What can we do about crime? (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

First things first: the law exists to defend the capitalists not the workers. Laws are social rules to ensure the dictatorship of King Capital. By voting, in a majority, for the continuation of the profit system, workers hand social control on a plate to the class which exploits us. Law equals coercion for the defence of capital — but such coercion could not exist for one minute if the victims refused to go along with it:

There is not today any force in Britain capable of maintaining indefinitely a government not enjoying the support or tolerance of the overwhelming majority of the people. (The Police We Deserve, Sir Robert Mark, 1972.)

They talk about law and order as if it was such a desirable state of affairs. But what does law and order mean? It means hungry people starving without daring to take food from the supermarket shelf; it means homeless families — tens of thousands of which exist in this “property-owning democracy" — being refused access to empty houses and flats, many of which are the second or third homes of affluent parasites; it means locking people up for being too poor to pay rents, rates or other debts; it means "Keep Out" signs surrounding the vast private lands owned by the parasite class; it means keeping frustrated kids with toy guns away from the Queen, while making sure that she is surrounded by medalled thugs who carry real guns which they fire at anyone to order. Law and order means deferential wage slaves. Law and order means the morality of working class inferiority. Law and Order means that those who work are usually poor and those who exploit are rich. It is capitalism's law and order: law to defend the social disorder which puts their profits before our needs. The Tory. Alliance and Labour parties are all concerned to preserve law and order because they are all in the dirty business of keeping the profit system intact.

In a capitalist Utopia everyone would obey the law. Indeed, everyone would be so stupidly submissive that law enforcement would not be necessary. Tory politicians appear on TV and bemoan the fact that their Utopia has not arrived: why can’t the proles behave themselves and do as they’re told? Let us try to consider why the perfect law-abiding society does not exist.

The most common form of criminality is petty theft. The worker who has never stolen a pencil from school or some note pads from the office or some goods from the factory is a statistical exception. Without having the slightest conception of Marx’s theory of legalised robbery (the appropriation of surplus value), most workers know that the employer is getting as much as he can squeeze out of us and, if it is safe, we are going to get back some of that stolen wealth from the bosses. The transport services lose millions of pounds each year as a result of "fare frauds": why pay their price to travel if you can get away with less? Some workers — although far less than is implied by the gutter press — defraud the DHSS. As a fraction of the money fiddled by the capitalists in "tax evasion", social security frauds are negligible. But who needs the money most, the millionaire who saves hundreds of thousands of pounds by not paying a share to the state, which exists to protect private property, or the claimant whose schemes provide a few quid to which there is no legal entitlement? Most working class theft is petty — negligible inroads into the massive property-holdings of the capitalist class. More often than not petty theft involves more risk than gain. Socialists certainly do not recommend workers to obtain a ticket to the local prison by engaging in such piecemeal expropriation. But in a society in which workers have no real stake in the wealth surrounding them, and in which deprivation breeds the temptation to take whatever you can get “by fair means or foul", petty transgressions against the law of property are inevitable.

More serious than petty theft is "mugging” — assault and robbery. There are arguments about whether muggings are on the increase (as the sensationalist media claims) or whether "mugging" is simply a new statistical category to cover a crime which has existed for years. Regardless of the rate of muggings, nobody living in the streets and council estates built for wage slaves will deny that the fear of being mugged affects millions of people, restricting the times when they can walk the streets and the areas they can visit. Many old people in the poorer areas of London speak of the inadvisability of walking out alone at night. There is clearly something very wrong with a society that is too unsafe to walk in. Needless to say, in the capitalist Utopia muggers would be as rare as contraceptives in a nunnery. So, why mugging? The hard fact is that in the law of the jungle the most ferocious brute wins. In international war the superpowers boot the smaller nations in the metaphorical groin; in business, the multi-nationals wipe the floor with the struggling “small business man". Mugging simply reflects the vicious competitiveness of a society which condones violence and robbery when it is carried out on behalf of the ruling class. Many of the old-established titled landowners obtained their wealth and power by a process of “mass muggings” which over the centuries have become glorified in the name of heroic military conquest.

In the jungle of capitalism worker will attack worker in order to survive. Mugging is a rejection of the principle of class solidarity and, in the end, it is a game for mugs. After all, to transfer poverty from one worker’s pocket to another’s, by means of callous violence, is pathetic and undignified. Nevertheless, dignity does not fill an empty belly and it is not for socialists to moralise against those politically ignorant workers whose only way of responding to their poverty is to steal the crumbs from members of their own class.

The existence of mugging does not prove that "man is naturally aggressive, predatory and anti-social”. The despicable moralists of the profit system blame mugging on to the myth of “human nature". No: mugging is a product of property society. For approximately 40,000 years, prior to the emergence of private property or the state, there were no muggers. If “human nature” managed without muggings for four hundred centuries, we may expect that society would be able to exist without them in the future. Mindless racists say that muggings are caused by blacks. In fact, both black and white workers exist and the factor which unites them is not the colour of their skin, but their particular poverty. (Ever seen an Arab prince convicted of mugging?) Muggers tend to come from the most deprived sections of the working class. That is why the street crime figures for the poorest urban areas are always noticeably higher than those for the more affluent suburbs. Sociologists and criminologists tend to see mugging in terms of justice: either it is unjustified because it is morally anti-social or else it is justified because muggers are impoverished. Morality has nothing to do with it: mugging is an effect of poverty which is an effect of property and there is no point complaining about the effects while the cause is ignored.

What about the more “serious" crimes — in capitalist terms — like house burglaries, bank robberies and raids on Securicor vans? Capitalism only regards these crimes as being more serious because the value of wealth involved is greater than the petty theft of workers’ property. In general, the police treat the latter cases as being insignificant and unworthy of much of their time:

  In Bromley a uniformed policeman will turn up, but unless the crime is out of the ordinary the householder will merely be handed a form to complete for claiming against the insurance company. As in Kent, the reason is a lack of policemen and the need to concentrate on more serious crime — although a special unit will try to pick up habitual thieves. At present fewer than one in ten burglaries is solved. (Sunday Times, 6 July 1975.)

Sometimes there are guns used in “serious crimes" and the defenders of property are killed. But how can a class which uses trained armies and nuclear weapons in order to expand their property ownership object to “criminals" who are merely seeking the same end, but by relatively less violent means? The only difference between the Mafia and the American government is that the latter passes laws to justify its activities, whereas the former survives despite the law. Big crime, which is often controlled by men who are themselves capitalists, is a way into the property-owning class. Those who succeed in the underworld of illegal robbery can then graduate into legalised exploitation; for those who fail, capitalism has its “penal dustbins” (the term used by the ex-Governor of Wormwood Scrubs prison) to lock away those who offend against its “order”.

