On The Revolutionary Road (2005)

Film Review from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Motorcycle Diaries

It's become a common practice to give directors grammatical ownership of a film regardless of how much input they have. So we have Hitchcock's The Birds, Anderson's If, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, as well as Polanski's Macbeth and Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. Directors, like managers, are important to some extent, but most people know that when the boss is off the firm runs just as well, if not better. The practice of elevating the director to a position of supreme importance relegates to inconsequential roles the hundreds of other workers involved in a production. To make a film without a director would be difficult; to make one without engineers, musicians, caterers and cleaners would be impossible.

Such hierarchical structures have dominated society for so long that they appear natural and permanent, and revolutionary action has succeeded only to replace one hierarchy with another. Struggles for communism become struggles for fairer capitalism, as the experience of Latin America shows. Its turbulent recent history has produced a gallery of memorable radicals, but in terms of cult status there are few to compare with Ernesto Che Guevara. The Motorcycle Diaries, of which the director Walter Salles was one of the many workers involved in its making, concerns the early life of one of the 20th century's most charismatic rebels and whose image has become one of its most enduring icons.

Set in 1952, Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado take off on a 1939 Norton for a tour of South America intending to bring medical relief (they are both doctors) to the needy, and sexual relief to their own needy libidos. But the exuberance and exhilaration of single young men high-tailing it around foreign countries is balanced by the need to do good beyond the remit of the Hippocratic oath which we see developing in the 23-year-old Guevara as the journey progresses. As the real Che explained in On Revolutionary Medicine: 'I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease I began to realise that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous I wanted to help those people.'

Where medicine cannot help, Guevara offers money, moral support and brutal honesty. On behalf of dispossessed peasants he throws stones and hurls abuse. For the sick of the leper colony where he briefly works, he swims the river that separates them from the healthy whilst battling against currents and his own asthma. This is Che the champion of the downtrodden, the challenger of injustice, the idol in the making. Consequently, the film itself is fertilised with the concerns of its hero and a message begins to form. This becomes clear at the end when a montage of South Americas working and peasant class is displayed in a vividness only monochrome can achieve. These people are still with us, the film seems to say. There is still work to be done.

Fortunately the film has no anachronisms which refer to Guevara's later status or appearance; no scenes with him in a department store plumping for the beret or trying on a pair of Cuban heels. Joy and misery are lucidly brought to life in a film that can be enjoyed even if you are one of the few people who has never heard of Che Guevara.

There are as few things to say about the cult of Guevara as there are about the cult of the director. Both reinforce the notion that socio-cultural events are made only by powerful individuals rather than by the thousands of workers who truly make history. Perhaps it is time we donned our berets, put on our army boots and proclaimed in sonorous tones: Workers of the film industry unite!

Neil Windle

What Marx Should Have Said To Kropotkin (1994)

The following is the transcript of a talk given by Adam Buick to the 1994 Socialist Party of Great Britain Summer School, which was held that year  at Ruskin College in Oxford, England.

I once read a book which contained a sentence which began "As Marx said to Lenin ..." This would not have been a physical impossibility, as Marx's life and Lenin's life did overlap for 13 years. But quite why - and how - Marx would have confided his political views to a schoolboy in provincial Russia was not explained. In short, it never happened nor was it plausible to imagine it could have happened.

Marx-Kropotkin meeting on the other hand, though it never did happen, could well have. Kropotkin was born in 1842, Marx in 1818 so, although Marx was a generation older, they could have met and discussed (just as Marx had in fact met and discussed with the three founding fathers of modern anarchism, Proudhon, Bakunin and Max Stirner).

If Marx and Kropotkin had have met, it could have been on two occasions: in 1876-7 when Kropotkin arrived in England after making a dramatic and well-publicised escape from a Russian prison, or in 1880-1 when Kropotkin again lived in England for a while (before going to France - and ending up in a French prison).

As a matter of fact, I think Marx would have been quite keen to have met Kropotkin on both these occasions. In the last years of his life (he was to die in 1883. aged 65) Marx took a great interest in Russia. He had always seen Tsarist Russia as a threat to democratic, let alone socialist advance in Western Europe and was interested in the prospects of an anti-Tsarist revolution there. He learned Russian and began to study in detail its history and social and political structure.

Kropotkin's reputation during Marx's lifetime was not so much as an anarchist but as a Russian revolutionary with socialist leanings and as a geographer and explorer. Kropotkin came from a very privileged background. A member of the old Moscow aristocracy and a hereditary prince, he had been enrolled in the elite corps of pages, a military academy that supplied personal assistants to the Tsar. He had himself been the Tsar's personal page for a while, but when it came to choosing which regiment to be an officer in he opted not for some prestigious one but for a regiment of Cossacks in Siberia a first sign that he was becoming disillusioned with the Tsarist regime. In Siberia, where he did his exploring and geological studies, his liberal sentiments grew turning in revolutionary ones, especially after a visit to Switzerland in 1872/3 where he joined the IWMA (International Working Mens Association, or First International). On his return to Russia he became involved in a revolutionary circle, of the "go to the people" variety rather than the conspiracies to assassinate Tsarist officials and even the Tsars that later developed. He got arrested and was imprisoned, escaping, as I have mentioned, in 1876.

Marx would have loved to have met such a person and to have discussed with him the prospects for an anti-Tsarist revolution and for socialism in Russia including the Russian peasant commune (or mir). But the title of this talk is not "What Marx Would Have Said to Kropotkin". but what "Marx Should Have Said to Kropotkin". So what, then, should Marx have said?

Three things:

1. "Don't call me a State Socialist! I was putting forward a case for abolishing the State while you were still a toddler".
2. "With regard to paying people in labour-time vouchers in the early days of Socialist society, you were right and I was wrong. This was a silly, unworkable idea".
3. "Like me. You're a Socialist. We both want a stateless, moneyless, wageless society. Why then do you feel you have more in common with non-socialist opponents of the State than with me? After all, your disagreement with them is over ends, while you're disagreement with me is only over means".

Marx
Most people in this room will already know either from reading Marx themselves or from hearing the arguments that Marx was not what in the 1880s and 1890s was called a "State Socialist" but that, on the contrary, he was what might be called a "no-State Socialist". This, however, is not what most people out there, including many otherwise well-informed people, think. The myth of Marx the Statist is widely accepted, as a result, it has to be said, not just of his critics but also of many (perhaps even most) of those who have regarded themselves as his supporters.

But it is a myth and one that I'd like to begin by demolishing. The French marxologist, Maximilien Rubel, in an article first published in 1973 entitled "Marx: Theorist of Anarchism" has even argued that Marx was one of the pioneers of modern anarchism! I'm not sure I'd want to call Marx an anarchist without qualification, but I think a strong case can be made out for seeing Marx as the first person to put forward a full theory of no-state communism. Marx was, if you like, the first coherent and consistent theorist of an anarchist communist society. The quotes that I'll be using to show this are mostly taken from Rubel's article.

Marx became a Socialist, or Communist as it was then known and as Marx generally described himself, sometime in 1843. Before that he had been a simple Democrat and active as the editor of a Cologne newspaper financed by the radical section of the Rhineland capitalists and which advocated political democracy for Prussia (which governed the Rhineland) and Germany generally.

