Market's end (1989)

Book Review from the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Market and Its Critics: Socialist Political Economy in Nineteenth Century Britain by Noel Thompson, Routledge

This book unwittingly  confirms our view that the word "socialism" originally meant what we insist it continues to mean: common ownership and production solely for use. Written by a supporter of the market, it criticises the pioneer socialists of the nineteenth century for having seen socialism as necessarily involving the abolition of both market mechanisms and monetary calculation. According to Thompson they were guilty of throwing "the market baby out with the capitalist bathwater" and he actually says that the socialist commonwealth described by William Morris in News from Nowhere cries out for the introduction of the market to make it work!

Despite this rather quaint position, Thompson is scrupulously honest in his description of the views of nineteenth century critics of capitalism, from Charles Hall, Percy Ravenstone and William Godwin right at the beginning of the century through writers such as William Thompson, Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray and John Bray on to William Morris, H.M. Hyndman, Laurence Gronlund, Edward Bellamy, Robert Blatchford and Peter Kropotkin. There are also less interesting chapters on the Fabians and the so-called "Christian Socialists", in whose tradition we would not claim to be and who, in any event, did not envisage the disappearance of the market.

The first group to work out clearly the essential features of the alternative to the competitive, profit-seeking capitalist market economy that rapidly developed around them were the followers of Robert Owen, who were also the first to coin the word "socialist". For them the alternative to capitalism lay in the organisation of the production and distribution of wealth in accordance with the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". They at least realised that the organisation of production and distribution on this basis necessary involved the disappearance-of-private property, buying and selling, money and prices, and the introduction of free access to goods on the basis of self-determined needs as well as the replacement of monetary calculation with calculation purely in physical terms—to match productive capacity and wants. As the Owenite journal The New Moral World, put it in 1835, "our enlarged resources for the creation of wealth" mean that "the necessity for attaching money—value to any production whatever "can be superseded and that "no money price will be known".

Towards the end of the century socialist critics of capitalism saw such a system as: applying on a society-wide basis, but they retained the understanding that there was no role whatsoever for market mechanisms and monetary calculation in such a socialist society. As Thompson himself explains:

As regards the allocation of resources and the matching of supply and demand at an aggregate level, there was, however, a general tendency to move from the idea that economic calculation would proceed in terms of value to the idea that such calculation could be conducted in purely quantitative or physical terms. This was a conviction that was largely rooted in the belief that under socialism production would be for use rather than exchange and that in such circumstances social utility, rather than exchange value, could be a direct guide as to what and how much to produce . . . Such production for use rather than profit involved a concern with the concrete material characteristics of needs and the means of satisfying them rather than any abstract notion of value. It involved a deliberate matching of goods with wants that did not involve or require their valuation.

Thompson throws up his arms at what he regards as such economic naivety, but this is indeed what socialism implies. So-called "market socialism" (with which Thompson appears to sympathise) is an absurd contradiction in terms. Any society which retains market mechanisms just can't be regarded as socialist, at least not without violating the original, historical meaning of the word.

Adam Buick 

Socialism and rock music (1985)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways the music business is a prime example of all the workings of the capitalist system: the exploitation of talented, sincere musicians for the profit of the record company shareholders - even if they wouldn't know the difference between a crotchet and a quaver - along with the enormous waste involved in the socially useless task of selling people something that left to their own devices, they would probably want anyway (or - even worse - in some cases would never buy if it wasn't for the thinly-disguised associations of the product with "social success").

Rock music is an extremely attractive means of social control for the ruling class. For besides being hugely profitable (and better still, free of industrial strife - when did you last hear of Paul McCartney downing guitars in support of a pay claim?) it serves as an effective mechanism whereby youth rebellion may be channelled away from establishment targets and in on itself. Just as sexism and racism divert ordinary people from the real source of their problems, so it is that the rivalry in youth sub-culture between Punks and Teds and Mods and Rockers, is merely a smoke-screen obscuring the one real issue that faces young people - the choice between capitalism and socialism.

We would, then, hardly expect rock music to play an important role in the propagation of socialist views. This, I contend, is not true. Most readers will know of at least one artist/group that were marketed as anti-establishment rebels, only to become part of the establishment themselves at a later point and, in so doing, make a fortune.

The Clash- one of the most prominent political punk bands - have often poured scorn on the hypocrisy of those who betray their class in such a way: songs such as Death or Glory ("He who fucks nuns will later join the church") and White Man in Hammersmith Palais ("You think it's funny, turning rebellion into money") spring readily to the mind. The Clash are obviously not alone in this and there are many examples of musicians condemning, through their music, the business within which they work.

But what of critiques of capitalist society as a whole? Again, one thinks of The Clash who, in their early stages of their career, were known for their sympathies with the Red Brigade and other violent left-wing factions. The Clash, however, while frequently and virulently condemning the more obscene endemic ills of capitalism, never really escaped the mill-stone of their marketing image of pseudo Rolling Stones rock'n'roll rebels and as a consequence were never able to proffer a socialist society as a solution to the evils they had identified. For all that, it is probable that The Clash did at least awaken some young people to the insanity of the society within which they lived and for that reason should not be condemned too harshly. It is important to note that The Clash were successful mainly because their songs were relevant and comprehensible.

Compare the down-to-earth approach of The Clash with the intellectual ramblings of Green of Scritti Politti. Whereas The Clash expressed themselves in the language of ordinary workers. Scritti Politti's lyrics were incomprehensible to all but a student of politics and those fortunate (?) enough to know one. The capability of rock music to put over socialist ideas to a mass audience is, however, being realised by a growing number of artists, and we shall look at two of these.

The first is Paul Weller, formerly of The Jam and now of The Style Council. Over the years Weller's political attitude has matured from "rebel without a cause", prevalent among many punk bands, through a reformist stage before eventually settling into the full-blooded "socialism" of his current writings. The fact that for the past seven years he has remained a major figure on the British rock scene is evidence that he is able to influence many young people. Songs like When You're Young ("It's so hard to understand, why the worlds your oyster but your future's a clam") and Going Underground ("It's the kidney machines that pay for rockets and guns") set out a case against capitalism. More importantly, recent releases such as Money-Go-Round (the sleeve-notes for which state: " . . . was God an astronaut or a socialist? . . . For the potential beauty and goodness he has given us, I would have to insist the latter") and The Whole Point Of No Return ("The laws made for and by the rich") outline a case for socialism. The latter song was taken from the album Cafe Bleu, whose extensive sleeve-notes outline socialist ideas of production for the use of the community rather than the profit of a few.

Another major socialist rock musician/songwriter to emerge along with punk was Elvis Costello. Possibly an even more incisive critic of capitalist society than Weller, one of his most recent albums - Punch The Clock - contained two very important socialist songs. the first, Shipbuilding, Costello introduced on a recent concert tour as "a Falklands lament". A poignant ballad, it points out the tragic irony of parents constructing the means of their children's destruction with lines such as: "Somebody said that someone got filled in, for saying that people get killed in, the result of this shipbuilding". Further, in the line: "With all the will in the world, diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls", he highlights the pathetic situation where people like the Cammell-Laird shipworkers and the miners waste valuable energy in desperate fights for the dubious "right" to be exploited when, if only they could see the true nature of their problem, a socialist society could be theirs.