Penal dustbins

The smooth rule of capitalism depends on the constant threat of punishment. Britain has more people in prisons, being punished by the state, than most other European countries. The vast majority of prisoners are incarcerated for crimes relating to property. Even prison officers now admit that the “penal dustbins” are dangerously overcrowded. Criminologists generally agree that prison sentences do not tend to prevent people from committing further criminal offences — on the contrary, as most prisoners will testify, prisons are “schools of crime” wherein the naive first-time offender can pick up the more sophisticated skills of the trade. Any society which makes even the pretence of being civilised could not tolerate the continuation of institutions like Wandsworth, not to mention even more horrific establishments like Broadmoor and Long Kesh. Prisons can only survive in a society which cannot face up to the consequences of its own structure.

The capitalists’ crimeless Utopia is unrealisable because crime arises inevitably from capitalism. Those who disrupt the orderly robbery of the working class by the exploiters, which is legalised as the very basis of the wages system, are labelled as criminals. In many countries criminality extends to the realm of ideas, and those whose thinking conflicts with the state are imprisoned, tortured, murdered or, as in Russia, labelled insane. Thought policing is not confined to the state capitalist countries or to the “free enterprise" dictatorships, such as Chile, Argentina or South Africa. In Britain there are hundreds of laws which exist solely to enforce moral conformity and to punish behaviour considered deviant by the old feudal relics of the judiciary whose job is to defend the system for the master class. The fact that the law of Britain cannot tolerate freedom of thought is proved by the imprisonment of socialists who refused to be conscripted to kill their fellow workers during the last world war. In the event of a nuclear war civil servants would be given legal powers, including shooting on sight, which demonstrate the ultimate force that would be used by the capitalists in a civil emergency.

The hard task of enforcing the law is not carried out by the class for whom the law exists; it is the workers who guard the property, chase the (illegal) thieves and smash up the picket lines when ordered to do so. Quite a few of these “law-enforcers” are attracted to the job because they are vicious thugs who enjoy throwing their weight around. It is not only in South Africa that innocent people are killed by over-zealous police and prison officers — and it is not only in South Africa that the murderers walk free and well rewarded for their brutal work. There was a time when police recruits had to learn by heart the following principles of duty:

  . . . the constable will be civil and obliging to people of every rank and class. He must be particularly cautious not to interfere idly or unnecessarily in order to make a display of his authority: when required to act he will do so with decision and boldness . . . There is no qualification so indispensable to a police officer as perfect command of temper, never suffering himself to be moved in the slightest degree by any language or threat; if he do his duty in a quiet and determined manner, such conduct will probably excite the well-disposed bystanders to assist him if he requires them. (Quoted in A Force For The Future, Roy Lewis. 1976.)

One only has to recall the notorious television interview of a rape victim by detectives from the Thames Valley Police in a BBC documentary series to understand how outdated the above quoted passage is. Wage slaves in the police force do a hard, dirty and dangerous job and it must be recognised that, in general, the offensiveness of their activities is not because the individuals in it are nasty people, but because the law is an instrument of class oppression. Many police think that they are doing a good job; some join in the belief that they are going to be uniformed social workers, making society orderly so that decent folks can live in peace. In a different social context such aspirations could be put to good use. Hatred against the police as individuals is like hating the workers in the DHSS because the system of public charity stinks.

Reformists confine their criticisms of the law to the effects of the capitalist state machine. Their targets are bent coppers, sadistic screws, the Special Patrol Group, plastic bullets, SUS laws: if only we could organise laws, police, courts and prisons without these unappealing extras the reformers would be satisfied. The latest reformist outcry is against the Police Bill which gives police powers resembling those enjoyed by the law enforcers in fascist regimes. The power of the state to coerce the majority is growing with frightening rapidity, but that trend will not be reversed by Labour MPs calling on the police to act like gentlemen or Trotskyist fantasists demanding the creation of a People’s Militia. Like the reformists, socialists oppose the brutality of capitalism’s law and order. But our aim surpasses the reformist Wonderland in which the police lock workers up “without distinction of race or sex", the judges wear denim jackets and the prisons have one man to a cell rather than three.

Socialists stand for the abolition of a social system which requires laws and coercion in order to survive. The alternative to all that — a revolutionary one, to be sure — is the establishment of a system based on conscious social co-operation. This will only be achieved when the earth and its resources belong to its inhabitants and not to a privileged minority. Abolish property, in all its forms, and you end the need to protect wealth, which is owned by those who do not produce it, from those who do. In a society of common ownership and democratic control, where everything belongs to everyone, who could — or would want to — steal from whom?

But surely, it will be claimed, even a propertyless system will need some laws and some police and some prisons. People will still need to be kept in order. No: in a socialist society the people will democratically keep themselves in order or there will be no genuine socialism. Anti-social individuals will still need to be punished, will they not? Let us consider these “anti-social individuals". Let us assume that there are going to be people in a socialist society who insist on defying the will of the community. It will be the community itself, within whatever area is affected, that will have to deal with such anti-social behaviour. How it responds will be entirely up to the people at the time to decide. There will certainly be no need for a special, permanent force of men and women to ensure that the common will is respected. It is often said that there are certain crimes which will always exist. Are there? We can agree that some murders are committed by sick people, as are many acts of rape, child molestation and gratuitous violence. Psychiatric knowledge regarding the origin of mental disorders which cause such behaviour is presently under-researched and confused. It is doubtful whether such characteristics would exist in a society freed from the repressive psychological conditioning of capitalism. However, it is possible that there will be homicidal lunatics in a socialist society. If there are, they will require compassionate help, not punishment. You do not need prisons to deal with major personality disorders. Of course, those who believe that “human nature" is inherently anti-social will say that conscious social control is a dream. If they are correct, then the uncontrollable violence of the profit system will be with us forever. But all of the available evidence — psychological, biological, anthropological, historical — points to the fact that human behaviour is not natural, but adaptable and, given a different social environment, the thugs of today could be the consciously co-operating social beings of tomorrow.

Conservative minds will be filled with trepidation at the thought of a lawless, policeless, prisonless social order. How could they sleep safely in their beds at night without the prisons being full of frustrated men and women and the streets patrolled by human guard dogs? How, we might ask them, can they sleep safely with potentially devastating nuclear missiles aimed at all parts of the globe? We have law, but it does not protect the millions of people across the world who are mugged, burgled and beaten up each day. The conservative answer is to have more laws. The reformist answer is to have softer laws. The only practical alternative is to have no laws.

Conservative minds may rest contented that Law and Order will be preserved for ever more. But there are others who are becoming aware that the existence of crime has something to do with the kind of society we have. In his Annual Report for 1974, Laurence Byford, the Chief Constable of Lincoln, stated that

  All the signs are that there will be an even greater increase in violence, terrorism, industrial unrest, and crime in the future . . . this may sound pessimistic and even alarmist, but I prefer to think of it as a realistic forecast . . . and in my view anyone who seriously considers the position is bound to have at least some apprehension of where society is going.