At this time Marx accepted the view of the then dominant school of political thought in Germany that of Hegel that the State was a higher realm of human activity than the realm of everyday economic activity ("civil society"). This was because, whereas in their everyday economic activity humans were acting in their own individual selfish interest (as they had to, to survive), the State was the realm in which they pursued the common good, the general interest of all. So the State in concrete terms, the law-making and law-enforcing institutions of society (the government, the parliament, the courts, the army, the police, prisons) was seen as representing the interests of the community as a whole. As indeed it still generally is seen.

Actually. Hegel was a great deal more philosophical than this, speaking of the State as the embodiment of reason, etc. He also saw the existing Protestant Christian Kingdom of Prussia as filling this role. But Marx and the group of Young Hegelians to which he then belonged argued that the State would not become the representative of the whole community until and unless all its citizens had an equal say in its decision-making processes, until, in other words, it had become a Democratic State.

When Marx became a Communist and came to reject individualism as the regulating principle of everyday economic life his perspective altered. The establishment of Communism would mean that it would be the realm of everyday economic activity that would become the realm in which humans pursued the common interest they would no longer be individuals trying to make an independent living in conflict with all others trying to do the same, but members of a real community cooperating to meet their needs. This meant that there would no longer be any need for another, separate and superior, realm of activity in which the common interest was pursued. There was no need, in other words, for a State.

In fact, once he had become a Communist Marx came to see the State as a false (or at least only a very partial) community and as a realm that only needed to exist where individualism was the regulating principle of everyday life. It was an institution that was only needed, and only arose, out of such conditions, in order to restrain economic individualism in case it should tear society apart.

Marx expressed these views in the first article he wrote after becoming a Socialist/Communist published in 1844 and called "On the Jewish Question". This was the question of whether or not Jews who did not convert to Christianity should be granted political and civil rights (in Prussia at that time only Christians could vote, be civil servants, army officers, etc). Naturally. Marx argued "yes", but went on to argue that "political emancipation", or the establishment of a Democratic State with equal political rights, for all, did not amount to full human emancipation.

Political emancipation and a Democratic State, he pointed out had been achieved in the US but humans there were still not in conscious control of their destiny as their lives were still dominated by money and the need to acquire it to survive. Human emancipation, could only be achieved in a communist society where needs would be satisfied directly without having to go through the medium of money. Such a moneyless, communist society would not require a State, not even a democratic one, since there would then no longer be any need for a separate, political realm in which the general interest was pursued this would be being done directly at the level of everyday life.

As Marx put it in the philosophical terms in which he then expressed himself:

"Man must recognise his own forces as social forces, organise them, and thus no longer separate social forces from himself in the form of political forces. Only when this has been achieved will human emancipation be complete" ( Jewish Question, 1844. Early Texts, p. 108).

So, what Marx was advocating was a society without money and without a State an anarchist communist society, if you like. And this remained his goal for the rest of his life, as a few quotes will confirm:

"The existence of the State and the existence of slavery are inseparable" (1844 article, Early Texts, p. 213).

"[The proletarians] find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State" (1845, German Ideology, p. 85).

Particularly significant is what he wrote in 1847 in The Poverty of Philosophy. This is a criticism of the economic views of Proudhon, the man who is regarded by Anarchists as the founder of modern anarchism. Proudhon wanted a society without government, a society he called "Anarchy". However, he was not a Socialist or Communist but an advocate of various cranky financial reforms in the context of a completely free market economy. In fact he was a bitter opponent of Communism as he believed that this would immensely increase the power of the government and turn people into State slaves (the common bourgeois objection to communism at the time.

So it is very relevant how Marx dealt with Proudhon's views. Naturally, he shows that a free market economy based on free credit is not the answer. Communism is, but Marx underlines that this will be a society without a State:

"Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No ... The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society" (Poverty of Philosophy, 1847. Pp 196-7).

Exactly the same point is made in the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

"When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of the associated individuals, the public power will lose its political character" (1848 Communist Manifesto, p. 81).

After the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871 Marx was called upon to write what amounted to an obituary for it on behalf of the General Council of the IWMA. He wrote various drafts for this statement which was published under the title The Civil War in France. In one of these drafts Marx wrote:

"This was, therefore, a Revolution not against this or that, Legitimate, Constitutional, Republican or Imperialist form of State Power. It was a Revolution against the State itself, of this supernaturalist Abortion of society, a resumption by the people for the people of its own social life. It was not a revolution to transfer it from one fraction of the ruling class to the other, but a Revolution to break down this horrid machinery of Class-domination itself" (p. 166).

This was an exaggerated description of what the Paris Commune was about (it was not the attempted socialist revolution that this suggests) and it was no doubt because of this that Marx did not include this passage in the final version. But it does show very clearly that Marx thought that the socialist revolution had to be a revolution against the State, not a revolution to establish a more powerful, centralised State.

I only want to give one more quote from Marx but a very significant one as in it he uses the actual word "Anarchy". In the course of the dispute that broke out in the IWMA after the suppression of the Paris Commune, Bakunin circulated a document in which he claimed Marx stood for a new State in which a new ruling class of ex-workers would rule over the mass of workers who would remain exploited and oppressed. Marx wrote some notes in the margin of his copy of Bakunin's pamphlet. Some are just words like "idiot" and "ass" but others are more substantial, including the following:

"All Socialists understand by "anarchy" this: the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, once achieved, then the power of the State, which serves to keep the great producing majority under the yoke of a small exploiting minority, will disappear and the functions of government will be transformed into simple administrative functions"(1874).

Here Marx is saying, in explicit terms, that the communist society he sees as the aim of the working class movement is to be a no-state, no-government society. Here Marx is proclaiming himself to be an . . . . anarchist communist. Eight years before Kropotkin.

Kropotkin
There can be no doubt that Kropotkin was a Socialist in the sense we use the term. In fact he probably did more than any other well-known 18th century Socialist to promote the idea that Socialism means not just a stateless but also a moneyless and wageless society a society where the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" would apply fully, where individuals would have free access to goods and services according to their own self-defined needs and without rationing of any kind. Kropotkin, in fact, always regarded himself as a Socialist and always called himself a Socialist.

Here, for instance, is what he wrote in an article in an English magazine in 1887:

"Common possession of the necessaries for production implies common enjoyment of the fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable organisation of society can only arise when every wage-system is abandoned, and when everybody, contributing for the common well-being to the full extent of his capacities, shall enjoy also from the common stock of society to the fullest possible extent of his needs "(1887, Anarchism Communism: Its Basis and Principles, p. 59).

The Swiss Jura Federation of the IWMA adopted "complete communism" as its aim in 1880. Previously it had stood for the common ownership of all productive resources but for a person's share in consumer goods and services to be proportional to the number of hours of work they had performed. Kropotkin and others criticised this as being only "incomplete" or "partial" communism and argued that a consistent communism implies free consumption according to individual needs as well as common ownership.

At this time Kropotkin (like many others) felt that capitalism could not last into the 20th century and that therefore a socialist resolution was more or less imminent. His articles from this periods (1880s) all advocate that the aim of this revolution should not be the formation of a revolutionary government nor the institution of a so-called "Workers State" (he actually used the term) but the immediate establishment of full communism.When a number of his articles from this period were collected together and published (in French, the language he wrote them in, though from 1886 he resided permanently in England till returning to Russia in 1917 after the overthrow of the Tsar) in 1892, Kropotkin gave the book the title The Conquest of Bread. This well sums up what he thought the revolution should be all about: not about conquering political power and setting up a new political regime (as had happened many times in France without altering the position of the majority of the people), but about meeting the immediate consumption needs for food, clothing and shelter of the impoverished majority. To this end. he advocated that all food, clothes and houses in areas won by the revolution should be put into a common pool to which every member of the oppressed class should have free access according to their basic needs.

