The Practical Socialism of William Morris (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Useful Work versus Useless Toil (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We reproduce below an extract from Morris's 1885 pamphlet Useful Work versus Useless Toil which summarises his general position rather well as well as illustrating his style of writing.

There is a certain amount of natural material and of natural forces in the world, and a certain amount of labour-power inherent in the persons of the men that inhabit it. Men urged by their necessities and desires have laboured for many thousands of years at the task of subjugating the forces of Nature and of making the natural material useful to them. To our eyes, since we cannot see into the future, that struggle with Nature seems nearly over, and the victory of the human race over her nearly complete. And, looking backwards to the time when history first began, we note that the progress of that victory has been far swifter and more startling within the last two hundred years than ever before. Surely, therefore, we moderns ought to be in all ways vastly better off than any who have gone before us. Surely we ought, one and all of us, to be wealthy, to be well furnished with the good things which our victory over Nature has won for us.

But what is the real fact? Who will dare to deny that the great mass of civilized men are poor? So poor are they that it is mere childishness troubling ourselves to discuss whether perhaps they are in some ways a little better off than their forefathers. They are poor; nor can their poverty be measured by the poverty of a resourceless savage, for he knows of nothing else than his poverty; that he should be cold, hungry, houseless, dirty, ignorant, all that is to him as natural as that he should have a skin. But for us. for the most of us, civilization has bred desires which she forbids us to satisfy, and so is not merely a niggard but a torturer also.

Thus then have the fruits of our victory over Nature been stolen from us, thus has compulsion by Nature to labour in hope of rest, gain, and pleasure been turned into compulsion by man to labour in hope — of living to labour!

What shall we do then, can we mend it?

Well, remember once more that it is not our remote ancestors who achieved the victory over Nature, but our fathers, nay, our very selves. For us to sit hopeless and helpless then would be a strange folly indeed: be sure that we can amend it. What, then, is the first thing to be done?

We have seen that modern society is divided into two classes, one of which is privileged to be kept by the labour of the other — that is, it forces the other to work for it and takes from this inferior class everything that it can take from it, and uses the wealth so taken to keep its own members in a superior position, to make them beings of a higher order than the others: longer lived, more beautiful, more honoured, more refined than those of the other class. I do not say that it troubles itself about its members being positively long lived, beautiful or refined, but merely insists that they shall be so relatively to the inferior class. As also it cannot use the labour-power of the inferior class fairly in producing real wealth, it wastes it wholesale in the production of rubbish.

It is this robbery and waste on the part of the minority which keeps the majority poor; if it could be shown that it is necessary for the preservation of society that this should be submitted to, little more could be said on the matter, save that the despair of the oppressed majority would probably at some time or other destroy Society. But it has been shown, on the contrary, even by such incomplete experiments, for instance, as Co-operation (so called) that the existence of a privileged class is by no means necessary for the production of wealth, but rather for the ‘government’ of the producers of wealth, or, in other words, for the upholding of privilege.

The first step to be taken then is to abolish a class of men privileged to shirk their duties as men. thus forcing others to do the work which they refuse to do. All must work according to their ability, and so produce what they consume — that is, each man should work as well as he can for his own livelihood, and his livelihood should be assured to him: that is to say, all the advantages which society would provide for each and all of its members.

Thus, at last, would true Society be founded. It would rest on equality of condition. No man would be tormented for the benefit of another — nay, no one man would be tormented for the benefit of Society. Nor, indeed, can that order be called Society which is not upheld for the benefit of every one of its members

But since men live now, badly as they live, when so many people do not produce at all, and when so much work is wasted, it is clear that under conditions where all produced and no work was wasted, not only would everyone work with the certain hope of gaining a due share of wealth by his work, but also he could not miss his due share of rest. Here, then, are two out of the three kinds of hope mentioned above as an essential part of worthy work assured to the worker. When class robbery is abolished, every man will reap the fruits of his labour, every man will have due rest — leisure, that is. Some Socialists might say we need not go any further than this; it is enough that the worker should get the full produce of his work, and that his rest should be abundant. But though the compulsion of man’s tyranny is thus abolished, I yet demand compensation for the compulsion of Nature’s necessity. As long as the work is repulsive it will still be a burden which must be taken up daily, and even so would mar our life, even though the hours of labour were short. What we want to do is to add to our wealth without diminishing our pleasure. Nature will not be finally conquered till our work becomes a part of the pleasure of our lives.

Morris’s vision of socialism (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Yes, we agree that capitalism stinks; but what are we going to put in its place?" It is a question which socialists have heard often and, if our revolution is to amount to more than a grand act of demolition, we who want to create a new system of society must have our answers. Of course, only the majority who create the new social order will be able to decide what sort of a society socialism will be and even then, such decisions will be determined largely by the restraints of historical continuity and material necessity. Those who are lucky enough to live in socialist society will have recognised from the start that socialism will not be an ideal world, freed entirely from all problems. Unlike under capitalism, however, the inhabitants of socialist society will not allow themselves to be obstructed in the task of solving social problems by the artificial, historically obsolete features of the capitalist system.

William Morris well understood that the poverty and ugliness of what is called “civilisation" will not be eradicated until the whole “commercial”, or capitalist, system is destroyed. Unlike many of the self-styled socialists of his day — and the many more who advocate the propaganda of class confusion today — Morris was not interested in “socialistic” measures within capitalism, which amounted to no more than the robbers throwing crumbs to the robbed from the loaves that they have accumulated. Morris stood not for vaguely defined “socialist change" but for a new' social order which was the sole end of socialist activity. It was because Morris stood for socialism that his speeches and writings were filled with a sense of urgency about that alternative. For him, socialism was not some millenium; neither was it a pious ideal, to which occasional lip-service could be paid. What is to come after the revolution was, for Morris, at least as important, if not more so, than the propaganda against the system of the present. It was this awareness of the question posed at the beginning of this article — “What are we going to put in its place?” that led Morris to speak and write in ways which surpassed both the imaginary and historically predictive skills of most others in the movement, both before his day and since.

There are three main sources from which an insight into Morris’s vision of socialism can be gained. Firstly, and perhaps most popularly, there is his literary masterpiece, News from Nowhere, described by its author as "a utopian romance" and. published originally in serial form, between January and October 1890, in the Socialist League's journal, The Commonweal. The story is about a man who returns one night, tired after a heated discussion at the Socialist League about "the future of the fully-developed new society". He falls asleep and wakes up in the midst of a “fully-developed new society” - socialism. In the course of thirty-two fascinating chapters the reader observes this “guest” in a socialist society; he asks the questions which might be asked by one who wants to know more about socialism, and so Morris uses what is on the surface a futuristic fiction (written in the nineteenth century and set in the twenty-first) as a speculative socialist vision.

Secondly, there are the published speeches and writings of William Morris, most of which have been described as “political” works and which are stimulating in theme and embracing in style. Morris's “political" works are not about matters of factional intrigue or theoretical jargon, but present arguments for revolution which touch the feelings and class experiences of ordinary men and women who, without pretensions to scholarship, are sickened by the squalid lifestyle which the market system imposes on them. Thirdly, there is A Dream of John Ball, written in 1886: a visionary story about the desire for common ownership which pre-dates capitalism.

