliaments of the different nations. So, we, the working class, should expect nothing from the ruling minority capitalist class but should rapidly organise ourselves into a political party of our own on a global basis, with the aim of establishing socialism worldwide, democratically. This is the only way out for humanity.

A Trotskyist Sect By Any Other Name (1997)

No comment.

TV Review from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month—5th February to be precise—saw an unusual occurrence. The Socialist Party was featured on a BBC TV news report. Less unusually for the BBC, the report was not entirely accurate. We do not wish to whinge unnecessarily, only to set out the facts on the basis that some recognition from the BBC, however inadequate, is probably better than none at all. In any case, we were not the main victims of the broadcast—there was a far more deserving candidate for that.

The day after this news item the Trotskyist sect previously known as Militant held a conference to re-launch itself as “Socialist Party”, and its newspaper as The Socialist. So BBC2’s Newsnight filed a report on this organisation’s attempt to refurbish its tarnished Trotskyist image, while purloining the name of an existing political organisation—us—in the process. Mark Mardell, who is rather more used to swanning around the Palace of Westminster in search political titbits, compiled a feature which included footage of our Head Office and an interview with a Socialist Party member about Militant’s latest (and possibly temporary) venture into political banditry.

However, if Mardell’s reporting of us is anything to go by it is understandable why MPs are getting so upset with the media these days. In his voice-over he claimed that we had changed our name too, from the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the Socialist Party, the clear implication being that it was a bit rich of us to complain about Militant’s own change of name. In this attempt to make an interesting story even better, Mardell got it wrong, though whether it was deliberate or simply because he has a very bad memory we do not know.

The fact about this is that throughout our existence since 1904 we have used the full and shortened versions of our name interchangeably, though for what must be fairly self-evident publicity and propaganda reasons we have for some years preferred the shortened version. The BBC Newsnight team were made well aware of this, as if a visit and look around our Head Office was not evidence enough.

Rather more galling than this minor irritation, however, was Mardell’s description of Militant as being our “comrades” before we fell out over usage of the name Socialist Party. Such a comment is so inaccurate as to be laughable in many ways, though unfortunately it has more serious implications. The idea that a genuine socialist organisation committed to the overthrow of capitalism in all its forms should be lumped in with an elitist sect deserves comment from us, especially a sect which has always opposed the socialist project in favour of reforms and state-run capitalism.

Militant meanderings

The Militant Tendency—in all its various forms over the years—has been an implacable opponent of genuine socialism and democracy, and like the rest of the Left, has shown an unremitting hostility to real socialists and our attempts to win workers away from support for the profit system. Our disagreement with Militant is not the product of some Monty Pythonesque sectarianism or factionalism, as portrayed on Newsnight, merely disguising a quibble over tactics or personalities, but is a thoroughgoing disagreement about politics in its entirety. Apart from the fact that we both lay claim to the word “socialist”. Militant and the Socialist Party have nothing common at all, as anyone with even a passing acquaintance with either of us must know.

For starters. Militant favour political leadership and centralism, whereas we believe in the widest possible democracy. Militant stand for state-run capitalism under the rule of the vanguard party (themselves), we stand for the complete abolition of capitalism along with its economic categories of money, profits and wages, and instead agitate for common ownership and production solely for use. Militant have always told workers to vote for the capitalist Labour Party, we have always resolutely opposed it, advising workers not to put their class enemies in charge of the machinery of government and the armed forces. Militant thought Russia to be an advance on western-style private enterprise capitalism. Right from the outset we said it was a hideous dictatorship over the working class which led to state capitalism and warned the working class about the would-be Bolsheviks in Britain who would use the workers for their own gain . . . organisations like the Communist Party, the SWP and Militant themselves. Need we go on?

When Jeremy Paxman interviewed Militant “leader” Peter Taaffe at the end of the item it was a pity no Socialist Party members was allowed to engage in the brief discussion to point all this out. It was also a pity that Paxman didn’t go for the jugular in his accustomed manner, adopting a (somewhat understandable) air of weariness to Taaffe’s meanderings about nationalising the top 150 monopolies and introducing a two-hour week, or whatever it was, to cure unemployment. He should certainly have pressed Taaffe on his organisation’s plans to stand 28 candidates in safe Labour seats, and asked him whether Militant would tell workers to vote for the Labour Party as usual everywhere else—this, after all, being a party they now cynically describe as “pro-capitalist”, as if it wasn’t before!