The authorities are getting worried. They know, perhaps more than most workers do, that a movement to oppose the status quo could never be crushed by the force of minority-class law. It is up to us, the wealth producers of this society, to decide “where society is going". Conflict or co-operation; police or peace; the world run by us for them or by us for us?

Steve Coleman

By The Way. (1919)

The By The Way column from the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

That the war has indeed been a good thing to the capitalist is overwhelmingly shown by even a most cursory perusal of the daily Press. A glance at any company meeting notice, or a study of the Excess Profits Tax, will tell the same tale—swollen profits. Another instance recently afforded I append here. The Secretary of the Grocers' Federation, addressing a special meeting of the Grocery and Provision Trade Section of the Balham, Tooting and District Traders Assn. Said :

  The Food Controller had been the grocers' real friend for the last four or five years, in enabling them to dispose of all their surplus stock, much of which the public would not look at prior to the war, but which during the last year or two they gladly bought.
That was one of the good things that the war had accomplished. It had been a veritable spring cleaning for them, and in other ways, such as the extra halfpenny profit on cheese, lard, and margarine, the Food Controller had done the grocers good service, as it meant that nearly nine millions sterling had been given to the trade during the year.—"Daily News," Feb. 24, 1919.

The good work done by the Food Controller (from Lord Devonport to the latest Labour occupant of the office) for the benefit of the capitalist is here testified to by one who is an interested party. Truly they who pay the piper cali the tune.

--0--

In spite of the nonsense frequently indulged in by "labour leaders" and others during the past few years, that there is no such thing as a CLASS war, strange to say, signs are not wanting to show that this ever-pressing fact becomes clearer to those who have eyes to see. Recently Lord Claud Hamilton presided at the annual meeting of the G.E.Ry. Judging by the remarks he then made and the applause with which they were received, it is abundantly clear that he and those who listened to him are in no way mistaken about the matter. Enter Lord Claud—

  What had happened during the last nine months? One concession following upon another on the part of the Government: concessions not to reasoned argument, not in reply to private grievances, not in the interests of justice and fair play, but to brute force. (Hear, hear.) Brute force in any shape was contrary to the instincts of the British nation. (Applause.)
We have disposed of it on the Continent. We are surely not going to allow it—fostered by those who have not risked their lives nor suffered the unspeakable miseries of trench life—to raise its obnoxious head at home (Hear, hear.)
The time is arriving when the Government must take off the velvet gloves which they have worn too long. (Hear, hear)"—"Evening Standard." Feb., 1919.

So there you are, fellow wage-slave, it's up to you. He (Lord Claud) realises the bitter fight between the haves and the have-nots. Think it over. Then join the ranks of the workers who are organised for the war against capitalist oppression.

--0--

A few days before the House of Commons adjourned for the Easter recess a motion was introduced by the Labour Party having for its object the provision of

  Pensions adequate for a healthy and useful life to be paid to all widows with children or mothers whose breadwinner has become incapacitated, such pension to be provided by the State.

Some discussion ensued, and then Mr. Shortt pointed out what this involved, namely: It means that any widow with children, however rich she may be, or any wife of a husband who cannot work, even though she is extremely well off, would have the pension.

Now this may pass for serious criticism in the House, but to me the point has no substance whatever. In the first place the pension proposed to be paid to widows with children "adequate for a healthy and useful life" would and should preclude those "rich" widows whom Mr. Shortt had in mind. If they are "rich" then they have the wherewithal to obtain those social amenities which go to make up a healthy life. And regarding the other part of the qualification, i.e., "useful," then up to the present I am unaware of any evidence existing that the rich are useful.

--0--

Concerning the remainder, referred to as "any wife of a husband who cannot work, even though she is extremely well off," then in this case also the resolution is sufficiently clear, for no pension is necessary to that section of the community Mr. Shortt describes as "extremely well off," to ensure them the means of obtaining the essentials of life.

--0--

The financial aspect of the case was also mentioned, and it is distinctly good, coming from a member of a government that has been spending very close upon eight million pounds a day in the butchery of the world's working class. It was as follows : "One has to take into consideration the amount of money which the State possesses." Now all this chatter in the House is mere camouflage. The Government had no intention of favourably considering the resolution, notwithstanding all the flowery talk of making England "a land fit for heroes," and other meaningless phrases. In conclusion, let me quote from a paper which is an avowed supporter of the Government, and from which source the previous extracts are taken—

  . . . the House has done what it has often done before when dealing with a subject which requires big thinking and real courage. It has talked it out. Fearful to vote for such a big reform, and yet not willing to be charged with voting against it, the issue has been dodged."—"Reynolds's," April 13th, 1919.

--0--

A little more than a month ago an important event took place—that is, for the leisured class. While the "sporting" members of the working class were studying the noon papers and endeavouring to find some winners, those who toil not neither do they spin were assembling to witness the Victory Grand National. I read that the attendance was a record one, and the Commander-in-Chief of the British Navy, together with the Earl of Derby, Lord Sefton, Lord Lonsdale, and a host of other titled people, were there to celebrate the event. But a short time ago we were being told by the Leverhulmes that in the new world after the war all would have to take part in the process of wealth production, and thereby make good the deficiency caused by the war. Pardon my inquisitiveness, but when are these people going to commence? 

--0--

"The 'New York Times' correspondent in Washington states that Major-General Graves, who is in command of the United States forces in Siberia, has sent a report to the War Department, in which he states that the reason for not assisting the Japanese at Habarovik was that the Japanese shot woman and children and also that he did not recognise the Russians in this fight as the real enemy.

"When General March was questioned on the subject he said the Chief of Staff had nothing to say at present."—Central News. — "Daily News," April 17th, 1919.

--0--

When Lloyd George addressed the National Industrial Conference at the Central Hall, Westminster on the 27th of February last on the subject of Labour Unrest, he stated that one of the factors contributing to unrest was the high cost of living. He then went on to say—

  We will get back gradually. I do not say that you will get back soon or for some years to the condition of living that you had before the war; but within the next few week there will be a reduction in the cost of some of the essential necessities of life. By the summer I hope that the cost of living in a working man's household will have gone down by about 4s. a week in the cost of certain necessities. By the end of March you will have achieved about half of that"—"Daily News," February 28th, 1919.

We have now reached the period when, according to Lloyd George, we should be about two shillings a week to the good. From enquiries which I have made it would appear that this is another to be added to the long list of unredeemed pledges.