The other song of note was released on the eve of the June 1983 election. This track, the vitriolic Pills and Soap, presents a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of the capitalist press, using lyrics such as these to illustrate the point: "Four and twenty crowbars jemmy your desire, out of the frying pan into the fire. The King is in his counting house, some folk have all the luck. And all we get is pictures of Lord and Lady Muck. That come from lovely people with a hard line in hypocrisy, there are ashtrays of emotion for the fag-ends of the aristocracy".

Weller and Costello are not alone in their use of music to spread socialist ideas. It should be plain that the medium of rock music must not be ignored by socialists in their struggle to enhance the workers' political awareness.

Stuart Harrad 

(Norwich)

Reply:

Stuart Harrad makes some interesting observations about popular music and the profit-system. All of the evidence around us suggests that the potential creativity and social enjoyment of music are stunted and restricted by the way society is presently organised. Capitalism is a social system based on buying and selling, where almost everything we experience from the cradle to the coffin has a price on it. The majority of us - members of the working class - sell (or try to) our working abilities by the week or month to an employer. Under such a social system the inspirational and imaginative possibilities of music are imprisoned by economic laws.

Referring to the way that some of the Beatles' songs were appropriated for profit by 'entrepreneurs' in the music industry, Paul McCartney said recently, "It was a funny thing, but to begin with we hadn't realised that someone could actually own a song". Although some music artists become quite wealthy, most do not. The tycoons of this industry (the owners of large companies like RCA, EMI, CBS and so forth) acquire their great wealth through the combined labours of the thousands of people needed to produce a record and distribute it. Consider the number of people who work in the recording studios as technicians and engineers; the people who work in the factories producing records, compact discs and cassettes; the people who transport these, once they are made, all over the world and the people who work in record shops. Then there are all the workers involved in the organisation and presentation of concerts. All of these workers are in a condition of relative poverty. Although the results of all of this work involve thousands of people, most remain faceless and anonymous because the music industry reflects the elitist culture of capitalism, a society based on the minority ownership of the means of life. This economic basis of society has produced an ideology consistent with the view that the people "at the top" are there through merit, which is of course a fallacy. Those who have the largest stakes in the music industry are no more magnates on account of their musical knowledge or proficiency than the great landowners are in their positions by virtue of their abilities as farm workers or gardeners.

As Stuart Harrad observes, the ant--establishment theme of much modern music is often useless because it channels dissatisfaction into cults of rebellion which offer no alternative to the social system which has produced their misery. During the 1960s Bob Dylan wrote many poetic and piquant indictments of aspects of the capitalist system. The argument for socialism, however, was never explicitly advocated, with the result that many of Dylan's appreciators became cynically acquiescent in the profit system. Poverty, degradation and war would have to continue while the answer was "blowing in the wind". Many of those who excitedly sang that "the order is rapidly fading" were to find that this sort of protest movement would not dismantle capitalism and that the times they weren't a-changin'. In the 1970s, with rising unemployment, especially among young people, Punk rock stuck two fingers up at some "traditional values" and snarled at the glossy glamour enjoyed by a minority. But as with the protest movement of the sixties there was despair and rebellion without a constructive solution. In a spirit of nihilism, Johnny Rotten and The Sex Pistols sneered that there was "no future in England's dreamland". In one sense they were right but by telling only part of the story they were probably responsible for producing more cynicism about political change.

Like television companies and major newspapers, the large record companies are owned and controlled by people from that small minority of the population whose privileged economic position puts them in the ruling class. There is, therefore, a degree of reluctance for promotion to be given to anyone wishing to make serious and sustained criticism of class-divided society. As Elvis Costello noted:

You either shut up or get cut up

They don't wanna hear about it.

It's only inches on the reel to reel

And the radio is in the hands of

Such a lot of fools tryin' to

Anaesthetise they way you feel . . .

(Radio, Radio. 1980)

The Specials made a similar criticism when they sang:

And catch 22 says if I sing the truth

They won't make me an overnight star . . . 

(Gangsters. 1979) 

In a world straining with so many grotesque and unnecessary social problems it is conspicuous that so much popular chart music is void of social comment. Amongst the myriad of bland ballads and instantly forgettable fandangos there are, of course, songs which are enjoyable although they have no political comment. Socialists do not have common views as to what constitutes "good music". However, it is worth considering why commercial success is so widely enjoyed by songs which do not question the bleakness of present society. This must be partly because they are meant to be lighthearted—an area of fun completely divorced from the everyday problems we are plagued with—and partly because we are socially conditioned to develop certain sorts of taste.

That workers are basically stupid is an erroneous and arrogant assumption often made by various left wing political parties. Workers, the argument runs, should not be approached directly with the case for a classless, moneyless society because they will properly understand it. Instead they need to be baited with isolated issues and by unsuccessfully wrestling with these problems for long enough they will eventually become socialists. There is no evidence to support this contention; in fact all the evidence suggests that the subjects of this sort of political engineering usually become disillusioned and cynical or fall for some other dead-end pursuit like fascism. Workers are not stupid but sometimes stupefied. But this state is very open to change, as is testified by the great efforts that the ruling class put into the continuing process of conditioning people to accept the status quo. But the con trick is becoming difficult to sustain. As a recent letter to a music paper explained,

. . . As long as the majority of the world's population put their trust in leaders to build a fairer capitalist society we will be in the same position of degradation and poverty. Because capitalism is a system out of control of even the minority who own and reap the benefits, it is a system which is by its very nature must produce periodic crises, of which the present world recession is but one. The only sensible solution to this anarchy of production is for a class-conscious working class to take away the ownership and control of the world's resources and to democratically run it in their own interest. Until we have this majority we shall have to exist on the crumbs thrown to us by the parasitic minority.

(Gary Cornwell, New Musical Express, 23 February 1985.)

Culture Club can sing that "war is stupid" and Frankie Goes to Hollywood lament that "when two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score", but this sort of thing will not shake the ideology of capitalism. The ruling class would agree: from their point of view war is a costly and damaging interruption to their parasitic way of life. Warfare is an endemic feature of a system which periodically produces conflict when economic rivalries cannot be settled around the summit table. Again, look at some of the songs about money. While Abba's Money, Money, Money probably did not have anyone breaking out in a nervous sweat at the Stock Exchange as the record rose in the charts, Pretty Green by The Jam and Money by Pink Floyd were more direct in their questioning of the need for a property society and its means of exchange. But even then it is probably the case that the lyrics of these songs struck a chord mainly with workers who had already considered the case for the abolition of private property. Without further comment lyrics can easily be misinterpreted and it is always possible, of course, that the rare songs that socialists often cite as significant were really written for an entirely different reason.

It is true that no popular song has had lyrics expressing the ideas contained in the Declaration of Principles of The Socialist Party. "But", an observer could suggest, "there are some songs which, because of their message, must serve to raise the social consciousness of the tens of thousands of workers familiar with the lyrics." In a chart song called The Lunatics, The Fun Boy Three sang,

I see the faces of starvation

But just cannot see the point

'Cos there's so much food here today

That no one wants to take away . . . 

The recent Band Aid single, Feed the World, made a comparable, if more vague, point. Mass malnutrition and starvation co-existing with our potential to produce enough food for everybody is an inherent contradiction of a social system which operates on the basis of profit of the few rather than social need. Feed the World, however, was more of a moral imperative than an urge to social revolution. In this sense Band Aid was an appropriate name for a group whose solution to famine within the profit system is comparable with advocating sticking plasters as a remedy for malaria.

