Socialism or Anti-Apartheid? (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The apartheid policy of the South African government — with its race laws, its industrial colour bar, its segregation, its overflowing jails and its restrictions on free expression — is a brutal system of oppression of the “non-white” people there and particularly of the African workers and peasants on whose backs the South African capitalist economy largely rests.

Everybody knows (including the South African government who have banned our pamphlets) that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to apartheid. However, our refusal to take part in anti-apartheid activities such as the boycott of goods some years ago and the planned demonstrations against the cricket tour is often misunderstood. So let us explain why we say that Socialism, not anti-apartheid is the way out for the oppressed people of South Africa.

The establishment of a democratic socialist world community based on the common ownership of the world’s resources will mean the emancipation of all mankind. It will end not only the capitalist exploitation of the working class but also all existing oppressions based on colour or language or culture.

Capitalism, the system based on the class ownership of the means of production, paves the way for Socialism by creating a world-wide productive system capable of turning out wealth in abundance. Towards the end of the last century capitalism became the dominant world system and so completed this task of building an economic basis for Socialism. From then on world Socialism was an immediate, practical possibility; capitalism had become a reactionary barrier to man’s further social progress. Some parts of the world, however, though dominated by world capitalism had yet to be absorbed into the system of production for profit and wage labour. These were “the backward countries”.

The question arises: is the coming of capitalism to these countries now in the interest of mankind? The Socialist Party says it is not. Before capitalism became the dominant world system it did play a progressive role in breaking-up pre-capitalist societies — a step towards creating an economic basis for Socialism. But once capitalism had come to dominate the world it had no progressive role to play anywhere, not even in the backward countries. The modernisation of these countries is certainly desirable but this can now take place within the framework of Socialism. There is no longer any need for them to pass through the capitalist stage of social development; they can skip this and, along with the already industrialised parts of the world, go straight into Socialism.

Let us now apply this analysis to South Africa.

Apartheid is essentially a pre-capitalist form of oppression; it is an attempt to impose the colour patterns of a frontier farming community onto a modern industrial economy. It will never work properly because what the government is trying to separate the economy keeps bringing together. The mines and factories of South Africa depend on African labour so Africans are attracted into the towns. Apartheid may never work but the attempt to make it do so brings untold suffering since it is partly because it does not make economic sense that it has to be imposed by police state methods.

The big capitalists of South Africa, as exemplified by gold magnate Harry Oppenheimer, are opposed to apartheid; so are the international corporations with capital invested there. Capitalism’s tendency, through the world market for its goods and the labour market for its workers, is to reduce all previous distinctions based on birth or language or colour or religion to one economic one: that between owners and non-owners of the means of production. Ideally — and this comes near to reality in this age of big corporations where the prejudices of individual capitalists do not matter — the capitalist employer is only interested in the quality of a worker’s ability-to-work and is not concerned with his skin colour or his views; he wants to be free to employ those he considers would be the most profitable for him. The free labour market by throwing together workers of all kinds of backgrounds allows him to do this.

South Africa's big capitalists want to encourage this tendency of capitalism so that they can make more profits on the basis of a modern wages system and a stable, integrated urban working class. They recognise apartheid as an obstacle to this and oppose it. Anti-apartheid serves their interests. It is not in the interest of the oppressed people of South Africa since its achievement would mean the final triumph of international capitalism over its backward-looking opponents there.

Those who are merely anti-apartheid and who urge us to join in their latest single-issue campaign about this should ask themselves just whose dirty work they arc doing. Are they really helping the oppressed people of South Africa or are they merely furthering the interests of the capitalists there whose profit-making is being restricted by apartheid? The unpleasant fact is that the overthrow of the National Party government in South Africa and the end of its apartheid policy would mean that political power would pass into the hands more friendly to capitalist magnates like Oppenheimer. This would be so under an African nationalist government (as it is in Zambia or Ghana, for instance) as much as under a United Party or Progressive Party government. The biggest part of the South African working class would be freed from oppression on grounds of colour, but they would still be propertyless and still have to work for wages on the farms, down the mines and in the factories. They would become subject to the straightforward capitalist exploitation the workers of Britain have long known.

Anti-apartheid, then, is not the way out for the oppressed people of South Africa; Socialism is as it will free them from capitalist exploitation as well. To treat opposition to apartheid as a separate issue to Socialism is to become an unwitting tool of international capitalism.

The Socialist Party for other reasons (the dangers of reformism) does not support single-issue protest campaigns in any way event, but, as we have tried to explain, anti-apartheid is not what it seems. We are afraid that thousands of sincere people genuinely appalled at racism in South Africa are going to further the demand of international capitalism for freedom to exploit all workers in South Africa irrespective of colour. We are not prepared to be used in this way and shall not be joining in the demonstrations.

Our advice to those who like us are opposed to apartheid, but who arc thinking of demonstrating is this: Think before you act. Do not let your perfectly justifiable distaste for racism lead you to “do something” that, when you think carefully about it. will not really achieve what you want. Consider whether your efforts would not be more fruitfully employed in working with us for a socialist world community where racism would have no place. In the meantime racist policies will be undermined to the extent that socialist ideas spread.

Adam Buick

Productivity deals (1970)

Book Review from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Employers’ Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them, by T. Cliff, Pluto Press. 6s.

In the preface to his new book on productivity deals Tony Cliff tells us that it is intended as a handbook to enable shop stewards to understand and resist offers of productivity deals. He regards such offers as “part of a major offensive by the employing class of this country to shift the balance of forces in industry permanently in their direction”.

This book is a continuation of Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards which T. Cliff and C. Barker wrote in 1966. The review of that book in the Socialist Standard (August 1966) ridiculed its claim that out of the shop stewards there would come a new “revolutionary working class movement”. Cliff now admits that we were right and he was wrong — “Life” he says “proved much more complex than the theory put forward”. Specifically he admits that incomes policy did not stop the rise of all wages, it did not provoke general working class resistance “economic, ideological and political”, and there did not arise “a new workers’ movement… overcoming the fragmentation of the working class”.

Nothing daunted, he is having another go. What Incomes Policy failed to achieve he now expects to be achieved by the employers’ campaign for productivity deals. Events will prove him wrong again.