Perhaps on reflection Paxman didn’t feel the need to press Taaffe harder on any of this, because most of what he said was nonsensical and this must have been obvious enough to the viewers. Indeed, the abiding impression left by Taaffe was that there must be a village somewhere that has been deprived of its idiot, though one suspects that if this is the case they will manage to get along quite well without him. The same could be said of the working class as a whole who, beleaguered by the profit system and its representatives, need Militant’s support for capitalism and Taaffe and co.’s tactical posturings like the proverbial hole in the head.

Dave Perrin

Spot the balls (1997)

TV Review from the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the election campaign proved anything it was that slick, well-produced TV is not necessarily the most interesting. Most of the election coverage was well done if not flawless in its use of presentational techniques, graphics and virtually seamless continuity. And yet much of it was still deathly boring and irrelevant. Indeed, despite its slickness, the specially extended BBC1 Nine O’clock Election News lost a whole tranche of viewers as the campaign progressed.

One of the few programmes to eschew such modern TV professionalism didn’t attract a terrifically large number of viewers either — mainly because it was up against soap operas and football — but Spot The Difference (Channel 4. 8pm, April 9) was almost unique in that it informed its viewers about things worth knowing. To that extent, it was more informative and watchable than almost anything else.

The presence of a small, insipid audience, poor programme structure and horrendous editing simply did not matter as the message was all. And the important message was this — that without forewarning it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between randomly selected passages on policy from any of the main parties of capitalism that dominate the political agenda. Even the most dedicated political anoraks, who have spent hour after hour poring over the party manifestos and policy statements, cannot do it with any degree of certitude.When the presenters plucked out a sound-bite or policy goal from the literature of the Tories. Labour or Liberal Democrats the most common reaction from the panellists was ’’well . . . it could be any of them really!"

Really saying something 

Although there is now an unprecedented emptiness about capitalist politics, it is not that the main parties are saying nothing at all. A lot of their pronouncements are just froth and bubble — but quite a bit of the time they are saying something. It is just that on most issues they are basically saying the same thing.

They all believe that the capitalist class (usually referred to simply as "business") creates wealth rather than legally steals it from those who do actually create it — the wage and salary earning working class.

They all believe that the free market and competition offers the most efficient and viable method of producing wealth ever conceived by humankind, despite the untold misery it has caused but can't do anything about.

They all believe in state repression of those who try to "buck" the system or who are denied access to wealth on the grounds that they are not part of "the business community", and who commit terrible crimes like joining trade unions to defend their meagre interests in the market place.

They all believe in the 
necessity of a "strong defence capability” to safeguard the interests of Britain and the British — a Britain where one person owns more wealth than nineteen of the rest of us put together on average and where the majority's stake in "the national interest" is little more than a huge mortgage and a second-hand car.

And they all believe that they — the guides and beneficent manipulators of our economic and moral interests are capable of bringing wealth and success to the mass of the population.

It is because of all this that a programme like Spot The Difference has its uses. Few but the most bigoted or ideologically brainwashed can now believe that there is any meaningful difference between the parties of the market economy. The downside is that such programmes do nothing to offer real hope, real encouragement or a real sense that things can be different. In the present political climate they merely reinforce the spread of cynicism and apathy among an already downhearted and dispirited working class.

It is precisely for this reason that journals like this — and those who read it — are so important. We do not constitute a huge political force and are not as yet a political pressure to be truly reckoned with — but we do offer one thing. A scientific and logically-arrived at view that is able to account for society as it is. and has a clear, exciting and practical vision of how it really could be. Without us it would indeed be a cynical, cold and miserable outlook for humanity. With us — and more importantly with you — organising for genuine change, there could yet be a ray of hope. As a well-known children's TV programme used to put it a few years back — get up. turn off the TV set, and go and do something less boring instead.

Dave Perrin

The Negative Midas Touch (1997)

TV Review from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC1's Panorama (8pm, 9 June) on the night before the first round of the Conservative leadership election went a good deal of the way towards explaining the Conservative Party’s historic and horrendous defeat a month or so earlier. Nick Robinson spent 40 minutes charting the Tory decline over the last five years examining Major's weak leadership, the ERM debacle, the tax rises, splits over Europe, sleaze and the challenge represented by a revitalised Labour Party under Blair.