Some of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism are doubtlessly made clearer by this sort of song; it is certainly more likely to provoke serious thought about social change than ditties about walks in the park or inquiries such as "Do you think I'm sexy?". The danger is that where a response to social problems is presented, it is given obtusely by vague hint or innuendo and if workers are ever inspired to formulate political ideas as a result many different sorts of conclusions may be drawn. If no coherent argument is being advocated by the artists (and really it cannot be, given the idiom in which they work) then no purposeful group of socialists can be produced by the music. At best, commentators like Paul Weller (who would, as an SWP supporter, presumably vote for the Labour Party and another dose of the profit system at an election) and Elvis Costello give occasional inspiration to socialists with some of the emotive poetry they write about capitalism. On the subjects of militarism and sexuality, for example, Costello  has written some poignant material about the way behaviour and aspirations are affected by the profit system.

Popular songs with a political slant are always open to misinterpretation. The playwright David Hare once stated that you can produce a play to highlight the atrocities of fascism and always have a certain number of people leave the theatre thinking that the Nazis had the right idea. The same subtleties of song lyrics carry the same susceptibility to misunderstanding. It is difficult to compress the argument for socialism on to a single track, so get the 12 inch version—The Socialist Standard!

Gary Jay

Don't take me to your leader (1994)

From the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 23 April, one of the most comprehensive criminals in recent history died. Cunning and unscrupulous, he was a liar, this blackmailer, pimp, cheat and murderer - his name was Richard Milhous Nixon. From the ambitious opportunism of his collaboration with the Senator Joe McCarthy, his actions blighted countless lives. Yet he has been buried with honour, praised by Billy Graham and portrayed by much of the media as a "nice guy" president with a few human failings but a brilliant talent for foreign policy. (How could we all have misunderstood him so badly?) Even more astonishingly, tens of thousands of his victims were mourners at his funeral.

There is, of course, a commonly-shared reluctance to speak ill of the dead until a decent interval has elapsed. Partly because our genuine capacity for love and forgiveness but also because of a deeply-felt hope that similar discretion will prevail following our own demise. Without the constraint of this tradition many funerals would almost certainly engender scenes of excruciating unpleasantness and possibly violence.

Should a popular entertainer, royal or political leader expire, however, the level of cant becomes positively nauseating. Most especially in the case of the latter when particularly imaginative elaborations are normally required to imbue the corpse with virtue. The purpose being to induce a degree of public forgetfulness sufficient to maintain the illusion that the deceased had somehow contributed anything of use to society.

Later, when it becomes necessary to deflect awkward questions concerning the probity of the new leader, it may be deemed advantageous to release details of a few choice indiscretions that severely impugn this posthumously-granted sanctity.

Although the idea of the philosopher king or benign dictator has always intrigued political writers, the concept of an altruistic leader is clearly contradictory. Power, authority and privilege - the spoils of leadership - inevitably embrace corruption and it may reasonably be assumed that anyone possessing the integrity to make an honest leader would never seek to become one. At the very least it implies a sense of superiority. As H.L. Mencken explained: "I am strongly in favour of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

Putting the same point from a different perspective Simon Cameron, a 19th century American politician declared: "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."

A recent poll revealed that most people hold an extremely unfavourable opinion of politicians and view their promises with considerable suspicion: a number expressed contempt. This is hardly surprising since not a day passes that new examples of duplicity transpire. Unfortunately, so pervasive is the myth of the indispensability of leaders that the usual response to these disclosures is resigned acceptance rather than outrage - it is simply fulfilling expectations.

For rulers, such resignation represents a significant capitulation to centuries of suppression, exploitation and "education". Providing welcome confirmation that they are moving ever closer to the Machiavellian ideal of a controlled, if occasionally complaining, majority lacking the self-belief to challenge authority. Socialists, though disappointed by the apparent extent of working-class indifference, regard such a conclusion as premature.

Consciousness cannot be privatised, nor its evolution contained by the narrow dictates of political expediency. For as long as human beings exist so does the potential for radical change and if rulers think otherwise then it is they who are most seriously deluded.

The inability of capitalism to deliver the goods and its harrowing social consequences increasingly disturbs the apathetic calm. Understandably, the reactions provoked stems sometimes from frustration and despair but it would be foolish to dismiss them as merely negative since often they provide a necessary stimulus for fundamental reappraisal.

The dubious and unprovable proposition that most human beings are "natural" followers and that leaders are, therefore, essential is a claim serving only the convenience of those who wish to lead. Indeed, such evidence that does exist would surely elicit the conclusion that the absence of leaders, far from creating chaos is a prerequisite to end it.

The Socialist Party has no leaders and argues that the only possible basis for a truly democratic society in which things are produced for need rather than profit, is the voluntary cooperation of free and independent individuals. Whether or not leadership is the oldest profession it is assuredly the lowest and in a Socialist society nobody would be required to do such filthy work.

Richard Headicar

A striking example of mutiny (1996)

TV Review from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month this column berated Channel Four's Secret History series for its tedious and irrelevant programme about the tactics of the British army during the Falklands war. This month we return to the scene of the crime, battered by two weeks of heroic British failure at the Olympics and endless summer repeats of second-rate sitcoms. On 8 August—like a diamond glistening in a vast cow-pat—Secret History redeemed itself with a documentary called Mutiny In The RAF. This, at least, was a secret history worth commenting about, centring on the massive wave of strikes which broke out in the RAF after the end of the Second World War in India, Singapore, the Middle East and other centres of British imperial rule. Largely due to the activities of the British ruling class, few will have been cognisant of the facts surrounding this series of mutinies against military authority, and the documentary team compiling this particular programme can be satisfied with a job well done.

The British bourgeoisie—one of the most experienced ruling classes in the world—has long done its best to hide the real truth of the various mutinies and strikes in HM Forces throughout this century. For decades it tried to keep hidden the nature of the massive wave of discontent which took place in 1919 after the so-called Great War, when soldiers and policemen went on strike and mutinied, and when sailors demanding better pay hauled down the British Ensign and hoisted the Red Flag. For entirely understandable reasons it has tried to do the same in relation to the wave of discontent of 1945-6 too. Thankfully, it has failed.

Secret History told the history of how over 50,000 RAF servicemen refused to do the dirty work of British Imperialism in its outposts of Empire any longer. Serving in appalling conditions and with little chance of demobilisation, this mixture of volunteers and conscripts refused to obey their officers' orders, substituted self-discipline for hierarchical rule, formed democratically-run strike committees and successfully spread their struggle even to section's of the Indian armed forces. They were met with bogus trials and false imprisonment, harassment from the military police and the ultimate deterrent of threatened executions. Expecting sympathetic treatment from the newly-elected Labour Government under Clement Attlee, their actions instead were met with subterfuge and repression, characteristic treatment of workers by Labour governments before and since. That they eventually met with some success in ensuring early demobilisation for hundreds of thousands was a testament to their tenacity and the power of working-class combination. Not unwisely, the British ruling class took the view that to keep such disgruntled servicemen in troubled outposts like India at such a sensitive time was to invite chaos.