To begin, let us quickly explode the myths which those who have not taken the bother to understand Morris’s outlook have concocted about his conception of socialism. As an affluent poet and artist — a man who was much admired for his creative genius and was even offered the Poet Laureateship when Tennyson died in 1892 — Morris was highly vulnerable to accusations that his socialist ideas were merely quaint ideals — a poet’s fad, the dreams of a political utopian. Such labels were stuck on Morris, despite his well-formulated and practicable ideas. Repeatedly it has been asserted, more often than not by "scholars" who prefer to comment on what Morris almost said than on what he actually did say, that Morris was an opponent of modern machinery. Indeed, so often is the myth recited that when one reads the contrary in Morris’s writings one is almost tempted to chastise Morris for contradicting his interpreters! Morris made clear that his opposition was not to machinery, which he thought could be used in a socialist society to do some of the work which capitalism finds it more profitable to have done manually; his opposition was to the social nature of industrial mass production under capitalism:

  I do not mean . . . that we should aim at abolishing all machinery: I would do some things by machinery that are now done by hand, and many other things by hand which are now done by machinery: in short, we should be the masters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this or that tangible steel and brass machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us. (Art And Its Producers)

In A Factory as It Might Be Morris points out that socialism will put an end to "the manufacture of useless goods, whether harmful luxuries for the rich or disgraceful makeshifts for the poor". Only then will the community as a whole be “. . . in possession of the machines once used for mere profit-grinding, but now used for saving human labour”. Again, in As to Bribing Excellence, written a year before his death. Morris wrote:

 What are the said machines about now that the mass of the people should toil and toil without pleasure? They are making profits for their owners, and have no time to save the people from drudgery. When the people are the owners — then we shall see.

In short, Morris's objection was not to development in the productive forces. He realised that machinery will liberate human energies from many wasteful labours once machinery is used for need and not profit. Under capitalism the wage slave becomes the appendage of the machine, the impotent victim of a production line which travels to the uncompromising rhythm of profitability. Socialism with its crucial transformation in the objective of production from profit to use, will turn machinery into a useful device for saving labour. In a socialist society we could well imagine printers, who now fear automation as a threat to their highly-priced labour power, welcoming such machinery as a means of freeing them from needless toil. But — and this was Morris’s point — once production is for use and human beings are in control of their own labour, perhaps people will decide that the pleasure of creative work will be preferable to industrialised mass production. In some cases this will probably be so; maybe the skilled printers will prefer to print using methods which take longer, but provide greater creative enjoyment. In News from Nowhere Morris writes of farmers who, having done away with much of the big machinery of agriculture, enjoy working on the land. Of course, material conditions will determine the choices which will be made in socialist society: perhaps Morris’s agricultural picture would not be fitting if a massive increase in agricultural productivity was needed. As socialism develops production priorities will change and Morris is right to point out that once an abundance of wealth has been produced there will be every opportunity to experiment with human lifestyles.

Central to Morris’s conception of socialism is the theme of work. Under capitalism most people are slaves to the commercial interests of a small minority. Morris draws the all-important distinction between employment, which is life-destroying, and work. In a socialist society men and women would have more than what is now called “the right to work’’:

  It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which is worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious. (Art and Socialism)

In short, the present barrier between work (what you do for Them) and leisure (being creative) will be broken down in a society where working is both creative and serving your own interests. Of course, there will be unpleasant tasks to be carried out by people in a socialist society but, unlike now, the incentive to do them will be the common understanding that all physical and mental contributions to society will be for the benefit of all members of society.

In News From Nowhere the guest asks Old Hammond “how you get people to work when there is no reward for labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously”. Old Hammond replied that there is a “reward for labour", although wages and salaries have been abolished. So. what will the “reward” be in a socialist society? Work, says Old Hammond, has become "a pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain". Work as pleasure; let Old Hammond explain:

  . . . all work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not pleasant; or else because it has grown into a pleasurable habit, as in the case with what you may call mechanical work; and lastly, and most of our work is of this kind, because there is conscious. sensuous pleasure in the work itself; it is done, that is, by artists.

The pleasure of work, according to Morris, arises out of the transformation of work from useless toil and drudgery to creative art. How different this is from the nature of work and art under capitalism. Wage slaves alienated from social power over the produce of their own labour, are far from being artists, not because they are talentless, but because capitalist production stifles the creativity of the class which exists only to create surplus value.

Morris’s critique of art under capitalism was not an incidental feature of his conception of socialism; it was crucial to it. Before Morris there were others who despised the ugliness of the ever-expanding capitalist edifice, with its blinkered regard for profit at the expense of happiness and beauty. In 1860 John Ruskin declared that:

  Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels instead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold; our harbours are a forest of merchant ships, and the people die of hunger. 

Ruskin, Rossetti and the other Romantics dreamed of a return to an idealised natural past, uncontaminated by the filth of industrialism. It is an understandable misreading of Morris — and one which has been repeated often by the scholarly distorters — to assume that he too sought a Utopia by means of returning to the past. Indeed. Morris did write that:

  Anyone who wants beauty to be produced at the present day in any branch of the fine arts, I care not what, must be always crying out "Look back! Look back!"

But, as the scholars choose not to see, Morris was a materialist in his understanding of history, and thus it was not backwards that he wanted to go. Morris knew that:

  We cannot turn our people back into Catholic English peasants and Guild craftsmen, or into heathen Norse bonders, much as may be said for such conditions of life. (Morris’s letters, p.206)

And again:

  It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to an original fullness as it is to believe that with this present emptiness history has come to a standstill.

This was the crucial point, which made Morris a revolutionary as well as a dreamer: his vision was to be realised within real material conditions.

Chapter VI of News From Nowhere describes “shopping” in a socialist society: goods are available freely; there is no money. In this propertyless society of which Morris writes (and for which socialists aim) there can be no exchange, for that which is owned in common cannot be bought or sold. The stranger in Morris’s imagined land feels the urge to put his hand in his pocket and pay for goods and services — but, to the people of socialism, this seems as curious as it would be under capitalism for a homeless family to demand a suite in the Ritz. Need it be asked which system has the more humane priorities?

On meeting a group of children the “stranger" in socialism is surprised to learn that they are not forced to go to school. Why should they be, asks his guide Dick, when learning is a natural human process and the children will come to it soon enough? Marriage, we are told, is not a legal contract, but a mutually entered bond of love. There are no laws or prisons, for the causes of most anti-social behaviour, which are to be found in property relationships. do not exist in Morris's socialism. That is not to say that there are never acts of violence arising out of anger, and Morris is wise enough to include a reference to a case of homicide in News from Nowhere showing how, in a co-operative society, such problems would be likely to be dealt with. News From Nowhere is a novel which any student of socialist ideas should not be without, and there is no doubt that its image of the socialist future played a major part in influencing the thought of subsequent socialists, particularly in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The portrait of a moneyless, stateless, classless society based on production for use is of immense importance to those who want not only to destroy capitalism, but to create socialism. But News From Nowhere is not — and was not intended to be — a blueprint for socialism, or anything like one, Marx, in his day, refused to “write recipes for the cook books of the future" and Morris was not attempting to impose his conception of socialism, but to offer it to the working class as a vision of what might be.