The words Kropotkin used for "free access" were (in French) "pris au tas", literally "taking from the pile" or, colloquially, "help yourself, take what you need". If this wasn't done, said Kropotkin, then the Revolution would have failed. It has to be said, however, that Kropotkin's conception of the form the Revolution would take was somewhat old-fashioned, even for his days: a series of town risings on the lines of the Paris Commune of 1871.

One of the articles that later appeared in The Conquest of Bread was called "The Wage System" (written in 1888, it appeared as a pamphlet in English in 1889). In my opinion, it is the best refutation that has been written of the idea of Labour Time Vouchers an idea, of course, that Marx somewhat unwisely endorsed in his 1875 comments on the Gotha programme of the German Social Democrats. Kropotkin's criticism was not in fact specifically aimed at Marx (he couldn't have known what Marx's views on the subject were since Marx's comments had not been made public at the time Kropotkin was writing). It was aimed at all those, including some anarchists as well as the German Social Democrats, who advocated the use of Labour Time Vouchers (LTVs), labour certificates, labour checks, labour chits, labour money, labour notes as they were variously called, to regulate consumption in a Socialist society.

Kropotkin put forward two simple, but effective arguments.

First, that it just didn't make sense to try to measure an individual's contribution to production. This was impossible since production was not (or no longer) individual, but was cooperative and social. All the workers in a particular factory or mine contributed to the product, but only as a group, not individually. In fact, in the end all that is produced is the result of the collective work effort of all the producers in all farms, mines, factories, transport, services, etc. So:

"No hard and fast line can be drawn between the work of one and the work of another. To measure them by results leads to absurdity. To divide them into fractions and measured them by hours of labour leads to absurdity also. One course remains: not to measure them at all, but to recognise the right of all who take part in productive labour first of all to live - and then to enjoy the comforts of life" (1888, The Wage System, p. 10).

Kropotkin's second argument was that, in any event, and even if production had still been individual, it still wouldn't be fair to ration a person's consumption by the number of hours worked. Because the skills they would be using would have been acquired only through society they weren't born with them, but were benefiting from the experience of countless past generations. And the towns and factories they worked in, as well as the general level of education and culture, were likewise the result of the work of past generations. So:

"A society that has seized upon all social wealth, and has plainly announced that all have a right to this wealth, whatever may be the part they have taken in creating it in the past, will be obliged to give up all idea of wages, either in money or in labour notes" (1888. The Wage System, p.8).

What Kropotkin was claiming was that to use LTVs to regulate consumption would be to retain the wages system.

If people are to be given labour vouchers to regulate consumption, this implies that goods and services have to be given labour-time "prices". I've got the word "prices" in inverted commas in my notes but I could as well have left them out, as it is clear that the LTV system does imply problems of supply and demand, inflation, devaluation, etc, even taxes, just like the ordinary monetary system does.

When he endorsed LTVs Marx never said anything about this, though he had done earlier when he had discussed and dismissed as unworkable various schemes that had been put forward for introducing labour money under capitalism. What he failed to realise was that many of his objections also applied to the use of LTVs in Socialism. LTVs were, or would rapidly have become, labour money and we'd be back to buying and selling and capitalism.

It was Kropotkin's merit to have seen this and to have denounced the LTV system as nonsense a criticism of course which we have long taken on board.

Kropotkin was also able to see that because they didn't really aim at abolishing the wages system, groups like the German Social Democrats stood not for socialism, but for State capitalism. In fact Kropotkin must have been one of the first to use this term, as for instance in his autobiography Memoirs of A Revolutionist that first appeared in 1899. And in one of another series of articles later published (in 1913) in Modern Science and Anarchism:

"We entirely differ from all the sections of state socialists in that we do not see in the system of state capitalism, which is now preached under the name of collectivism, a solution to the social question. We see in the organisation of the posts and telegraphs, in the State railways, and the like which are represented as illustrations of a society without capitalists nothing but a new, perhaps improved, but still undesirable form of the wage system" (1913, Modern Science and Anarchism, p. 170).

"Anarchism cannot see in the next coming revolutions a mere exchange of monetary symbols for labor-checks, or an exchange of present capitalism for state-capitalism" (p.195).

So, as I said, if Marx had met Kropotkin he ought to have conceded that he was wrong on labour-time vouchers and that Kropotkin was right.

Of course Marx could have said that, in the end, there is no point in discussing now how goods should be distributed in the early days of Socialism, since that will have to depend on how much there was to distribute at the time of the socialist revolution. In fact this is what he did say. Kropotkin was fully aware of this and one of the themes of the Conquest of Bread was to show that enough food, clothing and shelter already existed, or could very rapidly be brought into existence, to satisfy people's needs for them. He knew that his call for the revolution to bring in full communism immediately depended on this being the case, and he used his scientific approach and knowledge to demonstrate that it was. This was also the theme of his other book Fields, Factories and Workshops, the first edition of which came out in 1899. Whereas the assumption in the Conquest of Bread was that communism would and should be implemented to begin with in one town and its surrounding countryside, here Kropotkin set out to show that a self-sufficient anarchist communist society could be established in the two islands that make up the British Isles.

In the 1880s, as I said, Kropotkin really believed that a Socialist revolution was more or less round the corner. When it became clear that this was not the case, he settled down to trying to give anarchism a scientific basis in much the same way as Engels did for socialism. And just as Engels spoke of "scientific socialism", so Kropotkin spoke of "scientific anarchism". Kropotkin was in fact better-qualified to do this than Engels since he was actually a scientist himself, having made a major contribution to an understanding of the geology and geography of North East Asia and nearly becoming the Secretary of the Russian Geographic Society (he had been offered the post, but turned it down in order to devote his life to revolutionary activity).

Kropotkin's great achievement here was undoubtedly his book Mutual Aid (1902), which used to be on the bookshelves of every Socialist (in fact we used to sell it as a Socialist book along with those of Marx and Engels). Subtitled "A Factor in Evolution", this was a refutation of the Social Darwinist view (then very popular as a defence and justification of capitalism) that capitalism was natural as "the struggle for existence" and "the survival of the fittest" were inevitable features of all animal societies, including those formed by the animal species homo sapiens.

Kropotkin produced the evidence to show that "mutual aid" and cooperation had been an important factor in both biological and social evolution. It was the right book at the right time as far as Socialists were concerned and by the right person, a Socialist who had had some scientific training and experience. This no doubt explains its one-time immense popularity amongst critics of capitalism. It showed that nature was not like capitalism and that human beings were social, cooperating animals and not isolated, competing individuals. This has since been confirmed many times by other scientists anthropologists, ethnologists, sociologists and others and is now an integral part of the case for socialism as a refutation of the so-called "human nature" objection.

Incidentally, the American scientific writer Stephen Jay Gould in his collection of articles Bully for Brontosaurus has a chapter on Kropotkin called "Kropotkin Was No Crackpot" in which he says that most of what Kropotkin wrote in Mutual Aid has stood the test of time, even if he did commit the same fallacy as the Social Darwinists (to reach the opposite conclusion, of course) of arguing from what happened in the rest of nature to what should happen in human society.