What he didn't examine was quite how suspicious the majority of voters have demonstrated they are about the great political "project” of the last twenty years, ushered forward in Britain by the Tory right. This is the political project built on the premise that the market knows best, and its application by the Conservatives was one of the key and deciding factors in the huge Tory defeat.

This may, at first sight, seem paradoxical because self-evidently the Blairite Labour Party is in love with the free market too, with small caveats. This is what bamboozled Panorama into ignoring this popular rejection of the free market, but a closer look at the election and the years leading up to it would have demonstrated the truth of this proposition. This is because although New Labour did not campaign on an open programme of state capitalism like in 1983, neither did it campaign for the free market. Beyond the soundbites the Labour Party campaigned on very little at all and its most popular policies were little more than heavily dressed-up anti-free market rhetoric devoid of spending commitments.

It is quite possible that the Labour leadership does not particularly find the schools voucher system. GP fundholding, the NHS internal market and so on to be quite the idiocies they painted them as but they were crucially aware that these market reforms were deeply unpopular among the working class both as workers in those fields and as consumers of services.

Sighting the target

In fact, the Labour Party's position on the free market as conveyed by its leaders and campaigners was a superb example of audience targeting. Its most obvious free-market rhetoric and pro-big business stance was reserved for its growing number of admirers in the capitalist class, the people it is now having to "do business” with now it is in government. For the consumption of the working class, there was a rather different fare—pledges to curb the alleged excesses of the free market Tory years and to build a community of interests, a “one nation" vision of inclusion rather than exclusion. In this way the Labour Party distanced itself from the unfettered free market just enough to convince its target voters to switch to them without at the same time frightening them off with grandiose revenue-raising proposals or suchlike.

The more discerning on 1 May were not seduced by this two-faced posture and turnout was the lowest for years, but then again so was the vote for the unashamed party of the free market.

Of course there are those in the Tory Party who believe (rather like the Bennites did some years ago about their project) that the only problem has been that their medicine for capitalism’s ills has not been administered in great enough quantity. As the Tory leadership contest has shown hardly anybody with brain cells still functioning believes this nonsense.

Instead politics has reached a situation (and Britain is only one example of it) whereby the free market is generally viewed by most people with suspicion bordering on hostility while the overt interventionism and state ownership of the past is distrusted and feared in equal measure. In this scenario there appears to be only one short-term solution and the Labour Party found it just as Clinton's Democrats did—attack everything that has gone before and failed, whether state capitalism or private capitalism and hope that something more substantial than rhetoric will come along to fill the resultant void. In other words, a “new" capitalism where the old private/state and left/right divisions have been left behind. A capitalism where persistent old problems require bright new solutions which must be there in the minds of the great and the good . . .  somewhere.

But these ideas about superseding the old divisions seem remarkably sparse and those that are around tend to cost big money. While the Tory Party fights over the spoils of its defeat everything Blair touches turns to gold at present. But at an ideological level, deep beneath the political spin. Prime Minister Blair has been dealt the hand that capitalism deals all its leaders blessed with momentary popularity out of the popular distaste for the effects of the market, including Thatcher and Major before him, is the negative Midas touch, where sooner or alter, everything the market touches, including its political "masters", turns to shit, no matter what the rhetoric or political dressing.

Dave Perrin

Revolting business (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once upon a time there existed, in the swamps of British politics, a strange mutant known as the Independent Member of Parliament. Some of these were elected for the universities, where the equality of man was proclaimed by allowing anyone with a degree to also have an extra vote as a reward for all those years of toil among the books and the lecture halls. Other Independents were elected by ordinary constituencies — in other words by thousands of members of the working class who had never had the time or the money to go to university.

The Independents, who could be politically interesting characters, were supposed to prove something about the unique intelligence and stability of the British electoral system. They were living witness to the fact that personality counted for something against the might of the political machines. One of the first acts of the Attlee government which came to power in 1945 was to abolish the University seats (along with other plural voting rights). This effectively destroyed most of the Independents; the rest were crushed between the upper and nether millstones of the two big parties, which settled down after 1945 to grind British politics into a dull succession of conformities which were referred to as party discipline. This was the heyday of the political gorilla, when the most primitive political man could slide into Parliament, provided he had the right party label around his neck.

Lies, Cynicism and Good Copy

The system now is that when there is a vote in Parliament the members of each side are expected to attend and to vote in accordance with a line laid down for them. It is the job of the party whips to make sure that everyone knows when to attend and how to vote and in case there is any chance of a mistake they often send out their orders in writing, sometimes underlining them. Three underlinings — a three line whip — means that no disobedience will be tolerated.