His argument this time is that because of the big increase in the size of investment required for modern industry, the rapidity of technological change and the intensity of foreign competition, capitalism needs to plan years ahead and have long-term control of costs, including wages. The problem is alleged to be particularly great for British capitalism because inflation and the adverse balance of payments lead to “stop-go” and a slower rate of expansion, which in turn raises the cost of production per unit of the products. So the capitalist must have productivity deals which undermine the workers’ shop floor organisation, the shop stewards. This will be resisted with the help of Cliff’s handbook and the new revolutionary movement will emerge.

It will be seen that fate has been very unkind to the author; for about the time his book was being printed the adverse balance of payments was converted into a surplus; also inflation is going on in most other countries too; and productivity deals are going ahead often with the approval of the shop stewards.

One of the author’s errors is to underestimate the resilience of capitalism and the resourcefulness of business managements. Having seen that capitalism would rather like certain things he imagines that there are “musts”; but there is no must about it. Long term wage contracts would be useful to the capitalists but they are not indispensable, especially as employers know by experience that unions have little hesitation about presenting new claims during the life of a contract if circumstances favour this. The situation recently arose in America of the General Electric Company fighting for a one year wage contract while the unions were pressing for three years.

Again, employers would like to be able to enter into long period contracts with buyers to supply at a fixed price, but this is not a matter of life and death. The Shipbuilders and Repairers National Association reports that contracts to build ships are now being drawn up with a clause which allows for some form of price variation to meet unforeseen higher costs (Financial Times, 30 April 1970). Many other firms do the same where completion of the job extends over a long period.

What vitiates much of Cliff’s theorising is that he seems to be quite unaware of the past history of capitalism. He draws hasty conclusions from current events as if nothing very much happened before he came on the scene to observe them.

He tells us for example that in this country it was the Macmillan Government in 1962 which first embarked on an Incomes Policy. It was in fact started in 1948 by the Labour Government when it laid down the principle that there was to be no general increase of wages “unless accompanied by a substantial increase in production”. The same idea was present in the productivity campaign of 1920.

He says that ten years ago productivity bargaining was “a new and strange phenomenon to most workers in British industry”. Little is new about it except the name. The capitalists have always been intent on eliminating unoccupied time and wasted effort from the productive process and workers have always with varying degrees of success, resisted: it and tried to bargain about it. The basic attitude of the employers has always been the same as it is now, to try to get all the benefits of increased productivity themselves. Marx, in Volume I of Capital (Chapter XXI), dealing with the bitter struggles over piece work wages and the workers’ attempts to get higher rates in line with increased productivity and profits, ended the chapter with the following:

  “The capitalist . . . declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not concern the labourer at all.”

Many of the present productivity deals are concerned with the worker giving up trade union restrictive practices for a wage increase. In the first world war workers were unwisely induced by appeals to their patriotism to give up trade union practices and accept dilution, getting in return only a pledge that after the war what had been given up would be restored. When that time came the workers were not in a position to make the pledge stick and, as Sidney Webb tersely remarked in his History of Trade Unionism “Trade unionists were on the whole ‘done'”.

Cliff has a good deal to say about Work Study (Measured Day Work) and job evaluation. Here again there is little new except that the methods have become more elaborate. Nearly half a century ago factory workers were bitterly resisting employers’ attempts to introduce the Bedaux system of unit measurement (the work expected of a worker in one minute). Job evaluation was years old when in 1955 it was formally introduced in the Civil Service. It was being used in a rough and ready way by the Post Office at the end of the nineteenth century and the Post Office long ago developed its own system of units of work to adjust the numbers of staff to the volume of traffic.

There is one superficial change concerning wage bargaining brought about by years of inflation. For a quarter of a century governments have more or less continuously run a policy of depreciating the currency, with the consequence of an abnormal rise of prices and the cost of living. They have done this as part of their belief that they were thereby securing “full employment”. A rising cost of living is politically unpopular so the governments have also strenuously sought to offset some of the rise by finding ways to increase productivity per worker (Reducing the amount of labour required to produce commodities). As in this situation employers could count on getting continuously rising prices for what they sold they were content to put up a more or less token resistance to wage increases required to keep up with the cost of living, offering their real resistance to increases beyond that level, just as when Marx wrote about it a century or more ago. Official figures for 1969 give a revealing picture of what happens.

“Wages and salaries alone rose by 7 and half per cent; but this increase was reduced to 5 and half per cent by higher personal tax payments and national insurance contributions. Most of the remaining 5 and half per cent rise in personal disposable income was offset by higher prices . . . “ (Financial Times, 9 April 1970.)

The workers would be on sound ground in resisting all attempts to intensify their work or worsen its conditions and should always try to get the highest wage possible in the circumstances of the time, the strike, or threatened strike being the one way to test the possibilities. Cliff turns this simple proposition into something needlessly complicated. He produces a handbook for conducing productivity bargaining but declares himself to be “bitterly and unalterably opposed” to such deals. Then he hedges by saying that you can’t just say no to an employers’ offer, and by directing his fire against “derisory” offers and ones which give only “a few miserable shillings”. His real reason why shop stewards cannot just say no is that many workers want such deals and if the shop stewards take a negative attitude they isolate themselves from the workers.

One of his recommendations is that shop stewards should “invent” restrictive practices the abandonment of which will be of no value to employers and then sell these to the employers for wage increases. It is open to question whether the employers’ negotiators are so easily deceived but if Cliff believes them to be that naive it is for him to justify making these tricks public. Certainly the point was taken by Peter Jay who reviewed the book in the Times (25 March 1970) for he recommends to “any business executive who expects to be engaged in negotiating productivity deals” to get a copy and “know your enemy”.

Cliff is a firm believer in leadership as against the Socialist principle that working class emancipation requires the understanding of the workers themselves. He believes however, that the “natural leaders” of the workers are the shop stewards and other “floor” representatives and not the national trade union leaders.

His case against national trade union leaders and for shop stewards is that the national leaders get out of touch with their members, but he then admits that many of the shop floor representatives also “get completely divorced from their base”. Without knowing that he is doing so he actually shows how little use his “good” leaders are for they cannot act beyond the understanding of the workers; he grants “that a trade union leader can’t be expected to march 10 miles ahead of his membership”, and, as already remarked, he admits that unless shop stewards fall in with workers’ support for productivity deals they become “isolated”.