It was not, of course, the case that those who mutinied in the RAF wanted socialism any more than their fellow workers back home who had joined with them to vote in the pro-capitalist Labour Party the previous year—their struggle was in fact more akin to a defensive economic trade union struggle within capitalism. Indeed, many of the strikers had been active trade unionists before the war. But what it did got to show—like many other similar incidents across the world—is that men and women in the armed forces are generally workers in uniform. They are doing an unpleasant job on behalf of the capitalist class, but then again, so do millions of other workers. And just like other workers, those in the armed forces are capable of critically assessing their own class position and of coming to the conclusion that it is at odds with the position of the bourgeoisie. This is contrary to the unhistorical and anti-materialist position of so many Leninists who don't even regard members of the armed forces or the police as being members of the working class in the first place. It can also be added—far in advance of the Leninist vanguards—workers in uniform have demonstrated time and again that they can organise democratically and collectively, without leaders, to further their own class interests. This in turn demonstrates that the armed forces, like all other sections of the working class, are capable of developing recognition of their real position within capitalism and of the necessity of socialism.

The RAF mutiny in 1946 was a case in point and its lessons must never be forgotten. Working-class self-activity and democratic organisation is the key to any struggle whether for economic defence within the system (as with trade unionism) or for revolutionary transformation. As the movement for final working-class emancipation can only be collective and majoritarian, the former will surely still have an important role to play as the training ground for the latter.

Dave Perrin

Gotcha! (1987)

From the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because we are a democratic Party all our meetings are open and our propaganda meetings organised to allow open debate. To this end visitors are given ample opportunity and encouragement to ask questions or state an opposing view. At a recent Socialist Party meeting a visitor from the SWP took the opportunity to explain how "the average bloke in the street", could be led to socialism by the SWP. Another visitor, obviously impressed, asked for further information:

Visitor: "Is the SWP a democratic organisation?"

Leader: "Yes."

Visitor: "Before I could join The Socialist Party I have to show my agreement and my understanding of the Socialist case. If I wanted to join the SWP I wouldn't have to mess about with that?"

Leader: "No, if you were at a meeting and were impressed enough you could join there and then."

Visitor: "What about the ideas I might have - I could be a racist say?"

Leader: "That could be sorted out later in the branch, at education meetings and whilst you're selling papers."

Visitor: "Obviously I wouldn't be allowed to represent the SWP or be allowed full access to the party until you were satsified about my ideas."

Leader: "That's right."

Visitor: "If I've got you right that means that you have two types of members: those with power in the party and those without. That doesn't sound much like democracy to me."

Leader: Long pause.

The visitor has attended all our meetings since but remains convinced by the argument put by the SWP. Leadership makes you stupid.

R 

Global capital (2013)

Book Review from the November 2013 Socialist Standard

The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism. By Paul Craig Roberts. Clarity Press, 2013.

Paul Craig Roberts is of interest as he is a former Assistant Secretary to the US Treasury under Reagan and an erstwhile columnist for the Wall Street Journal who has written an excoriating attack on free-market economics in this book. In particular, he criticises financial deregulation and ‘offshoring’ of jobs and says these are part of what is effectively a conspiracy by the elites in the US and other Western countries to ensure an increasing amount of wealth goes to the very rich and ever less to everyone else. At one point he claims:

‘The United States is the first country in modern history to destroy the prospects and living standards of its labor force in order to enrich the top 1% of the income distribution. Once a land of opportunity, America is being polarised by globalism into rich and poor’ (p.117).

But there is of course a problem with this viewpoint, and one he does not address. America (like all other capitalist countries) has always been characterised by massive income inequality whereby the people who own and control the means of living receive colossal incomes that bear no relation to the effort (if any) they have made, while the vast majority are exploited to keep them in their positions of privilege and power. Reading this book, anyone would think that it is only since the Clinton administration onwards that these things have been a noticeable feature of life.

In fairness, one of the more positive aspects of this book is that there are a number of interesting facts and statistics presented at various stages to support aspects of his case, including on the real nature of employment and unemployment in the US. For instance, Roberts claims the real unemployment figure is nearer 23 percent than the ‘official’ 7.5 percent. There are also interesting statistics on changes in the US labour markets and on the stagnation of real wages there.

However, real wages for large numbers of US workers have been stagnant or declining from as far back as the early 1970s and this was never fundamentally addressed or reversed by the Reagan administration of which Roberts was a part. Indeed, Roberts seems very coy about Reagan and ‘Reaganomics’ and tries to argue that the growth of laissez faire capitalism has only happened in comparatively recent times as a product of ‘globalisation’. To do this, he engages in some historical sleight-of-hand about Reagan’s supply-side economic policies, claiming that these were really about reforming the US tax system to give incentives to entrepreneurs and workers. But of course they were about far more than this – including attacks on the trade unions to ensure labour flexibility and mobility so as to reduce costs of production. Indeed, some of the very things Roberts now seems to be railing against here.

The fundamental weakness of this book though lies in the lack of solutions proffered. ‘Steady-state’ growth is lauded but there is no serious suggestion about how this can be achieved within capitalism. The most obvious soft-spots Roberts has are for national sovereignty and protectionism, yet he glides over the likely disastrous effects of the latter, which we have of course seen before, and which infamously led to the exacerbation of the economic depression of the 1930s and provoked the subsequent bloodbath of World War Two.

What Roberts has failed to realise is that capitalism has increasingly – over a period of many decades – become a truly global, interconnected system that operates according to its inherent, underlying economic laws. These are impersonal and driven by profit and the competitive accumulation of capital. Furthermore, this proverbial genie of globalised capital is out of the bottle and campaigners for national sovereignty, protectionism and the rest are never going to be able to squeeze it back in again.

Dave Perrin

Action Replay: Scrum down (2013)

The Action Replay column from the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

In June last year the top rugby union clubs in England and France gave notice that they would withdraw from the Heineken Cup, the competition for leading European teams. This meant that the 2013–14 event would be their last unless they changed their minds for some reason. With this competition about to start, and still almost complete uncertainty as to what would happen next season, the last couple of months have seen plenty of frantic negotiations and brinksmanship.

Behind all this are questions of power, with the clubs wanting more say in how the big competitions are run, at the expense of the national unions and the International Rugby Board. Who’s in charge would cover matters such as the number of teams taking part, and how the competition would be organised. At present, teams from six countries are involved, with regional sides from Ireland, Scotland and Wales competing. In organisational matters, England and France can be outvoted by these three countries and Italy.

And behind the wielding of power, as you might expect, is money, but with some specific variations. Heineken Cup matches have been screened by Sky for some years, and this arrangement was recently extended. But English Premiership clubs have themselves signed a deal with BT Sport that includes European games they are involved in. Under the proposed new Rugby Champions Cup, the money would be distributed in a way that benefited English and French clubs.

The uncertainty is leading to top Welsh players being signed by clubs abroad, as it is not clear what sort of contract the Welsh clubs could offer from next year. There were even claims that professional rugby in Scotland could end if no agreement were reached and the Scottish Rugby Union failed to get its annual subvention from the Heineken Cup.

Paul Bennett

‘If you look at the history of professional rugby,’ according to the chair of Saracens, ‘it has always been about this balance between union control and the clubs … The BT Sport television deal has given the English clubs more of a chance to redress that imbalance’ (Guardian, 23 September). The players and spectators barely rate a mention, of course.