--0--

Five months after the signing of the armistice find the newspaper folk waxing eloquent on "Shall the Ex-Kaiser Hang ?" To-day he is reprieved ; to-morrow he is to be tried. Personally I do not think he will suffer the death penalty. It would be establishing a horrible precedent. And one never knows what might follow. The conflicting statements made concerning this august person will be illustrated by the following items of news :—

  "Paris. Wednesday.—It is understood that the "Big Four" have decided to eliminate the idea of the capital punishment of the Kaiser, but they will provide some means of bringing him under the control of the Allies.
In addition there will be a strong indictment pointing out the responsibility of his leaders."—"Globe," 10.4.1919. 

  "Paris. Tuesday.—The Paris edition of the "Chicago Tribune," under a page-wide heading "Kaiser to be Tried for War Crimes," declares it is in a position to state that the Kaiser and other Germans will be tried before a tribunal formed by the League of Nations for violating treaties and for crimes committed during the war.
It states that the report of the Responsibilities Commission specifically indicts the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Tirpitz, and others, and that it is believed the death penalty will be inflicted upon the German leaders responsible for cruelties and crimes committed during the war."—"Daily News," 16.4.1919.

The Scout.

Finance Again. (1919)

Party News from the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

Any reader who has followed the fortunes of the Socialist Party in this country through the 16 or so years of its existence will not need to be told that it is not our custom to make appeals for funds through the columns of the Socialist Standard. At our propaganda meetings in the highways and byeways, at street corners and in open spaces, we have, of course, commonly afforded those in sympathy with our aims, but who, for various reasons, find it expedient to remain outside our Party, opportunity to do their bit for the cause through the medium of our ordinary collection ; but, rightly or wrongly, it was only under direst stress that we determined to depart from our custom and ask those to whom the "S.S." mattered and the activities of the Socialist Party were of consequence, to signify the same by coming to our assistance in a time of crisis.

We do not desire to express any opinion as to whether or not the response has been satisfactory. We trust we are not so void of imagination as to see nothing beyond the "face value" of the little contributions that have reached us. Every coin, we believe, that has gone to make up the £300 we have acknowledged, represents an earnest and fervid longing for the triumph of Socialism, and most of them, the smallest not less than the largest, a real sacrifice for Socialist principles.

So far so good. But what we desire to point out now is that the need for cash ia still as urgent as ever. Those to whom it means anything will be glad to see that the present issue of this journal consists of 16 pages instead of 8. This event is not altogether unconnected with our £1,000 Fund; neither is its continuance altogether independent of that fund. For, notwithstanding that larger supplies of paper are now available, the time is not yet when we can supply a 16 pp. "S.S." for a penny without incurring financial loss. In other ways also the cause calls aloud for money. Those who are able and willing to work for Socialism find their efforts stultified by lack of means. At a time when almost every worker, sick at heart of the awful plight to which capitalism has reduced the world, is asking "What is Socialism ?" and when so many, interested in obscuring the truth, are giving lying, misleading, and travestying answers to that question, we who alone in this country are qualified to explain what Socialism is, are unable to spread the enlightenment abroad as we desire because we are poor and propaganda, in any phase, costs money.

We wish, therefore, to correct the idea that the need for giving money to the Socialist movement is a mere temporary matter, or that when a "Longer for Socialism" has given one contribution he or she has done all that is needed or has paid his or her share of the PRICE of Socialism. The need for money contributions is as permanent as capitalism— just exactly. Money is the very foundation of efficient personal effort. A soldier may pull a trigger for nothing, but the cost of the cartridges must come out of somebody's pocket. In like manner, a soldier in the Socialist army may be doing good work for the cause every day of his life, but in order to make his labour truly efficient his tongue must be well backed up with suitable literature, and with a sound and virile organisation, and with a progressive battle on the political field. The personal effort, in this sense, must necessarily wait on the Party's income. Therefore we can never have enough money until the struggle ends, and an increment to our funds, inasmuch as it enables our members to do more and better work, is just as surely an increase in our strength as is an increment in our numbers.

We would urge, therefore, that what is most vitally needed is that those who think with us (and this applies with increased force to those who for the present can find little other opportunity to join in the battle) should make up their minds to give a contribution at regular periods. If we can establish our fund upon some such basis as that we shall soon be able to do great things for Socialism.

And now will friends kindly note that we far prefer to devote our space to other subjects than this, and that the absence of lengthy appeals by no means indicates that the need for finance is over.

We acknowledge tribute as under.

Economics at Central Labour College. (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Central Labour College was established in 1909, the working-class movement, according to its founders, was about to be placed on a sound educational basis. Young men from the trade unions were to be thoroughly equipped with the necessary knowledge to leaven the whole labour movement with revolutionary principles. Classes were to be formed all over the country, and the "Plebs' Magazine" was to be published monthly, in order that the workers might be instructed in Politics, History, Sociology and Economics.

The founders of the college advertised their wares so effectually among the trade unions that they have reduced the debt they started out with almost to zero, and are now completely subsidised by the South Wales Miners' Federation and the National Union of Railwaymen—the college being owned and controlled by these two unions. This fact accounts for the almost purely trade-union propaganda of the magazine: those who pay the piper call the tune, and the C.L.C. tune is trade unionism, industrial unionism, labourism, or any other ism where its pupils can find jobs after they have gained their "degree" at this "Clark's College" of the labour world.

In its curriculum the college advertises economics according to Marx. But in the columns of the "Plebs" the readers are treated to the same economics they get from Municipal Reform candidates at County Counoil elections. In the current number, for instance, Mr. George Barker (Miners' Agent, Abertillery), says: "There are about fifty millions of debt hanging round the necks of the workers of Europe. The worker cannot pay huge dividends to the capitalist class and pay the interest on this colossal debt."

Of course not ! as wage slaves they can only pay away what they receive as wages, and wages —even according to the "Plebs"—being barely sufficient to supply the worker with necessaries, must be spent on necessaries. If they were able to do more there would be something wrong with the capitalist system, which, generally speaking, operates in favour of the ruling class by compelling the workers to accept wages that only provide them with the wherewithal to live and propagate their kind.

In the same number Mr. W. W. Craik, dealing with the Coal Commission, asks a simple question in economics : "What is capital ?" But although economics is an important subject at the college, and a correct definition of "capital" is very essential to that subject, the writer seems quite unable to give one. "What is capital ?" he asks. "Wealth used to produce more wealth," he replies, quite ignoring the fact that, thousands of years before Capitalism evolved, men used weapons and tools to "produce more wealth," and no one—either then or now—with the exception, perhaps, of avowed anti-socialists, would think of describing such things as capital.

Of course, the anti-socialist uses this more general definition to cover up or mask the true one. Capital is wealth used for exploitation. But Mr. Craik is not obliged to accept the anti-socialist definftion, and, to do him justice, he does not seem satisfied with it; and as there appears to be no limit to the number of guesses allowed, he tries again. "Capital is the ownership of labour, the ownership of the labour of yesterday and of to-day," and further on still he refers to capital as "i.e., ownership."