One of his proposals for reforming the trade unions is that “union officials should get the same rate of pay as the average members”. This is a question that occupied the unions as soon as the need arose to have full-time officials and to many trade unionists. Cliff’s proposal looks a useful one. It was being propagated nearly half a century ago by an organisation of trade union office staffs. It is practicable for unions of comparatively highly paid workers and something of this kind is operated by some unions. But where the membership is of low paid workers it can be quite impracticable. For example, in the agricultural workers union, which has its head office near the centre of London, it would mean that the full-time officials would be paid considerably less than their clerks and shorthand typists because it would be quite impossible to recruit staffs in Central London at the wage of an agricultural worker.

In any event it is misdirected. What is of much more importance is that union membership should see to it that they formulate policy themselves and insist on officials and executives and shop stewards carrying it out.

Cliff’s book is dotted with references to Socialism and the abolition of capitalism but without any real understanding of what Socialism implies — on occasion he indicates that he thinks state capitalism (nationalisation) is Socialism. Emancipation is not going to be achieved by non-Socialists led by shop stewards because it requires a Socialist working class getting control of the machinery of government.

So little does he understand the futility of putting a party of capitalism in control of the machinery of government that he and his organisation (“International Socialists”) were telling the workers to support Labour candidates at the last two elections — and are doing so again at this one. His book is not going to achieve the new revolutionary working class he anticipates.

Edgar Hardcastle

Where Orwell went wrong (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

For many decades now, the ruling classes have employed many devious methods in order to distort working class conceptions of Socialism, and have enjoyed a long success. One of the most successful attempts at distorting working class ideas about Socialism was George Orwell’s horrifying piece of literature 1984. Orwell, a sick and dying man, conjured up visions of a Big Brother state, which many were led to believe would be the result of a Socialist revolution.

Like millions of other people, Orwell’s conceptions were strongly influenced by the outcome of the Russian Revolution, which in actual fact, as all Socialists know, was a capitalist revolution.

The British ruling class did not waste any time in giving Orwell’s ideas widespread propaganda; for after the book was acclaimed by the capitalist press his misconceptions were perpetuated even further through the mass-media of television.

The effects of such harmful anti-Socialist propaganda were only too apparent. Many who had had any beliefs in Socialism became confused.

Orwell’s vision certainly was not of a socialist society where classes will be abolished. But there is now strong evidence to prove that what Orwell really envisaged was the monstrous power of state capitalism which is prevalent throughout the world today. Heavy policing is now being enforced by capitalist governments all over the world; C.S. gas is used against workers, and many other odious methods of repression are used. Demonstrations are photographed, names are recorded, while politicians mouth meaningless words about peace, freedom, and democracy. The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class has become more and more scientific; in order to increase its wealth millions of workers are enslaved by their capitalist masters, and each individual is timed to the second. Often, when a worker cannot keep up to the speed required of him, his wages are slashed, and it is common for him to be persecuted by the foreman until he is driven out of his job. Workers are even timed when they visit the toilet. When we shop in a supermarket or department store we are watched on a television screen. Even out in the streets of a large city the public are under the watchful eye of Big Brother; the police have televisions on tall buildings. The ruling class have not yet introduced Newspeak, but the national press in Britain is controlled by a small group of milionaires, and the same lies are fed to the British masses daily in order to confuse them even more.

Those who had their ideas of Socialism destroyed by Orwell’s misconceptions should look around in nineteen seventy and they will realise very quickly that the horror of Big Brother has been brought about by the capitalist system of exploitation under which we are living now. The only way to eliminate Big Brother is to abolish the system which has fostered this suppression.

M.

A Correction (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Inside the Bolshevik Cul dc Sac’’ (April Socialist Standard) we incorrectly implied that The ABC of Communism written by the Bolsheviks Bukharin and Proebrazhensky made no distinction between Socialism and Communism. In the first part of the book Bukharin describes the society the Russian Communist Party aims at as one based on common ownership without money, wages or profits. This he calls “communism” in line with the then policy of the Bolsheviks of using this word to describe what the Social Democrats had always meant by Socialism. Later, however, the book follows Lenin’s distortion in his April Theses and talks of a society called "socialism" as “inevitable as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism”.

Editorial Committee

50 Years Ago: Justice and Social Revolution (1970)

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

The philosophic historians attribute this evolution to the ceaseless action of the Spiritual Forces, particularly Justice, the strongest of all, which according to an idealistic and academic philosopher is always present even though it arrives only by degrees into human thought and into social facts. Bourgeois society and its way of thinking are thus the last and highest manifestations of this immanent Justice, and it is to obtain these fine results that this lady has toiled in the mine of history.

#    #    #    #

A ruling class always considers that what serves its economic and political interests is just and that which disserves them is unjust. The Justice which it conceives is realised when its class interests are satisfied.

#    #    #    #

The feudal and guild organisations injuring the bourgeoisie was in its eyes so unjust that its immanent Justice resolved to destroy it. The bourgeois historians relate that it could not tolerate the forcible robberies of the feudal barons, who knew no other methods of rounding out their fields and filling their purses all of which does not prevent their honest immanent Justice from encouraging the forcible robberies which, without risking their skins, the pacific capitalists have committed by proletarians disguised as soldiers in the barbarous countries of the old and the new world.

It is Justice who gives the slaveholder the right to possess men like a chattel; it is she again who gives the capitalists the right to exploit the children, women and men of the proletariat worse than beasts of burden.

(Extract from The Historical Method of Marx by Paul Lafargue. Socialist Standard, June 1920).

The Revelations of Winston Churchill (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The contempt in which the British ruling class holds those over whom it rules is shown by the readiness with which it reveals the truth about its motives and actions in the Second World War only a few years after the event. This column has already remarked upon the revealing statements made since the end of the war about both the Battle of Britain and the invasion of Norway. Now Mr. Churchill himself, the author of those stirring speeches which were so successful in inducing the British working class to fight the battles of the British capitalists for them, has made some extraordinary revelations in his last volume of the history of the war, “Triumph and Tragedy.”