Landed with Tony Blair! (1996)

Book Review from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Impossibilists: Selections from the Press of The Socialist Party of Canada And One Big Union, 1906-38. edited by L Gambone (Red Lion Press £4).

It is easy to forget that before the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in June 1904 there had already been in existence the Socialist Party of British Columbia, founded in 1901, but having an organised existence going back to 1895. The early history of this, our companion party in canada, is brought to life by the re-publications of a volume of reprinted articles from the Western Clarion, the SPC's first journal, as well as other journals of the period which came out of this broadly impossibilist tradition.

A few words are in order about this term "impossibilist". It emerged, of course, as a term of political abuse. Socialists who stood for the end of capitalism and no compromises along the way were seen to be demanding the impossible. Interestingly, before anyone ever used that word there was another term which was popular: possibilism. The so-called possibilists emerged in France in the early 1880s, and they were the reformists, tired of trying to bring about socialism and nothing less, who imagined that the best possible option would be to chip away at the edifice of capitalism bit-by-bit, reforming it until it looked like socialism. Over a century has passed since these undoubtedly sincere people embarked upon their futile course and everywhere reformist gradualism has ended in the most abject failure. A hundred years of demanding "the possible" or "something now" has landed the Labour Party with Tory Blair! So, if we who refuse to settle for anything less then real real socialists are impossibilists, perhaps it is time for our fellow workers to be rather more practical and demand "the impossible".

The articles which are reprinted give modern readers a good flavour of the clarity of analysis and vision of our early North American comrades. Warren Atkinson's Western Clarion article of 1906 exhibits prescient recognition of the capitalist nature of so-called public (i.e. state) ownership; Rab's 1918 article on dialectical thought is as relevant today as ever it was; John Tyler's 1919 Red Flag article deals with the myth of the Bolsheviks' "socialist revolution" (as do others in the volume), and there is also material written by Charlie Lestor during his "One Big Union" period—before he joined the SPGB. Article after after in this volume leaves the reader saying "they were right all along". And there is no shame in consistency when it is attached to validity and honest principles.

Gambone provides a useful, though incomplete, bibliography at the back, and there is a basically sound introduction, only marred by the biased sulkiness in the brief reference to the current Socialist Party of Canada. Small though it may be, at least it still exists as a relatively active party, which is more than can be said for the other movements mentioned which have expired in the course of the century. Has it ever occurred to Gambone, and those like him who celebrate the revolutionary past of the SPC/SPGB tradition while deriding its present existence, that history is of little use unless it teaches you what you should be doing now? For anyone who has come into contact with our ideas in recent years (or recent decades, for that matter) this is an invaluable guide to a hitherto under-publicised part of our past.

Steve Coleman

Sincerity is not enough (1968)

Book Review from the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Frank Cousins, A Study by Margaret Stewart (Hutchinson, 35s.)

Margaret Stewart, as a Fleet Street industrial correspondent, is in an admirable position to study a trade union chief. It is a pity that she confuses her study of Frank Cousins by the continuous use of those popular but vague terms, "the left" and "the right".

In the introduction to her study Stewart poses three questions. First, why did the Transport and General Workers' Union swing from the right under Arthur Deakin to the left under Frank Cousins? Them what has been the effect of Cousins' campaign against wage restraint? Finally, is Cousins big in his own right or because he is the leader of one-and-a-half million trade unionists? The answer to these questions is to be found, mainly between the lines, in her following chapters.

Stewart shows that the great majority of union members are apathetic and do not influence union policy. Full time officers are constitutionally debarred from opposition and lay members in high office are inhibited from expressing opposing views to those of their chief. The delegates to the union's policy making conferences are influenced by an autocrat like Deakin, to whom they listened in sullen silence, or by their hero worship of Cousins, whose speeches they greet with vociferous applause. For decades past they have accepted the views of their current General Secretary and voted accordingly. When Cousins came on the stage with a new policy the delegates remained loyal and supported him. The mass of the membership did not swing left or right. It noticed no change.

The members of the TGWU, like all workers, aspire to achieve the highest possible wage. Their aspirations were held in check by a government policy of wage restraint as expounded by Deakin and are equally held in check by the same policy as opposed by Cousins. Deakin proposed it, Cousins opposes it, but it is still there.

Stewart points to the series of accidents and incidents that catapulted Cousins into the union secretary's seat in 1956. Such accidents or incidents could easily have left him in a junior office and he would have been as little heard of today as he was in 1955. He is big because he is the leader of a million and a half workers who follow him enthusiastically, mistaking his verbal fireworks and his sincerity for sound sense.

We accept Stewart's assessment that Cousins is sincere and honest but, she says, even after writing her book, she still finds him an enigma. The things that make him enigmatic are his dual loyalties. As a trade union chief his job is to promote the interests of his members. As a member of the Labour Party he feels obliged to support the Labour government even while protesting against its anti-working class policies.

That is why, as Stewart tells us, Cousins considers the union rule that precludes "communists" from holding office is silly, yet he panders to the Labourites by aggressively opposing attempts to have the rule rescinded. At a TGWU Rules Revision Conference the present writer opposed political discrimination in the union and moved for the rescindment of the rule. Cousins opened his opposition speech with the words, "Waters says he is carrying a torch for no political party. Well, I am. I am carrying a torch for the Labour Party" (Loud cheers).

When union members are on strike they expect Cousins to lead them. The Labour government wants him to keep them at, or get them back to, work. He advocates opposition to the Prices and Incomes Policy but dodges open conflict with the government by taking the municipal busmen's case to a court.

In capitalist society the interests of the working class and the capitalist class are diametrically opposed. In the ensuing struggle the workers organise into trade unions and the government, be it Liberal, Conservative or Labour, is compelled to safeguard the national capitalist interests. No man can serve both masters. If he tries, and he is not a rogue, he must appear an enigma to those who fail to understand the capitalist system.

Cousins accepted the invitation to join the Labour government because he thought he could do better serve the workers. he left it because he did not wish to be identified with policies that were to the workers' detriment. But he remains loyal to the Labour party without apparently realising his invidious position.

Stewart's brief description of the 1958 London bus strike is sound except that the reference to Sir John Elliot's magnanimity is incorrect. He did not give the members of the busmen's negotiating committee an autographed copy of his book. He only promised. No tears were shed.

We do not quarrel with Stewart's narration about Cousins 'ban the bomb' activities, his attitude to the infamous Clause Four or his brief governmental career. We do quarrel with her reference to him as a Socialist. She likens him to Keir Hardie and quotes his old assessment of himself as an "old fashioned socialist". She says his socialism is instinctive and comes from his heart as much as his brain.

At a mass rally of TGWU members in the Central Hall, Westminster in 1966 Cousins launched his "socialist plan". A minimum of £15 for a 40 hour week with three weeks annual holiday for all workers. This plan is now adopted by the TUC. It bears as much resemblance to Socialism as it does to green cheese.

W. Waters

Some Pars From America: Not read at the Peace Conference (1919)

From the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

As news of the American labour movement is so scare in these days of censorship and Press laws, perhaps the following notes from the December issue of the New York "Class Struggle," an unofficial organ of the so called left wing of the also so-called Socialist Party of America may be of interest to the reader.

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In a candid article on the recent elections it is admitted that the large vote received by the S.P. of A. at the 1917 election was more of an anti-war vote than one for Socialist principles and that this vote has now gone back to the "old parties." By this means the recent "slump" is accounted for.