Creating an anarchist tradition
The other thing Kropotkin did, once his revolutionary days were over, was to try to create an anarchist tradition separate and distinct from the socialist tradition. Originally, those who became the anarchists were one of a number of different groups within the First International, a group which saw themselves as Socialists and who called themselves Socialists. They stood for the end of the rule and privileges of the bourgeoisie, for the common ownership of productive resources, for the abolition of the wages system and for production for use not profit. In other words, they were part and saw themselves as part of a broader anti-capitalist movement.

This, no doubt, is why we today would find just as much to agree with in the writings of those in this tradition Kropotkin, Malatesta. Rudolf Rocker, Alexander Berkman and others as we do in the writings of those more directly in our tradition like Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Plekhanov. And our differences with them on how to get to the classless stateless, wageless, moneyless society that is Socialism are no greater, or no less, than those with the Social Democratic tradition of the Second International from which we emerged.

Perhaps because he saw that most of those who called themselves Socialists (and the German Social Democrats in particular) stood in fact for State capitalism, Kropotkin became the prime mover in an attempt to invent a separate "anarchist" tradition. Although he himself was a thorough-going Communist, he dropped the insistence on standing for a moneyless and wageless society as a condition for admission to this tradition in favour of standing only for a stateless society.

As a result, some strange people, from a working class point of view, came to be included in particular extreme individualists like Max Stirner as well as various currency cranks and free marketeers and other advocates of complete laissez-faire in the tradition of Proudhon. All of them raving anti-Socialists but with whom Kropotkin felt some affinity just because they envisaged the disappearance of the State even though they were all in favour of money and the market.

It has to be said that Kropotkin (who wrote the contribution on "Anarchism" that appeared for years in the Encyclopaedia Britannica) largely succeeded in creating this anarchist tradition which lumped together all those who opposed the state from whatever point of view. It has affected anarchism ever since. Most anarchists today justify their anarchism not on the grounds that they want to abolish the State because it is an instrument of class oppression and defender of private property and capitalist exploitation, but on the grounds of the "right of the individual" to be unrestrained by any external authority. Look at the various anthologies of anarchism in the bookshops and you will see that the socialist element has shrunk to a distinct minority viewpoint.

The idea of the isolated, completely independent and unrestrained individual is an absurd proposition, both from the philosophical point of view and from the point of view of social theory. It assumes that the individual exists prior to society. And it is this that makes it absurd since, clearly, society exists prior to any particular individual. An individual human being does not, and could not, exist outside society: all the things that makes humans specifically human arose in and through society language, abstract thought, the transmission of acquired experience by non-biological means, the consciousness of being a separate individual, even our physical attributes (voice box, brain size), all these are social products.

Society is of course composed of individuals, but of social and already socialised individuals, not of previously independently-existing individuals who came together to set up society and who retain certain pre-existing rights against society, including the right not to comply with majority decisions if they don't want to. People who take up this position are opposing not so much the State as Society. The ironic thing here is that Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is one of the best refutations of extreme individualist position, which of course is shared by open supporters of capitalism as well as probably by most anarchists nowadays.

It was because he understood that anarchists, including some who regarded themselves as Communists, were taking up an anti-society rather than a simple anti-State position that William Morris always refused to call himself an anarchist; in fact to denounce anarchism (in this sense) as an impossibility. This from a man who is on record as saying:

"State Socialism? I don't agree with it, in fact I think the two words contradict one another, and that it is the business of Socialise to destroy the State and put Free Society in its place"(Morris, Commonweal, 17 May 1890, p.479).

So there would have been no need for Marx to have been clairvoyant in the early 1880s and warned Kropotkin against going off the rails by associating with anti-socialist, individualist anarchists as he was to after Marx's death. Morris could have done it for him, and no doubt did since Morris and Kropotkin met frequently up to Morris's own death in 1896.

It only remains to mention the sad end to Kropotkin's political life. When in 1914 war broke out Kropotkin came out in vociferous support of the British-French-Russian side against the German-Austro-Hungarian side in that struggle for markets, trade routes and spheres of influence. He was immediately disowned as a traitor (as he was) by most of the anarchist movement.

It was clear that his character was marred by a deep-rooted anti-German prejudice which led him to advocate and cheer on the slaughter of millions of workers in a conflict between two imperialist power blocs. Even after he returned to Russia following the overthrow of the Tsar in March 1917 he still advocated continued Russian participation in the slaughter. The Russian soldiers, however, were more sensible. They voted with their feet, as Lenin put it, by simply walking away from the front.

Kropotkin died in Russia in February l921 and his funeral was the occasion of the last public opposition to the state capitalist regime Lenin and the Bolsheviks were setting up in Russia. He died a discredited old man, but this should not detract from his contribution to socialist ideas in the rest of his. life. After all. some others who we have always recognised made a contribution, such as Kautsky and Plekhanov, also took (separate) sides in this imperialist slaughter. And we are on record as criticising Marx for his support of the British-French-Turkish side in the Crimean War.

I want to end on a point anarchists should appreciate. This talk has been called "What Marx Should Have Said to Kropotkin". But neither Marx nor Kropotkin should be regarded as authorities, whose views should be accepted just because they put them forward. They should be regarded simply as two 19th century Socialists who made some interesting contributions to the development of Socialist ideas. Their views are not, and should not be regarded, as any more "authoritative" than those of any of us in this room. The case for a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society rests on the facts and on its own merits, not on what one or other great man may or may not have said or written.

Adam Buick

Bertold Brecht's Mother Courage (1998)

Theatre Review from the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht. Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich.

Brecht's epic plays Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941, The Life of Galileo (1943), The Good Person of Szechuan (1943) and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1945), dont lack for performances, in spite of their overtly political agendas. Brecht would no doubt find some irony in the fact that the essentially bourgeois theatrical establishment finds merit and an audience for these plays, in spite of their obviously revolutionary flavour.

At one level Mother Courage is an account of the struggle of a gutsy woman and her family in a period of war. Brecht sets the play in the Thirty Years War the better to enlist the objectivity of the audience. However, the play is also structured so that it can be seen as a parable and metaphor, and audiences are invited to draw particular conclusions about the nature of all wars and people's reactions to them. the challenge for anyone directing and playing in Mother Courage is to ensure that play emerges essentially as a metaphor, and that the audience doesnt identify too much with the plight of its apparent heroine. Mother Courage, pushing her cart from one place to another, is a business woman intent on making money out of the war. She says that she isn't interested in politics only the wellbeing of her family and herself, but the play makes it clear that she colludes with the system that sees war as a means of making profits, and in so doing she loses all her children.

Brecht saw the theatre as serving the needs of society not those of the playwright, and from his (as he saw it) anti-capitalist position this meant using the theatre as a vehicle for criticising capitalism. Typically Brecht wished to display events on stage in an unusual way: a way which would prevent use from identifying ourselves unreservedly with the plight of, for example, a single character. He talked about "a double process" which would allow us "to lose ourselves in the agony (of events) and at the same time not to lose ourselves", the better to understand the plight of people in a more objective, analytical manner. However, Brecht himself wasnt always successful in achieving the necessary balance. At the play's first performance in Zurich in 1941, which he directed, the audience seems to have hugely admired Mother Courage's spirit and her ability to survive, without recognising Brecht's larger strictures about capitalism and war.

The audience at the Wolsey in Ipswich when I saw the play recently made no such easy identification. In an admirable production which manages to draw the audience into the spirit of the enterprise, we are left in no doubt about the roots of war and its monstrous human consequences; and of the culpability of Mother Courage in the death of her children. Full of the satire and occasional moments of the grotesque, and intercut by songs in the manner of a music hall, the play makes for wonderful evening. As Brecht had it "War is a continuation of business by other means" and "business people are in it for what they can get". Those leaving the theatre that evening and being immediately confronted by a newspaper poster advising of "Kosovo Air Strikes", might have recognised the force of these injunctions in a new way.