Yet even with all these precautions the monolithic unity of the big parties sometimes crumbles, as M.P.s who can usually be relied upon to find their way into the correct lobby blindfold appear to have lost all sense of direction and find themselves rubbing voting shoulders with men they choose in other circumstances to call the enemy. When this happens the newspapers assure us that we are witnessing a political revolt. At times the revolt is of little account; only a few M.P.s are in it and at most it reduces a majority by a small amount. At others — for example in the recent debate over the immigration laws in connection with British membership of the Common Market — it can be extensive enough to defeat the government.

There have been history-making occasions when a revolt has been aimed at the leader of a government. In 1940 many M.P.s had become convinced that Neville Chamberlain’s government was too tainted to be able to persuade British workers to die and suffer enthusiastically enough in the struggle of their masters against the threat of German capitalism. There was a great debate in which Chamberlain, although not actually defeated, came close enough to it to feel himself compelled to resign. Some of the speeches made on that occasion were hypocritical enough to find a place among even Parliament’s long history of lies and cynicism. Particularly honoured among the contributions was that of the late Arthur Greenwood, the ex-pacifist who was revered as Labour’s conscience, the gentle hero of the left. Greenwood got up to demand, not an end to hostilities but a more efficient prosecution of the war and, according to many observers, his speech set the seal on Chamberlain’s fate. Then there was the more recent occasion in 1963, when the followers of Harold Macmillan thought that his clumsy handling of the Profumo scandal indicated that he was no longer a sort of political cash register which recorded an ever-increasing vote but someone who was old and out of touch. One Tory actually went to the lengths of pinching an idea of one of Chamberlain’s critics and quoted a suitable piece of poetry in his speech, which at least showed that a university education comes in useful sometimes. It made excellent copy for the reporters and the M.P.s could go home full of pride at their consciences which had operated so strongly in reaching such a weighty decision. Meanwhile capitalism — and even Macmillan for a while — went on as before.

Conscience at Work . . .

But to bring us back to the present, the whole debate on the Common Market has been very confusing for the whips and the disciplinarians because both big parties are split wide open on the issue, which meant that a lot of M.P.s had to be leaned on pretty heavily to persuade them to vote in the right lobby at the right time. There was of course the famous case of Roy Jenkins, who has now taken his conscience into the wilderness for a while, who saw nothing inconsistent in voting for British membership of the EEC and then against the laws which would enable that membership to come into effect. Not for the first time, this type of political agility earned for its exponent the label of a man of principle.

And principle is what political revolt is supposed to be all about. On most issues an M.P. is expected to vote the party line but on a few he is allowed — if he does not assert — dissension on grounds of conscience. Sometimes this is of as much significance to the lives and welfare of the workers of this country as the split in 1928 when, while there were 1,300,000 unemployed, Parliament debated the wording of the book of Common Prayer. Another example is in the battles over the abolition of the death penalty, when M.P.s who had eagerly supported the organised butchery of millions of working people in wartime were prepared to argue that it was barbaric to do the same thing to about a hundred people a year.

Why do the party machines allow what is called conscience to work on such matters? The simple answer is that they have only a small influence on the important events of British capitalism. Much as it mattered that there was a death penalty to the man who was taken to the execution chamber, on the scale of the interests of the ruling class his fate was of no account. Only a few vociferous reformers would get upset about it.

. . . and at Rest

In contrast the issues which are the day to day business of capitalism and of its parties cannot be allowed to be affected by crankish theories of reform. When these are under discussion conscience must be flattened. Membership of the Common Market is of such historical importance to British capitalism that little aberration can be allowed among the people who administer the system. It is the same over the range of the legislation which is generally designed to perpetuate the existence of this national wedge of world capitalism.

And when these sort of chips are down, the M.P.s can be relied upon to conform, sometimes stifling their consciences with an assurance that it is all for the good of the party or the country. There need be no mystery about this, for there is one thing on which there is unbroken unity both within and between the parties of capitalism. They are both solidly agreed on the necessity to sustain the capitalist social system, at whatever cost in human suffering and social disarray. Within that unity there is room for an occasional revolt or deviance over a minor issue. We still wait for the real, significant revolt which will be not a matter of conscience but of understanding and which will sweep away capitalism and all its tattered conscience.

Ivan