Now, it must be obvious that capital is something that is owned, and not the act of ownership, and Mr. Craik is only adding to the confusion that already prevails when he tells the "Plebs" readers that capital is the ownership of pit props, winding gear, machinery, etc. Adam Smith's definition that capital is "wealth used for the production of profit" is a far more scientific one, and always good enough for the Socialist, because it can easily be shown that there are no profits without exploitation.

When the Central Labour College was established its object was stated as follows: "The Central Labour College is founded to train men and women for the industrial, political and social work of the organised Labour Movement, under the supreme control of the Labour organisations in the United Kingdom, and to assist in the establishment of similar institutions elsewhere."

The founders declared for independence in the three fields—educational, industrial and political. The so called independence of the Labour Party is, therefore, the measure of Labour College independence—no more and no less. The mistaken notions of the South Wales miners, and the Liberal politics of the Labour Party, form the basis of the college instruction, which is carried back to the trade union and I.L.P. branches as independent and scientific knowledge of the working-class position. Thus neither the college nor the unions can get beyond the compromising and reform attitude of the Labour Party.

Notwithstandingall their frothy denunciations of Capitalism, and their continued affirmation that they are travelling the right road toward the emancipation of the working class, they are merely supporting and countenancing a movement that opposes the ruling class within the basis of its own system, and with no definite or settled principles for carrying through the revolution for which they admit the necessity.

They ruled themselves out of the revolutionary movement right from the first, when they said: "Just as the needs of the individual correspond to his environment, growing in complexity with his development, so the needs of the working class change and become more complex with industrial evolution. Industrial, Political and Educational organisation are each in their turn called into existence by the development of productive forces."

Thus, instead of learning from Marx that the workers can achieve their emancipation as soon aa they acquire the knowledge of their class position, and see clearly that the source of capitalist power is the political machinery, the C.L.C. waits on industrial evolution—to instruct them in a new philosophy for each epoch—and marks time with the political and industrial labour leaders until the rank and file shall have marched past to achieve their own emancipation.

F. Foan

Too Long. (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too long they have been harnessed to the mill
That of ten thousand lives grinds life for one ;
Too long denied an hour of blessed sun,
From dark ere dawning sweating blood until
Again the dark of night. So did they fill
Your coffers to the brim with gold fine spun
Of brain and tissue ; and their labour done,
Found grudged rest beneath a lone grass hill. 

And dare they hope, ye ask, the break of day,
Whom we accorded leisure of the night ?
Presume to harvest any they have sown ?
Aye, do they dare ! And who shall them gainsay,
Or ban a little hour of waning light ?
Aye, they do dare to hope and have their own !

Edmund B. Fitzgerald.

All friends and sympathisers . . . (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

All friends and sympathisers are asked to do their utmost to extend the sale of the Socialist Standard in the immediate future. In particular every effort should be made to justify the present enlargement by selling out this issue. Much depends upon this being achieved. Nuff said.

#    #    #    #

CHANGE  OF ADDRESS.
Please note that the Head Office address is now:

17, MOUNT PLEASANT,
LONDON, W.C.I.,

where   all   communications   should   be sent.

A badly crumpled man (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

A thick skin is necessary to all politicians and this government abounds in rhinoceros figures. Some of them revel in an acknowledgement of their popular caricature — Thatcher the quick-tempered autocrat, Tebbit the parliamentary bovver boy, Howe the dead sheep of Westminster. But there is an exception; a minister who functions rather like a problem child, plastering its family into a false unity through itself carrying the burdens of their fractious confusions. Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary for Education, is liable to flog himself publicly with statements like: “You can't possibly blame Geoffrey Howe, he’s been marvellous. And the prime minister too. It’s me. It’s people such as me who are to blame.” Demonstrators who are unable to impress ministers like Tebbit sense that with Joseph they are close to a kill and they do not spare his feelings. "Sir Keith," read a placard which greeted him in South Wales. "You are mad and we hate you."

So it should be remembered that Joseph emerged as a government minister to a mixture of wonder and gratitude that so clever a man should spare us the time to take over a ministry and solve all our problems. (One hack was so excited that he likened Joseph's carefully argued opinions to fine sherry.) He came into the world with his mouth crammed with silver cutlery. His family, owning the Bovis building firm, were rich enough to send him to Harrow and Oxford University, where he so impressed everyone that he became a Fellow of All Souls. In Oxford, this is very significant; there are no undergraduates in All Souls, which is inhabited by Fellows who are reputed to be very superior people, the highest authorities on law, history and the social sciences. After a short spell being superior as a barrister. Joseph got into Parliament and was eventually given some inferior jobs in the government until in 1959 Macmillan made him Minister of Housing. A few years ago he was regarded as at least a future Chancellor of the Exchequer, possibly the next Conservative Prime Minister — a man who had left the most cloistered environment to put to rights a few trivial matters like slums, war and poverty.

Joseph made a consciously impressive start at the Ministry of Housing by going to look at some slums and then making a speech about them, even mentioning one — London’s notorious Cable Street — by name to show how he had got to grips with the problem. Perhaps in an effort to expand his knowledge, some people who actually lived in slums called round to Joseph’s expensive Chelsea home to tell him what the dirt and the drains and the rats were like. To the sound of Fleet Street’s busily clicking cameras, a bravely smiling Lady Joseph admitted a few scruffy children. One result of Joseph's investigations, for which Cable Street should not be held responsible, was the encouragement of local authorities to build a lot of new slums in the form of tower blocks, although Joseph did not actually intend to avail himself of this remedy for the housing shortage. Councils who followed his policy soon regretted it; the economics did not work out as Joseph had assumed and they found they had erected concentrations of neurosis, disease, crime and drug misuse.

There were few mourners for Joseph, when his time at the Ministry of Housing was ended by the Labour Party victory in the 1964 election. So anguished were the Tories by that defeat that they decided not only to ditch their leader, the amiable, aristocratic buffoon Alec Douglas-Home, but to elect another by ballot. This was an historical change since up to then the Tory leader had been expected to emerge after a bout of vicious in-fighting which Harold Macmillan called "the customary processes of consultation". Joseph was a Heath supporter and was rewarded for this, when the Conservatives came back to power in 1970. Through another customary process Joseph, having failed to make any impression on the housing problem, was given the rather more demanding job of abolishing sickness and poverty. He was put in charge of the Department of Health and Social Security, where he soon got down to an investigation which was to lead him to a discovery even more startling than the slums in Cable Street.

In June 1972 Joseph announced his suspicion that children born into poor, deprived families stood a good chance of growing up into parents of their own poor, deprived family.