Michael Gill

June 2006 Socialist Standard Online

Hello All,

Just a wee bulletin to mention that the June 2006 Socialist Standard is online. People who would like to read it in all its glory as a colourful pdf can click on the following link:

Socialist Standard June 2006

People who might just want to check out individual articles and book reviews can also click on the links listed below.

As mentioned previously, people can take advantage of the offer of the free three trial subscription to the magazine. Details of how to go about ripping the arm off of the person offering up this generous freebie are available on the profile page. Just remember to mention MySpace when sending in your request - it keeps Rupert Murdoch happy.

all the best,
Darren
The World Cup and Workerism Blog

June 2006 Socialist Standard

Editorial - They Call It Sport, M'lud
World Cup 2006 Fever

Pathfinder

The regular science column in the Socialist Standard. This month's articles are about how some people will seek to swap the real world for a virtual one.

The British National Party Advances - What Does It Mean?

The BNP gained seats in the May local elections because it put together a better package of lies than the mainstream parties.

Exporting Crime

The witch hunt against ex-prisoners from abroad shows that xenophobia is now more than ever official policy.

Cooking the Books

Regular economics column in the Socialist Standard carries articles on Capitalist Ideals & Towards an Economic Crash?

'Prejudice and Equality'

The Equality Act, which came into force earlier this year, covers discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender, disability and race. Yet it illustrates the point that government legislation cannot in itself change people's attitudes.

Japan: A Woman for Emperor?

No male heir born in 40 years sparks a debate about bringing "gender equality" to the Japanese monarchy. What is the role of the Japanese monarchy? Would a female monarch be a step forward?

JK Galbraith: a Radical Keynesian
An economist who remained loyal to the end to the discredited view that
government intervention can make capitalism work in the interest of the

majority.

Book Reviews

Graham Harvey: We Want Real Food/Steven Poole: Unspeak/Hyashi Hiroyoshi: Marx's Labor Theory of Value. A Defense/Stephen Ingle: The Social and Political Thought of George Orwell: A reassessment.

Modern Times

Exhibition Review of Modernism 1914-1939: Designing a New World, Victoria & Albert Museum.

50 Years Ago
The Mosley Movement Today: British Fascism's New Look

Greasy Pole - Panic Aboard SS New Labour

Regular monthly column in the Socialist Standard that looks at current British politics from a historical angle. This month's article, looking at the increasing specualtion surrounding Tony Blair and how he might step down as Prime Minister before his full third term of office is completed, writes of how a a strategically timed withdrawal from government need not ruin a political career.

Voice From The Back

An irreverent look at the insanity, greed, barbarity and hypocrisy of capitalism.

Cooking the Books: Capitalist Ideals (2006)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The unacceptable face of capitalism" has become a standard term for excusing some excess of capitalist enterprise as if capitalism could ever have an acceptable face. At the annual jamboree of the Institute of Directors at the end of April, Todd Stitzer, chief executive of the Cadbury Schweppes group, whined that "business bashing has become everyone's favourite sport".

"He said recent scandals and disasters, from 'Enron to Arthur Andersen to Exxon Valdez and Bhopal', were not typical. 'These episodes did expose the unacceptable face of capitalism . . . But the business world is not populated by malignant people determined to harm others and exploit the world for base profit'" (Daily Telegraph, 27 April).

He was also reported as saying that businesses had to try to convince the public that companies were "capitalists with ideals" (London Times, 27 April).

Of course Stitzer and other heads of capitalist corporations are not (or at least the vast majority of them aren't) "malignant people determined to harm others and exploit the world" but it remains true that their "ideal" is, and has to be, maximizing profits, base or otherwise.

The personal views and motivations of business leaders are not relevant to the way the capitalist system works. Business leaders are cogs in the economic mechanism of the accumulation of capital out of profits derived from the surplus value produced by the class of wage and salary workers. They have to pursue a policy of maximising profits, even if this might "harm others and exploit the world", as this is what has to be done for their particular company - in fact, for any company - to stay in the competitive struggle for profits. If they didn't do it, somebody else would be found who would.

It is true that some of them seem to have completely internalised putting the making of profits before everything else and delight in applying this ruthlessly, and that this has earned business its deserved reputation for having an interest only in the bottom line. Others, such as Stitzer, may have some qualms about what they are doing, but do it all the same.

Then there was the case of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital Trust which was tricked by a consortium which had contracted to build a new hospital for them. The "re-financing" deal was exposed by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, whose (Tory) chairman, Edward Leigh, called it . . . "the unacceptable face of capitalism".

What happened was that, after the hospital had been built, the consortium Octagon was able to obtain better financial conditions for the money it had borrowed to build the hospital. An extra £116 million was raised which, according to the (Tory) MP for Norwich South, Richard Bacon, was used "not to build more wards or a new cardiac unit. The sole purpose of this extra borrowing was to speed up the rate of return to investors" (London Times, 3 May).

Octagon had done nothing illegal. They had merely used their financial expertise to get a favourable deal for their shareholders at the expense of a hospital trust inexperienced in such matters. It happens all the time. In fact, such wheeling and dealing is virtually all that goes on in the City of London where not an ounce of wealth is created, but where financial capitalists try to trick each other - and any inexperienced suckers they come across - out of what has been produced by the working class.

The Wobblies (1986)

This article was originally published in the August-September 1986 issue of the Socialist View, which was the journal of the World Socialist Party of Ireland, a companion party of the World Socialist Movement.

On the eve of the American celebrations to mark the centenary of the Statue of Liberty, Channel 4 gave us a rare treat indeed - a documentary film entitled The Wobblies. As America waited to unleash its professionally staged, hand in the heart, tear in the eye nationalism, The Wobblies provided an historic insight into the realities of the American version of "Liberty" and "Democracy".

The one and a half hour documentary was a poignant recollection of the courage and ideas of these Americans who were members of the Union, the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as "The Wobblies".

The reason this Union is interesting to socialists is two-fold. Firstly, it was a highly political union which understood the necessity to question the very basis of capitalist society and secondly, its history acts as a good example of how ideas become spread, and, more importantly, accepted.

The realities of Capitalism became stark in America during the latter half of the last century, and the beginning of this one. The growth of the big corporations, such as Rockefellers Standard Oil and Carnegie's US Steel Corporation bought up the vast supplies of cheap migrant labour which was flooding country. The new American capitalists were not slow in understanding their class identity and obligations: "Any man who pays more for labour than the lowest sum he can get it for is robbing his shareholders", is how one leading industrialist echoed the sentiments of this new "land of the free". "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half" said Jay Gould, Financier, exposing the representatives of democracy for the liars they are.

The new "American" working class, imported from all over the world, were, as always, the recipients of this new "freedom" and, having been bought cheaply by the vast corporations, many became more exposed to the ravages of the system because they were not properly organised in trade unions.

It was clear from the start that the I.W.W. was something new and fresh, and it was equally clear that they had an understanding and energy second to none. J.P. Thompson, I.W.W. organiser: "One class owns the industries and does not operate them - another class operates them and does not own them". This statement could have come from the pages of Socialist View but the ideas of the I.W.W. became even more interesting when reading their "preamble" or statement of objectives:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wages System".