  I want to tell you what it is I desire of the Society of the Future, just as if I were going to be reborn into it; I daresay that you will find some of my visions strange enough. (The Society Of The Future)

Of course, it will be up to those who establish the new system (ourselves, if we establish it soon) to decide democratically how we are going to use the material resources which are owned and controlled in common for our greatest mutual benefit. To move beyond capitalism — to remove the social features which seem today to be eternal. but are not any less transitory than any earlier social relation — is not a fantasy. If Morris could envisage such as change, as have many socialists since, there is no reason why our fellow workers cannot see beyond the narrow walls of the capitalist present. As Morris rightly concluded. “If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream”.

Steve Coleman

Bad Night for Olga (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lady Olga Maitland, who is famed as an Express gossip columnist, did not gild her reputation when she came to Islington last month to debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the question: Is Britain Worth Dying For? Her supporters came too; they gathered in a tight knot and clapped loudly when she was introduced from the platform. By the end of the evening, with some help from socialist speaker Steve Coleman, she had reduced them to a demoralised silence.

She had, let us be fair, a pretty difficult job with the Orwellian logic that workers should be ready to die to protect their masters’ fortunes, that bombs are needed for peace, that social problems may be eased by squandering vast resources on war machines. As a diversion she proclaimed a ringing pride in her British passport although she confessed to being an impure specimen of British womanhood because her mother came from Yugoslavia. Being British means having something called Tommy grit, otherwise known as moral fibre, which is just the stuff to beat the Russians with. It may just be that the evil men in the Kremlin are not deterred by Tommy grit, even supposing that they have ever heard of it. So to make sure we must have armed forces, guns and shells and bombers and nuclear weapons.

If anyone gets killed as a result, well Olga is very sympathetic. Should we have felt better, knowing that last November she was at the cenotaph for the annual outpouring of cant about the workers who were misguided enough to die for capitalism? Well, we didn’t; someone was unkind enough to ask about the people who had not yet managed to die for Britain and who are now being denied the chance to work for it. This was Olga's chance to show off her knowledge of economics but the best she could manage was to wonder about the true level of unemployment, based on a little difficulty she is having in finding a skivvy to clean her windows.

Not a wet eye in the place and a restless, bewildered audience of more than three hundred wondered if this was the best the defenders of patriotism could do. Well yes, actually it is. Olga Maitland sounded silly and empty because she was trying to put a silly, empty argument. It was as well that it was so clearly exposed.

From the opposite end of the table Steve Coleman pointed out that workers have no country to die for; it all belongs to their masters, in whose interests wars are fought. Patriotism is a garbage reserved for the working class, for capitalism’s trade is not allowed to be hampered by any such ideological nonsense. We should not fall into the trap of supporting one lot of bandits against the other; workers everywhere have an interest in common against capitalists everywhere.

Olga's arguments were in tatters. There was little for her to smile about but bravely she managed it. A living example of Tommy grit.

Election Fund (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Autumn Delegate Meeting last year a resolution was passed recommending the establishment of an Election Fund. The object of the Fund is to build up financial resources to help the Party to contest elections — local, national and European. Support for the Fund is now being sought from all members of the Party and also from others who recognise and value the Party's work. We particularly appeal to those who understand the necessity for the Socialist Party to undertake electoral activity and are willing to contribute on a regular, committed basis.

The cost of contesting the one seat where we stood in the UK Parliamentary Election last June was around £1,200. and our campaign was conducted responsibly and prudently. Taking into account the prospect of a substantial increase in the deposit called for, and the hope that at the next General Election we shall be strong and confident enough to put forward perhaps more candidates, the Party needs to be thinking in terms of having several thousands of pounds in hand when the opportunity comes. This may well be the European Election in June, 1984. The next UK General Election may be as far off as 1988, within the next few weeks, or at any time between; so, the sooner we start saving and planning, the better.

The Fund will be controlled by the Executive Committee, subject to Party Rules on Electoral Activity and to Conference and Delegate Meeting Resolutions. Contributions will be acknowledged, if requested, and regular contributors will be kept informed of the Fund's progress. We have available Bankers’ Standing Order Forms in the hope that as many as possible will use this method. Please write or telephone Head Office if you would like us to send one. We realise not everyone operates a bank account, either on principle or for other reasons, and we have prepared a similar form of commitment for those members who wish to make a regular contribution through their Branch Treasurer. Of course, many members and sympathisers will wish to make an occasional contribution to the Fund as and when they are able, rather than undertake a regular commitment, and all such contributions will be equally welcome.

We ask you to reflect seriously on how best you can respond to this call, and then let us know what you intend to do. We have already had an encouraging response.

Parliamentary Committee

50 Years Ago: Collapse of the Opposition to Hitler (1984)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian contributed two articles recently (Jan. 12th and 13th) on the collapse of the opposition to the Nazis and on the prospects of a new opposition. His estimate, based on a detailed knowledge of the facts, fully bears out our criticisms of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party.

"Nothing is now left." he says, "of the apparently big and powerful Social Democratic and Communist parties, and the Hitlerite government is more solidly established than ever. It has gained many voluntary supporters among the urban working class, particularly among the younger generation."

Of the Social Democrats he says:

  Although they professed Marxist principles. they were not Marxist. . . They were essentially conservative.

He thinks that the old party is discredited beyond recovery, but this, even if true, does not mean that the old illusions cannot be taken up by new organisations.

The views he holds about the Communists in Germany are particularly deserving of notice:

  The German Communist Party has always been over-rated, chiefly because of its great numerical strength, which was always out of proportion to its real strength. Indeed, so great was this disproportion that the German Communist movement came perilously near to being a colossal piece of bluff. There is not. and there never was. a “Communist danger” in Germany. . .
  The German Communists never fought a single successful action, they never even began an action that could conceivably be successful . They were never able to call a general strike, or even any partial strike beyond ineffectual, desultory, local stoppages. .
  Although full of revolutionary dogma, they were not revolutionaries, and never had the slightest conception of what a revolution is. . . Each of the so-called “revolutionary risings” (such as the central German insurrection of 1921 and the Hamburg insurrection of 1923) was a cruel farce from beginning to end.

The correspondent rightly points out that the German Communists, like the German Social Democrats, talked about "Marxist logic." but were "neither Marxist nor logical". They were "for illegality above everything, and preferred illegal defeat to legal victory”.

Although their membership at the time of the collapse was probably about 100,000, and they had had five or six million votes cast for them not long before, "they collapsed without resistance” and "just as ingloriously" as the Social Democrats.

The correspondent is right when he says: "it is probable that Marx would have repudiated Social Democrats and Communists with equal indignation”. 

(From an editorial "The German Situation", Socialist Standard, February 1934)

From William Morris (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a letter of October 1883

Among the discontented, discontent unlighted by hope is in many places taking the form of a passionate desire for mere anarchy, so that it becomes a pressing duty for those who, not believing in the stability of the present system, have any hopes for the future, to lay before the world those hopes founded on constructive revolution.

From “Four Letters on Socialism" (1894) 

This claim for the abolition of the monopoly in the means of production is made by all socialists of every shade; it forms the political platform of the party, and nothing short of this is a definite socialist claim. It is true that some of us (myself amongst others) look further than this, as the first part of my paper indicates; but we are all prepared to accept whatever consequences may follow the realisation of this claim; and for my part I believe that whatever struggle or violence there may be in the realisation of socialism will all take place in the carrying out of this initial step.