  Much deprivation and maladjustment persisted from generation to generation. Many of today’s deprived children were doomed not only to stunted lives themselves but to become, unless they could be helped, the parents of a further generation of doomed children. (The Times, 30 June 1972.)

Joseph called this “the cycle of deprivation" and social workers and teachers were excited at the prospect of lavish official research into a problem which they had been despairingly aware of for a very long time. But the excitement died, when Joseph decided the research showed the cycle of deprivation did not exist, that he had invented it and the whole thing was. in his words, "a pretty negative piece of analysis". It was difficult to decide whether it was more worrying to have a Minister for Social Security who was surprised to find that impoverished families produced impoverished children than one who thought this didn't happen. A year later a positive piece of analysis by the National Childrens' Bureau reported that one million children who were living in squalor and deprivation, educationally crippled from birth, were “doomed to failure".

Sir Keith

Joseph lost his job when the Heath government went down to defeat in the disarray of the Three Day Week. He had made some elegant speeches, as befits a former Fellow of All Souls, he had made some promises and, as is expected of government ministers, he had juggled the figures a bit — in his case by introducing reforms like the Family Income Supplement which are supposed to substantially reduce poverty. Lord Carrington was annoyed with him because he had “given away a lot of money” without securing any benefit for the Conservative Party and the poor might have been annoyed with him because there had not been much benefit for them either; as the Heath government left office there were nearly four million people depending on Supplementary Benefit and nearly one and a half million living at or below the official poverty line.

Nobody expected that Joseph’s inability to introduce social security to the people of Britain would harm him in the Tory Party and when, in their bout of anguish after their 1974 defeat they threw out the leader they had chosen in the last bout, he became a strong candidate for the leadership. He might be sitting in Number Ten now, except that he made yet another memorable speech. The occasion was at Birmingham in October 1974 and his audience of Conservatives received an early warning of what was to come. “Let us,” Joseph advised them, “take inspiration from that admirable woman. Mary Whitehouse . . .” He then moved relentlessly on, to the kernel of his speech:

  The balance of our population, our human stock, is threatened . . . a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world and bring them up. They are born to mothers who were first pregnant in adolescence in social classes 4 and 5 . . . Some (of the mothers) are of low intelligence, most of low educational attainment . . . They are producing problem children, the future unmarried mothers, delinquents, denizens of our borstals, subnormal educational establishments, prisons, hostels for drifters . . . Why do I talk about birth control for the unmarried girls in socio-economic groups four and five? Because . . . this group makes far less use of birth control than the other social classes. (Daily Telegraph, 21 October 1974.)

Whatever had once been expected of his theory of the cycle of deprivation, it was not that it would resurface in the form of a crude, class-biased blunder into the perilous field of amateur eugenics. His louder opponents compared Joseph to Hitler; perhaps more damaging was the sort of quieter dismay expressed in Cecil King’s Diaries: “. . . surprising that what was obviously meant to be a major affair was not more carefully considered”.

As he could no longer expect to be Tory leader himself, Joseph threw his support behind Margaret Thatcher, who gratefully foisted him on to the Department of Industry after the 1979 election. It was here that Joseph began to show the first clear signs of serious disintegration. The Tory defeat of 1974 had converted him to the conviction that the happiest way of running capitalism was to ensure that the market, shaped by the profit motive, should be allowed to operate in simple purity. If an industry or a company were not profitable then it should not survive, like a brainless human body on a life- support machine, through financial aid from the government:

  If the government were to put money into industries that are losing jobs, the result would simply be that an equal number of jobs would be lost in other industries. All we would do would be to wreck other industries that arc doing moderately well by overtaxing them or their workers.

Few people expected Joseph actually to believe this argument and any who did expect him to would have had problems explaining what he did as Secretary for Industry. He decided to double state support for companies like British Leyland; he sanctioned £1.5 billion a year in subsidies to industry and £3 billion a year to state industries. One example was in March 1981, when he announced a government guarantee for a £200 million loan facility for ICL. This state-backed computer company had just announced a three-month loss of £20 million, which qualified it to have Joseph switch off the life support machine. To the dismay of the Tory Dries, he kept it going; a home-based computer industry is too vital, for economic and military reasons, to British capitalism to allow it to be damaged by draughts of intellectual sherry from All Souls.

Joseph is now Secretary for Education, which he says he regards as the peak of his career but where he does not have a happy time. He has a reputation as the Mad Axeman of the schools and the universities and everywhere he is hounded by angry demonstrators, who perhaps thought his “cycle of deprivation" speech implied a commitment to step up investment in education. In a recent White Paper he declared his intention to turn the screw on the teachers, as the demand for them falls, by stiffening the qualifications required of them and to make it harder for the teacher who is not up to scratch to keep a job. Joseph’s plans were not well received; a failing teacher may be due to sickness or a weariness with decades of struggling with educational, personal and social problems and in any case Joseph himself does not rate high in the efficiency tables: a chairman of the National Enterprise Board once described him as “hopeless” and in May 1981 the Bow Group journal Crossbow condemned him as “. . . by universal consent the most dismal disappointment of this administration". At uproarious meetings Joseph hears what people think of him, standing as if on the gallows, unable to make himself heard, unable to understand why these clamorous tormentors obstinately refuse to accept the crystal logic of his policies.

But the fault is not in his personality (in private, he is said to be kindly and witty); if he has crumpled it is under the strain of trying to do the impossible. His famous brain has not protected Joseph from the delusion that this social system can be made to work to the benefit of us all. Other politicians, who wear better than Joseph, are under the same delusion and so are the demonstrators. They are all looking for a missing ingredient through which capitalism’s ailments can be put to rights — the demonstrators say this ingredient is human compassion while Joseph says it is cerebral power and purity. All are driven by a common madness which sets experienced reality at nought. The choice is not to bury the likes of Joseph or to praise them. If we are to defeat what he represents we must not only know him for what he is but why.

Ivan

Letter: The Rise of Nazism (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Clifford Slapper’s account of the rise of Nazism in Germany in your March issue is true — up to a point. He says: “Fifty years ago, Hitler and the Nazis came to power with the support of more than ten million workers”. Is he saying that over ten million wage-workers voted for the Nazi Party? And was the "election" of 5 March, 1933, a genuinely free election anyway? First, a few statistics (figures in millions):

Between 1923 and 1933, the votes for the Social Democrats and Communists remained fairly constant; in the March, 1933 election the Communists receiving nearly 5 million votes and the Social Democrats 7.1 million votes, despite the SA terror mainly directed against the Social Democrats. No one has ever denied that the vast mass of wage-workers consistently voted for these two parties from 1924 until Hitler crushed all opposition.