Nothing seems to left of the sprinkling of Socialist legislators that were elected in the previous year in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and California. Kansas, Idaho, Illinois, and Minnesota are again without Socialist representatives in the legislatures, and Minneopolis lost its Mayor Van Lear, which is hardly to be regretted. This precious "Socialist" who, at the beginning of the war had opposed the "infamous Public Safety Commission" as the new election approached "compromised himself and the party that elected him, by joining hands with the American Alliance of Labour and Democracy, and by speaking from its platform at a so-called Victory Meeting . . . That Van Lear took this stand not so much from a change of conviction as from openly opportunist motives, above all to get re-elected, by no means detracts from this sorry spectacle.

The article declares that the defeat of Meyer London, the late "Socialist" Congressman for New York, is "one thing to be thankful for." After telling the tale of his reactionary, pro-capitalist activity in Congress during the war the writer concludes: "His re-nomination is not to the credit of the membership of New York, even though it was prompted by the consideration that the district would be lost if another candidate were nominated in his place."

Such are the methods of the anti-revolutionary, anti-socialist ideas which permeate the membership of the S.P. of A. Is this the party which is going to overthrow the best entrenched and most unscrupulous capitalist oligarchy in the world? I think not.

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Very little news has reached this country about one of the most dastardly outrages among the many which American capital has perpetrated upon its wage-slaves. The sequel, too, is interesting. In Bisbee in Arizona, in 1917,

"four thousand miners went on strike against the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation for a ten per cent. wage increase and a reduction of the ten-hour workday to nine hours . . .  At that particular time there was an enormous demand for metal ore, and the highest prices were being paid. The Company saw fat profits slipping away between their fingers; the strike was costing them millions of dollars. They were, therefore, prepared to come to terms on the question of wages, and would perhaps have granted a reduction of working hours. But they refused point blank to consider the recognition of the union demanded by the striking miners.

Then on the 17th June the bosses took action:

A great crowd of striking miners that had gathered about the entrance to one of the mines was surrounded by an army of police, deputy sheriffs, and gun-men, were driven, unarmed as they were, before the loaded guns of their captors, to the railroad station. There, all of them, men, women and children, were forced with unbelievable brutality into a waiting freight train, in which they were shipped across the border into New Mexico about seven hundred miles from Bisbee, where they were thrown out of the cars in the midst of an uninhabited desert. In this deserted region of New Mexico, completely cut off from all communication with their families and the world, these unfortunate men, women and children were exposed to the most intense suffering. And only the foodstuffs that were brought them by organised labour at the earliest possible moment saved these thousands of workers from a miserable death.

 It took some time before the energetic protests of labour in the West were finally able to force an investigation. It was disclosed that this dastardly crime had been committed not only with the knowledge, but with the assistance of the management of the mines and the local authorities of Bisbee. The corporation officials had paid the gun-men, while the local authorities had engaged the scoundrels who did this dirty work. Indictments followed, indictments that incriminated the highest officials among the millionaire knaves at the head of the company. Proudly the capitalist press showed that there was no class justice in the United States of America, that rich and poor were measured by the same standards, that not even the richest of the men were responsible for the Bisbee outrage would be able to escape the hand of justice.

That was six months ago. Since then things have been strangely quiet. And now comes the news that the entire matter has been dropped because of a technical error in the indictment.  (Italics mine.)

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A very interesting account of the recent food riots in Japan is given by the well-known Sen Katayama. The immediate cause of the riots was the high price of rice, the staple food of the Japanese workers. Dr. Yokoi, "the agricultural authority of Japan, says in 'Industrial Japan': 'The past five years have produced super-abundant rice crops in Japan. Statistics show that there is no shortage of rice this year.'" The article following the Japanese "Oriental Economist," declares that the high prices were directly due to the policy of the Government in aiding and encouraging export trade. The political machinery of the country functions exclusively in the interests of a few big capitalists, while the interests of the vast majority of the people and the workers are completely disregarded."

The various phases of the riots are described in some detail. They "usually began in a peaceful demonstration that went to the homes of the rice dealers or to the granaries to demand cheaper food. Invariably it was the police who met the demonstrants with drawn sabres that turned these for the most part peaceful demonstrations in furious attacks." The riots were very wide-spread, extending "over three prefectures, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, over thirty provinces, and in Hokkaido, the northern part of Japan. Altogether this rising affected over two-thirds of the Japanese Empire. The 'Oriental Economist' reports that there were destructive riots in 142 different localities; that in 38 places they could be put down only by armed troops. In Osaka (the Manchester of Japan) the rioting continued for three full days and nights, and it is roughly estimated that at its height a force of over thirty thousand soldiers, including cavalry, was necessary to control the infuriated masses."

"In Kure, where the chief Navy Yard of the Empire is located, the marines were called out in full strength to quell the desperate mobs, while all thoroughfares and important crossings were armed with machine guns. But in spite of the rigid military discipline that obtains in the Japanese army, it was found that a number of the marines had made common cause with the rioting masses  . . . In Kobe the populace burnt down stores, offices, and even the residences of the wealthy rice speculators. The rioters were joined in a sympathetic movement of the 8,000 workers in the Mitsubitu shipbuilding yards." It must be remembered that working-class organisations, which might have rendered the movements more effective and less chaotic and violent, are illegal in Japan.

After August 13th the Government, fearing the spread of the disturbances, suppressed all news relating to the riots. "In Osaka the Governor published an edict forbidding more than five persons walking together on the streets. In Yokohama street assemblies were limited to nine persons."

"When the Government saw the magnitude of the movement, it appropriated $5,000 000 with which rice was bought up to be given away to the poor, or to be sold at greatly reduced rates to stem the tide of popular dissatisfaction." This, however, failed to have the desired result, for the movement had developed new characteristics. "Since food riots have ceased there have been labour troubles all  over the country. The 'Oriental Economist' gives a detailed account of seven large strikes that occurred between the 1st and the 19th of August, while the daily newspapers enumerate at least 40 others." The legal machinery, of course, reaped a rich harvest. "According to the latest reports (Sept. 12) over 5,000 persons were arrested and are awaiting trial. It is estimated by the Government that the number of arrests will reach more than 7,000 before the whole matter us settled. Among them are numerous Socialists. Chief among these is Yei Osugi, arrested at Osaka. The Government is particularly desirous of incriminating our comrades as mob leaders."

The article further hints that a contributory cause of the riots was the discontent of the workers with the Government's policy of intervention in Siberia, Whether this is so or not the political sequel to the disturbances was significant, for the Terauchi Government was superseded and the new ministry under Premier Hara reversed the policy of the old ministry in Russian affairs, and openly declares that Japan desires only  a responsible government in Russia, whether it be Bolshevik or not." Of course, this eyewash may satisfy for a time the workers of Japan, but we know that a working-class government can in no circumstances be considered "responsible" by the bourgeoisie.

R. W. Housely

Putting the boot in (1985)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Football has had something of a rough time of it lately. The deaths in Bradford and Brussels resulted in much talk, most of it uninformed, and even some action. Newspapers have editorialised about the malaise afflicting "our national game" and politicians from local councillors to prime ministers have put in their twopence worth.