From “How we live and how we might live" 

The word Revolution, which we socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people’s cars, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment.

We can clear our eyes to the signs of the times, and we shall then see that the attainment of a good condition of life is being made possible for us, and that it is now our business to stretch out our hands to take it.

And how? chiefly, I think, by educating people to a sense of their real capacities as men. so that they may be able to use to their own good the political power which is rapidly being thrust upon them; to get them to see that the old system of organising labour for industrial profit is becoming unmanageable, and that the whole people have now got to choose between the confusion resulting from the break-up of that system and the determination to take in hand the labour now organised for profit, and use its organisation for the livelihood of the community.

Funds Appeal (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even with our very moderate programme, expenditure last year exceeded income by more than £15,000. Unless we drastically curtail spending we will run out of money within the next twelve months. To help us carry on propaganda for socialism, please send a donation NOW to: The Treasurer, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

“Uncle Sam is wicked” (1970)

Book Review from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

This collection of essays (American Power and the New Mandarins, by Noam Chomsky, Penguin, 40p.) towers above the majority of polemics arising out of the Vietnam war. It is a withering exposure both of the scholars who use their abilities to expedite mass murder, and of those who criticise them on grounds of mere expediency. It deserves to be read with some of the care, honesty and clarity of thought which evidently went into writing it. For all that, its strength is mainly destructive. When it comes to Chomsky’s alternatives, the weaknesses emerge.

What sickens him is not just the American action in Vietnam, and the arguments for it — but the arguments against. These are often to the effect that the war is a costly blunder, in opposition to America’s long-term interest, that America has no hope of winning, or that more stress should be placed on aid. less on military means. Chomsky is even suspicious of anti-war arguments based on the suffering involved:

  The primary reason for opposition to the war is its cost to us. A second cause is the feeling that the cost to its victims is too great. At first glance this reaction seems to be at a higher moral level than the first, but this is questionable. The principle that we should retract our claws when the victim bleeds too much is hardly an elevated one. What about opposition to the war on grounds that we have no right to stabilise or restructure Vietnamese society . . .

Yet there is a curious discrepancy between his argument and his conclusions. [1] A piece like The Logic of Withdrawal takes up every cudgel available against US involvement in Vietnam, including the “national interest’’ and horror at the brutality of the war (both arguments which the author elsewhere declares to be unsatisfactory). He adds that the US is transgressing international law, and that the Vietcong has mass support in South Vietnam whereas the government does not. But here again, one can infer that Chomsky is not basing his case on these points. Occasional remarks scattered throughout the book make it clear that what really disgusts him is the arrogance of the US in presuming to intervene in far-flung lands as it sees fit, whatever the circumstances: America “has no unilateral right to determine by force the course of development of the nations of the Third World.’’

In short, he mobilises all the conventional arguments for American withdrawal, with great force and eloquence, whilst stating that these arguments won’t do, and offering tantalising hints of a much more radical indictment. But when we try to assemble from these hints what this radical critique amounts to, we find it to be preposterous:

  These scholars designate themselves as ‘the moderate segment of the academic community.’ The designation is accurate; they stand midway between the two varieties of extremism, one which demands that we destroy everyone who stands in our path, the other, that we adopt the principles of international behaviour we require of every other world power.

That is a good example of Chomsky’s bitter irony, but though the second form of “extremism”, which he embraces, might be expected to disturb some, it is patently so unrealistic as to be merely pious. Chomsky is more aware of this than most, for he has gone to great pains to draw parallels between the American Empire and its predecessors, notably Japan and Britain. The similarities are often startlingly close. After all, a nation’s foreign policy flows largely from its economic structure and its relationship, economic, political and military, with other countries. To make appeals to the most rich and powerful nation in history to behave decently is surely a waste of breath. The US did not attain its dominant position by a request for the rights of other nations, and could not maintain it by adopting such a principle. Yet Chomsky even goes so far as to speculate about “massive capital gifts” (from the US!) “to Cuba and China.”

True, domestic reaction against the war might conceivably help to hasten its end, but the great majority of American workers will not be prepared to subordinate what they imagine to be “their” national interest to some form of arbitrary morality. The major reason why dissent from the war effort has become so large (as Chomsky sadly indicates) is that there has been so much “responsible” criticism, i.e. criticism founded on costs, expediency and national interest.

In a recent interview (New Left Review, No. 57) Chomsky gave the following explanation of why America is in Vietnam:

  The United States fought the Second World War, in the Pacific theatre, primarily in order to prevent Japan from constructing its own independent, integrated imperial system which would be closed to America. That was the basic issue which lay behind the Japanese-American war. Well, the United States won. The result is that now it must develop a system in which Japan can function effectively as a junior partner. That means the United States has to grant Japan what it needs as a partner, namely markets and access to raw materials, which for Japan, unlike the United States, are desperate necessities. Now the United States can very well survive without South East Asia. But Japan cannot. So if the United States wants to keep Japan securely embedded within the American system, then it has to preserve South East Asia for Japan. Otherwise Japan has other alternatives. It would turn to China or to Siberia, but that would mean the United States had lost the Second World War, in its Pacific phase. Once again a substantial industrial power would be carving itself out an independent space which, taken to its logical conclusion, would be separate and partially sealed off from the American world system.

So the Vietnam war would seem to be in America’s economic interest. True, Chomsky gave other causes for America's continuing the war, including its “investment in error”, and in his review of Schlesinger’s Bitter Heritage he points out that whilst ideology has its roots in real or perceived interests it can have a life of its own that may sometimes conflict with the interests from which it arose (e.g. US policy towards Cuba, and arguably, Vietnam).

However, an argument on the basis of national interest is what Chomsky set out, quite rightly, to avoid. He is outraged at the notion that any calculation can justify America’s part in the Vietnam carnage, yet apparently feels unable to say: “To hell with the national interest.” It might of course be a useful exercise to examine all the arguments just to show that the case for the war will not hold water even within he terms of reference assumed by its advocates. But it is not at all clear that the Vietnam slaughter is, on balance, against the interest of American capitalism. And in any case, Chomsky fails to think through his own really rock-bottom case. What sort of a world would it be in which powerful nations were bound by the same rules of conduct as weaker nations; That is altogether absurd. Nations embody antagonism of interest: their very existence is a sign of that. [2]

Chomsky’s extreme radicalism has thus led him into a hopeless muddle, but if he became more extreme and more radical still, his inconsistency could be resolved. For a coherent, logically sound and morally acceptable indictment of war can be based only on a thoroughgoing anti-nationalism and anti-patriotism. This must entail a recognition that “the national interest” means the interest of the owning and ruling class, that the nation should not be equated with the people. “The national interest” is a term used to conceal the class division between employers and workers by superimposing a geographical division. It is waved in the face of striking workers at home, as well as foreign enemies.