When Churchill met Stalin in Moscow in 1944, they both abandoned the wordy inanities with which they had exhorted their followers to greater efforts, and got down to the business of the real reasons for which the war was fought. Among these reasons the situation in the Balkans in 1939 ranked high. Hitler's successive conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia and part of Poland gave rise to fears that he was about to begin another "Drang nach Osten,” the drive to the east which had been high on the Kaiser’s programme. Britain wished to conserve her influence over Greece and over the Balkans generally; and Russia was determined not only to keep the half of Poland which she had taken in 1939, but also to extend her hegemony over the rest of Eastern Europe. So when Churchill and Stalin, as the representatives of the victorious ruling classes of Britain and Russia respectively, met at Moscow, they sat down to business with no illusions as to why the other had fought the war.

Blue Pencil
Churchill wrote on a sheet of paper the respective shares which he proposed that each country should have in the various Balkan countries. He suggested that Rumania should be ninety per cent. Russian and ten per cent. British; that Greece should be ninety per cent. British and ten per cent. Russian; and that similar divisions of influence should be made in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the rest. He pushed the sheet across the table to Stalin. "Stalin took a blue pencil, and made a large tick upon it; and passed it back. It was all settled, says Churchill, in no more time than it takes to set it down ” (Reynolds News, 25/4/54). There was no discussion on either side, according to Churchill’s own account, as to how this dividing up of smaller countries (most of which had been on the Allied side in the war) squared with the lofty motives which each had repeatedly given in public speeches as the sole reasons for which the Allies were fighting the war. Does the reader remember the old gag about “the independence of small nations”? No mention of that here. Does the reader remember how the National Anthems of these small countries used to be played to us regularly by the B.B.C. to show us how intimately this country had their interests at heart? Now they were not even called in to give their approval of the settlement reached as to their future by their big brotherly allies. If these Balkan countries had been told, no doubt they would have raised a cry of "No division without representation" but they were not even told.

Honour Among Thieves

Churchill and Stalin kept their respective bargains. When it looked as if the left-wing .political party EAM, and its guerilla supporter ELAS, was going to take power in Greece, Churchill ordered the British Army and the Royal Air Force into action; thus was Greece saved for its Anglo-American future. And not a word of protest came from Russia, or appeared in the Russian press. Similarly, when the Russian army of occupation in Rumania saw to it that the Communist Party took power and threw King Michael out, there was no interference from Britain.

All this is retold frankly by Churchill. Apparently his scorn for the workers is such that he has no fear of any adverse effect on morale in a Third World War; he is not afraid that the workers, having seen how hollow were the speeches made and articles written in the Second World War, might come to think that those in future wars were just as hypocritical. And such is the hold of propaganda on the mass of the working class, he is probably right

Joshua.

Editorial: Our Fiftieth Anniversary (1954)

Editorial from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month our Party has been in existence for fifty years. Fifty years of persistent, single-minded and uncompromising propaganda without ever swerving from the path we set out upon, the path to Socialism. Along that path we have met the laughter, the jeers and the revilings of those who claimed that we were unpractical chasers of dreams. The parties that contained those who laughed, reviled and jeered have either passed out of existence or lost their old identities in the swamps of capitalism. The fire-eaters of yesterday have become the practical politicians of to-day, immersed in the problem of running capitalism more efficiently.

In the course of these fifty years there have been many and shattering changes in the world but none of these changes have in any way affected the soundness of the Party’s fundamental outlook. The Declaration of Principles formulated in 1904 still provides the anchor that has kept the Party solid and safe through the storms of two world wars and the treacherous calms of peace times.

When the Party was formed the British Empire was looked upon as the greatest empire the world had ever known. At that time the maps of the world showed nearly a quarter of the land surface painted with the red that denoted British hegemony and on the sea, well, "Britain Ruled the Waves”! Germany was moving upwards and threatening British trade in a development that eventually led to the head-on collision in 1914. In the East the vast ramshackle Empire of the Czars, built upon the ruthless exploitation of the peasants, spread like a semi-feudal blight. China, still steeped in the customs of olden times, was a promising field of plunder for western trading brigands, whilst Japan was struggling into the sphere of the modern powers. India, with its teeming population, was lying somewhat uncomfortably in the lap of British imperialism and its Durbars were splendid circuses for the edification of its Western rulers. America was too busily employed building from within to exercise much influence outside the American continent. Big business was building up internal fortunes for those who were riding on the rush to mechanise American industry. Standard Oil was one of the few American enterprises that spread its tentacles over the outside world.

The movement that went by the name of "Socialist” was mainly a hotch-potch of nationalist and state-ownership ideas that gave some lip-service to Marxism. In Germany this movement had a large body of adherents, and in France it was fairly strong, but elsewhere it exerted little influence. In England its supporters could only be numbered in hundreds.

What vast changes have come over the world since those days! The British Empire is a thing of the past, India and China have awakened from their slumbers and become powerful states, the empire of the Czars has been replaced by a ruthless dictatorship that has mechanised Russia and built it up into a first class imperialist power challenging America for world supremacy. All over the world the sometime backward countries are rapidly overtaking the erstwhile leaders and building up societies split into the familiar western type of workers and capitalists. In the course of these changes "Labour” has come to power in various regions and revealed the emptiness of the claim that Labour Parties were out to build a new world in which the workers would find comfort and security. Wherever Labour Governments have come to power they have acted in just the same way as avowed capitalist governments they have administered capitalism in the interests of those who own the means and instruments of wealth production. To the workers the change in government has made no fundamental difference.

The facts of history have proved that we were right in our outlook and in our criticisms. In face of this we urge workers to study the position we have been putting forward for fifty years for it is the only position, the only solution to the problems of today that offers the workers hope. We have kept steadfastly to this position for fifty years because we know that Socialism is the system of society that will bring comfort and security for all mankind.

Finally, we are what we were and we will remain what we are.

Geneva and Indo-China (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political all-in wrestling match which has been taking place at Geneva has been the focal point for the eyes of the world. It is not a simple struggle between two opposing sides but a free-for-all for any group with vested interests in S.E. Asia and/or world strategy. The various claims and counter-claims, the advances, retreats, feints, side-steps and trials of strength that precede the really getting down to grips have taken place in the glare of publicity and propaganda, although there is, in addition, the backstairs double-dealing and secret alignments which will, in due course, when put to practical use in the negotiating, have such telling effects. It is understandable that people should take an interest in the goings-on in Geneva, for it is in such trials of strength over the division and redivision of shares of wealth, which have been produced by the workers for their masters, that groupings of powers are formed which could plunge us into another war. For this fight at Geneva differs from some all-in wrestling bouts in that here the fight is a genuine one, with no holds barred.