The violence is by no means confined to British supporters. In May, when China was eliminated from the World Cup by Hong Kong at a game in Peking, spectators pelted players with bottles and vandalised cars and buses. Thirty policemen were beaten up, and over one hundred people arrested. One local bureaucrat blamed the violence on "the lack of education and discipline among a portion of the younger citizens".

Football violence is seen by those in authority as a problem which they must now do something about. The solutions suggested range from identity cards and banning away supporters to closing down stadium bars and such progressive ideas as the restoration of corporal punishment. Nobody can seriously believe that the root cause of football violence is supporters getting drunk once inside the ground. It is, admittedly, true that there would be no violence at empty football grounds, but no doubt determined supporters would manage to fight elsewhere. In the past, police, especially on the continent, have allowed ticketless supporters into supposedly all-ticket matches, rather than have them wandering around town causing trouble.

It is a truism to say that football violence is really a social problem, that it just happens to be football—rather than, say, cricket or rugby—that the hooligan element have fastened on to. Football violence is often seen as just the response of the poorest sections of the working class—the young of the inner cities, unemployed or in desperate dead-end jobs—to the frustration and emptiness of their lives. It provides them with excitement, solidarity and a sense of identity.

But this violence is by no means only the work of the skinheads or the poorest workers. An article in the Observer (2 June) discussed the new brand of violent supporters, who wear smart, casual clothes and often sit in the most expensive seats. They look "respectable" and travel under their own steam, rather than in official supporters' club trains and coaches, thereby avoiding any special attention from the police. Unofficial newsletters provide tables of teams' supporters and their reputation for "hardness". Many of these supporters come not from the inner cities but from the supposedly more affluent suburbs and new towns. Often their parents have moved out of the cities, but support for the old team has increased. This is still, however, a matter of finding something to identify with amid the barrenness and unfamiliarity of the new home. It is somehow more satisfying to claim allegiance to Chelsea or Millwall than  to, say, Slough or Milton Keynes.

Te following day, in the Guardian, Jeremy Seabrook related football violence to the policies of the Thatcher government and, more generally, to changes within British capitalism. It is clear, he wrote,

that the identity of the manufacturing centres of Britain, the function to which they owe their very existence, has been severely eroded in the past few decades. And the passionate feelings which have crystallised around football teams in these places are in large part the most conspicuous popular reaction against the injured sense of place.

As certain industries decline, he claims, workers fasten on to football clubs as something stable in their lives, lives which are being disrupted by forces beyond their control. Tory MP Edwina Currie responded that the Brussels violence was not "displacement activity but utterly amoral behaviour, deliberately fuelled by drink", the work of "vicious thugs", which had to be condemned rather than understood.

In yet another Guardian contribution (24 June), David Selbourne produced pretentious waffle which appeared to end by criticising the "Left intelligentsia" for refusing to face the truth of the violence seen in Brussels, which apparently shows where "British labour might be going" (whatever that means). Selbourne's was certainly one of the least articulate of the academic/political commentaries on the Brussels events, which clearly reveal the dearth of ideas or the merest hint of originality among the defenders of capitalism.

Fulham chairman Ernie Clay once put things more simply and forcefully: "Football has treated its public like cattle, so it is no wonder they have behaved like cattle". As capitalism treats workers like appendages of a machine, and thereby brutalises them, it is no wonder if some sometimes behave brutally.

It is sheer hypocrisy for the likes of Currie and Thatcher to condemn the events in Brussels while at the same time supporting the vicious and violent system in which they arise. The deaths in Brussels are as nothing compared to the carnage and suffering inflicted by capitalism every single day. The Bradford fire disaster, whatever its immediate cause, was certainly aggravated by the poor condition of the ground (there's no profit in safety precautions) and by the locking of exit doors (to prevent people entering without paying).

It is often claimed that football is popular because it reflects such values as excitement, physical prowess, local identity and the desire for victory. But so, after all, did the Falklands War, with its rejoicing and its hideous jingoism. The rivalries and violence of the football field are a microcosm of the competitive inhuman society of capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Political Notes: End of the Shah (1980)

The Political Notes column from the September 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

End of the Shah

In the welter of words about the passing of this remarkably successful capitalist monster, there was a passing reference to the first time he lost his throne in the early fifties. That time it was not the Ayatollah but a nationalist called Mossadegh who had the audacity not only yo kick him off the Peacock Throne but to nationalise the British oil giant which practically owned the country.

The idea of nationalisation was of course too much for the British government, who were so angry that they wanted to resort to their old friend the gunboat. They had to be restrained from this notion by those pacifists in the Truman government of the USA (remember him? Hiroshima? Korea?). In due course the two governments managed to "destabilise" Mossadegh (the dirty tricks department of the CIA knew more modern tricks than gunboats), the "robbery" of nationalisation was put right and the Shah restored to await the Ayatollah (and Death the Great Leveller—it seems he hasn't taken his billions with him).

But the real point lies here. Who were the Blimps who wanted to send in the gunboat and who clearly hated the idea of nationalisation? Churchill? Eden? Well no—actually it was Attlee, the leader of the Labour government of 1945-51. And who were his supporters in Parliament in those days? Why the same apostles of nationalisation that we know and hate today—Wilson, Foot, Callaghan, Mikardo, Allaun—and the young Wedgbenn himself.

Russian workers

The Guardian, like the high-class reformist rag that it is, employs some of the finest leftist creeps in Fleet Street. Among them is a chap called Jonathan Steele who is now their chief foreign scribbler. Up to about ten years ago, he was their main Eastern European reporter and had been licking the boots of the so-called communist governments with great enjoyment.

Suddenly, for no reason that he could think of, this bewildered lefty found himself kicked out of a communist congress in Hungary. He never knew why and was clearly shocked that years of faithful creeping should be rewarded in this way. However, he managed to get over it and became the USA expert of the paper for the next decade. Whether he found it better or worse he never told us. No doubt he was hard put to find much difference.

However, he is now back in Moscow and clearly determined to lick even harder so that he will never be kicked out again. On July 29 he had a large spread in the Guardian with a picture of that great democratic newspaper called Pravda. And under the picture was the caption: "In a one-party state, readers' are the best guide to public opinion". Now isn't that delightful? The very fact of a one-party state means that the ruling class allows no opponents to open their mouths. Imagine the shock to the Soviet system if one day there appeared just one letter in Pravda saying: "As a member of the public, I wish to voice some public opinion. I think that free trade unions and political parties should be legalised at once. Oh yes, and that Brezhnev and the rest of the gang should be sent to enjoy the delights of the Gulag Archipelago".

A likely story, fit only for creeps like Steele—who, incidentally, has provided us with this gem: that most of the letter-writers are pensioners because they have most time. "Next in order are workers, clerks, farm workers and technicians." Now the very existence of a working class is proof positive of the existence not of socialism, but capitalism. It now seems that in Russia, they have got a socialism tat not only has a working class but apparently any number of working classes. Steele omits to tell us whether there are many letters in Pravda from readers who are not members of any working class at all. For example, Communist Party bosses.

Labour hypocrisy

Can anyone fail to be sickened by the antics of the pseudo-socialist parties? When in opposition, they denounce the governments of their countries on account of the social evils all around and when they obtain power they continue with the mixture as before—the same capitalism with the same evils. Well, the British pseudos are now bidding for an all-time record in lies and humbug.