Revolution can wait ?
What is the explanation for this core of confusion within the shell of Chomsky’s glittering erudition? In part it is due to his overpowering abhorrence of the war, and the sense of urgency he feels about it. Everything must be subjugated to the task of stopping the war. He is sympathetic to the idea of social revolution but :

  If the Vietnamese have to wait until we build a serious political movement against all forms of capitalist repression in the United States, then they are all going to be dead . . . we cannot delay on the Vietnam issue in order to build a movement on more long-term issues. . . . Principled opposition to the war will lead directly to principled opposition to imperialism and to the causes of imperialism and hence to the formation of a principled anti-capitalist movement. (NLR interview)

Now this is manifestly wishful thinking. Not any kind of principled opposition to war leads to opposition to capitalism. A pacifist, for example, taking the view that all physical violence is an unqualified evil in all circumstances, would certainly be opposed on principle to the Vietnam war, but there have been such people for generations, and many of them in other respects still support the capitalist system. Again, someone might oppose the US action in Vietnam on the principle that, whilst war itself must be tolerated, the US is at fault by the Geneva agreement. Or that killing soldiers is permissible whilst killing women and children is not. These are all “principles” but they do not, in historical fact, automatically lead to opposition to capitalism. So it all depends what Chomsky means by “principled opposition.” What principles?

Effective opposition to war must be based on revolutionary. Socialist principles. In this case, opposition to war does not “lead to” opposition to capitalism, but principled opposition to capitalism necessarily gives rise to principled opposition to war, which (this should always be made clear) means hostility to both “sides” in every war. [3]

The plea that we cannot delay on some vital topical issue in order to build up a movement to abolish capitalism is a cruel deception. Its unspoken premise is that a total change in society is very distant and somewhat airy-fairy, whereas something like stopping a particular war is hard, real, practical and down- to-earth. In actuality though, it is the attempt to adjust capitalism according to humane criteria which is Utopian, and the call for social revolution which is the only practical solution. For decades sincere people like Chomsky have been hypnotized by some “immediate” issue, and have fallen like him into the habit of talking as if, that issue once removed, the decks will be cleared at last, and some serious attention can then be paid to the task of abolishing capitalism. The fallacy is obvious: capitalism provides an unending procession of such immediate issues, and with each one a crop of new “realists” who argue that this pressing problem must be tackled first, and then, ultimately . . .

When the Vietnam war is over, new horrors of similar magnitude are in store for us. as long as capitalism lasts. [4] If the human species has to wait until all the Chomskys have sorted out all the Vietnams, then we are all going to be dead. One of the consequences of this relegation of revolution to the realm of the “ultimate” is that here is felt to be no need to argue for it in urgent and consistent terms. Thus, when the people who adopt this posture do mention social revolution, they usually discredit it, reinforcing the popular attitude that it is irrelevant to the here and now.

Guilty patriotism

But the real source of Chomsky’s muddles is his patriotism. The word may seem odd in this connection, conjuring up Curtis LeMay and his “Bomb them back to the Stone Age.” Chomsky’s however, is a guilty patriotism, the patriotism of the flagellant. His personal identification with the American nation is overwhelming. That is why his revulsion at the Vietnam butchery finds its expression in demands that the US reform itself.

Time and again he uses the expressions “we" and “us” to mean “America” or even “the American government.” It is alarming that one so sensitive to the implications of words should notice nothing strange about this:

  Like the German Kaiser we believe that everything must be put to fire and sword, so that the war will be more quickly finished — and we act on this belief. Unlike the German Kaiser, our soul is not torn. We manage a relative calm, as we continue, today, to write new chapters of history with the blood of the helpless and innocent.

Because he feels responsible for the actions of the American government he is paralysed when it comes to criticism of America’s antagonists. Thus, in an article on the Pacific war, he draws a convincing parallel between Japanese policy in China and subsequent US policy in Vietnam, but arriving at the subject of Japanese bombing of civilians in Nanking he merely states:

  For an American today to describe these events in the manner they deserve would be the ultimate in hypocrisy. For this reason I will say very little about them.

And that is presumably why he also says very little, in fact nothing, against the North Vietnamese regime or the Vietcong. Every conceivable argument, sound or not, must be mobilised against the American colossus. Therefore, when US policy is under attack, the idea that Chinese expansion might be a threat is vigorously pooh-poohed, but in another context, when it is necessary to stress the independence of Hanoi, the view that “the principle raison d’etre of such a powerful army in North Vietnam today is to protect North Vietnam against possible Chinese aggression” is quoted with approval.

This is dangerous because governments always try to make out that those who oppose their wars, are supporters of the enemy. There is no point in providing them with convincing evidence for their accusation. Chomsky is well aware that state capitalist Russia and China are only less brutal than the US to the extent (if at all) that they are less powerful. He knows that Victnam-style atrocities do not spring from any peculiarity of the American nation, except that it is on top. He knows too that North Vietnam is no paradise (to put it mildly), that it is dependent upon aid from Russia and China, and that an American withdrawal will amount to an extension of the Russian and/or Chinese spheres of influence. A call for American withdrawal is simply a call for a slightly different carve-up of the world by the big powers. It is time Chomsky faced up to the implications of these facts.

Where now

The bulk of this book, in its dissection of mainstream American ideology, is excellent. The deceptions and self-deceptions of this school often read like self-parodies, for instance the solemn warning from one expert that a pacification programme requires survivors to be pacified. Or the reminder, addressed to an American commander bragging of the latest US “victories”, that the victories seemed to be getting closer to Saigon.

Yet “there is no particular merit in being more reasonable than a lunatic,” as Chomsky himself remarks. He must therefore be judged primarily on his recommendations for political action. He could sometimes be more explicit in his references to social revolution, though some of these are promising:

  A democratic revolution would take place when it is supported by the great mass of the people, when they know what they are doing and they know why they are doing it and they know what they want to see come into existence. Maybe not in detail but at least in some manner. A revolution is something that great masses of people have to understand and be personally committed to. (NLR interview).

This view is as alien to the anarchist tradition as to the bolshevik — though it is certainly a corollary of Marx’s assertion that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the workers themselves. All the more unfortunate that Chomsky is attracted to anarchism, and has apparently been put off Marxism by its misrepresentations. He quotes Bakunin's summary (which is all lies) of Marx’s doctrine with every indication that he believes it to be an accurate account.

His observations on Spain are (so far as the knowledge of this reviewer extends) substantially correct, but whatever the possibilities of the popular movement before it was crushed by the “Communists” it was undoubtedly (like the Makhno revolt in Russia, another prize exhibit in the anarchist pantheon) a product of backward agrarian conditions. consequently haunted by scarcity and doomed by the march of industry. This in no way belittles the heroism of many of those involved: it simply indicates the limited relevance of such events to the problems of an increasingly white-collar proletariat in vast conurbations during the second half of the century.

It is not likely that the evolution of Chomsky’s ideas has stopped. Hopefully, future writings may contain a more serious approach to the urgent need of today: worldwide social revolution. For all its flaws, even the present volume can be expected to put serious questions into many thousands of minds, and is therefore, with reservations, welcome.