Nothing new in a Trade Union recognising the existence of the class struggle but a Union talking about the "workers of the world . . . taking possession of the earth" , was certainly new, and then to go on to state their aim as the abolition of the wages system, was revolutionary.

When we consider that the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain, the longest running companion party of the World Socialist Movement was formed in 1904, just a year earlier, it shows the significance of the formation of "The Wobblies".

Another significant feature of the I.W.W. was that membership was open to any worker irrespective of race, creed or sex. Bill Haywood, one of the I.W.W. founders: "This Union will open its doors to any man or woman who earns their living by brain or muscle". This feature set them apart from other established unions of the time which had membership restrictions on the basis of race or sex or did not allow Black and White workers to organise together. This made "The Wobblies" unpopular with the established unions many of which had become well immersed in the game of compromise. "The I.W.W. has never been anything but a radical fungus on the labour movement for those who could not fit into a normal rational movement" - Samuel Gompers, president of the A.F.L., a skilled workers union.

The fact that the I.W.W. came into existence and proved so attractive to many thousands of workers gives lie to the nonsense talked by those on the Leninist left today, like the Communist Party and Militant who tell us that the working class are not capable of understanding socialism. The I.W.W. with its slogan "abolish the wages system" represented the views of the most impoverished and least well educated members of the American working class. Taught, as they were, by the straightforward no frills arguments of "The Wobblies" these workers were able to understand that this system does not, and can not, serve their interests and that the only answer remaining is to abolish it completely. The reason that these ideas proved attractive lay, for the most part, in the way in which they put over their ideas and the commitment of their members.

Their propaganda was always lively and entertaining. They have left behind them a great stock of songs, poems and slogans all of which put their ideas over in the best possible way. "Wobblies" cherished their "little red song book" almost as much as their union card. Everywhere "Wobblies" met they sang these songs - at their meetings, on the picket line and in their work place. The songs represented their solidarity and iron resolve.

To the tune of "John Browns Body" they sang:

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand fold
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

To the tune of "Red Wing":

Workers all unite
We must put up a fight
To make us free from slavery
And capitalistic tyranny
This fight is not in vain
We've got the world to gain
Will you be a fool, a capitalist tool
And serve your enemy
Chorus:
Shall we still be slaves and work for wages?
It is outrageous - has been for ages
This earth by right belongs to toilers
And not for spoilers of liberty.

None of the traditional "values" were safe at the hands of "The Wobblies", least of all religion. They "took no prisoners" in their exposure of religion as capitalism's moral seal of approval and another aspect of working class suppression.

"Trust in the lord and sleep in the street" and "Jesus saves the willing slaves" are two examples of popular slogans which I.W.W. members used to show their attitude to the arrogant preachers who tell workers to work hard and pray hard. Their songs again put over their ideas in an entertaining manner.

To the air of "Onward Christian Soldiers":

Onward Christian Soldiers!
Blighting all you meet
Trample human freedom under pious feet
Praise the Lord whose dollar sign dupes his favored race!
Make the foreign trash respect your bullion brand of grace
Trust in mock salvation, serve as tyrants tools
History will say of you
"That pack of Godly fools"

Another "value" which the I.W.W. had no time for was that of the traditional "role" of women. Women played a leading part in the organisation and struggle of the union, so much so that the union was accused of pushing women to the front in order to get sympathy. This argument was countered by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, I.W.W. founder member and organiser: "The I. W. W. had been accused of putting women at the front - the truth is that the I.W.W. does not keep them at the back and they go to the front".

And go to the front they did playing an equal role in organising factories and suffering police violence on the picket lines. One typical example was Sophie Cohen and her friend who joined the I.W.W. when they were seventeen. They spent their time looking for work in unorganised factories so as to get in and organise. Once they had made their presence felt the boss, in disbelief that two such girls would ever dream of joining a union, would sack them. Their job completed, that of getting members into the union, they would simply go and look for a similar factory. Unsurprisingly, there were songs in praise of such courageous women too.

"The Rebel girl" (from the little red song book)

Yes, her hands may be hardened from labour
And her dress may not be very fine
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance shell hurl
For the only thorough-bred lady is the Rebel Girl.

For the I.W.W. solidarity was what made workers strong and they would not allow the divisiveness of racism or sexism to distort that strength. It was the sheer force of this solidarity which enabled "The Wobblies" to overcome many of the obstacles which the state, in its fear of working people organising together, placed in front of them. The I.W.W. was at the forefront of the fight for free speech in America. At a time when motor cars were rare, most people walked through and around town and "The Wobblies" used outdoor street corner meetings as a forum for their ideas. As these meetings became more successful they were made illegal (except for the Salvation Army). The answer of the I.W.W. to this ban was to overrule it by sheer force of numbers. Hundreds of speakers would congregate to do a single meeting. One would get up to speak, get arrested, and immediately be replaced by another, and another, etc until the prisons were filled with "Wobblies", all charged with vagrancy. This proved an embarrassment to the authorities to such a degree that the ban was eventually lifted.

It was this solidarity of action which got results. Joe Murphy., an I.W.W. member tells the story of such solidarity during a strike on the building of a dam in Seattle. All workers were out on strike but its effectiveness was being reduced by the employers who were importing "scab labour" from a town several hundred miles away. Joe, a striking dam worker himself went to the town in question and organised the local Wobblies members to register with the employment agency which was hiring the "scabs". Having been taken on they boarded with a train load of scabs to travel to Seattle. As Joe recollects the "hardened scabs" were dumped off the train during the journey and the rest joined the I.W.W. By the time they arrived at Seattle the whole train was singing "Wobblies" songs. This event in Joes words "pissed the bosses off" who had wined and dined these "Wobblies" during their journey.

This strength in numbers dismissed the need for the union to use violence in pursuance of their cause. Despite their reputation there is no evidence to suggest that the union engaged in a concerted campaign of violence to achieve their aims.

Bill Haywood: "The I.W.W. advocates violence of the most violent sort. Violence that consists of keeping our mouths shut and our hands in our pockets, By doing this, and staying on strike, we are committing the most violent of acts - cutting off our labour. Let them weave cloth with Bayonets" (our emphasis).

In this respect they realised their real strength as the possessors of labour and therefore as the class which produces wealth. They realised also the redundant nature of the capital1st class if they do not have the use of our labour. One Socialist used to say "Labour power is your most precious possession, use it sparingly", and the I.W.W. would surely have agreed with this sentiment. Using their labour power sparingly was what they did in pursuing their policy of sabotage To "The Wobblies" sabotage meant "The conscious withdrawal of efficiency".

They understood the futility of burning down the factories which meant workers losing their jobs, the alternative was to slow things down, do enough to get by, but not to allow the boss to squeeze you too tightly.

In 1917 when America got involved in the first World War, the I.W.W. again took a unique stance. Other unions made agreements with the Government not to strike during the war years. The I.W.W. refused to do this knowing that the war was not being fought in the interests of working people, the same working people who would die fighting it. During 1917 the I.W.W. organised 50,000 lumberjacks out on strike up and down the Pacific coast. also in that year they organised 40,000 copper miners in a strike.

The state used this, along with the nationalistic fervour brought about by the war, to discredit the I.W.W., accusing them of helping the Kaiser. In the same year of course, the Bolshevik revolution took place in Russia which caused internal friction in the union between those who supported the revolution and those who understood that it was not, and could not have been, a socialist revolution.