So, who voted the Nazis into power? In the main, it was the petit-bourgeoisie (a much larger group than in Britain), the peasants (also a group which did not exist in Britain), the lumpen-proletariat or semi-unemployable who, even before the advent of mass unemployment in 1932-33, numbered about 1.5 million and. lastly, the capitalist class itself. In the main, these groups — together with some “white collar" workers — tended to move away from the traditional capitalist “right-wing” parties to the Nazis who, as Slapper correctly points out, used the Jews and others as scapegoats — and made even more promises than the "left-wing” reformist parties, such as the Communists and Social Democrats

There are, of course, no socialist histories of "the birth of Nazism”; but readers might find the two following books of some interest: Der Fuehrer — Hitler's Rise to Power, by Konrad Heidcn (Gollancz, 1944); and Hammer or Anvil, by Evelyn Anderson (Gollancz. 1945 and Oriole Editions/Journeyman Press, 1973).

Peter E. Newell

Colchester. Essex

Reply:

The article in question stated that over ten million workers gave their electoral support to Hitler and the Nazis. This refers to people who did not possess substantial productive resources and who therefore had to work for others in order to survive. Their problems of insecurity and poverty applied regardless of whether they were paid by wage, salary or commission, and irrespective of the colour of their collars. According to the German census of 1925 (as interpreted by Lenz in “Proletarian Policies", Internationaler Arbeiterverlag, 1931) nearly 41 million of the total German population of 62.4 million were industrial workers, agricultural wage-labourers or lower paid "white collar" workers, including their families and the unemployed. It is clearly incorrect therefore that, as Peter Newell claims, the "vast mass” of wage-workers consistently voted for the Communist and Social Democratic Parties, when those parties only polled 13 million votes between them at their peak.

In March 1933, the Nazis and their allies, the Nationalists, polled between them over 20 million votes, an absolute majority (51.9 per cent) of the votes cast. Peter Newell attributes this support to the petit-bourgeoisie, the peasants, the “semi-unemployable" and the capitalists themselves. But according to the census figures referred to above, there were only 2 million capitalists, and about 9 million small farmers and peasants, many of whom were in the process of being transformed into agricultural labourers. The petit-bourgeoisie or small property holders were also a dying breed as their savings were eaten into by inflation. It is true that much of the Nazis’ support came from the white-collar workers, shopkeepers, students and professionals who formed the remaining 10 million of the population; but the frustration which drove them towards the Nazis was that of the dispossessed, of workers who felt they had some stake in capitalism but who were compelled to accept their economically dependent and impoverished position.

It has been our intention to stress that fascism, like the capitalist system of which it is one form, is not some kind of conspiracy forced on the workers from "above" by a minority of capitalists. Domination and inequality depend upon acquiescence and acceptance by the majority. It is on this basis that socialists seek to persuade a majority of our fellow workers to establish a system of society based on common ownership and democratic control. It is a common but dangerous myth on the Left that Nazism was not supported by workers; it is historically incorrect and implies a disdain for the democratic process of persuasion and voting. The German Communist Party, with 5 million votes in 1933, shared with the Nazis not only its nationalist campaign against foreign debt repayments, but also an anti-democratic contempt for the idea of a majority of workers deciding consciously to end capitalism. Their support for minority armed insurrection and street-fighting, like the modern claim that the workers didn’t really support fascism, begs the question why, in the words of Wilhelm Reich, “It was precisely the wretched masses who helped to put fascism, extreme political reaction, into power” (The Mass Psychology of Fascism). The short answer is that as long as workers are persuaded, contrary to our experience, that we should continue to support a system based on our exploitation, there will be no safeguard against a recurrence of the more brutal aspects of class rule.

Editors.

For The Socialist Alternative (1983)

SPGB advert from the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: Labour Party Capitalism (1983)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism means the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. In spite of a superficial similarity of words, the Labour Party is not aiming at common ownership, but at State control with private owners. The Capitalist class are not, according to the Labour Party, to be dispossessed, but are to remain as a property-owning class, but are to be deprived of their immediate control over the management of industry. The country is to remain the same in all essentials. There will still be a working class and a class living on property incomes. Goods will still be produced for sale and profit-making, but the management will be in the hands of a series of so-called public utility corporations, directed by highly-paid business men like Lord Ashfield. This is a grotesque representation of Socialism. It is capitalism in a thin disguise. It solves no working class problem. It is not Socialism and as such docs not bring Socialism one day nearer.

(From an article, “Socialists and Working Class Unity”, Socialist Standard, May 1933.)

The Profit System (2005)

From the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Very few people would deny that the present state of the world leaves a lot to be desired. Humanity staggers from one crisis to the next – from war to famine to slumps to repression . . . Capitalism has developed a huge productive capability but its social  organisation and relationships cause extremely serious problems and render it incapable of meeting the basic needs of its people.

A vast amount of the world’s resources is expended in the production of weapons of war, from bullets and bayonets to nuclear and chemical weapons. Alongside these weapons are the armed forces which every state organises, clothes, feeds, trains and deploys. This is a massive waste of human effort; it is all intended to be destructive and none of it to create anything useful to human beings.

In a world which could produce more than enough to feed and care for its population millions are homeless and tens of millions die each year because they don’t have enough to eat or for lack of proper medical treatment. None of this is necessary. It happens while farmers in Europe and North America are being paid to take land out of cultivation; from time to time even food that has been produced is destroyed or allowed to rot. This makes sense to the profit motive; in terms of human interests it is wildly insane.

The environment is increasingly under threat from pollution and from the destruction of some of its natural, ecologically vital features. We hear well-informed warnings of an ultimate impending disaster unless we act to eradicate the problem but these warnings are always met with the objection that to save the environment can be a costly, profit damaging business. Yet it is not necessary for industry and agriculture to pour out noxious effluents into the air, the earth, the rivers and the seas. They do this today because pollution is seen as being cheaper, which means more profit friendly and to a society where profit is the dominant motive for production that is justification enough to override human welfare.

These are a few examples of how capitalism works against the interests of the world’s people. In contrast, as the articles in this issue explain, socialism will have fundamentally different social relationships, motives for production and concepts about the interests and security of human beings.

All the programmes at present being advanced by the professional politicians for dealing with the problems of capitalism through reforms must fail because of their essentially piecemeal approach. They attempt to treat symptoms instead of going for the basic cause. That is why, after a century or more of reformism the problems the reformists claim to deal with are still here.

A far more radical, fundamental change is needed to create the framework within which they can be solved.

I’ll Do It! (2005)

From the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is the Year of the Rooster, but also the Year of the Volunteer  – you may have seen the TV ads for the website www.yearofthevolunteer.org. This is a government-run scheme, aimed at “encouraging active citizenship”, but if we leave aside the government involvement, the whole volunteering set-up  is both interesting and positive from a socialist viewpoint.