Steele

[1] Not to be resolved by taking into account the dates of the separate articles, though this does reveal a trend towards greater clarity.
[2] A similar lack of realism is displayed by those who imagine the UN could ever cease to be in the pockets of the big powers.
[3] The double think of the US government is unsurpassed, but some elements of the "peace movement” have a good try, e.g. the sleight-of-tongue by which support for a pro-war demand (Viet- cong victory) is represented as “antiwar." See Why Socialist oppose the Vietcong in the Socialist Standard, October 68. Also useful is the pamphlet Rape of Vietnam by Bob Potter, though this writer is disturbed to find himself approaching the position of hostility to both sides, and evades it with the remark “One can’t be ‘neutral’ while aircraft are flying over one’s home dropping bombs.” an announcement for which both the German and British governments in the last war might well have commended him.
[4] When there is a Socialist movement of more than derisory strength it will of course unite across frontiers to use its influence to try and stop particular wars within capitalism. But its approaches would be made not to the governments, requesting them each to capitulate. but to the workers called upon to fight, pointing out that only their masters’ interests are at stake in the war. This has been the message of the Socialist Party in two World Wars and during Korea and Vietnam though with no expectation of achieving anything towards preventing these conflicts, given the solid support for capitalism of the great majority of workers. A situation where a massive Socialist movement, not yet a majority, was confronted with a war, might never arise. Firstly, because the rate of the spread of Socialist ideas might at that stage be expected to increase, so that world revolution would be imminent, with it the abolition of war. Secondly, because governments might be deterred from the initiation of wars by the knowledge that very substantial proportions of their populations could be relied upon to sabotage the war effort.

Aspect: Capitalist education (1970)

The Aspect column from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have no illusions about the role which institutions like the universities have to play in class society. Like the government and the churches they serve the interests of the ruling capitalist class.

The basis of modern society is the ownership of the means of production by a section only of society and their consequent use to make profits for those owners. The rest of us, cut off from ownership, have to sell our mental and physical energies in order to live. We, who make up over 90 per cent of the population, alone produce all the wealth of capitalist society.

The time has long since past when the capitalists themselves took any part in production. They have long since become redundant parasites, employing specially trained wage-labourers to perform the jobs, in the administration of the State and the management of their businesses, which when capitalism was younger they used to do themselves.

Modern society and industry is now run from top to bottom by paid members of the working class. All the jobs in the administration, planning, production and distribution of wealth are carried out by workers.

The glaring contradiction in modern society is between large-scale social or co-operative production and the outdated sectional ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth. Class ownership has become an anachronism that is holding back the use of society’s wealth to provide plenty for all.

So what have we got? A modern technology capable of providing abundance. Workers capable of operating this highly-developed industrial system, yet doing this in the interests of a non-working, owning class who want their means of production geared to profit-making. But whether these are used to make profits or to satisfy human needs the technology is the same. Thus, the owners face the problem of training workers to administer and operate modern industry.

At one time the task of schools was merely, by means of religious indoctrination, to break in the children of the working class to the sort of discipline and hard work they could expect when they went into the factories and mills and mines. But with the growing application of science to production the employers required more and more specially-trained workers. In 1870 the State brought in compulsory elementary education. More money was spent on technical schools. Soon, a three-fold division emerged in education: Elementary schools turning out factory workers; secondary schools turning out clerks; and the public schools teaching the children of the ruling class to be the rulers. This division was recognised and enshrined in the 1944 Education Act which made secondary education compulsory.

Compelled by economic necessity to spend money through the State on education, the capitalists came to expect more of schools than mere indoctrination. They wanted to turn out workers who understood what they were doing in the factory or office. They wanted, in other words, an educated or rather a trained working class.

Hence, in capitalist society, money spent on education comes to be seen as an “investment”, the return on which can be calculated in commercial terms. The educational system becomes the “education sector” of the economy or the “knowledge industry”. Thus Lord Butler, former Tory politician now an academic, can write about students “as the type of capital investment which will accrue with every year” and which has “enormous value” (The Times, 20 November 1968). Labour Ministers are not different. Gordon Walker, who used to be Education Minister, wrote in the Financial Times (11 March 1968) about the colleges of education achieving “a striking increase in productivity”, that is, turning out more teachers per £ invested.

People like to think of education as something outside the commercial world where human rather than commercial values are taught and learned. Thus all this talk of “investments”, “industry” and “productivity” in connection with education seems offensive and cynical. But Butler and Gordon Walker are being realistic. They are telling the truth. What is called education is today prostituted to the service of capitalist industry and its profit-making, pandering to its manpower and research needs. Education today really is an industry, a sector of the economy turning out a certain kind of product, whose performance is judged on the rate of return it brings on the capital invested in it.

This, of course, applies equally to the universities—though how they were captured by Big Business is another interesting story.

For universities existed before the rise of capitalist industry. They came into being in the Middle Ages as centres of religious learning where people could study theology, law and medicine. Indeed up until the end of the 18th century nearly all graduates were Church of England clergymen and until 1871 acceptance of the 39 Articles was a condition for going to a university (the poet and revolutionary Shelley was expelled from Oxford in the 1820’s for being an atheist). In the last century Oxford and Cambridge, the main universities, were institutions turning out Anglican clergymen and top civil servants. Since at that time the governing class still managed its own affairs, their role was to train the ruling class to rule.

Capitalist industry was faced with the problem of turning these bastions of aristocratic privilege into the knowledge industry, of driving out leisurely learning for its own sake and replacing it by business and technical training. Many of the early manufacturers were non-conformists and so were barred from Oxbridge. They therefore used their money to set up their own rival institutions—the redbrick universities—where the emphasis was on science and commerce rather than on Latin and Greek. The capitalists denounced the old universities as “a collection of books” and “a place where nothing useful is taught”.

This was an ironic situation. The mediaeval origins and traditions of these old universities, geared to serving a leisure class, made them value learning as such and resist the capitalist pressures to reduce them to the simple task of training managers, engineers and technicians for capitalist industry.

Traditionally, then, the universities were attended only by the sons of the rich, and especially Oxbridge by the idle sons of the idle rich. This is no longer so. Part of the money invested in education goes to provide grants for children of the working class to go to college. 90 per cent of students are the sons and daughters of workers maintained at college out of local authority grants. When after three or four years training they leave university, they enter the labour market just like someone leaving school at 15. Thanks to the capital invested in them, their ability to work is more valuable and so they can get a higher wage. But wage-workers they still are. The labour market for graduates is conducted partly through the advertisement columns of papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Observer, but now increasingly capitalist firms are entering the universities and trying to sign up students even before they graduate.

Make no mistake about this: students come from the working class and are merely being trained as special high-grade workers who still have to find an employer to live. Most students come from the working class and are being trained to fill the top posts in the State and industry.

Universities are capitalist bodies geared to producing valuable graduates for the employing class to exploit. So it is not surprising that these students who have seen this can only regard as hypocrites those academics who proclaim that the universities are “republics of learning” or “communities of scholars” dedicated to seeking after Truth. Students have every right, like other workers, to protest about being treated as an “investment” and judged merely from a profit-making point of view.

Adam Buick

The Vicious Circle (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

If society is to advance, or progress, or improve, or whatever you like, it is necessary that somewhere along the line men think about it and decide that it is a good idea—not just in an abstract, moral way but in material and concrete terms. The importance of this seemingly unexceptional statement is that the absence of man’s agreeing that a particular bit of progress is useful or necessary will delay or even destroy that progress.

At present, ideas are really the only obstacle to do the great social advance which will end capitalism and all its contradictions and replace it with the saner, more humane society of Socialism. Ideas alone are holding us up—human beings have developed the material necessities, a means of production which can feed and clothe and house us as well as we can want, but at the same time human support for capitalism maintains a social system which is at variance with those means of production. In other words, ideas are lagging behind material conditions.