The national support for the war gave the American government a perfect opportunity to squash this union which had proved a thorn in its side for so long. I.W.W. headquarters across the country were ransacked and hundreds of members arrested and put on trial.

Their solicitor, George Vandeveer, fought a skilful battle in the courts on behalf of the arrested members saying "These people are being tried for nothing more than belonging to a labour union, a labour union which recognises that this war is not being fought to save democracy, but merely to expand industrial markets".

Despite his defence, eighty members were imprisoned, many more fined and others left America for fear of future recriminations.

Regrettably these events effectively marked the end of the I.W.W. as a major force serving the interests of working people. The I.W.W. is still in existence today and although only a shadow of its former size, appears to be experiencing a small upsurge in activity and interest.

The W.S.P. may well have disagreed with many of the policies and actions of the I.W.W. but these stand as insignificant beside that on which we agree - the abolition of the wages system and winning the world for the workers.

It is from movements such as the I.W.W., Poland's Solidarity movement, and the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa - and the countless other examples around the world - that we must look to in order to properly appreciate our strength as a class. If we organise together and decide what we are aiming for then, as long as there are enough of us, we can not be beaten.

The W.S.P. can only offer you the ideas - you must offer your support - together we too can grow strong.

Monty

Originally published in the World Socialist Party of Ireland journal, Socialist View, Vol 1, Nº 2, August-September 1986.

Chomsky's Weakness (1998)

From the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Noam Chomsky has been celebrated as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century His popularity cannot be doubted. Books and lectures are bought and attended in the thousands and he has a strong influence amongst the left and anarchists. But mere anti-capitalism is not enough as it encourages reformism.

Chomsky's analysis of capitalist society broadly hits the mark and socialists could find little to disagree with generally. However, the leftist and anarchist supporters who look to Chomsky for inspiration miss the wider point. While Chomsky blames capitalism for poverty, human rights abuse, limited democracy and so on, his ranks of supporters support anarchist sects and fruitless reformist campaigns banging the capitalist table with a begging bowl, waiting for some new "right" like a dog barking for a crumb from his master's plate.

To blame Chomsky for his supporters may seem a touch harsh, especially as he has consistently spoken out against the following of leaders (in fact opposing a documentary for raising him up like an icon and personalising political issues), but Chomsky fails to come to the conclusion that his analysis deserves. Knowledge of how capitalism works and oppresses is not enough. Without an alternative, opposition to capitalism leads nowhere. A"right" here or there in capitalism has the unerring habit of suddenly disappearing when profit is hindered.

Granted, many who read or hear Chomsky will arrive at something close to anti-capitalist conclusions but without the aim of abolishing capitalism itself this means relatively little. Chomsky does little to redress this.

Although consistently stating the limitations of legal and other changes to capitalism, he does not oppose reformism as such and so unfortunately his analysis serves to assist futile reformism, however much this may not be his aim. While Chomsky's anti-leadership, anti-capitalism stance is sincere it runs counter to the adoring hoards of trendy leftists who persist in quoting his analysis while campaigning for minimal gains (e.g. pro-drugs, human rights, Law Society and other assorted moralists) and not for the abolition of the system which creates the need for such demands that seek to address problems which capitalism inevitably cannot solve. Capitalism subverts human need to profit and this is at the heart of the problems Chomsky so ably denounces. No amount of tinkering within capitalism can change this essential characteristic.

In general, Chomsky traces the origin of the abuses prevalent in modern capitalism to property. land and trade and the interests of a small commercial and industrial class (capitalists, i.e. those parasites who live by extracting surplus value from the working population) which run counter to those of the majority of the people (the working class). Big business and the interests of a corporate elite feature strongly in Chomsky's analysis. For example, he highlights numerous cases of US foreign policy which are clearly followed in the interests of profit and plunder but which are mysteriously absent or fudged over in the world media. Haiti is an obvious example where workers were plainly inconsequential and dispensable pawns in the capitalist pursuit of profit, policy being chopped and changed according to what would be likely to create the most conducive environment for profit-making. Harsher governments are regarded as eminently suitable for investment because of the strong control they exercise over the population and the absence of trade unions, while broadly progressive governments which offer basic rights to workers are regarded as bad investment areas due to higher costs in terms of wages, taxes, tariffs etc.

Elite control

Chomsky has stated his opposition to the "renting" of workers for their abilities in return for survival. He also opposes the state as a form of social organisation and suggests that alternatives may exist that are greatly preferable to the present system of organised robbery. Although he puts poverty, hunger, human "rights" abuses and the rest down to capitalism and its organisation, he does not see reformism and moralistic campaigns as a damaging side-track to the conclusion that capitalism itself is the problem and as such attracts the adulation of single-issue reformists.

This is not to deny Chomsky's, at times, outstanding analysis of capitalism and of the motives of its leaders and their sidekicks. In a pamphlet Media Control he discusses the nature of democracy under capitalism, coming to the conclusion that, in the capitalist state, democracy is devoid of any meaning as far as popular participation is concerned. This Chomsky puts down to the various "democratic" theoreticians who justify control by a Leninist-type elitism whereby the ruling elite are assumed to know what is best for the majority (over jobs, investment, welfare cuts, etc); under capitalism there is an unconscious movement towards policies which benefit the capitalists and keep the majority enslaved to interests which do not serve them but which are nonetheless applied in the "national interest".

Chomsky goes on to discuss the highly efficient elite control of the media and the role of education and other institutions in maintaining capitalism, citing the billions of pounds spent on public relations every year.

Chomsky himself has often been the victim of the capitalist propaganda effort as he has commented in interviews with David Barsamian. In capitalism, propaganda is not carried out by central state institutions but by exclusion from mass media which is monopolised by the owning class:

"Our system differs strikingly from say, [the former] Soviet Union, where the propaganda system literally is controlled by the state . . . Our system [western capitalism] works much differently and much more effectively. It's a privatised system of propaganda, including the media, the journals of opinion and in general including the broad opinion of the intelligentsia, the educated part of the population" (Chronicles of Dissent).

However, on how to halt the tide of capitalism, Chomsky is incredibly weak:

"[on the] issue of human freedom, if you assume there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, etc., there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world" (Chronicles of Dissent).

Hope is not, however, enough. A century of hope has produced nothing but more capitalist misery and failed reformist efforts. Only organisation for socialism will do. The working class must organise not to reform capitalism but to abolish it and establish a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of productive wealth. A society of free access and real democracy and an end to classes, states, governments, frontiers, leaders and coercion. A world without vested "interests" and freed from the constraints of profit.

Colin Skelly

Britain Is Not A Classless Society (2002)

From the December 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

In October the Cambridge Union invited the Socialist Party to take part in a debate on the question "This House Believes Britain is a Classless Society". Our speaker was Pieter Lawrence who made the following contribution.

It is often claimed that there are many ways of looking at the question of social class, but socialists argue that we should use a method that tells us most about the world we live in. To begin with, it should be agreed that statistics on the ownership of property are a important guide. These confirm what we see around us. We would have to spend our lives wearing blindfolds not to notice that British society is scarred by great differences in property ownership and in our use and enjoyment of the good things of life.

But we should not see class solely through the distribution of property. Class is a social relationship that invades all our lives. Class has changed and developed throughout history, it is not a static thing. This indicates the possibility of not just changing it but of abolishing it altogether so that we can all enjoy what would be the benefits of a classless society.