Barely a year ago they were the governing body, gallantly presiding over rising unemployment and cuts in education and the social services. There were cuts too in the living standards of the workers they tried to browbeat in the "winter of discontent" (which they have already erased from their memories) with rises of 5 per cent in the face of inflation of more than twice that amount. And now we read headlines like: "Varley attacks 'wicked' Tories over dole queues" (Guardian July 16). How can this unctuous humbug possibly call the Tories wicked for helplessly watching unemployment grow when he knows full well that his lot were exactly the same.

That question started out as rhetorical but it might as well get the obvious answer—that all these villainous politicians can do all these things simply because the working class allow themselves to be fooled by plausible rogues. Another specimen, the man who calls himself Tony Benn (this makes him a liar even before he says anything) complains that the media is (sic) 100 per cent anti-socialist . . . attacking the Young Socialists (he means young Trotskyists) and all those who stand for full employment, disarmament and peace".

This same Wedgwood, like Varley and the rest of them, was a leading member of the last Labour government which "stood" for unemployment, armaments and wars and all the other evils of capitalism. How could those young "socialists: sit there at their meetings (Guardian July 28) and allow this conman to get away with it?

Recently Michael Foot, who was mouthing the same cant (in the same high-pitched screech) as long ago as most people can remember, said that an anti-unemployment demonstration in South Wales was the greatest he had seen. How conveniently he forgets a similar protest at a steel works in his own constituency in Ebbw Vale, when he was minister in a government about to close the place down. The outrage among the workers was so great that they refused to let him speak and there was a serious danger of violence.

Not that we condone such tactics; we look forward to the day when workers will allow these leaders to speak—and then tell them they have had enough of capitalism, and its left-wing and right-wing stooges and are going to achieve a socialist world with their own intellects and their own efforts.

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A Labour councillor is quoted (Guardian July 15) as saying that workers "live in poor houses and in a poor environment. That was bearable while they had work" (he didn't say why). "Now that a lot of them have lost their jobs they are starting to ask questions—the process that creates wealth has spurned them and case them aside". Well spoken Labour councillor! (Even though this same thing has been going on for a couple of hundred years.) But what questions are they asking? Here's a suggestion: Who in hell needs Labour councillors? When did Labour politicians make a scrap of difference to those on the scrap heap?

L E Weidberg

Greasy Pole: Kinnock in the News Again (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who suffers from a sense of being unvalued, or disregarded, might find some relief in the recent experience of Neil Kinnock. Or rather the Noble Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty, previously Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party and of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, European Commissioner, Chairman of the British Council...and lifelong supporter of Cardiff City Football Club, recently promoted to the Premier Division and infamous for the aggressive, disruptive behaviour of its fans. In September he went to watch Cardiff play Fulham at Craven Cottage. Although a seasoned football follower like Kinnock should have known better, he chose to sit with his family among the Fulham supporters. In the twelfth minute Cardiff scored a goal which had Kinnock, in his own words, 'wildly ... expressing great joy, standing up...' Within a minute he got some attention from the stewards who 'advised' him to move his party to the Cardiff section of the crowd, where they were greeted '...with some warmth'.

The Sun

Shortly after the exposure of his antics at Craven Cottage Kinnock was in the news again, competing with Ed Miliband for sympathetic attention during the Daily Mail campaign about the Labour leader's father 'hating Britain'. He said he had similarly suffered, especially during the 1992 general election when the Sun had devoted its front page to the infamous headline 'If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights' followed on the day after the election with the claim that 'It's the Sun Wot Won It'. He also had something to say about the Daily Mail editor, the gruesome Paul Dacre, who complained that Kinnock had avoided going to lunch with him when the only purpose in doing so would have been for Dacre to observe whether Kinnock held his knife and fork properly. This was all a part of Kinnock's assiduously constructed image of the humble son of a Welsh miner who won his way to a sparkling education and then to almost the very top in government. But it said nothing about his own readiness to attack opponents, particularly those in his own party, as abrasively as anything thought up in Fleet Street. One of Labour's leading lights during Kinnock's time, Denis Healey, praised his 'incandescent oratory', a possible example of which was his attack at Labour's 1985 conference on the Liverpool members for their 'far-fetched resolutions ... pickled into a rigid dogma, a code ...the grotesque chaos of a Labour council ...hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own employees'.

In the sea

Kinnock was elected leader at the 1983 Labour conference in Brighton. To celebrate he went for a walk along the beach accompanied by his wife and a clutch of TV cameras. It turned out to be somewhat symbolic. This young, loud, fiery left winger walked too close to the encroaching tide, a sudden surge knocked him down onto the wet shingle, he quickly scrambled to his feet and turned to face the cameras laughing defiantly and waving a clenched fist to show how he would punch out anyone who denied that this was a new Labour Party. His mission was to purge the inconvenient ideas which some restless party members still regarded as essentially matters of principle. Like all that nonsense in Clause Four about the ownership of the means of production and exchange (which had to wait for abolition until Tony Blair); unilateral nuclear disarmament; local parties having too much say in making national policy; those pesky Militant people who had come into the party nursing tortuous intentions to radically change society. With the hand of the insidious Peter Mandelson on the tiller Labour navigated through two elections, in both of which they fooled themselves that they were on the verge of power (in the after-assessment of their 1992 election one of their perceived mistakes was the 'triumphalist' – taking too much for granted – style of their eve of poll campaign). In the end Kinnock's aggression against any ideas which he saw as voter-repellent was not effective. He retired from the scene with the unenviable record of being the longest-serving Leader of the Opposition to fail to make it to Prime Minister. It was not at all as he had envisaged it, that day he fell into the sea.

Peerage

But there were other, very lucrative, opportunities open to him – such as European Commissioner, which in 1976 he had described as 'a tariff club administered by an unelected commission and a bureaucracy with the principal objective of sustaining a capitalist market economy' but which, during his time in office between 1995 and 2004 (while he imposed savage cuts in staff wages and pensions) yielded him some £2.5 million in salary, expenses, pension and the like. Shortly after his term in Europe came to an end he announced that he had '...accepted the kind invitation to enter the House of Lords as a working peer for practical political reasons'. He was not deterred by his established reputation as a bitter opponent of the Upper House, for example in 1976: ' The House of Lords must go – not be reformed, not be replaced, not be re-born in some nominated, life after death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished'. In case he was misunderstood, in 1977 when the MPs walked to the Lords to hear the Queen's speech to open Parliament he stayed defiantly seated in the Commons alongside the Beast of Bolsover Denis Skinner.

Blair approval

Kinnock's story has been a bit like someone recovering from a serious illness; one after another the symptoms of all those fevered days as a troublesome, agonisingly ambitious left-winger died away to be replaced by convalescent signs of conformity. He strongly supported Michael Foot in his turn-about over the Falklands War, including the sinking of the Belgrano. And he backed the British attack on Iraq on the feeble excuse that the infamous liar Tony Blair had assured him that the Americans would safeguard the situation there after the war. Such political acrobatics were, of course, warmly approved by Blair, who noted in his book A Journey that as a result of Kinnock's leadership the Labour Party became 'broadened and ...more popular'. Nothing more needs to be said about Kinnock's relentlessly cynical betrayal of so much that he once proclaimed as promises to radically transform society to humanity's benefit. An overview of his time reveals his passionate support for Cardiff FC to be a lone example of consistency.

Ivan