To bring this down to an everyday, concrete (in more ways than one) example, we may consider what motor transport is doing to our lives. Used in a rational, humane manner, motor transport could bring great benefits to us. In itself, it is evidence of our ability to protect ourselves against our environment and to overcome obstacles to a better organised existence.

But the same people who design and build the motors, and the roads which carry them, also support the social system which imposes on it all an order of priorities based on the need for profitable wealth production. Because of this, those symbols of our abilities — the motor car and the roads, intrude on our environment to an intolerable extent. Very often, this means that a flyover passes within feet of somebody’s bedroom window so that all day, and for most of the night, the noise and the vibration and the smell of traffic is a companion to their lives.

Naturally, the people who suffer this complain bitterly about it but, as the authorities justify it all on the economic arguments which carry most weight in capitalism, the sufferers think that nothing can be done about it and from that assumption it follows that nothing is done. And that brings us to the point of this article, which is the Self-Fulfilling Prophesy.

Among the many ideas which keep capitalism in existence, the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is one of the most potent. In essence, it involves postulating certain conditions and, when these have produced the expected results, accepting those results as the justification for setting the original conditions. It is what is known as a circular process of reasoning. All of this sounds very remote and complicated so perhaps it is easier to take one or two examples.

Take colour prejudice. In this country, whatever the official story, coloured immigrants, no matter what their qualifications or abilities, are confined in their choice of employment. Often, this means that they do jobs which “white” workers have rejected because they are badly paid, or dirty, or arduous. In addition, because they are immigrants, coloured workers find it difficult to qualify for council housing and meet discrimination when they try to buy a house outside certain parts of the town where they live. The effect of this is that some jobs, and some areas, are overloaded with coloured people. It is not difficult to see here the cause and its result. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, however, sees it differently; it sees a majority of coloured workers in certain jobs and certain areas and concludes from this that anyone with a dark skin is only fit to live in a ghetto and to work as a bus conductor or a factory cleaner.

Coloured people are not the only ones whose responses are judged in accordance with pre-arranged prejudices. One of the big problems facing intending reformers in the field of crime is the simple fact that treating a criminal or a delinquent like a social deviant will produce deviant behaviour in him. Yet a person is bound to be treated in that way, once they have offended against capitalism’s laws. What it boils down to is that capitalism's reaction to crime does little more than produce repeated crime, which is then assumed to prove that a greater, stronger reaction is needed. Sentences are escalated, the offender is rejected even more emphatically and finds it harder and harder to adjust. He is part of the hard-core problem which baffles them all—the recidivist.

Such prejudice need not be confined to colour, nor indeed to class. It is only just over fifty years ago that women in this country won the vote, after a long struggle against the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. In this case, women were excluded from almost every activity except the most menial — were excluded, in other words, from all opportunity of proving themselves. Well-to-do women sat at endless hours of needle work, the less fortunate struggled with the job of governess or slaved as domestic skivvies. The very fact that women were kept out of certain jobs was used as evidence in support of the idea that they were incapable of doing these jobs. This opinion was supported by many highly qualified men — scientists, philosophers, politicians — and by not a few women as well. It took a massive act of defiance by a minority of determined women to dent this idea, which is now considerably shrunken in popularity.

Although this prejudice is not confined to class, it does operate in this field. At present, society is divided into two classes, one of which owns the means of production while the other does not own them. The first class (the capitalist class) employs the other (the working class) to work the means of production and distribution, which means that the working class really run society; without them the modern world simply would not be possible. They produce our food, build our houses, operate our transport system and design and conceive everything that is needed for this to happen.

But the working class, white collar and blue, high salary or low wage, are convinced that their rulers hold their superior social position by virtue of some innate, almost supernatural, abilities. They fall for the myth of the man who built an economic empire all on his own, who did it because he is millions of times more brilliant than the rest of us. They believe in the fraud of leadership and spend a lot of whatever time they devote to thinking about politics in searching for another myth — the honest, capable, effective leader who will deliver them to the promised land. Thus the working class condemn themselves to think, and to act, like a subject class. They proceed from this to accepting their own behaviour as confirmation that they should remain in subjection.

This can be seen most clearly, when a worker is confronted with the socialist alternative. Here is an idea which represents nothing less than an historic step to end the problems of capitalism. Yet when this idea is put to workers, their reaction often amounts to no more than objecting that, as it is a solution to their problems, it must be impossible. A society without leaders? We must have leaders, say workers, for the simple reason that we have them now. Without money? The world would stop without it, simply because money is so necessary to capitalism. Without war? Wars are unavoidable — simply because capitalism has conned them into thinking that war is a distasteful necessity.

Now so long as the working class think that Socialism is impossible, then it is impossible. And as they accept the very existence of capitalism, and the priorities and fundamentals of the system, as evidence in favour of keeping it in being, they continue to think that Socialism is impossible, undesirable, insane . . . Even when capitalism does its best to show them just what an impossible, undesirable, insane system is like — when capitalism sticks a flyover outside their front door, or herds people into stinking slums, or beats us all down in an obscene armed conflict — they are not convinced.

Ivan

The Labour Government: Are they bunglers? (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent ad. (Sunday Mirror, 4 January) the Tories contrast what Labour promised they would do with what they have in fact done. Under the heading "Bunglers or liars?" they say:

  It’s easy, isn’t it, to dismiss the whole lot of them as a bunch of liars who will say anything to save their faces and stay in power.
  Is that the truth? We don’t honestly believe it is. We think that when these people said these things, they believed them.
  But the extent to which they have failed to live up to their promises reveals an incompetence which is quite staggering. You appointed these people to run the affairs of the country so that everyone living here should prosper. That is what Governments are for.
  You gave these people their power. You pay them with your money. You hoped that by doing so you would enjoy a better life, and that your children would enjoy a better future. You can see what they promised you. And how dismally they have failed.
   Isn’t it time we set to work to undo the damage they have done ?

It is true that people voted Labour in the hope that this would bring them a better life. But it is not true that Labour has failed because they are utterly incompetent: nor that governments exist to “run the affairs of the country so that everyone living here should prosper”.

We are living in a class society in which there is no common social interest. The government’s job is to look after the interests of the propertied few who own Britain. This job involves all governments in conflict with the other class in society, those who have to work for a wage or salary. In managing the affairs of the capitalists governments have to ensure that profit-making can go on as smoothly as possible and are, from time to time, forced to take measures aimed at restoring profit levels by reducing workers’ living standards. The Tories have done this as well as Labour.

Labour has failed not because they are bunglers nor because they are liars, but because the capitalist system just cannot be made to work in the interests of wage and salary earners. In expecting Labour to do this, the voters set them an impossible task.

This is why a change of government from Labour to Tory would make no difference. Even if the Tories were as clever as they claim, they still could not ensure that everyone benefited from capitalism. If they are elected and when they fail (as on previous occasions) we shall not call them liars. Nor shall we suggest they are bunglers. We shall simply point out that no government. Labour, Tory, Liberal or a coalition, can make capitalism work in the interests of all. Capitalism is a class system that can only work for those who own the means of production. Until these means are commonly owned the problems facing wage and salary earners can never be solved.

Those who are going to vote Tory in the hope of getting a better life will be as disappointed as those who voted Labour last time.

Government by Labour (1970)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

A question which has recently aroused considerable controversy is, “Can Labour Govern?”