The statistics are many but just a few will tell us a great deal. If we look up the web site on "Who Owns Britain" we find that in England and Wales almost 26 million acres of land is owned by just over 150,000 families or individuals. This is 0.28 percent (about a quarter of one per cent) of the population who own 64 percent of the land. If we take land owned by the Dukes of Buccleuch, Westminster and Northumberland we have just three individuals who jointly own 531,500 acres valued at just over �14.5 billion. Three persons would be lost in our meeting tonight but in fact this trio owns a very big chunk of the country.

At the other end of the scale, according to the Economist for (23 February this year), for the years 1999/2000, the number of children living in poverty in this country was 4.1 million. (Poverty being defined as children living in families receiving less than 60 percent of the average wage). What this means is sub-standard housing, poor conditions of life, poor diets and cultural deprivation. A study published by the Rowntree Foundation has said that 8.3 million of our population live in these circumstances and this is not improving with time. This 8.3 million living in poverty was 100,000 more than in 1996/97. How then, can we sensibly dispute that what these figures mean is that we continue to live in a deeply divided class society?

But we may agree on one thing. I trust that we would all at least prefer Britain to be a classless society. To be a class-ridden society is to create conflict and great problems. It is morally and materially indefensible. I assume that what we would prefer is that all people should be able to live their lives, free from the disadvantages of underprivilege and class injustice. To live in a classless society would be in all our interests. The freedom for every person to develop his or her skills and talents on equal terms could benefit everyone. This would enrich all our lives. So surely we agree that a classless society would be a basis for a true community of shared interests.

Now, if this is the case, as I'm sure it is, it places a great importance on the need to get our answer to the question of the debate right. If through complacency, or what we imagine might be self-interest, we choose to pretend that we now live in classless society when in fact we do not, then quite obviously we are in no position to think sensibly about how to achieve the truly classless society that would benefit us all. So, I want to argue how we can think and act constructively so we can escape class divisions. As we know, classification is one of the important means through which we understand the world and this is no less true for social class. Our understanding of class can help us to take charge of our destiny and enable us to create a better world.

This should be easily within our reach. Who will doubt that we are people with great talents? In science, technology, in art, design, and in our trades, skills and many other fields, we can look back on great achievements. So given our great talents why is our society in such a mess? Why do we live in a world of great problems which appear to be beyond our control? Why is our politics cursed with persistent failure and disillusion? Why does social class linger on and on when it is part of an outdated system? To find the answers to these questions we need to know how society works. Above all we must not allow any privileged interest or power group to prejudice or corrupt the serious work of our enquiry.

What is true is that an economic definition of class is manifest in the entire way we are organised as a society. It is fundamental to our explanation of how we produce and distribute wealth and the commercial motives that are involved. It helps tell us how the operation of the market puts profit before needs and places constraints on all our activities. Our lives and the quality of our society depends upon on production and on the services we can provide. An analysis based on economic class tells us who gets what from the pool of wealth that is available. It explains how a privileged class has accumulated great wealth and property and therefore explains the great social differences that we see about us.

I am not concerned here with what I regard as the trivia of the debate. I fully accept that not so long ago "toffs" were people who played golf and went on motoring holidays, touring the Continent. Nowadays, millions of us from all walks of life do these things. That tells us that working people are now able to enjoy a share of the extra wealth that they alone have created through the greater efficiency of their labour. But this in no way alters the economic, class relationship between capital and labour which dominates the way we live. At the point of production, the workers and capitalists who may be sharing a golf course in their leisure time remain in a relationship of conflicting economic interests which must always, whilst it continues, condemn our society to the class divisions of strife and to the many ugly comparisons that we see of poverty amidst luxury.

It is not just society in Britain that is class-ridden. Regardless of the various political forms they may take, whether they be based on private ownership, or the state capitalist regimes that recently reigned in Russia and Eastern Europe, or the state systems of China and places like Cuba, the class system is a world system and it is in deep trouble with many threats to life.

Every country operates a market system that puts profits before need. And as a result, all over the world the great skills and talents that define our genius are constrained by the tawdry limitations of market capacity or what can be sold. The point is surely to release these great talents for the benefit of all people. That should be the main object of our societyâso how do we get there?

It is right to feel outrage at the great class divisions that exist but socialists do not come to this debate in a negative spirit of class hostility. Our aim is to end it. Class conflict has gone on for too long, there has been too much strife and we have to heal the wounds of history.

The way to end our class society and to reconcile our interests is through common ownership.

By this we mean that all people should stand in equal relationship with each other about the means of producing wealth, about natural resources and our entire world. On this classless basis, without the market system, in all the important activities of life, citizens of a genuine community of interests will be able to co-operate to serve the needs of all people. We are not speaking here only of our material interests. We have an urgent need to dignify our community relationships with social equality so as to enhance the quality of every part of life. As I have emphasised, a classless society based on common ownership is the only way to win freedom for the whole of mankind.

The motion "This House believes Britain is a classless society" was lost by 31 votes in favour to 284 against.

Oscar Wilde and Socialism (2000)

From the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oscar Wilde died a hundred years ago this month, in exile in Paris. This will be the occasion for a lot of talk about his achievements and accomplishments but we doubt that much will be said about the fact that he once wrote a socialist pamphlet. So this is a good time to take another look at Wilde's The Soul of Man under Socialism, which was first published in February 1890.

Without necessarily agreeing with every last word in the essay, we would accept that much of it is as true and as relevant today as it was 110 years ago. (Don't worry about Wilde's use of the word "soul" he clearly means "mind" or "spirit", and obviously wrote "soul" because, as a virtuoso literary craftsman, he savoured the euphony of the word with "Socialism".) To start with, he realized that socialism and communism mean the same thing:

"Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment . . . Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society."

So-called "human nature" is no bar to this society. The idea of an unchanging "human nature" is repudiated: "The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it."

Wilde condemns the demented rush after money that capitalism demands of all its subjects. In capitalist society, "man will kill himself by overwork in order to secure property". No one is free from this basic imperative. "There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor". Furthermore, "why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it".

The rich salve their consciences by disgorging at rare intervals a minute fraction of their loot. But charity, however well-meaning, is no answer:

"Their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system from being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good . . . It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair."

State capitalism, particularly when imposed by an authoritarian state, which many people confused then and confuse now with socialism, was no answer:

"Of course authority and compulsion are out of the question. All association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary associations that man is fine . . . If the Socialism is authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first."

Government itself will disappear in socialism: "The State must give up all idea of government . . . All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised".

Wilde saw that there would have to be a revolutionary change in the economic basis of society, and that this would have inevitable repercussions in the way people behaved:

"When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist . . . Though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear . . . Crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness."

Who will do the dirty work? Machinery will do it, said Wilde. (And, of course, machinery is enormously more developed now than it was in Wilde's day to do all the jobs which people do not wish to do manually.) "All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery". This will release each individual to help the community in his or her own way by doing service or producing things which will satisfy each person's need to be active, to contribute and to help. Wilde summed it up: "The community by means of organization of machinery will supply the useful things, and . . . the beautiful things will be made by the individual".

Thus Wilde was able to demolish the myth that socialism and individualism are in some way opposed, in some way different. In fact, only socialism can provide the basis for individualism, only socialism can allow individualism (for all, not merely for a fortunate few) to flourish:

"Private property has crushed true individualism, and set up an individualism that is false . . . With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

If these ideas had been accepted and acted on at the time, what an enormous amount of human misery would have been avoided.

Alwyn Edgar