Some people volunteer because they believe or hope that it will be useful for their careers, but the vast majority do so because they see themselves as genuinely contributing to the well-being of their fellow humans. Voluntary activities include almost everything from helping people to make phone calls or fill in forms, teaching English or the use of computers, helping blind people get to appointments, befriending and supporting those with HIV, working for St John’s Ambulance or the Samaritans, counselling people with all sorts of problems, even working as a Special Constable.

And all this is done unpaid, in the volunteers’ own time, often in addition to paid  employment, and with no reward other than the satisfaction of helping.

In the light of this, how can anyone object to socialism on the grounds that in a society of free access nobody would wish to work? If people’s consumption is not dependent on their work, the argument goes, why would someone want to work at all?

One answer, as we have seen, is that even under capitalism people work voluntarily, probably not even regarding what they do as work, as it is not employment. This is not because they are saints or angels but because they do not want to see others suffering or in difficulties. And helping others means helping yourself too. Age Concern carried out a survey of elderly volunteers, which found:

  “Volunteering benefits older volunteers in many ways, including making new friends, gaining self confidence, losing weight and living healthier lives.
   “More than half (51%) of the over 65s who took part in Age Concern’s report said volunteering improved their health and fitness and 62% said volunteering helped reduce stress” (From the above website).

So there you have it: even in a society of pressure and alienation voluntary work can be good for you. Just think of the pleasure of work in a world where there are no bosses, no dangerous workplaces and no production of useless rubbish.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: The First of May (2005)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad 

-turn your undying face, 

To where the future, greater than all the past, 

Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.” 

Walt Whitman

It is sixty-five years since half a million people poured though London, “an interminable array with multitudinous banners,” on the first International May Day. No celebration, no insubstantial pageant this: column upon threadbare column they came, signifying and expressing labour’s strength and labour’s aspirations, with an eight-hour day as their rallying call. For sixty-five years it has continued, but the columns are small now. And the eight-hour day?

They have it and, so generous is life to the working class, work overtime. May Day is workers’ day, the day of our class. However hollow the cries and futile the demonstrations, it remains the anniversary of protest, a continual reminder of exploitation and subjection. “Class” is the reason and the theme of May Day – class in its fullest, truest sense. The working class is not the labourers or the artisans or the machine-minders: it is all people to whom wages are life. The working class is international: so is its cause. Among the cries and chants and slogans of May Day, only one has meaning: “Workers of all countries unite!”

Class consciousness was never more needed than now. Sixty-five years have seen war, dereliction, fear and disaster; today mankind is under a shadow without precedent. The working people of the world have it in their hands to end poverty, fear, hatred and war. Nationalism is not their interest but their rulers’; submission is taught, not conceived. That is where the tragedy of the May Day processions lies. The hundreds of thousands who paraded their rights in 1890 lined the streets again seven years later, still threadbare, still of one mind – to cheer and wave streamers for their Queen.

To the Socialist, class consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. The class-conscious working man knows where he stands in society. His interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class; his cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. It is not mere preamble that the Socialist Party’s principles open by stating the class division in capitalism: it is the all important basis from which the rest must follow.

(Front page article by R. Coster, Socialist Standard, May 1955)

Cooking the Books: Britain’s bonanza farms (2005)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 22 March the government published a list of firms and individuals in England receiving subsidies under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy in 2003 and 2004. The figures showed, said the Times (23 March), that: “The biggest landowners, including members of the Royal Family, a clutch of dukes, and agrifood companies, are able to pick up hefty amounts of cash under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)”.

The CAP is based on guaranteeing farmers a given price for their products. If market prices fall below the guaranteed price then farmers are paid a subsidy to compensate for the shortfall. The aim was to ensure an adequate and stable internal supply of food and other agricultural products, and involved levying tariffs on imports. In this it was successful, too successful in fact as farmers ended up producing “too much” so that, as this meant that market prices fell, the amount that had to be spent on subsidies increased. Non-agricultural sections of the capitalist class – and EU countries like Britain with a comparatively small agricultural sector – protested and called for the CAP to be reformed.

One step in this direction was the “set-aside” scheme, introduced as from 1993, under which farmers are paid not to grow food. Cutting back production serves to bolster prices, and so the profits that farmers make, resulting in a reduction in the total subsidy bill (the cost of paying farmers not to grow food being less than the cost of making up the difference between the market and the guaranteed price).

The website of the lobby group UK Agriculture (www.ukagriculture.com) describes how set-aside works:

  “Set-aside is a term for land that farmers are not allowed to use for any agricultural purpose. It was introduced by the EEC in 1992 as part of a package of reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy to prevent over production of food crops. It applies only to farmers growing crops.
    In the first year of the scheme farmers had to set-aside a minimum of 15% of their cropped farmland for the harvest year of 1993.
   By the year 2000 the figure had dropped to 10% of cropped land but the amount changes each year according to EEC requirements. In 1999 there were approximately 550,000 hectares of land in set-aside. This  represents an area of countryside about 75km by 75km, twice the size of the area enclosed by the M25 around London. In exchange for not planting crops on set-aside land farmers are paid a subsidy by the EEC to counter the loss of income that results from not utilising the land for productive use.”

  What is omitted here is that set-aside was compulsory only for the larger, more productive farms. So to them went most of the subsidies for this; which will have contributed to “the hefty amounts of cash” paid to the big landowners and agribusinesses. The Times calls this “obscene”, but that’s because it represents the interests of other sections of the capitalist class who resent having to pay the extra tax. Of course this was disguised as concern that “the food bill for the typical British family of four is some £600 higher per year than it would otherwise be”.

Perhaps, but the abolition of the CAP in favour of free trade in food would not make the average wage and salary worker better off by that amount, instead would exert a strong downward pressure on wage levels. To socialists what is obscene is that farmers, and the most productive at that, are being paid not to grow food in a world where billions are undernourished, if not starving.

Obituary: Ronnie Edwards (2005)

Obituary from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are saddened to have to report the death of our comrade Ronnie Edwards  in March. When we learned of the seriousness of his illness the shock was all the greater because he had looked in fine health at the party’s Centenary Celebration in London last  June. He had joined the party in Glasgow in 1966 when only seventeen and immediately threw himself in to the branch’s activities in the city and elsewhere in Scotland.

In 1973 Ronnie moved to South Yorkshire. His brother Freddie soon joined him and both quickly got involved with local comrades in organising party activities in and around Leeds and Doncaster which led to the formation of the former West Yorkshire branch. Ronnie was still doing all he could for the party until only a few months ago when illness laid him low.

The party has lost yet another stalwart, and we extend our deepest condolences to his wife Winnie, son Josh, and to all his family north and south of the border.

Viv Vanni