The Viet-Minh
But there is a fresh young claimant in the ring challenging the French title to Indo-China—the native capitalists. Their interests are represented by the nationalist organisation known by its abbreviated name of Viet-minh, whose chief representative is the so-called Communist, Ho-chi-ming.

Viet-nam is the name given to the combined countries of Tongkin in the north, the empire of Annam in the centre and the former French colony of Cochin-China in the south. “Viet-nam for the Vietnamese” is one of the slogans of the nationalists. By this they really mean that the native ruling-class wish to exploit the workers there without having to share the loot with any other group. This attitude has the sympathy of many of the native governments of Asia who have only recently ousted the hated foreign masters themselves and one of them, India, has offered to act as referee at the Conference in order to help resolve the difference so that the claimants will not resort to war.

The internal situation of Viet-nam is complicated by the unrest in the native people and their desire for land reform. The native farmers operate such small segments of land and with insufficient capital that after they have paid the extortionate interest to the moneylenders there is usually insufficient left to maintain them in health. This, and the impact of revolutionary ideas inseparable from capitalism, have made of these people a force that must be placated. The Viet-minh have won their support by promising them reform if the Party succeed in seizing the reins of government.

Viet-nam
The existing native government, usually referred to in the newspapers as Viet-nam, headed by Emperor Bao Dai, is under the influence of the French. This puppet government tries unsuccessfully to steer a course which will satisfy firstly the foreign exploiters who hold much of the military power, secondly, that portion of the native ruling-class who wish for a greater measure of control for themselves but are prepared to leave the responsibility of keeping order to the French, and, thirdly, a native working population seething with unrest.

Russia
Though far removed geographically from the scene in S.E. Asia, the large and expanding economy of the U.S.S.R. has a vital interest in world strategy and it is this interest which may be affected by the forthcoming division of spoils being negotiated at Geneva. For France is a member of the European Defence Committee which seeks to combine those with a common interest in opposing the expansion of the Russian spheres of influence in Europe. The preoccupation with the trouble in Indo-China has, by weakening France, thereby weakened E.D.C. It is in the interests of the U.S.S.R. that the French and the other allied powers are pre-occupied with Asia for as long as possible. The Russians have practically nothing at stake there and thus gain greater freedom of action in Europe.

America

American interests are affected on two counts. One by reason of world strategy and the other arises from the need to safeguard their investments in S.E. Asia.

The American ruling-class regard Indo-China and Korea as bulwarks of democracy against the spread of Communism. To bring such high-sounding ideology down to earth it means that American capitalists wish to prevent their opposite numbers in China and Russia from extending their control of any more markets, sources of raw materials and exploitation of workers, at the expense of American-dominated Western Capitalism.

Apart from a considerable American investment in the French war in Indo-China the American government has invested in next-door neighbour Siam, which his a 900-mile river frontier with Indo-China. If Indo-China passes into the control of a hostile power Siam might be menaced too, and the Americans have no intention of allowing this to happen if they can avoid it.

Between Viet-nam and Siam lie the Buddhist kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, both comparatively weak through being but sparsely populated, and almost undeveloped from the Capitalists' viewpoint.

With the absence of dangerous revolutionary ideas —and any political unrest—these two countries, therefore, make an ideal buffer state to protect American investment in Siam and this indicates the policy the U.S.A. may pursue at Geneva.

Great Britain

British Capitalism has different interests again and therefore employs different methods to attain these ends. Having a long experience in the East, H.M. Government uses this superiority with telling effect against its rivals in the ring. For instance, probably realising that Dien Bien Phu was past help anyway, they refused any co-operation with the American proposal to despatch without delay all possible air help to the French troops, but giving as their reason that they did not wish to jeopardise the Conference.

The American embargo on war materials to China was evaded by the British, according to American charges, by shipping these goods to the British colony of Hong Kong and then transferring them across the common frontier with China.

The British Capitalists have much invested in some of the countries of S.E. Asia but particularly in the mines and plantations of Malaya. Here there is guerrilla fighting with the adherents of the Communist Party among the large Chinese minority living in Malaya who have been trying to oust the British and seize power.. But the Chinese Communist Party has steadfastly refused to assist their comrades in Malaya in any way, although by reason of British diplomatic representation in Peking, they are entitled to establish consulates throughout Malaya. Consulates are recognised channels for assistance to fifth-columnists elsewhere. Perhaps it suits the Chinese not to take on a venture in Malaya which they are not sure will be successful. Failure would explode the carefully nurtured Communist legend of invincibility, that history is on their side, a policy of inevitability that counts so much with many Asiatics of a fatalistic turn of mind. But also Mao-tse-tung, being an Asiatic, evidently knows what is meant by a bargain and the British Capitalists are probably expecting that their services over the matter of wrecking the American proposal of air help to the French in Indo-China, and their recognition of the present regime in China, will be remembered when the time comes in the East to hand out trade contracts.

China

It is reported by some of those who have made a study of the subject that China has given no help to the Viet-minh. Whatever the latter have had from China has had to be paid for. The record of Chinese dealings with so-called Communist Parties in other countries of Asia seems to support this view. But nevertheless China has, at the least, a strategic interest in the outcome of the struggle in Indo-China. This country has access to Chinese territory through a common frontier and the Indo-China railway system extends into China for 300 miles. It would seem to be to China’s advantage to have a weak nationalist regime in Viet-nam rather than France and her powerful allies. China, the most experienced of all contestants, will probably make her weight felt to the greatest advantage.

The French

The French are the present holders of the title to exploit Indo-China, which title they have held since 1787. And what a prize they have! For this is a country of profitable mines and the lush countryside produces that valued contribution to Capitalist profits —cash crops—that is, rubber, tea, sugar, rice, coconuts, timber.

At Cam Pha in the north is the coalmine-owner’s dream come true. Here is a seam of anthracite coal of fantastic size lying on the surface, 300 ft wide, 370 ft. deep and over 20 miles long. All that the workers have to do is to shovel the coal into trucks. All the owners have to do is to take the profits. Ocean transport is available in that veritable fairyland of beauty-spots—the islet-studded Bay of Along.