Socialists not so much concerned with the question of whether Labour can govern as whether is should, or, to put it a better way, whether Labour need govern. And on examination of the facts the only possible conclusion we can arrive at is that it need not—and should not.

#    #    #    #

The word “govern" means (according to Blackie's Concise English Dictionary): “to direct and control; to regulate by authority; to keep within the limits prescribed by law or a sovereign will; to keep in subjection; GRAM., to cause to be in a particular case, or to require a particular case.—v.i. To exercise authority”.

The italics are mine.

#    #    #    #

Seeing that the spokesmen of the Labour Party are all so greatly concerned to maintain their ability and their right to govern (when they get the chance) it is natural to ask “Who is it that the Labour Party wish to ‘keep in subjection’?” Seeing that the Labour Party, both officially and in the utterances of its representatives, has no conception of politics other than the capitalist view, and seeing, further, that there is no class beneath the working class to be oppressed, obviously it can only be the workers themselves that the Labour Party desires to "keep in subjection”.

Now. in asserting that Labour need not govern, it is necessary to submit an alternative. That alternative is Administration . . . The same dictionary says that to administer is "to manage or conduct as chief agent . . ." and states that the word is derived from the Latin ministro, to serve. The difference, then, between Administration and Government is that the first serves the people and the other represses them. 

#    #    #    #

Real Administration can be born only when the proletariat, having seized political power, use it for the purpose of making the means of production the common property of the whole of society, and proceed to administer them for the common welfare of all. Then the need for the State, for government—“Labour” or other, wise— and the "keeping in due subjection", will vanish, and mankind will at last be free.

(From an article by Hutch., Socialist Standard, February 1920).

The Myth of fair wages (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many rocks appearing among the stormy waters which the Wilson government are trying to navigate and one of them is called pay. Fair pay for nurses, for dustmen, bus drivers, postmen. Fair pay for miners, sailors, policemen, even for Members of Parliament.

Everyone in fact seems to be in favour of "fair” pay from which it follows that hardly anyone is asking the essential question of what the word means. It seems to be generally accepted that somewhere there is a magical formula which can fix a fair wage — a wage exactly adjusted to the skills, dangers, usefulness, responsibility, unpleasantness of each and every job. Of course this would be a beautiful excuse (as if one were needed) for a government to set up another of those Royal Commissions which could spend a lot of time gathering enough material to fill up very thick, big, books, which they will eventually produce as their report and which will very probably be quickly forgotten by everyone. But in the absence of a high powered commission, perhaps we could launch our enquiry.

What are we going to take as our standards for a fair wage? If we start with skill we shall soon run up against the problem that different skills are acquired in different ways. Some can be learned at university, others handed down from one generation to the next. In any case, is it ‘fair' to pay for skill in itself, rather than the way in which it is applied?

Then there is the question of danger. But if wages were based on the dangers involved in the job. airline pilots would be paid no more than the rest of their crew, who obviously are all in equal danger — and the whole lot of them would be paid a great deal less than miners, or trawlermen, or scaffolders. And how much would stock brokers and insurance men get, under a danger-regulated wages system?

They would obviously be in favour of some other criteria being applied. Perhaps usefulness in some strange way the Stock Exchange and the insurance firms manage to convince themselves that their dealings are necessary to society. Yet the world manages to tick over when the Stock Exchange is shut, and people who don’t take out insurance policies seem as happy and healthy as those with a trunk full of the things. It would be a different story if, say, the electricity generating stations took the day off or if bakery workers decided they had had enough of their job. By those standards, people who do jobs which society could not do without— people like dustmen—should earn a lot more than stockbrokers.

Anyone who is not left completely bemused by that beautiful notion may care to pass on to considering the next standard, which is, responsibility. This is, in fact, one of the arguments used by air-line pilots to justify their relatively high pay—which is, they say, no more than due recognition of the fact that they have in their hands the lives of many people and a lot of very expensive hardware. Yet this argument is not extended to other workers in similar situations — train drivers and bus men, for example, are not expected to get anywhere near a pilot’s pay, nor even that of people like salesmen (one advertisement in The Times recently offered salesmens’ jobs for men of between 25 and 35 with a basic wage of between £2000 and £2500 which, with commission could reach £5000 per year whose failures would not destroy any equipment nor endanger any lives.

Should wages, then, be based upon how unpleasant a job is? Anyone who has spoken to a nurse, and who has heard of the sort of jobs they have to do for patients who are in the last stages of diseases like cancer, will know that no wage could possibly be high enough to reflect the unpleasantness of their job. Then what about mortuary attendants, ambulance drivers, who have to pick up what’s left of people after road accidents? Sewer men? they should all be getting far, far more than the Royal Family.

It is possible to labour this point almost indefinitely. The plain, simple fact is that there is no such thing as a fair wage, nor is there any method of estimating one, nor is there any profit in trying to find one. Wages are not governed by fairness. They are not a moral issue, to be influenced by arguments of danger or skill or usefulness or anything else.

Because wages are paid by one human being to another (or, to be exact, by one class to another), the fact that they are no different from the mass of other payments in capitalist society is obscured. Yet wages are as much the price of a commodity as what we pay for apples, or bread, or a hair cut, or a ride on a bus. What is it that fixes how much we pay for apples or a haircut ?

In the short term, it is whatever price is settled after a tug-of-war between the opposing forces of supply and demand. In England in the summer, apples fetch a pretty high price in the shops, but as the autumn comes, and apples from English orchards flood into the shops the price comes down abruptly. This same situation applies to wages. If employers are short of a particular type of worker, or if they are competing with other employers for his working ability, or if they desperately need workers to produce goods to cater for an inviting market, then wages for that worker will tend to rise. If the opposite is true they will end to fall, or rises will be harder to get and the employer will be in a strong position to exert a downward pressure on pay and working conditions.

The whole point about the nurses’ campaign for higher pay is that it is not backed up with any force. Nurses would not use the strike weapon, which is another way of saying that they would not use their bargaining power— which means that in the end their employer has the pull over them. Appeals to fairness and public sympathy have only a limited value — and the government exploits this situation to the full.

When the forces of supply and demand have extended their pressures, they cause a fluctuation in the price of the commodity but the line about which this fluctuation takes place is fixed by something other that market forces. This line is the value of the commodity and, in general terms, this consists of what is need of socially necessary labour to produce the commodity. Thus the fact that a great deal of social effort is needed, in both training and equipment, to get a pilot into the air and bring him back safely, means that his labour-power has a high value. But the same cannot be said of a dustman.

The reduction of labour-power into terms of value, implying as it does an unequal social relationship between human beings, is one of capitalism’s most degrading effects. It flows directly from the debasement of human ability, to be costed and evaluated, bought and sold, hired and discarded. It causes directly the separation of man from his work, it is the hinge of exploitation, in which our lives are regarded as fit subjects for probing to discover ever more intense methods of extracting surplus value from us. It means a life-time of servitude for the mass of the human race.

This issue, which has nothing to do with justice, is always ignored by the seekers after a fair wage. Yet anyone who really wants to make sure that human beings get what they work for is illogical not to look at the social system which denies them this. A long time ago, Marx pointed out the futility and conservatism of those who pine for fair wages. He knew that the answer was a revolutionary one - abolish the wages system.

Ivan