Those who support French colonial policy in Indo-China could also point to the development that has taken place in Cochin China in the south.. In the last 60 years 4,800,000 acres of new land have been reclaimed for agriculture. Swamps have been drained and canals dug; 7 billion cubic feet of land were dredged. Fields under rice cultivation have increased from 912,000 acres in 1868 to 5,760,000 acres to-day. In other provinces even greater increases of land under cultivation has been noted. In all some 12 million acres of tillable soil has been added to the land of Indo-China.

From 1885 to 1940 France invested a total of 5,200 piastres in the country.

Apart from its intrinsic worth, Indo-China has a strategic value arising from its position as a peninsular athwart many of the trade routes to S.E. Asia.

Yet there are people who say that Indo-China is not worth fighting for!

The Workers enter the ring

But it is the workers who drain the swamps, grow the valuable crops and work the mines of Indo-China. It is also they who fight to protect French property which they have created by their own labour or to extend the rights of the rising Indo-China capitalists. But they are not represented at the Geneva Conference and their interests will not even be discussed. Whoever comes out on top in the struggle at Geneva the workers will still be the under-dogs. For them there will be no prize. It will not alter their class position in this capitalist jungle if the French are elbowed out by a native ruling-class.

The Socialist movement alone has a working-class policy which would give a knock-out blow to all of the exploiters and throw the whole lot of them out of the ring for all time. Then will the fullness of the earth and the valuable cultures of all peoples be freely avail- able for the whole of mankind. Socialists have a slogan which in its pithy way expresses our ideas—Workers of the world unite. You have only your chains to lose you have a world to win.

Frank Offord

The Passing Show: Crime and Punishment (1954)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crime and Punishment

The recent campaign in the Soviet Union against crime, including the restoration of the death penalty for murder, is being taken in some circles to show that crime is something “inherent in human nature,” and that the early Socialist pioneers were wrong when they said that in a Socialist society there would be no crime. But the people who take up this point of view do not see that in order for their reasoning to be valid, they must first show that there is a Socialist society in the Soviet Union. Far from the existence of crime proving anything about Socialism, it is itself another demonstration that there cannot be Socialism in Russia. The Stalinists themselves, who profess to believe that there is Socialism in Russia, abandon—as they have often done before—their materialist philosophy in order to explain it, and say it is due to elements which are corrupt or hostile to the regime. But before Socialism can be established, it is necessary to have a great majority who understand and want it, and to whom therefore the notion of crime is foreign; and Socialism will abolish crime because it will abolish the material conditions which cause it.

When Stalinists admit that there is crime in Russia they are admitting the falseness of their own view of the nature of Russian society.

On Guard

During the recent correspondence in The Times about the hydrogen bomb, one reader wrote that “the British Army remains unruffled. This last week-end I attended Territorial Army training—the morning was passed with lectures on the use and effect of the atomic bomb; in the afternoon we practised sword drill" (10-4-54). It is good to know that our generals are directing their minds to the problems that beset us.

Presumably, in the last ghastly moment of atomic annihilation, we are supposed to cry “‘Touché !” The present regime cannot guarantee that we will survive; but it is at least trying to teach us how to die like gentlemen.

Joshua.

A Special Commemorative Number of the "Socialist Standard" (1954)

Party News from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September, 1904, the first number of the "Socialist Standard” came out. This September we are bringing out a special number to commemorate fifty years of its existence.

The special number will have a colour-designed cover and will contain articles relating to our attitude to war in 1914 and 1939; Russia in 1917; the General Strike in 1926; The Woman Question, Ireland, etc, in the early years. There will also be articles on the Declaration of Principles; Style and Invective over the years; changes in theory, internally and externally; the Birth of the Party and the circumstances of the time; our attitude in the various elections from the early days; the world situation in 1904 and to-day; Propaganda in war time; some Reminiscences of members and events; and a number of other subjects.

This special number will contain 32 pages against the 
present 16 pages, and it is proposed to print 10,000 copies.
 We want to make this a production worthy of the occasion and to do the job properly the estimated cost will be in the region of £300, and as the price of each copy will remain as at present the loss will run into over £200. We therefore appeal to members and sympathisers to send along as large donations as they can to enable us to fulfil our proposals. If we cannot raise enough money to carry out the proposals we will have to cut down our ideas.

Will members and sympathisers send along to the Party Treasurer, E. Lake, as much as they can immediately so that we will be in a position to know how much we can do to make the special number really worth while.

Party News Briefs (1954)

Party News from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fiftieth Anniversary Rally of the Party is being held on Sunday, 13th June, at St. Pancras Town Hall, Euston Road. London. Will members and friends make a note of the date and rally round and help to ensure a successful evening.

* * *

Ealing Branch took the opportunity during May to organise a special all-out drive to sell the Socialist Standard. A rainy Sunday morning during the first week abruptly curtailed activities, but fine weather on the two following Sundays gave canvassers several hours of uninterrupted selling time. Sales by the middle of May, as we go to press, have already reached 21 dozen, and given fine weather for the remainder of the month the Branch is hopeful that the previous best monthly sale (32 dozen) will be exceeded.

A start is once more being made in selling the S.S. and pamphlets outside stations, and if first experiments at Hammersmith Broadway are successful, this type of activity will be extended and put on a regular and organised basis.

Finally, we are hoping that a good outdoor propaganda season at Ealing Green and Heron Court. Richmond, will also play a part in stepping-up sales and make it our most successful literature season so far.

Our experience has shown that the results from canvassing vary in strictly arithmetical ratio with the number of canvassers taking part. In other words, given twice the number of canvassers, we could step up sales to 50-60 dozen without any difficulty. It is most rewarding and productive work, and it is not beyond the capacity of any member of the Branch (and the Party for that matter) to devote one Sunday morning a month to it. The results are there for everyone to see. and the field has hardly been touched.

An appeal is made to every Branch member to contact the Literature Secretary, or any member of the Literature Committee, and find out how, when, and where he or she can help.

* * *

May Day Sunday in London was marred by rain and cold. Party members did their best under the circumstances to sell literature along the route of the Trades Unions' procession to Hyde Park. Our meeting in the Park was dampened by the rain.

However, a good indoor meeting was held in the evening at Conway Hall.

* * *

West Ham Branch members have renewed their canvassing drive and during April on one evening alone a hundred houses were called upon and twenty copies of the Socialist Standard were sold. The work has continued in May but figures of results are not yet available.

The Branch urges members to make every effort to assist in this work which is well worth while.

The canvassing party meets outside the “Boleyn” (corner of Green Street and Barking Road), East Ham, every Wednesday evening between 7.30 p.m. and 7.40 p.m.

Sunday evening outdoor meetings are held at this spot at 8 p.m. As the station is a new one, members should do all they can to support these meetings.

Friday evenings at 8 p.m. meetings are held at Station Road, Ilford.

Meanwhile Branch lectures will continue to be held on alternate Thursday evenings at Salisbury Road School, Manor Park Broadway. Details of meetings elsewhere in this issue.

A few tickets are available for the coach trip to Brighton which is being arranged by West Ham Branch. If members are interested please contact Branch Social Committee or telephone Ilford 2884. Date: Sunday, 27th June. A Propaganda Meeting will be held on the beach, in conjunction with Brighton Branch members.

Phyllis Howard

Prejudice (2009)

A Short Story from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A true tale from a kebab shop

I was serving a regular customer; a person who is showing me a lot of respect. The boss of the kebab shop doesn’t like it when I talk to the customers because he thinks I am his slave and that I should behave like a robot. He came over and he told me, “Serve him quick and don’t talk to him; he’s gay”, but he spoke in his language so the man wouldn’t understand.

The gentleman, he felt something is wrong and he said to me, “Is everything all right?” The Boss answered, “Yes Mike, everything is all right.” The man, he said, “I’m not Mike, I’m Howard.” I explained him that the boss means “mate” but he can’t pronounce it. Howard smiled and said, “thank you” to him and he left a two-pound tip for me then went out, but he left his umbrella. My Boss took the tip and told me, “I’ll buy a bulb for your room.” I said, “This is my money. That man he always leave a tip.” But the Boss is a hard man who treat his workers like slaves, so I say to him, “If you want to take it why don’t you buy toilet paper? I have a bulb in my room.” Then to patronize me he said, “Maybe you like to join Mr Howard tonight” with winking his eye.

At this point two people came in, each holding a bottle of beer. They were big chubby men with bald heads and they were so drunk that they couldn’t control their movements. They are shouting, “Fucking foreigners” to each other so my Boss said to me, “Be very nice with them. If they said, ‘Fuck you’, your answer will be ‘thank you very much, do you like anything else?'” I told him, “I can’t do that and I can’t serve them”, so he said, “When they have ordered, you do the order – I’ll speak with them.”

The men came up to the counter and one of them said, “Why did you come here, fucking donkey shagger?” The boss in his pronunciation, said, “Calm down, mike.” The man replied, “Fuck off, I’m not Mike, I’m Nick” and the other one he says, “They come here to shag young girls and marry them to get citizenship.”

The Boss, who thinks he is a great important man, couldn’t get rid of two bullyboys. He said, “No mike, I’m a religious person; it is not in my culture to shag girls.” This makes the second man very angry and he shouted, “He’s not Mike you c***.” And then he says to the Boss, “So you’re Muslim?” and he replies that he is. This drunk man then said, “I thought you lot weren’t supposed to eat pork, why are you selling it then?” The Boss says back to him, “That’s business.”

Now the first man is more angry even than the other one and he threw his bottle and it breaks into pieces; spread over the shop, and he said, “You got a problem, Mohammed?” The Boss said to him, “I am not Mohammed, I am Mustapha, my friend”. The first drunk man shouted, “He’s not your friend, he’s my friend.” The boss, he replied to him, “Ok, mate.” But he said “mike” again because he cannot pronounce, “mate”. This man, he was very drunk, he said to him, “My name’s not fucking Mike. Fuck you!” The boss he say, “Thank you very much, what you like?”

The second man say, “That’s what he calls his donkey when he’s shagging it!” Then he was holding onto the counter and he was pretended to be having sex that way; like Mustapha and his donkey, called Mike. He was saying, “Oh Mike, oh Mike”. At this moment Howard comes back for his umbrella. He realised there is something wrong and he becomes a mediator between my Boss and them when he explained to them when he saying to you “Mike” he is means “mate”.

Before the two boys leave the kebab shop one of them says to the Boss raising his voice, “The customer’s always right Mike!” The boss said, “Yes, yes, yes”. Howard advised him he should call the police. The Boss says “many times event like that happened to me – when I call police they come too late and when they come they accuse me instead of them.” I said, “And we are all fucking illegal immigrants and by their police law we are the crime-makers.”

Howard said, “I understand now. Good luck for you.” and he left the shop. I say to the boss, “Now can you see?”

I. I.

Cooking the Books: No growth area (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Wednesday 22 April, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, took his snout out of the trough for a while to deliver the budget speech. He ended it with what he must have thought was a brilliant soundbite:

  “You can grow your way out of a recession. You cannot cut your way out”.

Well, er, yes. A recession is a period when there is no growth, when in fact there is a fall in production, what the spin-doctors called “negative growth”. So, obviously, a recession comes to an end when growth resumes. The big question is: can a government do anything to make this happen?

But what is “growth” anyway? For government statisticians it is an increase in the Gross Domestic Product. GDP is made up of what capitalist firms invest + what consumers spend + what the government spends. For Marxists, the key part of this is capital accumulation, the part of profits that capitalist firms re-invest in production, the motor of the capitalist economy and which determines the level of consumer spending.

While governments can influence GDP – if only by increasing their own expenditure – they cannot do anything to increase capital accumulation. That depends on the amount of profits that capitalist firms expect to make, which in turn depends on market conditions, which governments can’t control.

An increase in GDP brought about by an increase in government spending – which is the government’s plan to get out of what Darling delicately calls “the recession” – can only come in the long run out of profits, the source of funds for capital accumulation. In the short run it’s only a statistical illusion. It doesn’t increase capital accumulation and so doesn’t result in growth in actual production..

Even here, though, Darling is not expecting GDP to go up until some time towards the end of next year. In the meantime, he estimated, GDP would have fallen by 3.5 percent. Not everybody agrees on this figure. In its latest quarterly Inflation Report published in May, the Bank of England “now expects that this year’s slump will lead the economy to shrink by up to 4.5 per cent on its main view, marking the most brutal drop in GDP since 1946” (Times, 14 May). The 1946 drop was caused, it should be noted, not by an economic crisis, not by any actual fall in production, but simply by the government no longer having to spend money on fighting a war. Three monthly earlier, however, the Bank had been ever more optimistic than Darling, expecting a fall of only 3 percent.

Basically, they don’t know. As Mervyn King, the Bank’s Governor, put it:

“We may well get a recovery that proves to be sustained, then again, we may not” (Times, 14 May).

True. And how very profound.

Pieces Together: A Grateful Nation? (2009)

The Pieces Together column from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Grateful Nation?

“It is only when darkness falls on the streets of London that the plight of many veterans of the Armed Forces becomes fully apparent. More than 1,000 of them are homeless. Until a couple of months ago Ray (not his real name) was one of them living on the streets. He had enlisted in the Royal Green Jackets (Light Division) in 1993 and saw service in Northern Ireland. He left the Army in November 2001 but found civvy street a harsh place. … “You think after serving your time in the Army society will accept you,” he says, “but they don’t and no one helps.” (Times, 25 April)

Hard Times?

“Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson is reported to have lost 56% of his wealth, shedding £1.5bn and is now worth £1.2bn. Meanwhile, Formula 1 motor racing chief Bernie Ecclestone lost £934m, leaving him at £1.46bn, the list reported. The richest British-born billionaire is the land and property owning Duke of Westminster, who has seen his wealth shrink to £6.5bn from £7bn. In fourth spot are Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli: the former Miss UK winner and her husband have a £5.6bn fortune based on pharmaceuticals. Their fortune has shrunk by a relatively modest 12% over the year. But it is not all gloom – the former boss of supermarket chain Morrisons, Sir Ken Morrison, has seen his fortune increase by 11%, making him worth £1.6bn. The wealth of Peter and Denise Coates, owners of Stoke-based online sports betting website Bet365, has gone up by 33%, to £400m. And Harrods boss Mohammed al-Fayed has benefited from a cheap pound – his fortune stands at £650m, up 17% on last year.” (BBC Times, 25 April)

American Poverty

“An estimated 3.5 million children younger than 5 are at risk of hunger in the United States, according to government numbers provided by an anti-hunger group. That’s more than 17 percent of children who could suffer cognitive and developmental damage if they are not properly fed. The not-for-profit advocacy group Feeding America based its findings on 2005-2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department. The study, released Thursday, is the first to look at these numbers for children under the age of 5, according to the group. Feeding America runs food banks and feeding centers around the country. The study also shows that in 11 states, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are at risk of going hungry. Louisiana has the highest rate, with just under a quarter of children at risk, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas.” (Yahoo News, 7 May)

A simpler way of doing things (2009)

From the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism makes arranging production more complicated than it need be.

We humans have always worked to support our life; worked to catch, grow and produce our food, to make our shelter, our clothes and our tools, in general to satisfy our needs. In groups tasks were shared and communities developed by dividing labour cooperatively according to expertise and free will. All worked both for themselves and the common good whilst partaking of the benefits accrued.

We still work to support our life but now money is a crucial factor, an artificial intermediary between labour and the satisfaction of needs, enabling labour to be exchanged indirectly for all manner of goods and services. We now require money whether working within the community or outside it. We do our work as farmer, builder, designer, cook or computer operator using our particular skill, the difference now being we are probably working away from our community and contributing little to it except socially in our spare time and often it isn’t the precise community of our choice but the one we can afford in monetary terms. Moreover, we work most of our life for an employer or series of employers who pay us more on paper than our net salary or take home pay with the remainder being passed on to various government agencies which, in turn, give us some back as health care, unemployment pay and various benefits and pensions as time, situation or entitlement dictate.

Without workers there is neither a product nor a service to sell and therefore no money is generated for the system, no money is generated to produce profit for the capitalists. Also, without worker input neither national nor local governments have money of their own. They are financed only by what they collect from employers in direct taxation and deductions for employees gross pay and from indirect taxes. The tax on employers comes from profit remaining after paying their bills and invoices for utilities, goods, raw materials, other overheads and the wages bill, all of which profit has been generated by the workforce. The deductions from employees’ pay also comes from the surplus generated by the workers but it forms a part of the overall sum that the employer is prepared to pay for the labour rendered.

Net pay is what is deemed sufficient and appropriate according to the type of employment. The difference in amount between gross and net pay, that which is utilised as deductions, (all of which is paid by the employer), is a deal struck between government and employers with some negotiation by trades unions on behalf of the employees. (The employee always striving for a larger remuneration in opposition to the employer looking to reduce it as much as possible.)

Gross pay, to a certain extent, appeases workers because they perceives themselves to be earning more than they are, although they generally believe they are being robbed on a regular basis, seeing a considerable amount clawed back from what they maintain they have rightfully earned. Statistics show that what is transferred from gross pay to the Inland Revenue and the National Insurance scheme more or less goes back to workers as various benefits and payments.

Defence, policing, health, education and roads, and the wages of the whole hierarchy of “public servants” from Prime Minister and Lord of the Admiralty to lowly office clerk, ambulance driver and teaching assistant all come ultimately from the surplus workers generate for their employers as profits.. The same goes for all the buildings and upkeep of the same, for the heating, lighting, cleaning, furnishings and all materials, vehicles – in fact everything used in their operations from stealth fighter to paper clip.

Today’s capitalist world is much more complicated and intertwined than that of our ancestors. We rely on international trade for many commodities and use ultra-sophisticated technology to allow us to track transactions worldwide, technology which, in theory, should simplify most matters, yet somehow we have become entangled in an overcomplicated web from which it is difficult to see a way out. Some say there is no way out of the present system. Our worker may disagree. If  workers accept that they have to work in order to live their life – and the vast majority do – does that mean that we also have to accept the incredible complications that capitalism and working for money involve (and that have certainly led to the miserable times many workers are now suffering in the latest financial crisis)? Can we not simply produce things directly for use, working for ourselves and the common good too, knowing that others will be doing the same?

Those who work – those who produce the useful things and provide the useful services – are the lynch pin, the vital component. They are indispensable. The capitalist, the employer is dispensable. Removing layers of unnecessary top-heavy bureaucracy, removing any necessity for taxation by removing the blight of money is the far simpler way. The nurse will tend the sick, the plumber will ensure no leaks, the farmer will provide food and the unemployed will no longer be unoccupied for there is much to be done cooperatively within all our communities. And plenty enough, too, for all to partake of the fruits of our collective labour.

Janet Surman